The Story So Far...
December 29th 2011. On the 13th November 2011, after a long battle with cancer and various other problems Steve passed away, I will leave the site running as a remembrance to him, he was a great friend and will be sorely missed. |
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| June 10th 2011. Another year passed already! This site has now been running for four years with this host, (GameStone)! The visits counter at this point is reading 3081 visits for the camera section and the bike section is now on 907 visits since the introduction of the counter on that section last year on 20th February 2010! |
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| April 5th 2011. Started to build a web page in the Tutorials section to try and explain how I set up and photographed Airfix model airplanes that had been photographed in front of a false background so as to give the appearance that the model planes were actually in flight. I have included some old example pictures to show some of the results. |
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| October 8th 2010. Taking the bike video camera idea a bit further I purchased myself a MD80 Mini DV camera from Amazon for £20 including a 2 GB Micro SD Card, a USB adapter, numerous brackets and a charger. The idea is to mount it on my motorbike to capture video footage when out and about on various ride outs with friends. |
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| September 21st 2010. It has been quite some time since I added something to the camera section as I have been busy with the motorbike section more so. However this camera was recently given to me by a friend to mess around with as a project for capturing video footage whilst attached to my motorbike. More information about it found in the usual way! |
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| June 10th 2010. How time seems to pass so quickly these days. This site has now been running for three years with this host, (GameStone)! The visits counter at this point is reading 2325 visits and the bike section is now on 239 visits since the introduction of the counter on 20th February 2010! |
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| April 25th 2010. Utilising the web space provided by the Windows Live Photo Gallery feature I decided to upload some pictures and link to them to see how it performed. This is the result of said links. The first one is to the main page with all the uploaded albums the second one is a slide show feature link to one of the albums. |
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| March 29th 2010. Started to experiment with different types of media files and how they would react when linked to from a web page. I was particularly interested to find out what programs would open different file types, (If they would open at all) and what difference it would make comparing Firefox 3.6 to Internet Explorer 8 in the way they handled the files. |
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| March 20th 2010. Still finding and correcting minor mistakes since the new site style went "live" a few days ago. Finally got around to replacing the "borrowed" pictures on the Fujifilm F420 Finepix camera page for images of my own. Added Highslide captions to all pictures with a "flyout" on the Fujifilm F420 Finepix camera page. |
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| March 19th 2010. After going live with the new layout for Steve's Zone I found quite a few broken links and general mistakes that I have now corrected. I resized the page images so they now display at 100% rather than using the lazy method of scaling them. Also added "Highslide" captions to some larger fly out images that had no description. |
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| March 16th 2010. New style goes live! Spent ages going through each page on the camera section changing the format and style to something more consistent to the bike section. The main changes were to the relevant section Index pages. Although there was a lot of code changes to other pages they do not look to dissimilar to their original layout. |
New Style Accessories Index Page. Old Style Accessories Index Page. |
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February 20th 2010.I thought that as I now had two effective main page subjects, (Camera and Bike) a visits counter on each page would be a nice touch to get a rough idea on how the site was being navigated. After a few failed attempts at adding some free counters GameStone kindly allowed me to use another one of his five allocated ones. Thanks GameStone! |
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| January 29th 2010. In keeping with the new style layout for the bike section I have started to trawl through the camera section to try and make the site more uniform and this site history page seemed a good a place as any to make a start. I have kept the original layout for this page for now, (this can be found from the picture link) but at some point pages will be removed to make space for newer ones. |
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| January 23rd 2010. Having concentrated most of my time on the new bike section the camera section was getting a bit left behind. During the development of the bike section some new techniques were acquired and I was considering changing the cameras section to the new style of layout. I have been working on changing the cameras index page just for trial, what do you think of it so far? |
Old Style Camera Index Page. New Style Camera Index Page. |
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| November 18th 2009. I was getting into a right pickle with the layout of the header and footer so I had to call upon the services of GameStone who promptly put me right with some pointers on HTML code and CSS etiquette. I have been using his base code to create a couple of test pages for reference. The next step is to progress through the site and gradually change over to the new method of layout. |
 Test Page Without SSI. Test Page With SSI. |
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| November 12th 2009. It was pointed out that when viewed on a large wide screen monitor the main content centralised but the navigation buttons and Steve'sZone logo were to the extreme left. To fix this I had to add some code to each page which pointed to a style sheet to centralise it. I based full width on a 1280 pixels wide monitor, ( Code as follows... { width: 1280px; position: relative; margin: 0 auto; } ). |
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| July 30th 2009. Started to build a secondary site linked to Steve's Zone that is dedicated to the new bike I am thinking of buying, a Yamaha FZ6 Fazer S2. I have found a shop pre-registered one that I particularly like and it is a good chance that I am going to purchase it. The price is pretty good for a bike that is this years model, (2009) that was registered in March but still has no mileage on the clock. |
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| July 19th 2009. Decided to split the Filters and Lens Care page into two separate pages as the content for the two categories was making the page somewhat crowded. There are now two pages representing items in the Accessories section, Camera & Lens Care, Filters & holders. The content remains pretty much the same as the original page only less bloated. |
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| June 10th 2009. Happy birthday dear Steve'sZone... This site is now two years old with this host, (GameStone)! The visits counter has a nice round number of 1350 visits which is almost an average of two a day, not bad for a site that started out as a bit of fun! |
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| May 30th 2009. Replaced the "Picture Coming Soon" images on the flashguns page with pictures that now actually represent the items in question and generally finished off that page. Tidied the code mark up to XHTML 1.0 transitional compliant by running the page validator. Started on the next part of the site with regards to the accessories section capturing images for the filters and lens care page. |
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| April 29th 2009. Installed Internet Explorer version 8 and found it had rather a strange effect on the way my web site pages were rendered. The main problem was that the web page line spacing bumped up and down when a picture containing a link was hovered over giving the impression the page was animated. In the end I edited numerous offending style sheets and cured the problem for now. |
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| March 17th 2009. Had a complete tidy up of all the site elements which involved re-naming some files, creating new directories and deleting old ones. As a result of this I got into a bit of a mess and the whole site ended up with broken links and missing image files. I think I have managed to sort it out but should you find any broken links or missing files let me know using the "Contact Me!" button. Thanks! |
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| March 2nd 2009. Made up a couple of more pages based on the tutorials theme. The first page demonstrates how to merge two images into one to achieve a better looking picture. The second page is more a photography "Hints & Tips" tutorial based on things I have picked up over the years that I thought may come in useful. |
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| January 25th 2009. I updated the Index page to make it a bit more dynamic plus I wanted to advertise my pictures more directly by including rolling side shows that link to my pictures housed on Flickr. I have also been experimenting with different site navigation methods and I thought it might be a good idea to include some of these ideas on a separate page. |
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| December 31st 2008. Last Day of the year and apart from a few technical notes that I need to look up I have pretty much finished the Batteries & Chargers section. Managed to get a day or two with some decent natural light so I took some pictures of all the memory cards and pen drives that I have got so I could start working on the new Memory & Pen Drive page although some pictures may be replaced later. |
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| December 21st 2008. Started working on the Accessories section a bit more this time concentrating on the Batteries & Chargers section. Unfortunately there is only so much information you can write about batteries and their chargers so this page is somewhat boring plus the lack of images at this time means the page is somewhat incomplete at the moment. |
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| November 28th 2008. I came across some tripod pictures I had taken a while ago when I was preparing to do the camera accessories page. Although I need a lot more images to complete the page I thought I would make a start on it as I have not worked on the site for some time now. |
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| September 9th 2008. Found some information on how to include a favourite icon, (favicon.ico) in the the address bar using the following code... <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" /> by placing it in the head of the document and creating an icon that is no more than 16 x 16 pixels using a maximum of 16 colours. |
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| September 8th 2008. I was introduced to background images in combination with the basic background colour and how they can dramatically change the appearance of a page bringing it more to life, (see top of page). To complement these changes I created a new page in the "How It's Made..." section describing how I created the watermark style background image from a standard photograph. |
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| August 30th 2008. Decided to add a new section to cover all accessories that I own and put to use past and present. This meant re-designing the index page. It also meant changing the navigation button link bar that features on all other pages. The Accessories page is as yet under construction and so far the only link with any content near completion is the Lenses section. |
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| July 31st 2008. Added a new page to the "Techno" section! I was asked why cropping occurred to a photograph taken on one digital camera when printed on 5" x 7" paper but did not crop when taken on a different camera but printing out the image using the same paper size. Put simply it depends on the sensor size... |
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| June 16th 2008. Added a new page to the "Homebrew" section the item being a tripod quick release block that fixes to the base of the camera. This device allows you to remove the camera from the tripod without undoing any screw threads which is a good idea, however if you have more than one camera you need more than one block and they are about £25 each so I decided to make my own. |
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| June 10th 2008. This site is now one year old with this host, (GameStone)! Purchased yet another DSLR which is a few generations more advanced than my Olympus E-500, this one being the Olympus E-510 DSLR. This new camera boasts 10 Million pixels as opposed to the E-500's 8 Million and includes "Live View" and built in Image Stabalisation. |
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| May 11th 2008. Finally got around to doing a bit more to the site mainly due to the purchase of a new camera, (a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W170s). This involved adding a new page which meant photographing and editing images of the new camera (for this I used my Olympus E500 and Paint Shop Pro 7). Lastly I had to change the layout of the "All Cameras" page to incorporate the new Sony camera. |
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| March 22nd 2008. Made extra images to create different style rollover buttons this time a simple square style. Two different sizes, (48 x 48 pixels and 24 x 24 pixels). Available in the form of a downloadable page should anyone like my images and fancy them for themselves. Expanded on the "Techno" page by adding another page to do with multiple flash "ƒ" number formulas and typical simple layout example diagrams. |
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| March 3rd 2008. Constructed another tutorial page and added a link to the "How It's Made" page to show how I made the gradient style rollover buttons. Some of the images link to "Fly-out" images of screen shots taken whilst using Paint Shop Pro 7 to create the button images. Also included a link to another page where you are able to download the code required to make the "Rollover" work. |
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| February 23rd 2008. Found a free PDF document maker online called PrimoPDF that works in Windows Vista. I used it to make a PDF document version of the Miranda MS-1 Super Manual using Microsoft Word to layout the pages then selecting print and choosing PrimoPDF from the drop down menu. Finished a bit more of the Sony Cyber shot DSC-W1 with more example pictures. |
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| February 15th 2008. It occurred to me that some people still use Feet and Inches when taking their "distance to subject" measurements and that my Aperture Calculator is designed for metric. So to accommodate those of you who prefer Imperial measurements I have included a conversion calculator on the Aperture Calculator page! Also is a ISO GN Converter for those whose GN is not given at ISO 100. |
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| February 8th 2008. Having got my head around this Server-Side Include lark and updating all the relevant pages I decided to go one step further and have a go at JavaScript. I thought it would be useful to include a calculator of sorts for working out the aperture, ( ƒ ) values for a particular powered flashgun using the Flashguns "Guide Number" in the formula, it is a bit basic but hey it works! |
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| February 4th 2008. It was politely pointed out to me by a friend that if I wanted to add another Navigation button I would have to edit every page that contained the change so why did I not use "Server-Side Include" for my headers and footers, that way only one file would need to change to perform an update. I have been experimenting to see if I can make it work. So far so good I think! |
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| January 20th 2008. Having got over the Christmas period I find I have a bit more time on my hands to continue building the site. Continuing with the "Techno" section I have started yet another page describing the use of Slave Units on flashguns and how older style flashguns can still be used with DSLR cameras even though they ar not compatible. |
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| December 31st 2007. Last entry for this year! Another section added to the "Techno" page to explain how to use a Flashgun Guide Number to work out the correct aperture setting for a particular set up. It also explains the relationship between "ƒ" numbers and why certain formulas are used to work out the "ƒ" value. |
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| December 18th 2007. Purchased some new Olympus E-500 Digital SLR Camera bits while on holiday as they were so cheap compared to the UK prices. As a result I have updated the Olympus page to include some of the new items, these being mainly a new lens and an adapter lens for wide angle and close up macro photography. |
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| December 4th 2007. Added yet another page to complement the "Tripod Extender Kit" part of the "Homebrew" page which consists of links to technical drawings of the homemade pieces. I used Paint Shop Pro 7 Anniversary Edition to create these images which was probably not the best program for drawing with, as a consequence the drawings are actually png images and not text as they appear. |
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| November 24th 2007. Tinkered about with the index page to accommodate some extra pages those being the "Techno" page and the "Homebrew" page. The idea of these two pages is to show formulas and images to explain certain camera set up aspects and to also show and explain homemade items that I have made or adapted for different applications. |
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| October 14th 2007. One of the most common requests I have been receiving is for a user manual for the Miranda MS-1 Super. This is a bit ironic as that page was only added as a point of interest due to the reference in the Olympus section. In response to these requests I have started a "User Manual" page that can be viewed as a web style page from various links around the site. |
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| September 1st 2007. Finally got round to photographing and editing the pictures of the lenses, flashguns, tripod and accessories. I needed these to finish the Miranda MS-1 Super page. I am also considering how to add pages to the site to show how to do some trick photography and also explain about useful technical blurb such as "Depth Of Field and "Inverse Square Law"! Still thinking! |
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| August 31st 2007. Forced to purchase a new PC that ran on Widows Vista! That took away web site build time whilst I got used to it. Changed some pictures on the Fujifilm Finepix 2600 Zoom page and found some original full size example pictures that I had taken some time ago. Still not happy with the camera pictures but the camera itself is a bit battered now and does not photograph very well. |
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| August 11th 2007. Went through all the site pages and ran a tool to validate the XHTML 1.0 Transitional Code to make sure my pages complied to the given XHTML code rules, found loads of errors that took ages to sort out but all pages should now validate correctly. Took some new pictures for the Sony page and set about laying them out using the "Highslide" script for larger images again. |
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| August 2nd 2007. Added a couple of changes to the main "Index" page, graphical and dynamic, these being the "GameStone" logo which also links to the "GameStone" home page and a visits counter so I can see how many "Hits" I have had. I also did some more work on the Fujifilm DX-10 page adding some thumbnail pictures that link to full size images taken on the DX-10 at full size resolution and best quality. |
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| July 28th 2007. My friend showed me how to add a "Contact Me" page with a form and authorization number so as to be able to receive comments and questions by way of e-mail from genuine people and not those that put out spam. Finished off the spinning logo section on the "How It's Made" page, I also added a bit more by way of pictures and specifications to the Fujifilm Finepix 2600 Zoom page. |
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| July 20th 2007. As I made reference to my old Miranda SLR camera I decided to build a page dedicated to it. Whilst about it I decided to include two other pages covering all the digital cameras that I owned or now own, These being a Fujifilm DX-10 (my first digital camera) and a Fujifilm Finepix A2600 Zoom. I also grouped page colours into themes, (cameras blue, tutorials green, general pages red/pink). |
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| July 15th 2007. Added another page to the "How It's Made" section describing how I captured and edited the image for the small Olympus overhead camera picture, created a new style sheet for this page using a "green" theme, not to sure about it at the moment could be a bit to bright. Also changed the background colour to the Fujifilm page to a more cool blue, again not to sure if it is going to stay like this! |
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| July 7th 2007. Changed the "Index" page layout so that there is a link to a page that contains a common link page to the cameras pages rather than having individual page links on the index page. |
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| July 4th 2007. American Independence Day! Tidied up some graphics on the Fujifilm Finepix F420 page and added some fly out pictures to the front and rear camera views using the Highslide script. I also added some "Back To Top" links on some more pages (including this one) to make navigating the page easier. Installed Mozilla Firefox 2 to go with Internet Explorer 7 as an alternative checking browser. |
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| June 30th 2007. Introduced some images to the SZ Button page. Some are made from screen shots to show a visual aid of the tools used to make the button. I also used some javascript called Highslide, it is free for home use, $29 for commercial use! It enables multiple images to open in their own windows that can then be dragged around the screen allowing viewing of the original page. |
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| June 24th 2007. Started to create some images for the Olympus page with the intention of keeping the same layout as the Fujifilm page. I used the Fujifilm camera to photograph my new Olympus E500 DSLR camera. Then I messed around a bit in Paint Shop Pro 7 to resize, crop and generally adjust until reasonable for posting on the site. |
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| June 19th 2007. I made three new png images and created a navigation button on the main page that changed to an orange border button when passed over with the mouse and that emulated a button being pressed that when clicked on linked to this page. I also decided to remove the word "link" as it looked a bit obvious that the button was meant to do something. |
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| June 13th 2007. Created new style sheet for the old Fujifilm F420 review but kept most of the original layout, blue text on a slightly off-white/yellow background. I also found some of the original gif images that I used to make the page and converted them to png images to use less web space. |
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| June 10th 2007. This idea of building my own web site seems to be doomed as the site hosted by Yahoo has been shut down due to some breach of condition by myself? Forget all this rubbishy free stuff, my web site space is now hosted by GameStone for a menial donation plus I get access to other services that the other providers did not supply! |
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| June 8th 2007. I started building this web site in April 2005 when I was given some free web space by Freeserve. Since then the company has changed to Wanadoo then finally to Orange. I decided to change my Internet Service Provider to Sky because it would work out cheaper but I did not realize that Orange were going to delete the site that I had previously built. So after some while I decided to open a Yahoo account for e-mail and found I could get some free web space again! So here I am re-building the site I had before but with a few changes. The graphics are all new but some of the reviews or comments date back to the original site build date. |
| Established 8th June 2007 © 2010 Steve's Zone... |
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