renaissance2010
Turning to photography as a creative outlet during a valiant fight with breast cancer at age 34, renaissance10 survived and set up a photo contest to help raise funds for the Lavender Trust, a nonprofit that provides information and support to younger women with breast cancer. In the first two years, the competition brought in over £65,000 (that's $107,260.73 U.S.!), with entries from 130 countries last year. Renaissance10 recently joined LiveJournal to meet other passionate photographers and find supportive friends.

Tags: cancer, renaissance2010

curiouscupcakes
Holy buttercream frosting! If you have a sweet tooth for sugary goodness or a wandering eye for whimsical confection, this is pure ecstasy iced in deliciousness. Hailing the beloved cupcake as the artisinal canvas of choice, you'll enjoy recipes, photos, and bountiful tips to bake up a batch, whether your taste leans toward French classics or funky and flavorful.

Tags: cupcakes, curiouscupcakes, desserts

mission101
With New Years in the offing, it's an ideal time to reflect on past accomplishments, make peace with disappointments, and refocus the lens on future goals. This community welcomes you to create a bucket list of 101 things you plan to accomplish in the next 1,001 days. Offering support, guidance, and inspiration, this is a great way to jumpstart those pesky resolutions.

Tags: bucket list, mission101

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I tried to use the camera while walking last week. And that was not a success, every step registered as jolt and with every stride the image swayed from one side of the street to the other.
This week I strapped the camera to my helmet and rode on my bike.
It's even worse. On a very smooth road it's doable but most of the roads in town are not smooth. There is asphalt and that works but almost every street has broken up and refilled parts and there are lots of places where the street is made out of small concrete blocks. While riding those cause a mild vibration but it's easy to ignore. The camera doesn't ignore them though, on those parts I didn't get a single second of steady image.
Making things even worse is that I have a good and very light helmet, it weighs 300g, the camera weighs 250 g. The camera is fixed on top of the helmet, about 5 cm above the helmet making the whole combination rather top heavy and unstable. Even tightening the chinstrap painfully doesn't help stabilising this.

Another problem that took quite a long time fixing was aiming.
Normally when you film something you make sure the object is visible on the camera screen (or the view-finder in older cameras). But when the camera is strapped on top of your head you don't see the screen, so you don't know what your are filming. And putting it unfixed on the helmet for quick checking doesn't work, fixing the straps is work for very fine nimble fingers, with my clumsy stumps the whole thing shifts forwards or back or to the side and ends up in a different place each time. Also putting on the helmet without fixing the chinstrap is not good because the helmet sits to loose and shifts. So I spend several minutes fixing everything to shoot ten~fifteen seconds of rain-cloud, to undo and retry in s slightly different position.
I got several minutes of clouds and ceiling filmed before getting it more or less right.

So the helmet-fixing is now officially ruled out. It just doesn't work.
(And handlebar fixing will be another game, the supplied clip doesn't fit the handlebar of my bike. :( )

Oh, btw, can anyone recomend a video editing program? Just the basics with the emphasis on easy.

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Current Mood: annoyed

Merry Christmass

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The last snow fell on Monday morning.
So all the streets are clear and all the bicycle paths are clear as well.
Except the one at work.

Everything was cleared in Hasselt by Monday evening. In Genk -where I work- the last paths were cleared by Wednesday afternoon. Except the path along the industry park.
Now riding in fresh snow is not difficult. It gives more resistance so it takes more energy but it's not very slippery or dangerous, and if you fall it is soft and breaks the impact with the ground.
The problem is that where you ride you compact the snow into a hard strip of ice. If you have ten or twenty riders passing the whole path is covered with icy tracks weaving trough each other, converging, crossing over, swerving, etc.
Two days later all the loose snow is either melted or blown away and all that remains is ice ridges where the tracks were. And icy patches in between.
Driving the five kilometre between the office and HQ was a real expedition. More then half the time my wheels were not pointing in the direction I was moving and about as often I was not moving in the direction I aimed for.
It was freezing (lightly) but after 5Km I was soaked in sweat. Now, hours later my shoulders, back, legs and about everything else is still hurting. I didn't fall though I had to put a foot on the ground a couple of times.
I also rode off the chain twice so I had to realign that twice.

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Current Mood: tired

Holiday debuggery

We know there were a few kinks with the holiday promotion. We've been working very hard to get them ironed out. If you have a paid/permanent account, keep on sending those coupons. Here's an update:

• If you were unable to send out multiple coupons at a time, please perform a hard refresh, and you should be good to go.
• If you redeemed a coupon to upgrade your account and the balance at checkout was $0 instead of $9.95 or $15, this means your upgrade did not go through (nor were you charged). We've straightened this out, so you can now apply your holiday coupon toward the purchase of an annual paid account.
• If you tried to redeem a holiday coupon and had trouble using a gift certificate to cover the balance of an annual paid account, we identified the root problem. If this happened to you, you can now use your holiday coupon together with your gift certificate.
• If the number of holiday coupons you have available suddenly goes up (instead of down), this might be due to recipients declining the coupons, at which point your pool of available coupons will be replenished and, therefore, increase.
• If you need assistance with holiday coupons or pretty much anything else (well, LiveJournal related), please open a support request and we'll be more than happy to help!

Tweaks

• There were some initial glitches displaying results on My Guests, but we've worked them out. We hope you'll check out who's been checking you out!
• Some of you reported formatting issues using the Rich Text Editor (i.e., line breaks were being removed incorrectly). We've implemented a fix! Thanks so much for your patience.

Give a little extra!

We're pleased to report that we've already sold over 100 virtual red ribbons in honor of National AIDS Awareness month. Remember, for each charitable vgift you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to fund the development of an HIV vaccine. Once again, we thank you for your generosity.

Celebrate with holiday vGifts!

Stop by the Virtual Gift Shop and share some holiday magic with your LiveJournal friends.

Photos of the week

We're back with more dazzling pictures from around the world. Congrats to marlenemcc, who has been awarded a virtual blue ribbon as the winner of our fourth photo contest. We hope you'll click over to LJ_Photophile poll and tell us your picks in pics!

For more fantastic user content, we'll meet you under the cut. ( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for reading. Here's wishing you the very merriest of holidays. We'll see you next year!

Tags: holiday coupons, lj_photophile, ljlimericks, my guests, red ribbon vgift

Isn't it strange.
You mix perfectly white solid snow with perfectly white hard salt.
And you end up with wet brownish grey slurry.
And that is almost as slippery and dangerous for trafic as the plain smow itself.

Current Mood: amused

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I am noticing a patern here.
I get in at around 07:00 and there is a bunch of mails and phones to handle. Then, between 09:00 and 12:00 it's all quiet on the warehouse front.
Between 12:00 and 13:00 there is a bunch of calls, probably because they know I eat then and they can't let that happen. Then it's quiet again till just before 16:00.
At 16:00 I go to HQ for the backup but I seldom leave in time. Back at my desk it is quiet again till about 18:00. Then people call with urgent problems. Urgent because everybody pused the problems around and now it's to late and IT must solve it.
I usually leave somewhere between 19 and 20:00. If I stay longer they call later.

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Current Mood: tired

i_hope_that
For many of us, the holidays can be kind of rough. If you're searching for a network of understanding friends, this ultra-nurturing community encourages you to express your heartfelt wishes and offer other members encouragement and acceptance. Not for the terminally snarky or emotionally-challenged, this is a good-spirited place to lend comfort and support.

Tags: i_hope_that, support, wishes

diygifts
Feeling crafty? If you've got a few last folks on your holiday gift list, this is a great place to seed your creativity and generosity. You'll also discover wonderful DIY tips to decorate your home and entertain guests. Offering a no-frills-no-skills attitude that welcomes the cash-challenged and arts-phobic, you're sure to get ideas and make friends in the process.

Tags: crafts, diygifts, do it yourself