Although I like my Olympus E-500 for taking photos in daylight, I've been very frustrated with it when taking photos in low light situations.   Since it's winter here in Wisconsin, I find myself almost always in low light situations these days and I started leaving my camera at home because I knew that I wouldn't be able to get good shots with the built-in flash.

As with most cameras, the built-in flash usually resulted in a lot of "red eye", unnatural shadows, and over-exposed subjects with dark backgrounds.   If I turned the flash off, I just ended-up with a blurry mess (even at high ISO settings) since I rarely wanted to shoot subjects that were not moving.  

One thing I really don't like about the E-500 is that is strobes the built-in flash in order to get a focus lock.   Not only is this very distracting, especially if the subject of your photo is a person or an animal, but it doesn't seem to work very well since the camera doesn't get a focus lock very quickly.

After attending a wedding a few weeks back where the photographer was taking one great shot after another in low light, I asked the photographer what his 'secret' was.  He said that he was just using a 'fast' lens along with the external flash and had his camera set on auto focus.  Obviously, there there wasn't anything magic about what this photographer was doing to get good shots, but he did have a good external flash that I did not have.   So, thanks to a decent sale on Amazon.com, I purchased the Olympus FL-50 external flash.

Although Olympus offered cheaper models than the FL-50, I decided to get their flagship model because it is the brightest flash offered.  As someone stated on the DPReview.com forums, "You can always tone-down a bright flash to make it dimmer, but you can't make a dim flash brighter."

This is the first external flash I've ever owned, so I wasn't expecting to be able to take decent photos for quite a while until I learned how to use it.   However, I was pretty pleasantly surprised with how quickly I was able to start taking very nice indoor shots while just leaving the flash in it's auto mode.

Because the FL-50 blocks the built-in flash on the E-500 from popping-up, the flash uses it's own red light to assist the camera with focusing in low light situations rather than strobing the built-in flash.  To me, this is a HUGE reason for buying this flash.   No more annoying disco-tech strobing and the camera does get a focus lock much more quickly with the IR light.

The other feature I really like about the FL-50 is it's pivoting head.   It can be pivoted vertically and horizontally so you can make that the light is bouncing off the correct object regardless of if the camera is vertical or horizontal.

The only thing I don't like about have a flash on the camera is that the camera feels very awkward now because it's so top-heavy.  If I'm not holding onto the camera and just have it hanging around my neck by the strap, the heavy and tall flash has a tendency to cause the whole camera to fall over.   I suspect this would be an issue with any flash, but is still a bit annoying.

So far, I'm very happy with my purchase.  I've got a lot to learn about how to use an external flash, but even in the few times I've used it so far, I've greatly increased the number of successful photos taken as compared to when I was just using the built-in flash.

I just got a little bit of good news emailed to me today by the Liberty Counsel, stating that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith by a vote of 372 to 9.  (Although I find it a bit troubling that the two Wisconsin Representatives didn't vote at all.)

A portion of the resolution:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

1. recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;
2. expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;
3. acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;
4. acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;
5. rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and
6. expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.

Be sure to read the PDF document that contains the entire resolution, as mentioned on the Liberty Counsel's web site.

I was listening to a talk on Relevant Radio from their show “Changed Forever” by Father Larry Richards and he described  atheism in a light that I think really illustrates the scary reality of what it means to say that one is an "atheist."   What he said might be something you've already thought about, as I have, but it's definitely worth remembering in case you ever get into a conversation about your faith with a professed ‘atheist.’

In a nutshell:  An atheist will never know if he is right, a believer will never know if he is wrong.

We all know that no one can prove that God exists, nor can we prove he doesn't.  So, you've got a 50% chance of being right no matter what you think.  Those odds might sound really great if the were the odds of winning the lottery, but they might sound really horrible if you're about to play an involuntary game of Russian Roulette!

As an atheist, if you are right, you'll never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever (on to infinity) know if you are right because you'll be dead and death is forever.  There is no way for a dead person to tell the living about life after death unless there actually is life after death, in which case the atheist would be wrong.

As a person of faith, you'll never ever, ever, ever (etc) know that you're wrong because you'll be dead.

As an atheist, if you are wrong, you will spend eternity knowing that you were wrong.  An eternity, mind you, knowing that you denied God's existence when you were alive, so I wouldn't expect that He would be willing to give you the ‘royal treatment’!

As a believer, if you are right, you'll spend eternity knowing that every moment of your life that you invested in following in Jesus’ footsteps was infinitely worth it.

So, do you know anyone who is “a gamblin' man”?

While attempting to retrieve a list of installed databases on my PC using SQLDMO in C#, I found that the named instances of SQL never showed-up no matter what I did.  Since my PC only has two named instances of SQL server installed and no default instances, this created a problem!

As it turns-out, the Windows Firewall was blocking calls to the SQL Browser’s UDP port 1434.  If you turn-off your Windows Firewall, you should be able to retrieve all named instances of SQL Server that are installed on your PC.  I opted to un-block this port so my app would work.

When trying to test a long web form, it gets really annoying having to manually populate the form with information only to submit the form to see your error and then have to do the whole thing over again once you think you’ve fixed the problem.

Since I don’t own a copy of Visual Studio .NET 2005 Testing Edition, I haven’t had much luck with finding good ways to test the UI (i.e., good ways to pre-populate forms for testing.) Of course, one way to test a form is to actually set all the values in a form on the ASPX page and then hope you remember to delete all those values once you publish the site. However, this becomes very annoying if you don’t get things right the first time.

To make my life easier and make UI testing less painful, I came-up with a nifty way to "cheat"... I’ve started using conditional compilation to populate my forms when Visual Studio is in DEBUG mode, but leave the forms blank when in RELEASE mode. So far, it works pretty slick, provided that I remember to compile my code in release mode before publishing it!

I wish I would’ve know about conditional compilation a while ago… it’s a really neat feature. It took me a while to get it working properly, and here is how.

1. Start with a Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project instead of the Visual Studio 2005 Web Site Project.  Note that you’ll have to download the Web Application Project because created after Visual Studio was released.  The application project behaves more like the Visual Studio 2003 web project and gives you “Build” options in the project’s Properties menu.
   
2. Once you have the web project created, right-click on the project title and select Properties and then the Build tab.  You should see a screen like this.
   
   
3. While Configuration is set to Debug, leave Define DEBUG constant and Define TRACE constant checked.  Then switch Configuration is set to Release and uncheck Define DEBUG constant and Define TRACE constant.
   
   
4. The rest is easy.  In your code, you can use the conditional compilation directive #if to make sure the code you use to pre-populate your forms only exists in your code when Visual Studio .NET is in Debug mode:
   
   protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
   

           if (!Page.IsPostBack) {

   #if DEBUG

               this.txtFirstName.Text = "John Doe";

   #endif

   }
   }

5. Run your site in Debug mode and you should see your textbox named txtFirstName populated with “John Doe”.  Run it in Release mode and your form should be blank.  Sweet!

Obviously, to keep your code a bit cleaner, you should probably create a method that contains all your form population code and you can mark that method with a conditional attribute by marking it with [Conditional(“DEBUG”)].  Note that you will have to add the System.Diagnostics namespace to your file in order for this attribute to work.

So there you have it!  Make your UI testing a bit easier and still keep your production code clean.