Drawne

8mm Rokinon Fisheye Lens Review

Andy Feliciotti — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 19:22:23 +0000

After reading Lifehacker’s “2011 The Best Photo Gear of the Year” and only seeing one lens on the list, I knew I had to purchase it. That lens was the 8mm Rokinon Fisheye Lens (for Canon/Nikon/Sony/Etc Cameras) which was a great deal at $300.

Using the lowest aperture of 3.5, there is some difficulty taking photos in low light, but still works great in most night shots without the need for a stand. The 8mm viewing angle produces some great photos on my camera (Canon T1i), even on a cropped sensor. The lens also has very little distortion and no vignette on the edges, which was a surprise to me. The main buying point for this lens is the price sadly, for $300 it’s hard to beat such a cheap lens.

Since the lens is made for a variety of cameras, it doesn’t communicate well with the Canon T1i, meaning aperture settings need to be set on the lens itself and a lot of photos will appear under exposed or over exposed. The image quality of the photos produced by the Rokinon was also below the quality I expected, a lot of grain and unsharp areas were noticeable to me.

The Verdict

If you’re a photographer on a budget and need a great wide angle lens, you should defenently pick up the Rokinon 8mm.

View more images from my Flickr set here

Have you purchased a lens not made by your camera manufacturer?
let us know in the comments!

A Day with the iPhone 4S

Andy Feliciotti — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 03:15:30 +0000

After spending an entire day with the new iPhone 4S after upgrading from an iPhone 4 the differences between the two products are lackluster. Here are my impressions

I waited in line for an hour to get the iPhone 4S at 8am today with 30 other crazy people (mostly Blackberry users) but the experience was easy going. While setting up the phone I logged in to my iCloud account and got it restored from my iPhone 4 iCloud back up which worked pretty well until I left the store (and leaving the wifi). At this point I couldn’t sync from iCloud without wifi, so I went to work and it took 2 minutes for it to sync settings. After my 8gb of files were synced, the phone was exactly how I had it setup on my previous iPhone, down to the tabs open in the browser. This was such an easy migration period, which is why I love iCloud.

Siri and voice-to-text work wonders but it’s not much more than what we’ve seen on Android based phones. That said Siri is pretty fun to interact with, asking it things such as “Call my brother”, Siri will ask who is your brother and remember who it was.

The camera is noticeably improved but nothing to write home about, and the speed tweaks to the device it self are slight. What’s more noticeable are the iOS5 and iCloud tweaks which is available on both devices. If you are on an iPhone 4 I’d say stay with it, but I’d recommend the iPhone 4/4S experience to any new comer.

Here are a few random shots I’ve taken with the new 8MP camera.

How I Find New Music

Andy Feliciotti — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 03:41:37 +0000

I spend much of my time listening to music, and I just wanted to share some of the websites and methods I use to find fresh music.

Almost always when you find me at the computer or in the car I’m listening to music. With over 4000 songs in my Zune I still crave more, here are some of the ways I pursue new music.

Hype Machine has to be one of my favorite sites, it basically tracks music blogs and lets users vote on them. I spend a lot of time listening to the “popular” page of the site to see what is upcoming (Hypem’s popular is usually upcoming songs). The site allows you to monitor searches for your favorite artists also, creating a unique feed for artists you like. (If you’re interested here’s my Hypem profile)

While driving a great way to explore a genre is to have XM or Sirius in your car. I’ve discovered plenty of songs through satellite radio, and the best part is if you like a song you can see the title right on the display. (My favorite stations include BPM, BBC Radio 1, and SiriusXM U)

If you like to let the DJ (or robot DJ) do all the work for you, you might want to find a nice online radio station. I’ve found plenty of older and newer songs I’ve never heard of while listening to internet radio, and after downloading they’ve been a great addition to my collection. I suggest browsing station in the Shoutcast directory using WinAmp. A few of my favorite stations include FrenchKiss FM, Wadio, and TechnoBase FM.

When all else fails see what your friends are tuning into, it also helps to “like” bands and artits on Facebook to see when they release new work.

How do you explore music? Grooveshark? Pandora? Concerts? Let us know in the comments!

Article header image by Daniel Paxton via Flickr

iPhone iOS5 Hands-on

Andy Feliciotti — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 23:28:26 +0000

With iOS5 announced and coming fall of 2011 I decided to run the developer version of iOS5 on my iPhone. Apple has seemed to fix every complaint and issue people have had with the OS, and it works wonderfully.

The biggest change is to notifications, it no longer pops up interfering with what you are doing but rather gives you an Android like alert at the top of the screen. To see all your notifications you just drag down the top of your screen to see notifications, and they even added a stock and weather widget in the dropdown.

A lot of visual tweaks are welcomed, such as changes in the messaging apps and adding a slightly different style around menus. The notification settings are also a lot more complex than they used to be, which is a great addition if you preferred the old style messages.

Being able to setup/sync your device all wirelessly is a nice addition. They even had a setting during start up that allowed me to sync everything from iCloud, meaning when I get a new iPhone I can pull all my photos and settings back down without having to do anything besides logging in. Apple has improved iOS in nearly every way, some issues were it ran a little slower and a few apps don’t work, but I assume these issues will be resolved by it’s fall launch.

iOS and Android’s OS are pretty tightly matched after iOS5 in my opinion, but what do you think?

Switching from Droid to iPhone

Andy Feliciotti — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 02:55:13 +0000

I recently got an iPhone 4 after having an Android phone (Motorola Droid) for over a year. Making the switch really gave me a better perspective on the different mobile platforms, and I’m sharing my experience. (note: this is not a guide/tutorial)

My first smartphone endeavor began with the Motorola Droid on Verizon which I bought on launch in November 2009. I mainly purchased it because it was one of the first Android powered phones on Verizon, and the rockin’ keyboard drew me in. After about a year of loving the phone, I realized it was getting a tad slow compared to the current generation of phones, so I bought the iPhone 4 in March of 2011 on Verizon (My first Apple product!).

Right after installing a few apps on my iPhone I realized the differences in app quality versus Android was dramatic. Mainly everything was polished and little functionality compared to my Droid, like not being able to select multiple emails and marking them as read in iOS4 was mind blowing to me. The app selection was disappointing as well. Apple always boasts about having 350k+ apps which sounds great but when the majority of them are fart/uesless apps it doesn’t do much for my phone’s functionality. Apps that gave me the ability to backup and search my SMS/MMS/Call Logs in Gmail was great on Android, and due to the limited API of iOS4 iPhone apps can’t achieve such functionality.

I quickly got over things like a broken notification system. Granted the notification system on Android is amazing and Apple will most likely mimic it in iOS5, so I was ok with the current one. Having no delay opening or switching apps gave a nice feel as I was used to waiting a second for apps to load. Granted giving up “true” multitasking, having extended battery life and speed is worth it.
Having a quick phone and polished experience is worth it on the iPhone for the most part. Most users don’t use all their functions on their phone like I do, so small things I notice really don’t matter to most. But this whole experance taught me how much better the Android OS was than iOS, Apple only having to make iOS for a few devices makes the experience way better. It’s only a phone, why not enjoy the time with it, which is why I’m keeping my iPhone4.

I am aware I’m comparing devices that are almost a year apart and that’s why things are faster/better on the iPhone, but this is meant to be a general comparison between devices. I have used newer Android devices and the slight delay when using the touchscreen just ruins a lot of how the devices should feel.

I can’t wait to see what Apple does in iOS5, I’ll be sticking with iPhone in the meantime! (See you in line for iPhone5)

Has anyone else made a switch to a different mobile OS, if so how was it?

Standard Palindrome in PHP

Andy Feliciotti — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:04:13 +0000

A Standard Palindrome is a word or phrase that is the same forward as it is backwards without punctuation and spaces. So here is a small script that strips everything but letters and numbers in a string and finds if it’s a palindrome.

There isn’t much need to explain how it works, just replace the $originalpalindrome with the word or phrase you want to test.
$originalpalindrome = "Madam I'm Adam"; $palindrome = strtolower(preg_replace("([^A-Za-z0-9])", "", $originalpalindrome )); $palindrome2 = strtolower(strrev($palindrome)); echo "Original Statement: $originalpalindrome "; if ($palindrome == $palindrome2){ echo "$palindrome is a Standard Palindrome of $palindrome2"; }else{ echo "$palindrome is not a Standard Palindrome of $palindrome2"; }; ?>

Spice up your Gmail Signature in Chrome

Andy Feliciotti — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 00:54:36 +0000

As you may know Gmail doesn’t allow you to make a html signature for your emails natively. So here is a quick way to add a little bit of a punch to your emails.

Since Gmail doesn’t allow html in it’s signatures normally, you will need the Autopen extension for Google Chrome (note there is an extension for Firefox but this tutorial is for the Google Chrome extension). This addon essentially lets you add a html signature at the end of any Gmail message, with basic inline css support.

After the plugin is installed you can go to your Gmail and click the Autopen editor button.

This will open the editor where you can make signatures for your emails, we are just going to make a simple signature with a image and some text.

Start by creating a table with 2 columns 1 row, and 0 border.

Using this table place a small image on the left, anything that you would find appropriate (a photo of you or something like that). I’ll be using an A just for an example (if you need a place to upload an image for this try imgur.com). When adding an image also add an alt tag so for those who don’t accept your pictures it’s not totally confusing for them.

On the right column of the table you will want to add things such as your name, email, website, or phone number. Also format nicely by making your name stick out a little.

Save your creation and try it out in Gmail, you can pick one of the signatures you make to be the default one that always loads with an email.

You’re done! There are plenty of techniques you can put into an email signature Smashing Magazine had a great post about email signatures where you can look for inspiration.

If you have a cool email signature feel free to show everyone in the comments, or email me!

Create a Basic Peeling Sticker Effect in Photoshop

Andy Feliciotti — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 09:45:51 +0000

A peeled sticker effect is a great effect to add to any design, and here’s how to do a basic peeled sticker effect in Photoshop.

First we will start off will a sticker looking object (obviously), just create some text (I’m using the Anja Eliane font).

Next add a stroke to it for the border of the sticker.

You will have to rasterize the text then create a new layer and merge the text layer down so you can get a flat version of the graphic.

Now that you have the merged layer you will need to pick what part you want to appear folded over (just do this by using the polygonal lasso).

After you have the part of the sticker selected that you want to flip you will need to right click it and select “layer via cut“. Once you have the cut in a new layer select it again and free transform it to change the height and width to -100% of what they are now, which flips them vertically and horizantally. Once it’s flipped place it where you deleted it so it appears as if it’s folded over.

Next you will need to remove the original black text part, by selecting the layer (ctrl+click on layer thumbnail) and fill the layer with any color you want (I used an off white for mine). I had to do this step a couple of times to fully get the original color of the text out.

Add a quick shadow to the fold and select the layer, once selected go to Layer>Layer Style>Creat Layers, this will make the shadow a layer itself where you can delete the area not on the sticker.

After the shadow looks nice go back to the layer of the fold and select the burn tool, make the range “Highlights” and put the exposure down (to about 4%). Draw a faint line on the fold so it appears to have some lighting effects, and that’s it! you have a nice simple peeling sticker effect.

There are plenty of different things you can try with this, including text, rounded “stickers”, and plenty more. Note that my rounded sticker was textured with this paper texture.

Here’s some inspiration, including Brad Sucks website and the Little Big Planet box.

9 WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have

Andy Feliciotti — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:03:23 +0000

Plugins are a very important part of WordPress, and should be a major part of your blog. Here are some of the best WordPress plugins for new or existing blogs.

When starting a new blog these are some of the best plugins for the foundation of your site. I wouldn’t leave home without them!

All in One SEO Pack
Search engine optimization is important for any site, and the All in One SEO Pack takes care of a lot of those needs, plus it lets you customize!

FD Feedburner Plugin
The amount of people viewing your RSS feed is always nice to know, and with this plugin you can easily replace all your RSS links to your Feedburner‘s Address. If you don’t use Feedburner, then I would suggest checking it out.

Google XML Sitemaps
Obviously having the worlds largest search engine indexing your site is important, the Google XML Sitemaps can help Google do so. Once you generate a sitemap with this plugin be sure to link it to your site on Google’s webmaster page.

Search Meter
When a user searches your blog and doesn’t find what they are looking for, they most likely will leave your blog. Search Meter is a great tool to see what people search on your site, but most importantly if they find their results. Maybe you have an article people are looking for but it’s just mis-titled, renaming your post could help a lot.

SexyBookmarks
This plugin took me some time to find, but it’s one of the better social bookmarking plugins out there. Sharing is caring, and SexyBookmarks helps with getting users to share your posts. (see example at the bottom of the post :P)

Smart 404

A 404 is annoying for anyone, and Smart 404 helps with the issue somewhat. Lets say someone goes to this url on your blog mysite.com/iphone-story/ but you renamed it, Smart 404 will search your posts and forward the url to the right post (such as mysite.com/correct-iphone-post).

WP-PageNavi
The standard “older posts” and “newer posts” on the bottom of WordPress pages can be annoying and slow to use. WP-PageNavi speeds up the process for visitors though, by allowing them to click the page number they want to go to. You might want to theme this before adding it to your site.

WP Super Cache
Speed is one of the most important factors for a website, WP Super Cache helps with this greatly by caching pages rather then pulling from the database each time a page is requested.

WPtouch iPhone Theme
It’s always nice to have a mobile version of your site, and WPtouch will take care of everything, making your blog feel like home on any smartphone.

Bonus! (Kinda): Akismet
WordPress is easily prone to comment spam, and Akismet takes care of all the spam. This plugin is defaultly installed but you have to get an API key from WordPress to enable it. If you aren’t using this plugin, enable it RIGHT NOW!

What are some plugins that you can’t live without… let us know in the comments!

7 Awesome Hand Drawn Fonts

Andy Feliciotti — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:41:05 +0000

Check out this quick round up of seven excellent hand drawn fonts to use in your designs.

I’m gonna break this down to a list of samples, at the end of the article is a zip file with all the fonts.

Angelina

ArtBrush

Daniel

Good Dog

HandWerk

Journal

TrashHand

Drawne

8mm Rokinon Fisheye Lens Review

The Verdict

A Day with the iPhone 4S

Further Reading

How I Find New Music

iPhone iOS5 Hands-on

Switching from Droid to iPhone

Standard Palindrome in PHP

Spice up your Gmail Signature in Chrome

Create a Basic Peeling Sticker Effect in Photoshop

9 WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have

All in One SEO Pack Search engine optimization is important for any site, and the All in One SEO Pack takes care of a lot of those needs, plus it lets you customize!

FD Feedburner Plugin The amount of people viewing your RSS feed is always nice to know, and with this plugin you can easily replace all your RSS links to your Feedburner‘s Address. If you don’t use Feedburner, then I would suggest checking it out.

Google XML Sitemaps Obviously having the worlds largest search engine indexing your site is important, the Google XML Sitemaps can help Google do so. Once you generate a sitemap with this plugin be sure to link it to your site on Google’s webmaster page.

SexyBookmarks This plugin took me some time to find, but it’s one of the better social bookmarking plugins out there. Sharing is caring, and SexyBookmarks helps with getting users to share your posts. (see example at the bottom of the post :P)

WP Super Cache Speed is one of the most important factors for a website, WP Super Cache helps with this greatly by caching pages rather then pulling from the database each time a page is requested.

WPtouch iPhone Theme It’s always nice to have a mobile version of your site, and WPtouch will take care of everything, making your blog feel like home on any smartphone.

Bonus! (Kinda): Akismet WordPress is easily prone to comment spam, and Akismet takes care of all the spam. This plugin is defaultly installed but you have to get an API key from WordPress to enable it. If you aren’t using this plugin, enable it RIGHT NOW!

7 Awesome Hand Drawn Fonts

All in One SEO Pack
Search engine optimization is important for any site, and the All in One SEO Pack takes care of a lot of those needs, plus it lets you customize!

FD Feedburner Plugin
The amount of people viewing your RSS feed is always nice to know, and with this plugin you can easily replace all your RSS links to your Feedburner‘s Address. If you don’t use Feedburner, then I would suggest checking it out.

Google XML Sitemaps
Obviously having the worlds largest search engine indexing your site is important, the Google XML Sitemaps can help Google do so. Once you generate a sitemap with this plugin be sure to link it to your site on Google’s webmaster page.

SexyBookmarks
This plugin took me some time to find, but it’s one of the better social bookmarking plugins out there. Sharing is caring, and SexyBookmarks helps with getting users to share your posts. (see example at the bottom of the post :P)

WP Super Cache
Speed is one of the most important factors for a website, WP Super Cache helps with this greatly by caching pages rather then pulling from the database each time a page is requested.

WPtouch iPhone Theme
It’s always nice to have a mobile version of your site, and WPtouch will take care of everything, making your blog feel like home on any smartphone.

Bonus! (Kinda): Akismet
WordPress is easily prone to comment spam, and Akismet takes care of all the spam. This plugin is defaultly installed but you have to get an API key from WordPress to enable it. If you aren’t using this plugin, enable it RIGHT NOW!