chaotic.signal
whatever Phil it's just random crap
Battlefield Bad Company 2 Wallpapers
Nov 18th
I like the artwork from Bad Company 2 but there aren’t any good wallpapers out, so I used the fan kit from DICE to create a few of my own, not the most creative but I think they worked out pretty well, currently adorning my laptop desktop 
Please enjoy and feel free to share, if anyone wants any custom resolutions or aspect ratios let me know and I’ll make it up for you, alternatively download the fan kit yourself and have a go 
16:10
4:3
16:9
Facebook profile pic faux pas
Jul 27th
This is a compilation of the worst crimes against the facebook world. People should keep their profile pictures relevant on most of all the picture should be of you!
3360×1050 Wallpapers
Mar 21st
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, I’ve been busy (more on that later) for now though I’ve always found it hard to find dual screen wallpapers, especially ones in 3360×1050 resolution, hopefully these should help, read below the fold for some more previews and a big link incase you missed the one up there^
Halo 3 Panoramas
Jan 15th
Not feeling in the mood to actually play the game and having a short attention span I for some reason set about making some Halo 3 panoramas (or halorama if you will). I think I saw something about it on a halo website and as usual thought “oooh I’ll try that” and set about taking multiple screenshots to stitch together.
The program I used (Hugin) is quite brilliant for a free app, all you do is select all the images that you took and click go. After that it stitches them all together and shows you what it’s made, then all you do is select where the image should be centered and there’s your panorama. Just as a side note the images it creates are tif files and and be quite big, I stitched together 10 – 15 for one panorama and the output file was around 350MB!
After that it’s a simple task of cropping the picture as there’s no way to make a completely rectangular image without losing data. I also do a bit of post processing on the images too because the images that come down from the Bungie website are a little washed out I find. I’ll probably write a little tutorial on how to do it with pretty pictures and everything. Look for that soon More panoramas after the fold.
Getting to know the W110
Jan 2nd
Just thought I would share a few of the snaps I’ve taken with the W110, had a lot of fun messing around with it and have a few things like a light tent and a tripod. I am feeling a little limited by the camera though, but definitely need the general experience I think before I splash out more on a DSLR and maybe need to make sure it’s not just a fad. Either way these are a few of my favorite photos;
Check out these too;
Sonic 10th Anniversary Pack
Yujin Dreamcast Gashapon
I’ve also gone and ordered a couple of Gundam models, always liked the anime and recently watched Gundam Seed Destiny, wanted to find one that really didn’t need painting. In the end though I decided to pay an extra bit for some craft materials to do a good job of it like a bit of paint, a craft knife, things like that, won’t get here for a while though from HK. Will definitley get some photos of them when I’m done.
Sony Cybershot W110
Dec 15th
I have been trying to decide which camera to get for some time, could not for the life of me make my mind up, especially considering my £100 price limit. At this range the more featured cameras are bigger, the smaller cameras generally more oriented towards general use.
I finally decided to go for the Sony W110, 7.2mp, face detection 4x optical zoom and some nice pre-set scene modes. What follows is a brief review and evaluation of these kind of features over a camera phone etc…
Firstly the zoom on the camera is brilliant, can’t go wrong with 4x optical zoom and the extra digital zoom is done very well, although with no anti shake technology you have to have a steady hand or a tripod. Check out the pictures below, as you can see when zoomed fully in at 8x the image is still good quality and doesn’t look too shabby;
Up to 8x mixed zoom
The camera is great in low light, there is a pre-set scene mode which will keep the shutter open for some time (usually about a second) rather than just using a very high iso (which adds incredible noise to the image), obviously this has to be used when the camera is resting or on a tripid, the results are great. On the left is an average phone camera, as you can see it’s terrible, on the right is the low light scene mode from the W110, the image actually comes out brighter than it looks to the naked eye.
Low light photo, Cellphone (left) vs. W110 (right)
Finally a lesson in post processing, most people tend to pop their images straight from the camera to their PC’s or online somewhere like facebook, most still have red eye and a lot of them could be very much improved with just a quick few seconds in something like Adobe’s Lightroom, the following image taken during daylight shows the difference a little tinkering can make (left is before, right is after);
Post processing is very important
In closing, I’m quite happy with the Sony W110, it was only £80 so under budget, which is always good. It meets my needs, which were to be compact, capable of 640×480@30fps video and have at least 3x optical zoom. Read on for a few photo’s I’ve taken with the camera. Read the rest of this entry »
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