StumbleUpon | AirToob's blog posts

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/29122205/

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:45:34 -0800

WELCOME! These pages try to show what is beautiful or interesting or entertaining in life and in nature, and highlight some developments in science and technology that benefit people and the environment. You will also find introductions to many good stumblers here, and hopefully some interesting links and a few laughs!

P.S. Even though sex can be beautiful and/or entertaining, and is always interesting, there is no "adult" stuff on these pages. It's only fair to warn you.
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A SPECIAL WORD OF APPRECIATION to those of you who take the trouble to identify (and/or provide links that will get to) the authors of photos, paintings and other works of art, and who thank other people for stuff that you borrow or for giving you a nice review. As far as I am concerned, whether you have 1 fan or 1,000 fans, people like you are the real "Top Stumblers".
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IMAGE SEARCHES - If you are looking for good images that stumblers have already found, or new images in various categories, I have some suggested sites and image searches that you may find useful. Try image-searches-art, image-searches-photos, or image-searches. These are tag lists that I add to from time to time.
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HELP FOR STUMBLERS - Here is some essential reading, including some excellent guides, and some examples of HTML for hyperlinks and for laying out images and text (that work for both IE and Firefox).

See also "Subscribing to interesting stumblers" and "Friends & subscribers - what has changed?".
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TRANSLATION - comes in useful sometimes! - Google Language Tools (now include Polish)
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WHITE RABBITS - If you're pressed for time, and you would like a quick sample of what I think are the best of these pages, then click the White Rabbit!

Alternatively, click the chevrons (>>) below for a different quick tour of my personal favourites, and keep following the chevrons as you go.

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/22788923/

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:45:22 -0800

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/23555408/

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:44:49 -0800

[Continued from Part 1]
Interesting Stuff:

The harp guitar
Awesome pictures from Hubble (and a science poem)
The amazing Mandelbrot Set, and other explorations
Test-drive a hydrogen-powered car
Hydrogen from sugar
A real revolution in car engines
Good environmental things happening in China
The Material World - perhaps the world's greatest science online radio programme

Favourite Tag Selections (open in a separate window):
(Make sure you select list view, not grid view - see icons near top right of page)

Things to enjoy in life
Humour
Music
Childhood
Portraits
Landscapes
Watercolours
Fantasy art
Beautiful art from mathematics
Beautiful women
Environment
Exceptionally good stumblers (IMO)

You might also like some of my other tags.

That's it for now... I'll update this occasionally... Gotta run!

[Dashes off, pretending to be busy, and finds a good place for an afternoon siesta]

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/37742114/

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:55:49 -0800

[Continued from Part 1]

One of the local yobbos, who sometimes eat fish (when they can't get fish and chips)

The best fish and chips place in Whitby, apparently! (There is fierce competition, but I can certainly recommend this place.)

The steps up to the church and abbey

Before this visit I had dabbled a bit with Photoshop, but I used these (non-expert!) photos to explore more of Photoshop's features. The main thing I learnt here was to use an additional curves layer in order to adjust the contrast and brightness of some parts of the picture that would otherwise be too bright or in deep shadow, and paint out the unwanted parts of the new layer with a black brush, letting the original show through. The Whitby Memorial Gate, for example, had no detail on the metalwork in the original, the Whitby Fudge window was dark, and the sunny area at the top of the stairs to the abbey was much too bright (it still is).

Experts will know all this stuff already, but I had a lot of fun finding out about this kind of "poor man's HDR". Using layers to improve parts of the picture works better if you have two images of the same scene taken with a tripod at different exposures, but I don't often carry a tripod around with me (I'll have to try it soon, though).

Also, I discovered that beneath the eye-dropper tool is the measure tool. If you draw a line with this across a horizon that you want to be level (but isn't), or down a line in the picture that should be vertical (but isn't), and then do an image rotate and select "arbitrary", Photoshop has kindly worked out the exact number of degrees (e.g. 1.3) in order to straighten things up and has loaded this number into the box for you - neat!

Another really useful feature is the droplet. Basically you first create an action to do a commonly-used series of things in Photoshop e.g. reducing the size of the original, sharpening it, adding a border, or whatever. Then you create a droplet from this action, which appears as an icon in some folder. Then you can drag a bunch of photos and drop them on the droplet, and the same actions get carried out on each.

As a Photoshop novice I can really recommend 50 Fast Photoshop 7 Techniques by Gregory Georges, which has a great CD-ROM to go with it (essential). He does a book for later versions of Photoshop, but I am happy with the version I have.

If you liked this...

[More of my photoblogs and other rambles]

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/37290721/

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:44:37 -0700

Happy Halloween, y'all!

[Last year's Peanuts on the Great Pumpkin]
[More selections from classic Peanuts...]

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/37029784/

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:46:47 -0700

I'm taking a break from stumbling for a couple of weeks or so... SU fatigue setting in, and some other nice things to do!

I'll leave you with this little item (author unknown), snaffled gratefully from Pearl's delightful pages.

Meanwhile, hopefully you'll find something to interest you here, or check out my personal list of Gold Stumblers, where there is much treasure to be found.

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/36845091/

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:17:13 -0700

[More selections from classic Peanuts...]

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/36458517/

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:24:02 -0700

[More selections from classic Peanuts...]

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/35989323/

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:24:01 -0700

[More selections from classic Peanuts...]

http://AirToob.stumbleupon.com/review/35898175/

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:09:29 -0700

Stepping stones at Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire - taken by my daughter Rachel

Great composition!

[More pictures by Rachel]
[Miscellaneous rambles - index to photoblogs of trips and random articles]
[Some Places To Enjoy Life... In England]