CloudStew - Part 4

The Daily Pennsylvanian – First Assignment

Posted by malammar in Photography Oct 3rd No Comments »

This is the first in a series of posts I will write about my assignments as a photographer at The Daily Pennsylvanian. The Daily Pennsylvanian, also known as the DP, is the local college newspaper run by Penn students and funded purely by ad revenue. You can check out the newspaper here: The Daily Pennsylvanian

I joined the photography team on September of 2007 shortly after I fell in love with Photography. At first it was difficult taking photographs that my editors liked. I was frequently told that I had a ‘pretty’ photograph but not a usable one. It took a long time for me to learn what ‘take a photo that tells the story’ really meant and how to do it without hesitation. Hopefully any of you photographers thinking of taking a foray into photojournalism or even sports photography will find these posts useful and insightful.

The assignment was for a meeting of a group at Penn called the Civic Scholars with Penn president Amy Gutmann. A couple of things made this assignemnt somewaht difficult. First, I had to make sure that I didn’t disturb the meeting at all. In fact I was directly told by my editor and one of the Civic Scholar’s faculty leaders to be as quiet as possible. This was easier said than done. The Nikon D200 I was using was NOT a quiet camera (most DSLRs aren’t) and one of the lenses I was using to get portraits was enourmous (the 70-200mm 2.8). Add to this the fact that I was in a room the size of jail cell and you get a great reason to freak out about your first assignment.
Here’s the first photo I ever took for the DP.

First DP Photo

But I gritted my teeth and with the help of Pres. Gutman’s handler (she was very eager to get good press for Gutmann in the DP) I clicked away and with minor irritation on the faculty leader I got my photos. I took so many that day that I thought I had to have a good one in there somewhere. It turns out I was right.
This was the one that was eventually published.

First Published DP Photo

And even though the editors liked this photo they still told me that I needed to get closer to my subjects. One of them even told me to get in the space in the middle of the square table and snap photos from there. That’s not disruptive at all right?

So what do you take home from this as a rookie photog?

Be bold. A timid photographer never gets good shots.
Don’t be affraid to get close.
Get plenty of angles and make sure your photos tell the story. In other words, imagine your photo in the paper next to the article and ask yourself: Does that make sense there?

Happy shooting!

Computer Tutorials

Posted by malammar in Computers Sep 30th No Comments »

I’ve always had a knack for computers and technology in general and building a tutorials website is a goal of mine. Instead of creating a separate website for these tutorials I’m going to try to place these tutorials in this blog under the computers category. Here’s the first one:
My C640 has a Windows XP skin that allows it to look very distinctive as you can see here:

Wallpaper is here.

This can be done in two different ways. The more powerful one which involves $$ will also use more of your computers resources through extra processes. The other involves a simple patch that will alow you to use a smaller variety of skins.

Windows Blinds
The current version of WB is a program by Stardock that will use custom skins called WB files. Both the program and the skins can be downloaded from http://www.wincustomize.com. The variety of skins is virtually endless. If you don’t find a skin to like with WB then you won’t find a skin you’ll like anywhere. The installation process if self explanatory and changing skins involves a very simple right click. However I must warn that the program itself and the skins take up a large chunk of Processing power, RAM, and HD space relative to the other skinning method.

UXtheme.dll Patch
Many do not know this but Windows XP has a built in skinning ability allowing it to use “msstyle” theme files. However, for some unkown reason ‘cough’money’cough’, Microsoft configured the UXTheme.dll file used for skinning windows in order to not allow the use of 3rd party msstyles. As a result a 3rd party patch came out which allows the user to simply click on msstyles to skin their computer. The msstyles themselves load with no residual memory usage, processing power, and very little HD space. The UxTheme.dll patch can be found here and the msstyles can be found here and here. While this method is simple and has very few residual effects it is not nearly as powerful as WB in skinning. WB can also add transparency to make the Vista Skins look real—msstyles cannot.

In the end it’s your choice on how serious you are about skinning and whether to buy WB or stick with the free UXTheme.dll patch. Just make sure your desktop doesn’t look like this:

My Ugly Desktop by XxMoroDashixX

Next week. Icons and Wallpaper!

The End of Ramadan

Posted by malammar in Personal Sep 29th No Comments »

Now that’s almost the end of Ramadan I feel like the month went all too quickly. You might think I’m crazy for wanting to keep fasting but I think that if you were in my place you would realize why I’m going to miss it. Every year after this month ends all of my friends begin to slowly drift apart again. The month simply keeps us together and a lot of times forces us to be together. And the truth is that you never fast alone.
On a lighter note here’s one of my friends after having been cloned:

Zohaibs

Staying up for Suhoor

Posted by malammar in Personal Sep 27th No Comments »

It’s 7:10AM and I still haven’t gone to sleep. Why? Well, last night/this morning had a good chance of being Laylat_al-Qadr, one of the most important nights in the history of Ramadan. Because it’s so important, many of us stayed up to pray for the entire night in the hope that we’ll reap the rewards of this night. Eventually, after a satisfying night of prayer, we ate our Suhoor meal at a local restaurant, Philadelphia Diner.

First, we ate deliciously joyous pancakes.