Benjamin Golub's Blog

Remove trailing slash on App Engine

benjamin.golub — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:52:19 PDT

class BaseRequestHandler(webapp.RequestHandler):
    def initialize(self, request, response):
        webapp.RequestHandler.initialize(self, request, response)
        if request.path.endswith("/") and not request.path == "/":
            redirect = request.path[:-1]
            if request.query_string:
                redirect += "?" + request.query_string
            return self.redirect(redirect, permanent=True)

DIY cheap (or free!) macro photo studio

benjamin.golub — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:31:55 PDT

To celebrate memorial day I built a cheap DIY macro photo studio following instructions from Strobist.

If you have most of the stuff (and most of you probably do) it should be free. I had to buy the light source, in my case a 500 watt halogen lamp, but it only cost me $17 from Home Depot. I plan on buying another lamp so I can light the other side.

The setup:

The result:

I learned that I should definitely clean up anything I place in the box because it shows off all imperfections; look at all the dust on the SD880. And I should buy a second lamp to light up the other side as well.

Requested: My Photography Workflow/Equipment - Aperture

benjamin.golub — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:34:19 PDT

Alex asked that I explain my workflow. It's pretty simple and rather short but this is how I post process my photos:

Plug camera directly into computer (yes I don't own a memory reader...yet).
Import into Aperture into an "archive" folder that has sub folders organized as YYYY/MM/DD. I do not let Aperture import photos into the Aperture library as I am worried about it corrupting. If the photos are just in a folder on the disk then I know they are safe (and can easily be backed up using Dropbox).
I have a problem: I now delete most of my photos. If they aren't perfect I get rid of them.
Process the best of the bunch. This is fast as I know the keyboard shortcuts and batch process things like white balance as much as I can. Usually I:
- fix the exposure and levels
- add some vignette (I love that look)
- a touch more contrast (I like contrast)
- and sharpen (using edge sharpen)
If it was shot at a high ISO I add noise reduction. If the photo needs saturation and has people in it I add vibrancy. If it needs saturation and has no people in it then I add saturation but very lightly. The difference between the 2: saturation will cause issues with reds and skin tones looking unnatural but is great for greens and blues, vibrancy is like "smart" saturation in that it won't touch skin tones.
Export to JPG. The photos are organized into an "export" folder that has sub folders organized as YYYY/MM/DD just like the "archive" folder. This folder is not backed up and is periodically expunged.
Upload to Flickr. Tag, place on a map, etc.

That's it. Each photo takes about 30 seconds to process. Aperture makes it really easy to fix the white balance on a single photo and batch apply the same operation to others shot in the same conditions. I don't do anything fancy in Aperture like tag/rate/organize. I'd rather do the organization on the filesystem and tag on Flickr.

Oh and Alex asked about equipment also: Nikon D40, 18-55mm, 35mm 1.8, 55-200mm VR. Lately the 35mm 1.8 stays on my D40 all the time. Leave a comment if you have any questions or tips for me.

Paris slideshow

benjamin.golub — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:38:04 PDT

I've finally finished uploading photos from our trip to Paris. Enjoy the slideshow:

Phish is back - My history and Hampton 2009

benjamin.golub — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 07:23:09 PST

In college I listened to a lot of music. Mainly a lot of Phish. Thanks to their liberal stance on sharing live music and sites like bt.etree.org I had a nearly endless supply of shows coming in via CWRU's extremely fast pipes.

I'd download and listen to at least 1 show a day. Megen would often come into my room without me noticing because I had big dorky headphones and a Phish show on while I did my homework.

Sometime during Junior year my hard drive crashed and with it I lost hundreds of shows. I went back searching for the old stuff that I really loved but, with Phish kaput and no new sounds coming in, I didn't really enjoy it like I used to.

But now Phish is back. I haven't listened to the show yet but the setlist reminds me of the older stuff that I really enjoyed. There are some obvious classics (Fluffhead, David Bowie, Tweezer, and Harry Hood) but also some stuff that just hasn't recently been played enough (Suzy Greenberg and Loving Cup). It sounds like a great show and I'm excited to listen to it. I might not have the screaming fast internet connection I used to but with free downloads of this weekend's Hampton shows I might just get back into the scene.

Happy Valentine's Day

benjamin.golub — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 08:03:17 PST

New blog feature - Flickr photos in the sidebar

benjamin.golub — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:39:34 PST

This blog now pulls in Flickr photo(s) to the sidebar. I also parametrized a bunch of previously hardwired numbers. It's not perfect yet (simplejson doesn't like the JSON feeds from Flickr too much) so don't use any funny characters in your titles or descriptions (I think it was an unescaped ' that did it) or no photos will appear.

Update: rather than wait for Flickr to fix the bug I've switched to demjson which isn't as strict as simplejson.

Photo a day?

benjamin.golub — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:18:40 PST

Well maybe not a day; but I'm going to try to get at least one *decent* photo up a week. The sun is coming out in Rochester and I need to get back in the game. I've been way too idle lately.

I consider this setting my goal in stone so I'm less likely to give up.

FriendFeed comments in Disqus and on this blog

benjamin.golub — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:29:34 PST

I've been meaning to do this myself but Disqus did it for me!

My ideal photo sharing site

benjamin.golub — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:37:09 PST

Take Flickr
Add ability to publish to multiple "streams"
Add Facebook tagging

That's all that I want. I take a lot of photos. Most of the time I am actively attempting to become a better photographer but sometimes I'm just out with some friends goofing off at a bar. I don't want to publish those photos to my Flickr account because:

The first photo in your Flickr stream is the most important. People rarely look past it so you want to put your best face forward. Random photos don't belong there
The people who are in those photos aren't on Flickr; but they are on Facebook. They will never see them if I publish to Flickr and not Facebook

Issue 1 is solved by supporting multiple "streams". By default anything I post appears on my Flickr stream like normal. But I could optionally post to a different stream. That stream isn't shown on the front page of my Flickr account. It's linked elsewhere; available but separated.

Issue 2 is trickier and I'll admit not very likely to happen. I want to have Facebook's tagging built into Flickr. I don't really care how this is implemented. Facebook could link users to the Flickr photo or Flickr could auto-upload images that I tag someone in to Facebook. Either way I just want an easy way to say "here are some photos of you from last night" without publishing to Facebook or falling back to email.

Thanks for listening to me rant. Here's a photo of some flowers (just because):