Blog - Manuel Juan Zamora

Decorated House in Dyker Heights

2011-12-20T23:45:00Z

Decorated House in Dyker Heights, 2011. Canon EOS 5D, EF 24-105mm f/4.

Every year the residents of Dyker Heights, Brooklyn / New York City, decorate their houses with elaborate figures and lights, trying to trump their neighbours in amount or effect. This house was one of the more over-decorated ones in Dyker Heights.

Golden Gate

2011-12-11T22:00:00Z

Golden Gate, 2011. Canon EOS 5D, EF 24-105mm f/4.

The Lone Cypress

2011-12-01T22:00:00Z

The Lone Cypress. Monterey, 2011. Canon EOS 5D, EF 24-105mm f/4.

This is a quick postcard from my trip to the States. The weather in California is fantastic these days and submerges everything in beautiful light.

Groovy snippet of the day - Using Apache POI to parse Word documents

2011-10-14T10:50:00Z

I sincerely enjoy working with Groovy (a dynamic language for the JVM) combined with the huge ecosystem of the Java platform. Today I had to extract text from a Word 2010 document. As always, there is an app a library for that.

With Apache Poi and the super easy to use Groovy Grape dependency handling, reading a Word, Excel or OpenOffice document becomes a piece of cake:

@Grab(group='org.apache.poi', module='poi', version='3.7')
@Grab(group='org.apache.poi', module='poi-ooxml', version='3.7')
@Grab(group='org.apache.poi', module='poi-scratchpad', version='3.7')
 
import org.apache.poi.extractor.ExtractorFactory
 
class PoiTest {
    static def main(args) {
 
        def extractor = ExtractorFactory.createExtractor(new File(args[0]))
        
        println extractor.getText()
 
    }
}

Java

Flatiron

2011-10-12T06:46:00Z

Flatiron. New York, 2010. Leica MP & ZM 35mm/f2 on Tri-X.

Here's to the crazy ones

2011-10-06T06:42:00Z

The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Steve Jobs

Thank you, Steve.

Bad Hair Day

2011-10-05T18:30:00Z

Bad Hair Day. Paris, 2009. Leica MP & ZM 35mm/f2 on Tri-X.

Sunglasses

2011-09-30T08:17:00Z

Sunglasses. Paris, 2009. Leica MP & ZM 35mm/f2 on Tri-X.

Thoroughly Documented

2011-09-26T19:10:00Z

Thoroughly Documented. Paris, 2009. Leica MP & ZM 35mm/f2 on Tri-X.

I finally managed to develop a few rolls of embarrasingly old film. They came out fine, so expect some more street shots on the blog over the next few weeks.

Weeping Willow

2011-09-15T18:36:00Z

Weeping Willow. Isle of Mainau, Lake Constance, 2011. Leica MP & ZM 35mm/f2 on Kodak Ektar.