The Midnight Isle is where I post articles on visual artistry - primarily photography and image manipulation, but you can also expect to see more on 2d and 3d graphics in the future.
For other avenues of my creativity, please visit Sorcerer's Isle, where you will find writings on a variety of other subjects.
I've recently been working on a gallery website for my brother, a brilliant artist and illustrator. The site is still under construction, but he's already got some great examples of his drawings and sculptures on there, and it is definitely worth checking out.
Head over to eldavo.co.uk to take a look, and if you like the work take a look at his blog where he has more of his art.
On the technical side, the main site is pretty simple, so far, with extra complexity coming later on. It runs on Railo and uses jQuery. The (private) admin part of the site was my first opportunity to use cfimage functionality, allowing thumbnails to be generated from uploaded images. I used jCrop for the client-side crop selection.
From the 26th May to 2nd June I'll be in Edinburgh, exploring the city and surrounding areas, and taking plenty of photographs. At the end of the week I'll be attending Scotch on the Rocks, an annual ColdFusion developer conference.
Each day I'll be updating this entry with what I've been doing, as well as including some of the photos I've taken.
Update, Sunday 10th June: Photos Available
I've put a selection of photos into an online gallery, available at photos.bpsite.net/edinburgh
....Transmission Intercepted.... We have obtained confirmation.. *bzzzt* ..e target will be *bzzzt* ...ission in Edinburgh in two months *bzzzzzzzzt* ...ion that the ta... *bzzt* area for the whole preceeding wee..*bzzzt*..nable to confirm the purpose *bzzt*...ngly suspect photographic reconnaisance of the target zone and surrounding are.. *bzzzzzt* ..unable to predict how the targe.. *bzzzzt* ..operation affec... *bzzt* clear which factio.. *bzzt* ..arget will alig.. *bzzzzzzzt* ..d will monitor the target's actions close... *bzzzzt* ....Transmission Ends....
Things are slowly starting to get going now, I think I'm settled on the software/tools I'm going to use, and just need to test that they'll do what I need, and then get things properly setup.
Last Updated: Tuesday 20th March 20:33 GMT
I have been investigating setting up UK-based Railo CFML hosting, and to find out if it will be cost-effective, I need determine what level of interest there is, what sort of features people would want, and how much people would be willing to pay.
To this end, I have setup a quick CFML Hosting Survey where people can let me know what they want.
If you are interested please take a minute or two to let me know what you want, and if you might know anyone else who would be interested, I would appreciate it if you could forward the survey on to them.
ps: I am also considering setting up hosting specifically for photographers — if you would be interested in this, please feel free to fill in the above survey also, or simply send me an e-mail.
UPDATE: Please visit hosting.hybridchill.com if you are interested.
Project:Photon is an attempt to build a small and silent device to fulfill two main requirements. The first is for a reliable high-capacity storage device for my photographs and other valuable data, with integrated backup routines to help protect against unintended deletions. The second is for a personal web development server, which will be used for testing websites and hosting personal web applications on my home network.
Whilst it is possible to buy commercial products which allow you to attach hard-drives via a network, and also have an integrated web server, none of the NAS devices on offer managed to work in precisely the way I want. So I figured I'd make my own.