Learn Photography in Bangkok

As a beginner, one of the problems I’ve encounter is taking a perfect shot of a landscape. The images I took are either blurry or overexposed. Sometimes, I got to the point that my images were not as sharp as I wanted them to be. But over the time, I’ve learned some tricks to get that perfect shot of landscapes that I want. I want to share with you my 5 photography tips on capturing a perfect landscape.

Play with your White Balance

Landscapes have different types of color temperature. Sometimes it is with a blue sky and enormous clouds, there are times it have a cozy feel due to the warmth of the sunset. Having your camera set in an “Auto White Balance” gives you the right temperature for your photo. But there are times the camera does not get the exact photo that you want. White Balance gives you the option to control the ‘feel’ of your images. Take a photo in each white balance settings you have in your camera and pick the best one and cut out the rest. Either way, you won’t lose a thing, plus, you get a chance to capture the best landscape temperature you have.

Work on your Point-of-View (POV)

Having a good point-of-view is always a big aspect in taking a shot of a landscape. Have a balance of the land and the sky. Look out for the perfect horizon and work on your location. If you can stand up on a chair, or lay down on the ground just to capture the best angle of the landscape you want, do it. Some of the greatest photos were taken with the weirdest position in taking a photo.

Use a Tripod

Holding your camera with your bare hands comes in so much handier than taking a huge and heavy tripod just to take a minimum of 30 photos. But using a tripod is always better in taking a photo of a landscape. Tripod eliminates the shaky and blurry parts of an image. It also allows you to take a wide variety of photos with the same exact level for continuous photos. If you’re not comfortable in carrying a huge tripod, try using a monopod.

Take as many shots as you can

With the recent technology today, taking a lot of photos of one specific object won’t be a big issue because you can immediately delete the images that you don’t like. Take as many shot as you can and pick your 3 best photos. Don’t limit yourself if you’re not satisfied yet with your shots.

Apply some minimal editing to your photos

Digital and SLR cameras are just some high-tech equipment  As a photographer, there are some specific shots that you want that your camera will never recognize. Before you take a photo, paint an image of that landscape in your brain of how you want your photo would look like. Then, take your best shot of that landscape and pick the closest photo to the one you had in mind. Then, use a photo editing software and apply some editing to your photos. Some of the best Image Editing Software are Adobe Lightroom, GIMP, Paint.NET, PhoXo, and PiXBuilder Studio.

Here are some other blogs about Photography tips that might help you in choosing the right lenses, navigating the image’s depth-of-field, and doing post-editing.

These 5 tips will be more applicable if you know your camera well. Take an hour or two and practice to navigate your camera for better results. Try to take variety of photos and track your skill level week by week. It will help you bring out the best photographer that you can be.

If you want to learn more about your photography skills, check out the One Day Photography Course or Photography Essentials at Web Courses Bangkok.

We are back with the week six of Friday’s Inspiration, this week yet again I will be sharing the screenshots and links of the websites that I have found inspiring.

CSS Web Design Awards:

1) Plums:

Winner 7th May 2013

www.fullten-plums.com.tw

The site is neat and based on infinite scroll, true to the Asian pop culture this site has there own Plum anime over the web explaining the different flavours.

 2) Apartments:

Winner 6 May 2013

www.weareapartments.org

This is also an Animation based website. This is a campaign website for helping living in a home that’s right for them.

3) Jam-Work:

Winner 3rd May 2013

www.jamvisualthinking.com

This is a website of a design agency based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The website also have Instagram and Twitter integrated so when ever a picture is taken from Instagram or a tweet is posted on Twitter it links directly to the website. This helps the page SEO and also keeps the interest of the daily visitor.

Awwwards:

4) Adam Hartwig:

Winner 9th May 2013

www.adamhartwig.co.uk

This is a portfolio wed site of award winning graphic designer Adam Hartwig. His website is simple and interesting at the same time. I have taken the screenshots of almost all of his website pages, their were so good.

The Best Design:

5) Tivix:

Winner 9th May 2013

www.tivix.com

Tivix is a custom mobile app and custom web developers, their site is simple and neat.

Interested in making neat and clean websites ? have a look at our Web Design Basic and Web Design Intermediate class.

This week we are back with the screen shots of the most inspiring web site of the week. The purpose of the screen shot is to see the various layout and pattern of the award winning websites.

CSS Web Design Award:

1) C-Roots:

Winner 2nd May 2013

www.c-roots.com

2) Smallfish Digital Agency:

Winner 30th April 2013

www.smallfish.es

3) The Interactive Ear:

Winner 27th April 2013

www.amplifon.co.uk

Awwwards:

4) Designembraced:

Winner 2nd May 2013

www.designembraced.com

The Best Design:

5) Pedalsouth:

Winner 2nd May 2013

www.pedalsouth.org

To make neat and professional websites and templates you can take a look at our Web Designer Basic and Web Designer Intermediate Course.

That perfect sunset:

With summer approaching it is now time for vacations, those long awaited long weekend. Where we can pack our bag and to head to beach. Chilling out at the cottage drinking beer and watching the sunset. Why not pull out your camera and capture a new wallpaper or create a piece of art to hang over your bed. My friend ask me “How do you get a stunning pictures of gleaming sunsets, rich with colour and warmth that seems to reach out beyond the boundaries of the photograph” I will share with you a quick an easy way to do so.

Top Tips:

• Depending on the position of the sun, metering above the horizon, or below will determine how the shot looks like.
• Setting your camera (a manual camera is best) Shutter speed is key here, first make sure you are not to high never go above 1/125 sec, Don’t go below 1/30 unless you have a tripod or a stable object to put your camera on.
• ISO should be at the lowest as possible you want to try to eliminate noise, don’t forget the sky is still bright.
• White Balance setting it to daylight is a good place to start, to get that rich red sky.
• Finding the right spot, move around don’t get lazy and just don’t go where every tourism goes, some times moving a few meters is just what you need.
• Try using reflections when possible.
• Silhouettes of people or trees, really just anything against the sky.
• Why not try a panorama quite useful when you don’t have a super wide lens.

Last thing, shoot more than one photo, try darker or lighter, you might prefer having a rich dark sky, or be able to have details of the surroundings.

Last tip of the day:

Get to know your camera, don’t have time then switch stop play Angry birds tonight play with your camera, what you can get out of it much more rewarding.

Thanks to Eric for this Article, he is a instructor here at WCB and if you would like to follow one of his classes check out the One Day Photography Course or Photography – Essentials.

 Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hi! I’m Harry, I’m a 22 year old web designer and front-end developer from the UK. I specialise in writing CSS on big projects with a lot of developers and a lot of code. I speak at conferences, write at csswizardry.com and tweet at @csswizardry.

Why be a web developer and what led you down this career path?

A few years ago, when I was abotu 16, I really wanted to become a graphic designer. My best friend Sam and I started working on small design projects for local businesses and I decided that we needed a website. I started reading up on HTML and CSS and stuff and soon realised that I was much better at front-end development than I was at design (I’m a terrible designer) and that I also much preferred it.

From there I just kept building stuff, kept tinkering, and now I’m here.

What was the first website you made and how was that experience?

The first site I made was the aforementioned portfolio site (long dead). It was a lot of fun but equally frustrating. When you’re just starting out the simpler things are far more complicated so the effort:reward ratio means that it takes a lot of work to achieve very little. However, once you make a few breakthroughs, it all seems pretty worth it. I got hooked!

If you can tell us, what are the projects you are currently working on?

I work at Sky, at the moment; it’s a pretty huge British organisation where I head up the front-end development and architecture in our area. I recently built the front-ends to skybet.com and m.skybet.com, two of our most profitable websites.

What are the best projects you’ve worked on? Tell us about them.

I worked on an app called faavorite with a really great friend, Nick Payne. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, faavorite had to be wound down. It’s a shame, but that was a very fun project that we built entirely in our spare time; it was huge! We’re thinking about open sourcing it soon, though.

Could you tell us what’s in your personal “toolbox”? Software, apps, hardware, books?

My toolbox is pretty light; all I really need is Chrome and Terminal… I code in Vim, I use Git and Sass, all of which happens from the command line. My personal hardware is simple a MacBook Air, and at work I have a dual-screen Ubuntu desktop machine and a MacBook Pro (again, on both I just use Terminal and Chrome). I use Photoshop when necessary, and I can’t live without Spotify!

I have used Mixture a little but it just doesn’t fit my workflow too much, which is a shame. It’s a great tool though, and I’d recommend everyone give it a shot!

Tell us about your best experience as a developer.

Probably speaking, speaking is terrifying for me, but the feeling afterwards is nothing short of elation and adrenaline. My time in Poland for Front-Trends 2012 was probably the most fun I’ve ever had because of my work.

Tell us about your worst experience as a developer.

Any time I feel boredom, or a lack of motivation. It’s happened a few times to me in my career and it just takes it out of me; it makes me not enjoy my work, and I coulndn’t ever do work that I don’t enjoy. Life’s too short to work a job you don’t enjoy.

In your opinion, what is the difference between a good web designer and a great web designer?

Caring. A lot of people will show up and do ‘just enough’. People who do more than enough are, by and large, the people who get places.

What advice would you give to our Web Courses Bangkok students?

Make sure you enjoy what you do. No one will make that happen for you, so you need to keep yourself happy all the time. This is such a cool job, make sure you keep it that way. Things change, techniques come and go, jobs are fun, then boring, but you need to just keep yourself happy. Keep that constant and things will follow.

Want to know more about Harry?

You can also find him here: speaker deck, github and twitter.

We would like to thank Harry for taking out the time to talk to us and answering our questions. Best of luck to him on his future endeavors.

Would you like to learn how to make great websites? Have a look at our web design courses at WebCoursesBangkok !

-A.A

Think about the documents stored on your computer. If you were to save all your documents using a (brain-dead) file naming scheme like “1.doc”, “2.doc”, “3.doc”, … “9999999.doc” (etc), you will eventually face a problem of finding the right file if you’re looking for a specific document. One way is to sequentially check every single file, starting from “1.doc”, till you get the right data. But this is obviously a highly inefficient method of getting the right file. And it’s primarily the result of a highly inefficient method of storing your data (ie, saving your files) in the first place.

But it serves to make the point that once you have a lot of data, if you don’t have a good system of organising it, finding the correct piece of data is a very time consuming operation. And it becomes more time consuming as the amount of data grows. This problem is solved through a type of computer program that is designed to handle lots of data, known as a database. In this article we will attempt to explain how a database works.

What is a database?

Databases are designed to offer an organized mechanism for storing, managing and retrieving information. They do so through the use of tables. If you’re familiar with spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel, you’re probably already accustomed to storing data in tabular form. It’s not much of a stretch to make the leap from spreadsheets to databases. Let’s take a look.

Database tables

Just like Excel tables, database tables consist of columns and rows. Each column contains a different type of attribute and each row corresponds to a single record. For example, imagine that we were building a database table that contained names and telephone numbers. We’d probably set up columns named “FirstName”, “LastName” and “TelephoneNumber.” Then we’d simply start adding rows underneath those columns that contained the data we’re planning to store.

If we were building a table of contact information for our business that has 50 employees, we’d wind up with a table that contains 50 rows.

Databases and spreadsheets

At this point, you’re probably asking yourself an obvious question – if a database is so much like a spreadsheet, why can’t I just use a spreadsheet? Databases are actually much more powerful than spreadsheets in the way you’re able to manipulate data. Here are just a few of the actions that you can perform on a database that would be difficult if not impossible to perform on a spreadsheet:

• Retrieve all records that match certain criteria
• Update records in bulk
• Cross-reference records in different tables
• Perform complex aggregate calculations

Databases: Need to know

The Structured Query Language “SQL”

Database programs have many different methods for storing and retrieving data, as well as for organising the stored data on the computer. One popular way for accessing data, both to store and to retrieve it, is to use a computer language called “SQL” (often pronounced as “sequel”). SQL was specially designed for database access.

There are many databases that support the use of SQL to access their data, among them MySQL. In other words, MySQL is just a type of database, one of many. This database is commonly used by programs that run on websites, which is why you often see it being advertised in the feature lists of web hosts, as well as being listed as one of the “system requirements” for certain web software (like blogging software or content management systems (CMS)).

Selecting Primary Keys

How do databases keep all of these records straight? It’s through the use of keys.

Primary Keys

The first type of key we’ll discuss is the primary key. Every database table should have one or more columns designated as the primary key. The value this key holds should be unique for each record in the database. For example, assume we have a table called Employees that contains personnel information for every employee in our firm. We’d need to select an appropriate primary key that would uniquely identify each employee. Your first thought might be to use the employee’s name.

This wouldn’t work out very well because it’s conceivable that you’d hire two employees with the same name. A better choice might be to use a unique employee ID number that you assign to each employee when they’re hired.

Once you decide upon a primary key and set it up in the database, the database management system will enforce the uniqueness of the key. If you try to insert a record into a table with a primary key that duplicates an existing record, the insert will fail.

Foreign Keys

The other type of key that we’ll discuss in this course is the foreign key. These keys are used to create relationships between tables. Returning to our employees database, let’s imagine that we wanted to add a table containing departmental information to the database. This new table might be called Departments and would contain a large amount of information about the department as a whole. We’d also want to include information about the employees in the department, but it would be redundant to have the same information in two tables (Employees and Departments). Instead, we can create a relationship between the two tables.

Let’s assume that the Departments table uses the Department Name column as the primary key. To create a relationship between the two tables, we add a new column to the Employees table called Department. We then fill in the name of the department to which each employee belongs. We also inform the database management system that the Department column in the Employees table is a foreign key that references the Departments table. The database will then enforce referential integrity by ensuring that all of the values in the Departments column of the Employees table have corresponding entries in the Departments table.

Note that there is no uniqueness constraint for a foreign key. We may (and most likely do!) have more than one employee belonging to a single department. Similarly, there’s no requirement that an entry in the Departments table have any corresponding entry in the Employees table. It is possible that we’d have a department with no employees.

NULL is Not Zero or the Empty String

NULL is a very special value in the world of databases, but it’s something that beginners often get confused about. When you see a NULL value, interpret it as “unknown”. If a quantity is NULL, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the quantity is zero. Similarly, if a text field holds a NULL value, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an appropriate value, it’s simply unknown. For example, consider a database containing information about children who attend a particular school. If the secretary entering the record does not know a student’s age a NULL value is used to indicate the “unknown” placeholder. The student certainly has an age, it’s just not present in the database.

All Database Platforms are NOT Created Equal

There are many different databases out there and all offer a variety of different features at different price points. Some are full-featured enterprise databases designed to host huge data warehouses serving multinational enterprises. Others are desktop databases better suited to tracking inventory for a small store with one or two users. Your business requirements will dictate the appropriate database platform for your needs.

Want to learn more? Learn how to create beautiful websites through our web design beginners and web design intermediate courses.

-A.A

CSS Awards:

1) Axel Aubert:

Winner 25th April 2013.

axel-aubert.fr

2) Hey Zombie Design:

Winner 22nd April 2013

www.heyzombie.com

3) Leeroy:

Winner 19th April 2013

www.leeroy.ca

Awwwards:

4) Wootten:

Winner 26th April 2013

www.wootten.com.au

The Best Design:

5) Vintage Hope:

Winner 25th April 2013

www.vintagehope.co.uk

We have really good deal for Web Design Basic and Intermediate Course you can check them out !

Stay calm and read on

Today when one hears the term “hacking” alarm bells tend to ring.  Over the past decade the media has taken the term hacking and polymorphed it in to a  fear instigating, paranoia driven state of terror. A calamity really; but wait, there is more; much more. What this new term encompasses today is a very wide spectrum of activities of which only the iceberg like tip is to been seen and understood by the average Joe.  So Joe, grab a seat and find a little insight here. If it sparks your interest flame then the internet is your friend.

The definition.

A hack; It’s a term used all the time, but I haven’t got a solid notion of the sense behind the term. I’m interested in the sense of the word related to coding because this is where it roots from. This is a definition I have found to quench my quest. : ‘To program a computer in a clever, virtuosic, and wizardly manner. Ordinary computer jockeys merely write programs; hacking is the domain of digital poets. Hacking is a subtle and arguably mystical art, equal parts wit and technical ability, that is rarely appreciated by non-hackers’ – Unknown (03.04.2013) on www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hack

Who are they?

The Community has been divided in to four main categories; white hat, grey hat, black hat and script kiddies. Ethics and hacking are complicated and intertwined strands of moral stances; debates on the right vs. wrong are ever perturbing on different platforms regarding various issues.  The white hat parade the banner of just and honest activity, the gray hat wearers are in my opinion the most realistic and acknowledge the ambiguity in the whole affair. Black hats tend to lean towards the radical revolutionary ideologies on information freedom and/or take pride in crossing legal boundaries with malicious intent.  Script kiddies are in a way armatures and unskilled. They use scripts or programs that have been developed by others to attack computers and deface websites. The general assumption is that script kiddies are juveniles who lack the ability to write sophisticated code.

How is it done?

Tools can be downloaded straight from the dark side of tinternet. But this of course is done by script kiddies.  For those wearing achromatic hats it’s a whole other ordeal.   Step one choose a hat, step 2 knock out some killer code.  This is obviously very simplified, but this brings me back to the intricacy of the definition.  Cutting to the chase hackers these days are typically associated with creating and exploiting code that can pick out vulnerability in secure coding and computer insecurity.  Trojans, viruses/worms, denial of service, payloads, rootkits and key loggers are other tools in the bag of an achromatic hacker.

What next?

If any of these topics even slightly tickle your interest, grab that flame and venture out on the web, you’ll find so much more information.  I found that spending some time surfing the web will indubitably spark your quest for fresh knowledge. If your interested in learning the how of a computer, check out our free course.

-CvdH

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m Ben Howdle, a JavaScript developer working in London for a company called KashFlow.

2. Why be a web developer and what led you down this career path?

The internet doesn’t turn off, you don’t clock out. You have a 24/7 opportunity to create, help and invent. I can’t really pin point what first grabbed me about web development, but it just felt right, something I could really get stuck into. Web work is always evolving and I kinda like the fact that you can’t know everything about it, so it puts you on the level playing field with a lot of people.

3. What was the first website you made and how was that experience?

It was for a guy who had just started his own business, he paid me £30. I can’t say I learnt too much from it (it was very basic HTML with inline style tags!) and a little bit of Flash I copied from another site, but I guess it got me in front of a real person who judged my work.

4. If you can tell us, what are the projects you are currently working on?

Most of my time is, happily, spent building KashFlow’s next generation of software; a JavaScript web application talking to a REST API. It’s gonna be ace. I’m also really into MeteorJS right now, so I’m building a small web app that’s going to make it effortless to gain critique for your designs. Also a large project which is going to make learning JavaScript a whole lot easier.

5. What are the best projects you’ve worked on? Tell us about them.

My most successful project is Movies As Code, a very geeky, niche site, but a whole load of movie buff/coders seem to love it! I’d say, the project I’ve worked on is http://upfrontpodcast.com, a weekly podcast that I co-host where we discuss all that is front-end development and speak to some awesome guests! It’s a nice release to talk about this stuff every week.

6. Could you tell us what’s in your personal “toolbox”? Software, apps, hardware, books?

Software: Sublime Text 2, Chrome and Photoshop. Books: every JavaScript book I can lay my hands on, I just like to absorb it all! There’s so much knowledge out there to pick up.

7. Tell us about your best experience as a developer.

Getting my current job – it allowed me to specialise in JavaScript and there’s not too many companies willing to think ahead enough to switch their product over to something as new as a JavaScript only web application, allows me to constantly try new things and play with new tools and technologies.

8. Tell us about your worst experience as a developer.

I guess, working with some clients, it’s the bits outside of coding/developing/ designing that sometimes get in the way – emails, invoices, etc…

9. In your opinion, what is the difference between a good web designer and a great web designer?

The amount of work you put in outside of the work you are told to do, either at your job or by a client. It’s the effort that you put in off of your own passion and desire that really sets great web designers apart.

10. What advice would you give to our Web Courses Bangkok students?

Build products, sites, plugins, etc as soon as you can to compliment your learning. Take the theory that you’re learning and apply it as soon as possible! It’ll highlight what areas you need to improve on immediately…

Want to know more about Ben?

You can also find him here: dribble, github and twitter.

We would like to thank Ben for taking out the time to talk to us and answering our questions. Best of luck to him on his future endeavors.

Would you like to learn how to make great websites? Have a look at our web design courses at WebCoursesBangkok !

-A.A

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I am a 23 years old freelance developer living in Freiburg which is amongst the most beautiful cities in Germany. You might have heard of it because Smashing Magazine is located here. When I am not working on client projects I contribute to Open Source Software: As for instance I am a team member of HTML5 Boilerplate which is very well known as a quick starting point for front-end web-applications. Lately I try to push my own projects as for example init, which extends HTML5 Boilerplate with Grunt and and more structure for your Sass files, forward.

2. Why be a web developer and what led you down this career path?

As a teenager I was pretty interested in my computer and tried to learn as much as I could about software and hardware. Eventually I came into contact with Microsoft’s Frontpage. But it wasn’t enough for me to build websites with the WYSIWYG interface, so I explored the underlying concept. This basically led to my first customer project, others followed and I quickly decided to do an internship at a web agency after I finished school. The interesting part about the web industry is definitely the openness for people with a certain skill-set. Germany is pretty traditional when it comes to degrees in your profession – the web industry is different and that’s what I love about it.

3. What was the first website you made and how was that experience?

When I was 16 years old, a friend of mine came to me and asked me if I could build a website for his brother’s upcoming small rock festival. This was the first time I felt that web development could really become something I can do besides school and earn some extra money. It was a great experience for me to actually sell programming and the project was great all in all.

4. If you can tell us, what are the projects you are currently working on?

One of the projects I work on is a mid-scale website for the German publisher Haufe to promote one of there larger B2B products “Talentmanagement“. Together with the web-agency /gebrüderheitz. I developed the front-end for this website with a focus on flexibility of the website’s components and responsive web design. Besides that I want to publish a modal plugin for websites which I developed throughout the course of some projects. The unique selling point of this project is that it works without any JavaScript involved and it’s fully accessible. Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date with projects I am working on. I am also open for client work, so shoot me a line to info@drublic.de if you need help with your project.

5. What are the best projects you’ve worked on? Tell us about them.

The best projects I worked on are actually Open Source projects. I love to be in contact with so many knowledgable developers and to share ideas and experiences. In the beginning of 2012 I had the pleasure to build the HTML5 Please API with Divya Manian, Paul Irish, Jonathan Neal and some others which was one of the most exiting projects I have worked on because of the atmosphere in the team and the result that came out of our work.

6. Could you tell us what’s in your personal “toolbox”? Software, apps, hardware, books?

For development it’s pretty easy – I only need a few things: Sublime Text as the editor, Chrome (mostly Canary) for viewing what I do and GruntJS to do compiling and serving pages in the background. I really like to use the Terminal for most of the actions I do. Besides that I have some other apps that are really handy for development, as for example Adobe Edge Inspect for developing on mobile devices. All in all I really like a tight setup where you don’t get distracted to easy. But if I am searching the distraction I dig around Twitter or read one of the latest Offscreen Mags which I really like for their look beyond.

7. Tell us about your best experience as a developer.

The best experiences in web development have clearly to do with my Open Source work as I outlined before. The people behind the projects are mostly very kind and being in contact with other developers all over the world helps to extend your horizon.

8.Tell us about your worst experience as a developer.

The worst experiences are the times when you have the feeling clients don’t really value your opinion on a problem.

9. In your opinion, what is the difference between a good web designer and a great web designer?

A great web developer or designer is someone who looks beyond the problem you have to solve at a given moment and applies his learnings and experience to it while sharing and discussing his thoughts with others. Good developers often forget to discuss their thoughts with others even though they might have great ideas.

10. What advice would you give to our Web Courses Bangkok students?

As Steve Jobs put it “Stay Hungry… Stay Foolish”. Try to soak up all that comes your way in concerns of web design. If you try to become better with each project you do and focus on new challenges you will soon be a great software developer. Don’t forget that you are constantly learning.

Want to know more about Hans?

You can also find him here: github, twitter and google+.

We would like to thank Hans for taking out the time to talk to us and answering our questions. Best of luck to him on his future endeavors.

Would you like to learn how to make great websites? Have a look at our web design courses at WebCoursesBangkok !

-A.A