One generally does not realize how much actually goes in to taking a photo. How the elements all work together, continuity, symmetry, balance all play a big role in the overall quality of a photo.

One key point is having access to sites that are all relevant to what you need. I was googling around looking for a good photographer blog.  While there are many out there, it pays to have access to a concise relevant blog with lots of information, as there are heaps of small things that i picked up from there, that I can now use even on a Saturday night at a nightclub or while taking landscape photos on a weekend away.

I do encourage you to start if you have access to a digital camera as it is so easy to share your photos. Don’t forget that if your mobile phone has a camera you can use that too. My n95 outperforms my first digital camera. It’s fast and easy to use, and far more convenient when you need to take a photo then and there.

I have been using Facebook almost since they first allowed international members. It’s a fantastic site for social networking, I’ve found friends on there that I would have had no form of contact with any other way, and I highly recommend it. However as your friends list starts creeping into the hundreds, you notice that all of a sudden you get more and more application requests. It gets ridiculous. Like 50 on an average day, over a hundred on a really busy day. And my name starting with an A doesn’t help either.

But alas my dream cure has arrived. Since Facebook has obviously received countless requests to block application requests, (the closest you can get as far as I know, is to delete all your applications and block applications all together, or the next best is to go through and block each one, one by one.), as shown by the countless groups with thread after thread on Facebook support wont write back to me on the issue.

Well the cure is here:

If you want to ignore all requests (should work on any browser), use this here:  http://www.ignoreall.com/

If you want to Block all requests or Block and Ignore all requests, (this one requires you to use firefox, with greasemonkey and addon a script, all instructions provided), go here: Block ALL Application Requests with One-Click

I use the block and ignore addon and it has made my life a million times easier. I would recommend this to anyone who thinks such a utility would be useful.

You can actually download the script from the SmartFTP website. Just download either the php or asp version, whichever you need, and if you want to run the php script as is on your webserver, just remove the s at the end of it and it will run no problem through your browser. I would also recommend renaming the file if you do this as people could determine your directory structure and this could jeopardise your server’s security. Best security measure would be to delete it if you don’t need it, or just upload it when you do need it, as it is tiny.

Another good way  is to set up a cron job on your web server, however I’ll post this up another day.

Now I realise many of my readers have more than one place that they check their emails. I personally have two that I use frequently, and one that I use not as frequently, but still does occur. Now as most people would realise, you download it in one place, you don’t get it on the other. That is due to the nature of POP mail. There is one alternative that many people are unaware of. This is called IMAP.

IMAP works off a different system, one that gmail can utilise because of it’s large server space, (4.3 gig the last time I checked, and still growing), because it works off keeping a copy of your mail on the server. The IMAP service allows the user to download only the message headers and decide if they want to actually download the rest of the message and the attachments. IMAP was designed to overcome some of the issues that POP had. It allows a user to download the message headers and allows the user to decide whether or not to download the rest of the message, so therefore messages are kept on a server, and are only downloaded when a user requests them, and this is great for people who are constantly mobile.

Some advantages of IMAP over POP are:

• Folders for storing received and sent messages
• Freedom for user to download attachments at will
• Server-based searching and selection to minimize data transfer.
• Ability to append messages to a remote folder.
• Ability to set standard and user-defined message status flags.
• Support for simultaneous update and update discovery in shared folders.
• New mail notification.
• Ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX.
• Remote folder management.
• Support for folder hierarchies.
• When a client program performs any operation on a mailbox, the server will automatically include in its response notification of any new messages that have arrived since the last notification.
• IMAP’s ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX is fundamental to online and disconnected operation. This means being able to save messages from one folder to a different one, being able to access archived messages subsequently, and allowing for multiple incoming message folders.

So this can come in handy for many of you out there, and I highly recommend you check out the features of your new abilities in gmail, oh and just in case you are wondering, it is 100% free, you just have to enable IMAP in your user settings, then set-up your email client, and you are good to go!

Saved me a lot of time. Hopefully it can help you too!