KNGUYENTU - PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEVIN & SAP HELP BY KEVIN » dikiem

Huntington Library 2009

dikiem — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:15:37 +0000

After spending a few months reading about HDRs and seeing how it was done, I decided to give it shot. One weekend with the Nikon D200 equip with the 70-200 2.8 VR and 16-85 3.5-5.6 VR lens, I decided to take a trip to Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

HDR is High Density Resolution. It is a process when using several RAW format images and combine them together to produce one single 32-bit image. The largest benefit of it is to allow you to take multiple pictures using different exposure to capture each area well.

Here are some HDRs I’ve made. You can view larger side and full gallery at http://gallery.knguyentu.com. Let me know what you think!

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Nikon EN-EL3e Rechargeable Li-Ion Battery for D200, D300, D700 and D80 Digital SLR Cameras, Part 25334

B & W 62MM Multi-Coated Mrc Kaesemann Circular Polarizer Filter KIT For Nikon 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX ED VR Nikkor

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B+W 62mm UV Haze 010 MRC Multi-Resistant Coating Glass Filter 66070231 KIT For Nikon 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S DX ED VR Nikkor

Upgrading to WP2.7: Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

dikiem — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:49:26 +0000

I recently upgrade from WP2.5 to WP2.7. For anyone who is interested, there is a fairly simple method on doing this upgrade. You could use the plug-in “Wordpress Automatic Upgrade“. It will automatically backup the database, download, and handle the upgrade for you in a simple manner. I completed the entire upgrade in less than 20 minutes using this method. Highly recommended.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/

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San Francisco, California

dikiem — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:03:30 +0000

I took a short vacation right between Christmas and New Year. Spent a few days up in San Francisco, California to visit the new Academy of Science building, Palace of Fine Arts, and few other areas. Here are some shot I would like to share. Would love to hear comments and feedback.

The entire gallery is @ http://gallery.knguyentu.com/p589500420

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Hilton Garden Inn – Foster City, California

dikiem — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:20:43 +0000

On a recent trip to the bay area on business, I stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn, Foster City, California. The location is approx 15 – 20 minutes from San Franisco and less than 30 minutes from San Jose. Near the heart of Silicon Valley, the surround area as you drive around you will see sign from major companies such as Yahoo, Google, Cisco, Oracle, Adobe, and many other technology oriented companies.

Hotel Information:
URL: http://www.hiltongardeninn.com/en/gi/hotels/index.jhtml?ctyhocn=SFOSMGI
Address: 2000 Bridgepointe Circle, San Mateo, California 94404
Phone: 650-522-9000

The hotel is located minutes from San Franisco Airport and across the 92 freeway bridge from Oakland Airport. Less than 30 minutes from San Jose Airport. So going to this location is fairly easy. It is right at the boarder of Foster City and San Mateo. Being situated by the bay, weather there is actually very pleasant with occasion cool breeze during the hot summer days. The surrounding area, within walking distance (approx 1 block), you have the Bridgepointe Plaza where you could pick up a host of items you need. You have Target, being a major convenience store in the area, not to mention a other popular eating location such as BJ’s Brewery. If you are in need of some Asian food, close by you have the 99 Ranch Supermarket, a Chinese popular supermarket chain. Less than a mile away you have fairly decent Chinese seafood restaurant.

As for the hotel itself, as of 2008, it was in the renovation process. The room was standard hotel size room and fairly comfortable. The king size bed I had was extremely comfortable with a bed style similar to “Select A Comfort” where you can dial the firmness of your mattress. The fitness room was a bit cramp with too many equipments in a small area. Internet service is complimentary, which is an added bonus.

Overall, the Hilton Garden Inn is a good place to stay because of the location and services it offer.

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Disneyland Resort, California

dikiem — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 22:16:20 +0000

A couple of weekends ago, my wife and I join our friends at Disneyland Resort for a day. I’ve been to Disneyland several times and each time you could never seems to take enough pictures. Each time I come across new angle of things to take pictures of. This time around, since we went with some friends, I decided to go light. All I had with me was my Nikon D200, removed the external battery pack so I could travel light, had my SB-800 Nikon Flash in a fanny pack, and my trusty old Tamron 28-75 2.8 lens. I have to admit, the Tamron lens is the best investment for this D200 out of all my lenses.

All of these pictures were taken hand held, even the night shot. Let me know what you think of them.

More could be found at http://gallery.knguyentu.com

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Nikon Annouced D700?!?! D3 in “mini-me” format!

dikiem — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:33:39 +0000

Nikon has once again stunt the photography world. Since the D200 release, Nikon was quiet, while Canon and other companies releasing major blow one after another. The highly anticipated D200 replacement, dubbed the D300 was released not too long ago along with it’s bigger brother the D300.

Earlier this month, Nikon annouced the “mini me” of the popular D3 camera, the D700! It tout the similar “full frame” CMOS sensor, in a much smaller body. More like it took the D3 functionality and put it in the D300 to produce the D700! Holy Cow Batman!

I will be release late July 2008 for approx tag of $2999.00

Key Features Include:

Nikon’s original 12.1-megapixel FX-format (23.9 x 36mm) CMOS sensor: Teamed with Nikon’s exclusive EXPEED digital image processing, the D700 delivers breathtakingly rich image quality.
Broad ISO sensitivity up to 6400 and incredibly low noise: Super low-noise performance from 200-6400 ISO, with the added versatility of Lo-1 (100 ISO) Hi-1 (12,800 ISO) and Hi-2 (25,600 ISO).
Continuous shooting up to 5 frames per second: Shoot at up to 8 frames per second with the optional MB-D10 Multi-power Battery Pack.
Three-Inch, super-density 920,000-dot VGA color monitor: High resolution with
170-degree wide-angle viewing, calibrated color and tempered-glass protection assure confident image review.
Two Live View shooting modes: Choose from hand-held or tripod modes to suit shooting requirements.
Rugged magnesium-alloy construction: Along with extensive dust and moisture protection and a durable shutter mechanism tested to 150,000 cycles, the D700 merges pro D-SLR performance with expanded agility.
Fast, accurate 51-point AF with 3D Focus Tracking: Exacting autofocus precision, plus three Dynamic AF modes.
Dynamic Integrated Dust Reduction System: Effective quad-frequency, ultrasonic sensor cleaning minimizes image degrading dust particles.
1,005-Pixel 3D Color Matrix Metering II: Legendary Nikon exposure accuracy aided by an onboard database of over 30,000 images.
Nikon’s exclusive Scene Recognition System: SRS further extends auto-exposure intelligence while also advancing white-balance detection and autofocus performance.
Nikon Picture Control settings: Advanced color control with 9 customizable settings and 4 preset options allow fine tuning of image appearance preferences.
Active D-Lighting with NEW Auto mode: Unique three-phase dynamic control to capture previously lost details in shadows and highlights while maintaining normalized contrast.

You could read more on at anyone of these sites:

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Byebye Bill Gates

dikiem — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:35:42 +0000

As count down to Bill Gates last day @ Microsoft (actually it is today June 27th, 2008), check out this cool video he release a few months ago at CES2008 on his going away….

Bill Gates stepped down as CEO and standing at the helm of Microsoft, leaving it to Steve Balmer. He will still be involved on the board and certain key projects.

No matter how many people say they hate Microsoft or how crap their project is, you can’t deny the fact it changed how computing is for people today. Microsoft Windows is on almost everyone desktop globally and their product change the face of computing.

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What happen when you ask…

dikiem — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:44:08 +0000

When happen when you ask a little girl about monster…Interestingly funny video. Take a look and see..

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WP: Splitting Category Listing Into Multiple Pages

dikiem — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:53:12 +0000

Here is a little neat trick for Wordpress. Normally, you would use the WordPress tag “query_posts” to query against the database to list all of the posts relating to one or more categories.

Usually a simple query against a category would like something like this:

while(have_posts()) { the_post(); } ?>

Basically all this is doing is show 5 posts for the category, where $category is either one or more categories depending if you have a outter loop or not. What if you have a lot of posts per category and want to only show 5 per page. Plus you want to have the previous page and next page button. That would be cool huh?

You can easily do that. Using the above code as example, you can easily transform it to look like this.

while(have_posts()) { the_post();

}
?>

Somewhere else on that same page, you need to call the function code that handle the previous page and next page logic. They look something like this

What you’ve just done essentially is use the get_query_var to capture from the url string what page is it currently on and pass that to the page. At the bottom, it detect what page is next and previous.

You can see a sample in action from the SAPHELPBYKEVIN page link above.

Additional References:
Wordpress Query Post: http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/query_posts