Behind the Photo: Focus Stacking for a Surreal PiP Effect
A couple of days ago, Joy and I had a photoshoot with our good friends Corey and Ashlee. We went to the Ludington State Park and had an excellent session; they were an excellent couple to work with and everyone had a great time. And while I usually don't post our shoots on my site, I wanted to give a quick overview of a particular (awesome) photo from our session with them.
Lifehack: Easily Straighten Dress Shirts with a Flat Iron
A small lifehack of mine for your Friday morning: easily straightening shirt collars, sleeves, and placket, plain, and fly fronts with a flat iron.
If you have one of these hanging around your house, they'll soon become your dress shirts' best friend when you're in a time crunch:
#THATconference 2013 Recap
Last week I had the opportunity to attend THAT Conference at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells, WI. I wanted to take a moment and just highlight a few things from the conference.
Come See Me at #THATconference
If you'll be attending #THATconference, find me and say "hi"! I'll be here all week attending the various sessions; I may even get involved in the "Open Space" conferences.
Recipe: Melon Sorbet
With the heat waves that have been hitting West Michigan, it's essential to find ways to stay cool. While hanging out in the air conditioning is nice, it's even better if you can find a cool treat to relax with.
I had some leftover watermelon and cantaloupe (we've gone through a half-dozen or more this season), so I thought I'd try making a sorbet for the first time:
A Summertime Treat: Savory S'mores
Something that my good friend Shawn introduced us to a few years ago was roasting summer sausage over a campfire. I have no idea why I never thought of that before, but it's such an awesome idea. We eventually took his awesome tradition and turned it into something even better: Savory S'mores.
Photoset: Lighting Workshop and Family Photos
Over the weekend, Shawn was out for a visit. He had asked if I could give him a few pointers in portraits (shooting and lighting); this was day 2.
Here's an example of our setup:
Capturing Myself: A Walkthrough of Taking a Self Portrait
Anytime I get a new piece of photography equipment, I immediately try to find a project to put it to use. So, after acquiring two new PocketWizard PlusX wireless flash triggers, I decided to take a self portrait and document the entire process. If you want to know Photos by Brandon & Joy's workflow, this is a peek into how we make the magic happen.
SQL DELETE or INSERT Fail with Incorrect 'QUOTED_IDENTIFIER' SET Options
A very frustrating error was holding the entire team up yesterday: ...the following SET options have incorrect settings: 'QUOTED_IDENTIFIER'.
Here's the full exception that TeamCity was giving us:
Resolve NetworkService Account Not GZIPing IIS Responses
After following many posts and tutorials on properly setting up IIS dynamic compression for JSON responses, I was still reaching a dead end. For whatever reason, my responses were still uncompressed. Apparently, using the NetworkService account doesn't always play nicely with static or dynamic content compression.
The NetworkService account doesn't have permission to the IIS Temporary Compressed Files folder, preventing it from writing and reading out compressed streams. The easiest way to get around this is by adding the NetworkService account to the IIS_IUSRS group (which already has permissions to the IIS temporary folder).