The simplest way to get the most out of your camera, whether a new fangled digital breed or a traditional film-based box, is understanding the fundamentals of photography. Just as in anything else, knowledge is your most powerful bet in enhancing your digital or film photos.

I'm not talking about some advanced Photoshop hack. Just pure fundamentals. Textbook photography.

The following links are resources I like that explain the basics. When put in practice, photos become dramatically better. Knowledge - not the machine - make the best images. (Updates to this list will be ongoing)

1) Ken Rockwell - Fantastic information that's balanced, somewhat technical, and indepth. Site content is fresh and gets updated frequently. I especially liked his diatribe that 'it's not the camera'.

I'm currently reading a new book titled 'Ambient Findability' (O'Reilly). It is a book on the deeper aspects of human wayfinding and written by Stephen Moorse. Its quite an interesting read - although a little long on high level views and abstraction. But he brings up some profound concepts to think about in relation to the future of finding information in a digital world.

The basic premise of the book is that digital data will only increase and with it, findability of what you are looking for (at the right time) will become increasingly difficult. This is in part due to the very nature of the 'technology' that allows us to communicate - language.

Since language can be quite subjective (the same words have multiple meanings; as contexts change, meanings sometimes change with them), findability will always be challenging.

All of this got me to thinking as much about the basic optimization practices on page, as well as them from an architectural standpoint. What if a CMS used this sort of concept with url structures? It could be the basis of better search on site.

What if content development centered around spheres of keywords, and as Morville pointed out, that mutli-disciplinary teams worked in tandem to generate textual-based mappings of the products, the orgnanization, ect?

Morville did get a bit out there. While it certainly wasn't a 'how-to' book, it got you thinking. Especially how some of the higher-level stuff like RDF, ontologies and stuff like that.

Update - 12/06/05
Well, what's very interesting is my point about 'keyword webs' and 'spheres of keywords' is actually known at 'latent semantic indexing (LSI)' What LSI basically does is consider a site's copy in relation to other site's that have used similar phases, keywords, etc. Basically it's a more downline approach that considers other resources and how your content relates to that 'standard'. Its latent.

A very interesting thing about my thoughts on this is that I've pondered this well before I even heard of a local interactive company that is promoting the concept. It's being promoted by a bigtime thought-leader in the SEO field. There language has given my concept a bit more structure.

A quick search on the topic found this excellent article:
http://research.nitle.org/lsi/lsa_definition.htm

I discovered an excellent web magazine covering modern web development in TreehouseMagazine. What really struck me was how they've used basic Acrobat PDF to present their core product - essentially a magazine.

Normally, many newsletters are designed in portrait mode on 8½ x 11. Shifting to landscape mode however, yields huge gains in viewability and usability, especially for publications geared to be read from a website.

Even at 125% magnification, landscape shows nearly all of a standard page. This changes the overall experience for the reader and makes reading more enjoyable.

A couple of factors are driving this. With high resolution monitor settings getting to be the norm (1024x768 and higher), landscape mode performs beautifully even at 125% magnification. Almost 95% of the page is in view at this range. What's more, is that you gain a sense that you're not missing much. This changes the experience of reading the publication. It's more enjoyable to consume.

The only drawback I can find relative to this option is for publications that are cross-purposed. (Meaning the print version is put online for download or vice versa.) Readers might fret over this when a hard copy is generated. Either way, a standard 8x11 fits the bill.

If you are publishing an type of publication that will be distributed or experienced electronically, conisider this format as a very strong option.

In PHP, you can seemingly freely use single quotes (') and double quotes (") around statements of various types. They often are used with echo or print_r commands where you are sending something to the screen.

I have read debates in the past about which one is beter and faster. Because double (") seemed to be easier to work with as far as production goes, I've been using it more lately.

I came across an neat little article on PHP tips at Evolt.org. One such one was regarding the major difference. While speed is a factor, double quotes tells PHP to interpret the code WHILE looking for a variable. If you are echoing a lot of variables and your script is short, double will do ya. Otherwise, single quotes are faster in the long run since they don't have to interpret anything. They serve as sort of a container.

There are so other excellent tips in the article. While many scripts I write are somewhat basic, optimizing them whereever possible can never be a bad thing. Clean coding is seems to be much like good writing. Shorter, simpler many times means better.

Erin's grandmother Thelma turned 90 years old on Nov 9. Erin, myself, Jim, Kathie, Kirk, and John and Gena Bartimac went up to Harrisburg for a party. We caught a flight out of RDU on Southwest. What we supposed to be uneventful turned out to be amouck in snags.

All was going well at RDU. Lolly-gagging around with Erin after we both checked our bags, Erin always insists on carrying cash. I love my debit card and swear by it. Who really needs cash nowdays? Anyways, she always insists on it, soooo I agreed to hit the ATM. Turned out that I left my card in the machine. Thankfully, a customer service desk was about two-feet away and someone turned it in. I noticed it missing just as we were going through security and quickly bolted to see if it was still there. My biggest fear is that the machine ate the card. All turned out well thankfully.

That frazzled me a bit. I went through security and caught up with Erin. We chilled for a bit before the flight - which was late! This was the second time a SW flight I was on has been late. SW is known for on-time flights. Go figure. The flight was completely full. Basically a puddle jump.

We arrived in Baltimore, and scratched our heads for a bit at the baggage claim because of a typo, of all things. Like in other things, Erin talked me out of it...

In any event, it was a successfull rendevous with Kathie and Grammy. Off to Mechanicsburg we went. I was about an hour's drive or so.

A cool thing we did on the way was stop and visit Erin's grandfather's gravesite. Curvin Thompson passed away in 1991. I snapped some shots of this.

I took a lot of photos along the way. Still practicing. The more the better. Anyways, we are all staying in a house right on Bethany Village property. It's great. The interior was fantastic. It felt just like home.

We had some time to kill before dinner, so Erin and I went for a litttle spin in Grammy's Jetta. This beauty in returning to Raleigh next week. A car swap that's too sophisticated to describe here is happening and Erin will be it's new owner.

We got back and sat around a bit before dinner. I attempted to download the photos for the camera and started having some issues. It turned out that I had to jurry-rig the flash memory card to get it to work. The Nikon is somewhat tempermental; thank God it's the Academy's. I'd be pissed if it were mine.

Anyways, Jim, Kirk and the Bartimacs were going out to dinner with us. Erin and I had ate there last year; a restuarant called Colhane's. We all got there and the rub was to surpise Grammy - she didn't know the Bartimacs were coming up. So we all sat around waiting for our table. John and Gena made there surprise entrance. It took Grammy just a second for it to click in, but once it did she couldn't beleve it. Here was the look on her face:

We had a nice time during dinner. I had tenderloin and shrimp. Dinner took about an hour and a half. A good time. We all went back to 'the house' and had cake and let Grammy open her presents. I ranked on her about 'being on the Internet' It was a dramatic role-reversal I had been waited for - I pounced as soon as I could..

Saturday
Jim always raves about the Farmers Market and this little diner. So myself, Jim and J/J Bartimac went in tow. To describe the place wouldn't do it justice. A picture is worth a thousand words. It was a greasy spoon, but it was great, down-home diner food. These are always the best places...I offered to go back everytime when were in town. After our eats we headed off to the farmers market. It was alot like the Broadway Market in Buffalo, but seemed to have a greater variety of foods. I snapped some photos of the place. Wasn't too bad. I read a little bit of the history about it as Jim, John and Gena were picking up some things.

That took us to about 9:30 and time to head back. Jim took us the back way, of course and showed us some landmarkds along the way. No sooner were we back home, that I left with Erin again, this time to pick up everything for the party in the afternoon. Balloons, decorations, stuff like that. Of course, I did try to 'fix' the camera by going into BJ's for a new card. I tested it right on the spot, and determined it way the camera. No money lost, just time. I was disappointed. Riggingg it to work sucks; my thumb hurts too. Erin and I helped set up at Bethany.

We got back, hung for a bit and got ready for the party. Going to change, I noticed that I had actually brought Erin's pants instead of my own. Real bummer. Since I wanted to look as spic/span as possible - especially for all of the people I was meeting - I shaved what I was calling a goatee. It was hardly a try; more of a joke than anything. Looks like I be wearing my brown cords one mo time...It was fine, noone would notice....

The party had a good amount of grammy's friends, as well as a lot of people that I had heard Erin talk about. It was good to finally meet some of them, especially before our wedding next May. We wrapped up about 4:30 and came back to the house. Unfortunately, all of the photos from the party that I took never came out.

I especailly was a little beat and grabbed some quick shut-eye. For the rest of the eveining, I basically spent it defending myself from spirited attacks by Ms. Bartimac. At one point she basically labeled me a geek. (Something I'm sure I'll never live down).

One good thing, though was I learned the basics of penaucle. I had never played before. Myself, Jim, Kathie, Grammy, John, Gena and David (Kathie's brother) played. It was fun.

We tried to get to bed early, as we had to get up about 5:00 am and be out of the house by 6:00 am to make our 8:55 am flight in Baltimore.