24 Friday May 2013
Tags
alberta, art, calgary, Calgary Expo, canada, comic expo, cosplay, expo, gaming, makeup, photography, science fiction
One of my favourite makeup jobs from last month’s Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo.
22 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Alberta, Calgary, photography, photowalking, random, urban
21 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Flickr, Internet, photography, random, technology
Tags
I was afraid of this — some wrinkle in the fine print of the massive changes to photo-sharing website Flickr made yesterday.
There’s nothing wrong with the esthetic improvements, to my mind.
All the trouble lies under the hood.
As blogger/photographer Thomas Hawk found out, the status of “Pro” accounts wasn’t as static as first thought.
Certain people’s current Pro account will eventually expire and those users will be forced into a new upgrade regime — $49.99 annually to remove ads; $499.99 annually to double space allocation to two terabytes. (That second one is not a typo: Four-hundred ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.)
Other Pro accounts will be allowed to continue.
It is still unclear to me how this Pro vs. Ad-Free/Doublr is suppose to shake down.
Will someone at Flickr please provide a CLEAR explanation of who is entitled to what? Who still has access to old-style Flickr Pro and who doesn’t?
What entitlements that were previously reserved for Pro users will be available to all users with the new free program?
How do I find out how much space I still have? One terabyte is a lot of data but I like to be organized …
Flickr has a few answers here: http://www.flickr.com/help/limits/#150582914
Still, it feels as if I’m information is being withheld or poorly explained.
I just tried to buy two more years under the current Pro regime … and it appears I’ve succeeded — even though the documentation states I shouldn’t be able to do so.
What changed in the last few hours? Has Flickr changed who’s entitled to a Pro account?
Essentially, I’d like to know how screwed I am when my Pro account expires … if it ever does.
This is turning out to be more confusing that it should be.
p.s. In the minutes after I took that screen capture of Thomas Hawk’s blog, he was also able to extend his Flickr Pro account. He is (not surprisingly) ecstatic.
21 Tuesday May 2013
Posted in Alberta, art, Calgary, Canada, photography, photowalking, random, urban
20 Monday May 2013
Posted in Flickr, photography, technology
Tags
I’d been wondering how long it would be before the wonderful justified view for my contacts in Flickr would come to my own photostream.
The answer is … today. That and a whole bunch of other changes and goodies from Flickr.
After you log in, you are immediately shown a feed of your contacts’ images. Not puny little thumbnails as before, but medium-large size images you can scroll through vertically.
The new “wrap” around the main page has a Google-like quality to it, with persistent menus at the top and the right side of the page. (Flickr is owned by Yahoo, oddly enough.)
Navigate to your own photostream and you’ll see what I mentioned before: Your own images shown in a pretty mosaic (justified view), the same as the contacts page has been for the better part of a year.
All in all, the visuals in your web browser resemble that of the iOS Flickr app.
There appear to be a few other changes, under the hood.
Whereas before, members who used the free version of Flickr had monthly upload limits, it appears this has changed to a hard cap on space placed at one terabyte.
However, with the free service, there are ad and no detailed statistics. (Same as before.)
There are no changes for Flickr users who pay for a pro account.
20 Monday May 2013
Posted in British Columbia, Canada, photography, photowalking, random, Travel, urban, Vancouver
Tags
animal, b.c., british columbia, canada, dog, German shepherd, GSD, pet, photography, photowalk, random, Travel, urban, vancouver
Spotted this lonely-looking pupster just beyond Vancouver’s Chinatown, toward downtown.
19 Sunday May 2013
Posted in Canada, photography, random, trains, Travel
17 Friday May 2013
Posted in British Columbia, Canada, photography, photowalking, random, Travel, urban, Vancouver
Tags
b.c., british columbia, canada, graffiti, photography, photowalk, random, Travel, urban, vancouver
Seen on a side street in Gastown, Vancouver.
16 Thursday May 2013
Posted in British Columbia, Canada, photography, photowalking, random, Travel, urban, Vancouver
Tags
b.c., british columbia, canada, Chinatown, photography, photowalk, random, Travel, urban, vancouver
Pender. Keefer. Columbia. Main.
Those street names in Vancouver’s Chinatown were oddly familiar to me on my first visit in 2006, even though I’d never been there before.
In a sense, though, I’d already been, thanks to a couple of novels by Canadian author Wayson Choy.
His portrayal of Chinese immigrants’ lives in early part of the last century gave a taste of what the neighbourhood would have been like.
Things are not that way anymore, of course.
But the landmarks and the names are still there.
15 Wednesday May 2013
Posted in Apple, architecture, British Columbia, Canada, fun, iPhone, photography, photowalking, random, technology, trains, transit, Travel, urban, Vancouver
Tags
b.c., british columbia, canada, Canadian Pacific, history, iPhone, iPhoneography, panorama, photography, photowalk, rail, railroad, railway, random, roundhouse, train, trains, Travel, urban, vancouver, Yaletown
This is the former Canadian Pacific roundhouse in Vancouver’s Yaletown district, captured with a sweep of my iPhone’s camera in “panorama” mode.
It was really interesting to try this, because the roundhouse is built in the shape of an arc … so if you’re standing at the centrepoint of the arc and you swivel to capture the panorama, the main subject doesn’t look very distorted at all, while everything else does.
Ricky Leong 