Have you ever received the advice from a friend saying “just do what makes you happy.” I’ve heard this advice too many times, but I could never understand what it meant. A lot of things make me happy in this world…actually, I am an optimist and I would say that 99% of the things in the world make me happy. Should I just continue doing what I’m doing? Maybe. Maybe not.
Anyways, reading the 4-Hour Workweek yesterday brought “do what makes you happy” into a new perspective. Timothy mentioned that the opposite of happiness is not sadness, but boredom. So, being happy, translates to being excited. “Just do what excites you.” Aha.
So, the next question becomes, “what excites you?” Only you can answer that though. I’m doing my fair share of thinking on this end, and maybe i’ll share some of my thoughts very soon.
This is a geeky entry, so please read with caution.
I just learned some very useful information about Gzip, and enabled it onto our Apache servers. This reduced our initial download size by half (of js and css files) from 366K to 180K.
Here is how to improve your site performance, it’s actually pretty simple:
Verify that LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so exists in your httpd.conf file
Create mod_deflate.conf file in your config directory, or just update your httpd.conf file.
I learned a very valuable lesson this week: an entrepreneur must wear many hats and, at times, he must learn how to make his own hats too. I was relying on a few friends and professional photographers to give me some pointers about taking new Cameesa product shots; fortunately, they were very busy and I decided to learn Digital Photography on my own. Within a few hours I realized that the basics are actually pretty simple, and we were off to new product shots in no time.
When it comes to digital photography there are 4 important factors you must consider: lighting, film speed/ISO(sensitivity to light), aperture(amount of light), and shutter speed(time exposed to light).
In our case, we had five lights, two diffused lights shinning on the background wall, and three lights illuminating the subject (Andy). Moreover, Andy stood 6.5 feet in from the background so his shadow did not appear in the shots.
Film Speed/ISO
The film speed determines the saturation of the colors in the photograph. Fast film (ie. ISO 80) requires a shorter exposure to the subject, and requires very good lighting; on the other hand, slow film requires (ie. ISO 1600) a longer exposure, but can be taken in darker areas. If you are in a well-lit place, and objects are standing-still, then you want a low ISO, like ISO 80. However, if you are shooting something in a dark place, or are shooting fast-moving scenes, then you want something like ISO 1600. Keep in mind that a high ISO number correlates to granularity in your pictures, so your pictures may come out blotchy.
ISO 100 on left; ISO 3200 on right
In our case, we shot all of our pictures with ISO 80 in a well-lit environment.
Aperture (f-number)
Aperture controls the amount of light that gets into the camera. The higher the f-number, then the less light will get into the camera, and more of the scene will be in focus; for example, f/32 will let little light into the camera and the entire scene will be in focus. In addition, if you want the background to be blurry and the subject to be very focused and stand-out, then you should use a low f-number such as f/2. Basically, aperture is used to adjust the depth of field in the picture. Keep in mind that as you zoom in, the aperture may increase automatically.
f/5 - wide aperture
f/32 - narrow aperture
In our case, we used f/2.8 for all of our full t-shirt pictures because we wanted the background to be blurry and the subject to stand out.
Exposure Time/Shutter Speed
Shutter speed controls the amount of time that the subject is exposed. A fast shutter (1/500 sec.) can stop droplets of a waterfall because it is a quick snap, and has a short exposure time; however, a slow shutter (1 sec.) speed can get that motion blur of a waterfall in moving pictures because the shutter is open for a longer time. In terms of a stand-still picture, you want an exposure of about 1 second or a little lower so you can absorb the colors in the entire scene.
Long exposure of 25 seconds
In our case, the exposure was usually around 1/50 second so the colors in the picture were taken correctly
Summary
Majority of our pictures were shot at an ISO 80, with an aperture of f/2.8, and an exposure time 1/50 of a second. Hope you guys learned a little about picture taking, and feel free to give us feedback on our new Cameesa product shots.
The long-awaited Cameesa Tee is now available in the Shop section of Cameesa.com.
A great big thank you goes out to Richard Fang (aka madeforyou) for designing it. We are very excited about the way it turned out, check out the pictures below.
P.s., We have taken new product shots of our t-shirts if you want to check them out in the Shop Section.
One thing I always look for when interviewing job candidates is strong opinions. I love hearing passionate responses when I ask, “what is your favorite programming language?” or “what piece of code are you most proud of?”. To me, it signals that the person has spent the time to think critically and deeply about what they do.
I would much rather have a job candidate tell me why Visual Basic is his favorite programming language, than tell me that he doesn’t have a favorite language. This carries over from the technical side into everyday life. I can’t tell you how many times I have met someone, and the conversation goes like this:
Me: “So what are you passions, what interests you?”
Them: “Uhh, I like sports and music”
Me: “That’s cool. What kind of music?”
Them: “Oh, you know, I like everything”
Me: “What’s your favorite band”
Them: “I really don’t know”
I love surrounding myself with people who have spent the time to develop strong opinions; they are just so much more interesting. Our opinions often differ, and that is the important part. That is when you have the chance to really learn something.
I once was at a bar table with a couple of hardcore Libertarians, essentially anarchists. I loved our conversation and learned an incredible amount, because they had, and were willing to defend, their opinions. They had obviously spent a lot of time thinking about their position, and truly believed in it. Such a refreshing departure from the apathy that seems to plague my generation.
I can see why apathy is so popular: apathy is easy. In contrast, developing strong defensible opinions seems to take time and research. I think this is where many people get caught up: having opinions shouldn’t mean that you aren’t willing to change them. People are often afraid of being wrong or appearing unintelligent, and therefore it seems easier to have no strong convictions. Having an opinion should be the basis for discourse, with the intention that debate can lead to new, more refined opinions.
My advice to you is to spend the time to think deeply about your choices and associations, and start forming opinions. You have to start somewhere, and realize that you may change your mind later. You’ll be amazed at what you learn.
Socrates said it best, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
I took the 30 Day Challenge and it taught me that it is extremely important to socially bookmark your content. In addition, it taught me how how to market online with more detail, and effectiveness (but that’s a different story). It taught me how to improve Cameesa’s page rank, popularity, and gear our site to be search engine optimized.
I know thes following sub-sites are a little weak, and definitely not up to Cameesa quality, but they are mainly to get the word out, and improve SEO. So, without further adieu, here is my first iteration of Cameesa’s sub-sites:
Cameesa is the brain child of Viktor Bezic, Kamil Chmielewski, Andrew Cronk, and Qasar Younis.
This blog is a set of semi-coherent musings from the start up front line as well as the things we find interesting.
Based in Chicago, IL Cameesa was founded in 2007 as a platform for Artists and their Supporters to bring freshly designed T-Shirts
to the public. To find out more visit cameesa.com
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