Loop - behind the scenes.

Nisa Capoeira

2008-04-04T10:04:00.001+02:00

Had great time shooting these amazing guys. Next time - proper lighting gear ;)

DYI Beauty Dish test

2008-03-22T17:22:00.001+01:00

various types of lighting gadgets keep to amaze me :) this time very simple beauty dish made from plastic bowl and piece of cardboard, stick in the sb-600 with omnibounce - the look you get is fantastic (i think).

create your own: http://image-guy.blogspot.com/2008/03/make-your-own-beauty-dish.html

workhorse

2008-02-21T22:55:00.001+01:00

workhorse

even the base model is quite powerful, and actually much cheaper than exact same configuration from Dell

playing with lights again

2008-02-01T00:19:00.001+01:00

The Beer

feels a lot like old days when i played with lights in blender, to achieve certain effect ;)

my first strobist experiment

2007-12-17T08:38:00.001+01:00

my first strobist experiment

For anyone into photography, kind of must-read stuff unless you know what are you doing (mostly pro shooters? :) ).

The 101 archive gives intro into gear and techniques, then the "on assignment" part is covering about 100 cases, with results and description how it was done. Great thing is, the approach is very minimalistic, suggesting cheap/few gadgets and trying to achieve as much as possible.

Beware, it's also very addictive read, so be sure nothing is coming in the next few hours.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/

moo cards

2007-12-04T00:00:00.001+01:00

moo cards

got printed these special "minicards". I quite like the (printing) services around flickr (blurb, bighugelabs, zazzle, moo etc), as it takes your photos to another level or even makes them real things :)

New Snow

2007-11-15T11:58:00.001+01:00

new snow

Well over 50cm, really hope for snow-covered winter as it was 2 years back.

Parked Glider

2007-09-25T20:58:00.003+02:00

real glider

Horses

2007-09-25T20:58:00.001+02:00

DSC_5614

Visited parkur in Martinkovice, took just few shots, as the sun was quite totally wrong for taking photos :/

more shots here

Photographic weekend

2007-09-25T20:56:00.001+02:00

leader of the pack

Spent most of this weekend looking through viewfinder :) We attended multiple starts of hot air balloons, then visited horse show jumping training and also i managed to take long-planned shots of parked gliders.

Back from vacation

2007-09-03T21:53:00.001+02:00

Sk�gafoss valley

Been to Iceland for a week, slowly uploading photos to flickr.

Extraordinary experience

2007-07-17T11:26:00.001+02:00

the ultimate flying device
Originally uploaded by Petr Vlk

Yeah, didn't blog for quite some time (and i'm not even gonna promise to start again :) ).

We had most exciting "Ballooning" weekend. First we went to see balloon start in the saturday evening, and then we actually flew the next morning.

Best-of gallery is at flickr.

If you ever wanted to try this, do! It's way better than you imagine ;)

so finally!

2007-01-25T13:04:00.000+01:00

World of details

2006-12-03T10:50:00.000+01:00

Yet another gallery

2006-11-24T14:38:00.000+01:00

Count with me:

gallery at imagiag.com (broken)

gallery at imagiag.com/koudy (kind of working, only dog's photos)

bubbleshare (even I don't remember the login/url)

picasaweb gallery (dtto)

flickr (very few shots)

So today I upgraded the flickr account to pro status, and will try to stick to following scheme:

koudy's blog will be used for his photos

anything else will be on flickr

the flickr URL is: http://flickr.com/photos/petrvlk/

let's see ;)

Giving Flock a try

2006-10-31T10:39:00.000+01:00

I've been watching this innovative browser (flock) in works for some time, and as i really want to have some convenient way to work web services such as flickr, blogger and some others, I thought it

could be worth a try.

It integrates photos from online systems in handy bar, has quite nice rss reader, integrates blog editor (testing now), and features some other small things such as shelf for dragging interesting pieces from any webpage for later use.

FIrst glace tells me it might be quite useful, let's see how it evolves ;)

instant search rulez!

2006-10-29T20:50:00.000+01:00

After enjoying Spotlight saving me from geting mad looking for file every now and then in OSX, i discovered similar thing for web!

It's called Inquisitor for Safari", and does pretty much what spotlight does for you localy - instant results on web searches, giving suggestions on search terms and updating actual results as you type.

They also seem to have online version for those who happen to have less sophisticated operating platform ;)

LOST

2006-10-16T20:57:00.000+02:00

We watched whole two seasons nearly in a row over past few days. First season totaly got me with style, well ballanced level of fear, action and mystery as well as interesting stories of the main characters.

Not so crazy abou season two i must say, at times it got nearly to state of being boring for all the "incredible story twists". But it still remained to have the interesting bits here and there, giving hints about characters connections (um, watching it in a row made those much more apparent i guess ;) ) and the whole big picture story being uncovered.

So now into season 3, let's hope they get more in the original style.

Mighty Mouse In Da House

2006-09-21T17:17:00.000+02:00

As "The Mouse" from Macmice started to act weird lately, i ordered another bluetooth mouse, this time the Apple original - Mighty Mouse Wireless.

So far it's sweet ;) - the ball is quite handy, no issues with it's size.. overall mouse dimensions and design is quite perfect for my hand. As a nice bonus for Macbook Pro owner - it doesn't close BT connection automaticaly as the macmice did, so my laptop doesn't whine anymore (for some reason, having BT device connected makes annoying cpu whine go away).

Outdoor activity for geeks

2006-09-10T16:43:00.000+02:00

Have recently got GPS receiver to use in a car, so we tried new outdoors activity today - Geocaching.

It's basically "find a treasure" kind of game, played globaly by thousands of players. Geeky part is that you need GPS of some kind to be able to locate the cache.
Fun part is that even with GPS you need to look very carefuly for possible hiding place. And caches are usually near some interesting point like great view or various landmarks.

We also tested if dog can help with finding the cache, but so far no significant contribution to the process from koudy ;) If you're geek, into hiking and generally like challenges, it's really worth considering.

First trip

2006-04-09T09:40:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we have been on our first trip this year, to castles Humprecht and Kost in Cesky Raj area. It was really nice, warm sunny weather, and nature waking up rapidly. Walked about 12km, in last part the path went through steep rocks which was really great scenery. Koudy plans to be sleeping all day today :-). Check the photos here.

Now I know too...

2006-03-28T18:59:00.000+02:00

Jimmac stopped by today to check out the BLACK game on aging ps2 (to find out it's not quite aging at all), and as I had him around, asked to show how the famous OSX curvy backgrounds (he reverse-engineered lately) are done.. So now I know too :) Thanx dude.

early adopter - not

2006-02-09T11:16:00.000+01:00

In contrary to my common habit of getting most recent gadgets possible, which often renders me being not-so-finished product user, i got product that's clearly in the end of its life cycle - PS-Two. Must say, I'm very positively surpriced about the gfx/gameplay quality for a 6y old computer system, and the games on ps seem to be pure fun, not like shaders-fps wars cripples on PC. Also getting it this late means good price, and games in 2nd-3rd generation, which makes them quite polished too. I thought i'll get ps3 in the minute they sell it here, but seems i could live with "two" for quite some time..

Dogs blog too

2006-01-22T12:52:00.000+01:00

To not feed this personal (and somewhat frozen, I know) blog with just Koudy-related pictures and events, I created a standalone site for him. It sort of proves that Apple's new iWeb is so easy to use, even dog's can get to web now :) He's got a blog there too!

Music discoveries

2005-09-28T17:32:00.000+02:00

Discovered few quite interesting music related services lately -

first is "last.fm" which is service collecting info on music you're listening and then it allows some cool things to do

allows you to see what you or your friends are listening, what's their usual music scheme for a workday etc. (being nice social research tool)
connects you to people with similar music taste
suggests new music you may like and might not be aware of
creates personalised radio station for you, based on your very own music taste

I've been bit skeptical when jimmac introduced me to this, but now i totally love the idea ;)

---

Second music related thing is MusicBrainz service and especially the music tagging tool. It's free, and is exactly what i needed to solve the mess in my mp3 library - analyses your mp3 files, and downloads missing ID3 tags for files it identifies. It also allows you to choose appropriate matching entries in database for those it can't identify for some reason. YAY!