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Fotofly PhotoViewer is now available on CodePlex
by
Ben Vincent
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This week I published onto Codeplex my Silverlight PhotoViewer, my third Open Source Project. Using my Fotofly metadata library, this reusable control displays the photo, people regions and a map of the location. You can use it on your own site to light up all that metadata locked in the file. Here’s what the control looks like. The design is pretty simple, with the icons on the left giving you access to different views. 
The People and Map Views Clicking on the icons on the left gives you two further views. The first uses the Windows Live Photo Gallery people data to highlight where people are in the image. The second uses the GPS coordinates embedded in the photo to draw the location using Bing Maps Silverlight SDK.  |  | | (People View) | (Map View) | So what’s on Codeplex? The project on Codeplex consists of a single Visual Studio Solution containing three projects: - Fotofly.PhotoViewer
- Silverlight Class Library
- This is the core of the project and the part you’ll want to copy into your own solution. It consists of six UserControls that draw the various parts of the application. The one you’ll need to get started is PhotoPanel which provides methods and properties to control what is displayed.
- The idea is that you build your own Silverlight application that handles the fetching of metadata and then pass that into the PhotoViewer. The other two projects are a simple examples of how to do this.
Fotofly.PhotoViewer.SilverlightExample - Silverlight Application
- This is an example Silverlight application that calls the webservice hosted by the example website to retrieve the metadata for the image. It then instantiates the PhotoViewer.PhotoPanel and passes in all the data it needs.
Fotofly.PhotoViewer.WebsiteExample - ASP.Net Web Application
- This is an example website that you can copy to host the PhotoViewer. It consists of two parts; A sample webpage that simply renders the Silverlight Object. And a sample webservice that is used to transfer the metadata to Silverlight.
Can’t get Bing Maps to Work? To use the Bing Maps SDK you need your own application ID. You can get one from here. You’ll need to add the key to the BingConfig.resx in the SilverlightExample project to get the map working. How to get started I’ve tried to document the code as much as possible, so your best bet is to dive right in and play with the code. And of course, send me feedback on bugs, suggestions etc. You can download the Fotofly PhotoViewer from http://fotoflyphotoviewer.codeplex.com. |
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Tassography v4.0 Goes Live Using ASP.Net MVC
by
Ben Vincent
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| Late last year I set out to completely rewrite the front end of tassography.com based on ASP.Net MVC. Well it’s finally done and now available for everyone’s viewing pleasure. As well as changing the underlying code the most important change I made was a switch to an entirely new SEO-friendly URL schema. Gone are all the ugly, impossible to understand /ViewCollection.aspx?c=20100214 because that’s now /photography/2010-02-14-wandering-around-pier-39. [Read More] |
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Fotofly v0.5 now available on Codeplex
by
Ben Vincent
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| I’ve just published v0.5 of Fotofly on Codeplex. This new version includes the first batch of bug fixes as a result of community feedback. Additionally I’ve started the work to expand the code to deal with multiple GPS sources (exif and xmp). This will be the main focus for v0.6 which I hope to finish sometime this week. I also spent a little time creating a logo. [Read More] |
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Lobster and Foie Gras – OMG!!!
by
Lisa Schmitz
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| Ben surprised me for my birthday with tickets to see “Wicked” followed by dinner at Luce, which he chose based on its recent garnering of 1 Michelin Star. I’d heard great things about the musical, even from guys that hate musicals, and it definitely lived up to expectations. [Read More] |
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Things We Collect
by
Ben Vincent
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| We travel a lot (and long may it continue) and apart from taking thousands of photos, we’ve started to collect a few things. Starbucks Mugs I started collecting Starbucks mugs in Kuala Lumpur and now it’s a little bit addictive. In total I have 38 from over 20 different countries and four continents. [Read More] |
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Getting Started with Fotofly
by
Ben Vincent
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| It’s been about two months since I posted Fotofly on Codeplex and I’ve had plenty of feedback and it’s been download over 100 times! What I haven’t written is a simple introduction on how to use the library. So that’s the aim of this blog. Step 1 – Download the Library First you need to download the DLL (or download the source code and build it yourself): http://fotofly.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx Follow this link to download the DLL and save it somewhere you can reference it from your Visual Studio project. [Read More] |
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When and how to use the right BitmapCacheOption setting
by
Ben Vincent
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| I keep stumbling across the consequences of changing which BitmapCacheOption I use. Despite the fact that metadata in a file isn’t really that big in the grand scheme of things, changing which caching option you use can have annoying consequences. The two typical issues I run into are: running of our memory when process lots of files or not having any data to work with. Let’s look at the code: [Read More] |
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Reading Geotagging in Photos Using Windows Imaging Component
by
Ben Vincent
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| In this blog I’m going to explain how Geotagging metadata can be read and written using Windows Imaging Component. First lets look at all the queries. These are the common ones, there are plenty more but I have not found any immediate need to use them. [Read More] |
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Fotofly v0.1 available for Download on Codeplex
by
Ben Vincent
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| After several years of evolving my photo metadata code I’m finally ready to put it online. Being the nice corporate citizen that I am, I’m using CodePlex and you can find Fotofly here for download. My somewhat lofty description of the project is: “A comprehensive C# library for reading, manipulating and writing metadata stored in jpg photos using WPF and the Windows Imaging Component. Includes support for Windows Live Photo Gallery People Tags, GPS Coordinates and most EXIF, XMP & IPTC properties.” Hopefully I’ll get lots of downloads and feedback to help improve it further. [Read More] |
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Reading and Creating Exif Rationals
by
Ben Vincent
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| Quite why Jeida who created Exif decided to use Rationals is beyond me but they did so you have to work with them if you’re playing with jpg metadata. In this blog post I’ll share my Rational class so you don’t have to go through all the pain I went through in creating it. It’s amusingly short now I look at it here but it took way too long to work it out. The class has two constructors, one for the value you’ve retrieved from BitmapMetadata, the second when you’re creating your own rationals. [Read More] |
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Basic Editing of Photo Metadata Using Windows Imaging Component
by
Ben Vincent
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| In my previous posts I’ve provided examples on using Windows Imaging Component to Read & Write jpg metadata. In this post I’ll explain how to use ContainsQuery, GetQuery, SetQuery and RemoveQuery. As an added bonus I’m going to use the IPTC address fields as my example. Whilst BitmapMetadata does provide some standard properties like Subject and Title, it is far from comprehensive. [Read More] |
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Writing Photo Metadata Using Windows Imaging Component
by
Ben Vincent
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| In this blog I’m going to build on my previous posting on Reading Metadata and explain how to write metadata stored in a jpg file using Windows Imaging Component. You can find all my blogs on Windows Imaging Component here. If you want to change any of the metadata, the first thing you have to do is make sure there’s room for your changes. This is done by adding padding to the metadata. [Read More] |
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Reading Photo Metadata Using Windows Imaging Component
by
Ben Vincent
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| I still see a lot of questions on the Internet and at work on how to read (& write) metadata in Photos. There are plenty of examples out there but they all appear to have some pitfalls. To be quite honest, the code I’ve been using for a number of years now is mature enough that it solves almost all the problems I’ve seen. This blog is the first in a series that document how to read (this blog), write and manipulate photo metadata. [Read More] |
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San Francisco Fleet Week 2009
by
Ben Vincent
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| Fleet Week comes to San Francisco once a year and this was my third chance to check it out. In fact, I’d been looking forward to it for quite some time because it’s a great chance to take some really cool photos. On Saturday we found a prime location at Aquatic Park with Kevin & Vivien from work. The weather was a little weird -- typical SF! [Read More] |
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Published in My First Book (Follow-Up)
by
Ben Vincent
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| Since the Photography@Microsoft book was released last week it’s made quite impression. I’m not going to release the actual numbers but it exceed the committee’s expectations on day two! I thought I’d share a couple of the ways it’s popping up across the web: Picked up by Ina Fried at Cnet “… the photos are all amazing.” http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10371366-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 and on the front page! [Read More] |
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Dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s v3
by
Ben Vincent
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| Having succeed in getting away from San Fran for Memorial Weekend and 4th July, it was pretty obvious we’d do something for Labor Day Weekend. We made a pretty last minute booking at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay at The London West Hollywood. Despite booking late we also got a great deal at the Marriott in the centre of Hollywood, complete with a Spa which always makes Lisa happy! Having already done the tasting menu (Menu Prestige) at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant's in London and New York, it was natural that we’d do the same again. [Read More] |
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San Francisco’s Nuclear Missile Battery
by
Ben Vincent
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| On Saturday, after months of trying, we finally visited the SF-88L which is one of the only remaining Nike Missile Batteries in the United States. I say finally because it’s only open the first Saturday of each month and we’d kept finding ourselves double booked for almost a year! SF-88L is one of 280 such sites around the country that housed missiles designed to protect the US from airborne attacks during the cold war. What I didn’t realise was that these are nuclear missiles, five times more powerful than the bomb used at Hiroshima! [Read More] |
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Published In My First Book!
by
Ben Vincent
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| Earlier this year I had my first photo published in a magazine and now I’ve had one published in a book! Some clever people in the Photography club at Microsoft decided to create a book and donate the profit to our Giving Campaign. I don’t think they realised how much effort would be required because they received hundreds photos and had to plough through every single one to pick the best. And I was fortunate to be chosen! [Read More] |
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Kylie’s Windows 7 Desktop Backgrounds
by
Ben Vincent
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| For those of you who pay any attention to the Windows 7 launch, you’ll have seen two amusing ads from Kylie, Microsoft’s four year old ambassador. Kylie is a little kid who is out to make a slideshows using quotes from all the positive Windows 7 reviews! It started with Kylie’s Good News a few weeks ago and the latest instalment is Kylie’s Conversations. I thought it would be amusing to grab the images and use them on my laptop. [Read More] |
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My First Hotmail Release
by
Ben Vincent
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| In February I moved over to the Hotmail team and along with owning Mobile Hotmail & Calendar, I’m also the project manager for the entire Hotmail UI team. So it’s exciting to see our first milestone start to get deployed, just as we start coding our second. Here’s a repost of the blog posted on Live Wire made earlier today. [Read More] |
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Fracturing My Rib in Mammoth Lakes
by
Ben Vincent
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| After our first trip to Mammoth we were eager to go again. So we persuaded Andrew (who really didn’t need any persuading to be honest) to make the most of his temporary bachelor time and join us. So we headed out on Friday after work and arrived just in time to grab a pint before heading to bed. We made an early start (well early for me - I think having kids may redefine my definition), grabbed some passes and headed up the mountain. [Read More] |
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Oh Google, where do thou get thy Keywords from?
by
Ben Vincent
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| The traffic to Tassography has definitely increased since I started playing with Search Engine Optimzation (SEO). The Microsoft IIS SEO Toolkit has definitely helped me get my head around the common things to fix. Amusingly the traffic to the site continues to be less to do with my Photos and more to do with this Blog! According to Google’s Webmaster tools I’m appearing in a wider variety of search results now. Which pretty much matches the traffic I get into the site (from all Search Engines, not just Google). [Read More] |
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Mountain Biking in Mammoth Lakes
by
Ben Vincent
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| After our adventure in Kirkwood we were itching to try some more mountain biking. Lisa found Mammoth Lakes on the internet and we quickly realised why Kirkwood was empty. The longest run in Kirkwood was a couple of miles, but in Mammoth they have runs that are more than 8 miles long! For $39/day you get unlimited access to 70+ miles of dirt single-track, with a descent of 3,000 feet from Mammoth's summit! [Read More] |
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Mountain Biking in Tahoe and Kirkwood
by
Ben Vincent
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| Ever since boarding in Whistler I’ve been enamoured by the idea of going to a ski resort in the summer. Last weekend we finally got our act together and went to Tahoe with our bikes (and all our camping gear). After arriving late on Friday night at Emerald Bay State Park camp site, we set out on Saturday to find a gentle introduction. After visiting a bike shop we headed out to the Tahoe Rim Trail. Not really the gentle introduction we were after but there’s nothing like starting in the deep end! [Read More] |
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Restaurant Gordon Ramsay at the London, New York
by
Lisa Schmitz
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| We spent the last of our free plane tickets on a holiday weekend to New York. As soon as we’d decided on NYC, Ben was immediately on the phone to get reservations at Gordon Ramsay at the London Hotel. Earlier this year, we had a dining experience (yep – it’s worthy of that cliché phrase) with Mark and Fiona at Ramsay’s restaurant in Chelsea and were excited to compare. Entering the restaurant was interesting. [Read More] |
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The 5th Most Popular Photo in the Facebook Bing Competition
by
Ben Vincent
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| Bing is getting plenty of press recently, and one of the most popular features is the home page photos. In partnership with Facebook they’ve started a competition off so people can submit their own photos. I immediately submitted my Nettle Jelly Fish photo from last months visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In just one day it’s rocked up to number five in the list! [Read More] |
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One Computer in Two or More Live Mesh Accounts
by
Ben Vincent
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| I’m a huge fan of Windows Live Mesh and it’s completely revolutionised the way I store my files. When my x300 solid state hard disk died it was a life saver. Whilst I do use Windows Home Server to backup my machine. The backup can still be a few days old. [Read More] |
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The Very Useful IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit
by
Ben Vincent
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| I’ve done my best to make my site ‘indexable’ by Search Engines but I’ve never really tried to optimise it. Martin Peck got me thinking about it more when I shared my analysis of my IIS logs last year. Back then my referrer list looked something like this: [Read More] |
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Showing Paul and Jacqui around the Bay
by
Ben Vincent
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| Paul & Jacqui had been planning a trip for a while, so it was great to finally see them in San Fran. We took the opportunity to show them around the Bay. I’m not sure what Paul enjoyed the most, cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge or all the local Star Trek sites. I had no idea the Monterey Bay Aquarium was used in Star Trek IV: [Read More] |
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Ireland vs USA Rugby
by
Lisa Schmitz
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| After my introduction to rugby during the 2008 World Cup, I’d been waiting for an opportunity to see the game in person. The Ireland team was visiting the US for a friendly competition game against the US in Santa Clara this past weekend, so we schlepped down to the South Bay. Ben immediately commented that it was not a proper rugby game since you’d never get such amazing, sunny, warm weather for a rugby game in England. I preferred the hot sun to the cold rain, though. [Read More] |
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Too lazy to visit the Farmer’s Market?
by
Lisa Schmitz
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| Saturday morning. We should be getting up early to walk or bike over to the Ferry Building to shop for yummy, fresh produce. Yeah right – we’re single and kidless, so we’re sleeping in. The lazy way of getting produce from local farms – be a yuppie and get organic produce delivered straight to your door. [Read More] |
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Windows Live Web Communications Art Exhibition
by
Ben Vincent
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| It amazes me how creative some of my colleagues are. Last Friday we had an Art Exhibition for everyone working on Windows Live (Hotmail and Calendar), down in Silicon Valley. I entered five photos, making a total of 37 pieces entered by the team. Everyone was allowed three votes and the winners announced at the end of the day. [Read More] |
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Why I Love American Express and Zune
by
Ben Vincent
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| I’ll get the bad news part of this blog out the way first. My 18-month-old Zune died. These things happen and generally speaking my electronics last for a long time, so I wasn’t that peeved. American Express Extended Warranty Lisa said I should look at American Express Extended Warranty because it might cover the replacement. [Read More] |
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Excitement on 3rd Street
by
Ben Vincent
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| Living on one of the main roads into the center of San Francisco is always full of excitement. Over the last few years I’ve only had to move 10 feet from the coach to grab some interesting photos. Late last month, our morning was disturbed by Police sirens. That’s not particularly unusual when you live in a city but when you hear them on their loud speakers it worth looking outside. [Read More] |
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Walker's 'Do Us a Flavour' Competition
by
Ben Vincent
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| On our trip to the UK we stumbled across some new flavours of Crisps from Walker’s. I wouldn’t normally care, but a friend recently sent me New York Times article about the British eating Squirrels. To my delight, I found that they had introduced Cajun Squirrel Flavoured Crisps! On further investigation we learnt that there were six new flavours; Builder’s Breakfast, Cajun Squirrel, Chilli & Chocolate, Crispy Hoisin & Duck, Fish & Chips and Onion Bhaji. [Read More] |
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My Grandma’s Recipe for Marmite Egg
by
Ben Vincent
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| I remember when I was young how fun it was to go to my Grandma’s house. She was an excellent cook, and having been bought up in the war years she had learnt to be a frugal cook. One of our favourite inventions was Marmite Egg. It was probably the first thing I learnt to cook, so in her memory I thought I’d share the recipe. [Read More] |
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Cooking the Perfect Roast Beef
by
Ben Vincent
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| Every time I go back to the UK, I always ask my Dad to cook Roast Beef. Ever since my University days, I’ve been able to cook damn good roast chicken, but I always avoided even attempting to do beef. When we visited in March, Lisa got hooked as well, so it was finally time to bite the bullet and learn how to do it. Since we got back we’ve had it three times, and each time it was excellent! [Read More] |
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The New Windows 7 Backgrounds Rock!
by
Ben Vincent
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| In a recent blog posting Steven Sinofsky talked about how the Windows 7 team has really gone to town on personalised content. The Release Candidate has just launched and the new backgrounds are now available for everyone to see. In each country there’s a different pack of photos, the US ones are awesome. Here are my two favourites: [Read More] |
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Tag Clouds Revisited, Refactored and Improved
by
Ben Vincent
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| About a year ago, I added a Tag Cloud to allow you to navigate tags associated with the photos on the site, but I’ve never been happy with the algorithm used. I spent some time Friday working out the problems and updating my code. The Problems 1) Tags were distributed across ten buckets, each bucket containing the same number of tags. But even with 1800 tags the frequency isn’t linear. [Read More] |
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I’m now a Published Photographer!
by
Ben Vincent
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| The TransRockies continues to be really good for my fledgling Photography career, I can finally say I’m published! Breathe magazine in Canada has included two of my photos in an article they wrote about the TransRockies in their February 2008 edition: [Read More] |
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Tassography Usage or never believe stats…
by
Ben Vincent
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| After posting the story about usage of Tassography it got me thinking. So I did some digging into the data and realised it’s rubbish. When I look at the visitor’s data it looks like the usage logs aren’t capturing everything that’s going on: [Read More] |
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First look at Usage of Tassography
by
Ben Vincent
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| I’ve been meaning to look at the log files generated for my site for a while, especially after the TransRockies. I finally got round to it this weekend and there’s good and bad data! Unfortunately I only have log files from July 2008 but it’s clear the TransRockies had quite an impact on the usage of the site. In August-September the traffic doubled and in November it tripled. [Read More] |
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Tassography Gets Personal, thanks to Facebook
by
Ben Vincent
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| Thanks to a little more magic from Facebook I’ve been able to use Facebook Connect to create a personalised view of Tassography for all my friends. The page will show you any pictures I have of you and any photos of your friends based on your Facebook friends list. To get there just click on the Facebook Connect button at the top of each page: [Read More] |
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Now you can Comment on my Photos
by
Ben Vincent
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| Thanks to some magic from Facebook it’s now possible to comment on any photo on Tassography.com and see comments left by others. At the bottom of each photo you’ll now see a very familiar Facebook comment box, simply type in your comment and it’ll show up on the page and on Facebook. [Read More] |
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New Tassography Silverlight Search App
by
Ben Vincent
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| I’m starting to get the hang of Silverlight, so I thought I’d replace my very basic HTML search feature with a Silverlight app. It only took about 3 hours, with most of the effort spent tweaking the UI to make it look right. Which just goes to proves how easy Silverlight is. Now when you visit www.tassography.com/search you’re presented with a pretty straightforward search box: [Read More] |
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Turning the Silverlight on Tassography.com
by
Ben Vincent
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| I’m always up for learning something new and when it comes to development the best way for me is to add a new feature on tassography.com. That’s why the site is packed full of features, half of which I’m sure only I know about! Silverlight has been usable for about 18 months now and it was time I finally played around with it. Over Christmas I pulled together two simple applications that I think are pretty cool. [Read More] |
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Using WIC & C# to read Windows Live Photo Gallery’s People Tags
by
Ben Vincent
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| In my last posting I talked about how Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG) stores People tags in XMP. In this post I’m going to extend the Windows Imaging Component code from Robert Wlodarczyk’s Blog to read the data. The code is pretty simple to use, just make sure you have PresentationCore registered in your project and the System.Windows.Media.Imaging namespace. [Read More] |
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Understanding how Windows Live Photo Gallery’s People Tags are Stored
by
Ben Vincent
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| Since writing Tassography.com tags have been an important part of my workflow. For as long as I can remember I have been using Microsoft’s Digital Image Pro 2006. With the release of the new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery (WLPG), I took this Christmas the time to switch over and take advantage of some of the cool new features. The most compelling new feature for me is the new people tagging capabilities. [Read More] |
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Windows Live Calendar is out of Beta
by
Ben Vincent
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| Ok so I’m no longer the PM Lead for Calendar but I really enjoyed by 4 months stint on the team and I’m looking forward to the work I’m going to do with them next Wave. So it’s really cool to see the plan I helped build has finally delivered and Windows Live Calendar is no longer a beta product. Here’s the blog post David the new lead did today: ------------------------------ Over the past several months, Windows Live Calendar has been in beta. We’ve been experimenting with features, listening to your feedback, and polishing up the service. [Read More] |
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I’m Number 1 on Live Search, Number 2 on Google
by
Ben Vincent
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| I don’t know much about Search algorithms but I do know that they are getting better all the time and sites don’t normally appear high up in the list unless they are meant to. Google uses a method that works out how many sites link to yours, I don’t know how Live’s works. So I’m pretty impressed that I now appear as the first hit on Live Search and the second hit on Google when you search for my name: Live Search: [Read More] |
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Why and how you should switch your ISP Email to Hotmail!
by
Ben Vincent
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| Ok so I work for Hotmail, and this might sound me I’ve been drinking the company kool-aid but hear me out. If you’re using Gmail or Yahoo! then you can also tune out now, I’ll tackle that conversation for another day! But if you’re using a random ISP and you have your own domain name then read on. When I joined 8 months ago I was using an ISP that gave me POP3, IMAP and Web access to my email, that’s pretty good. [Read More] |
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Copying Jpeg Metadata using C# and Windows Imaging Component
by
Ben Vincent
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| It’s a scenario I keep finding myself in, I have two copies of the same photo but I want all metadata changes from one file in the other. For example, I want update my backup with changes I’ve made to metadata but don’t want to touch the source image, or I have the original and a small version of the same file. I haven’t found any reliable way to do this, so I finally sat down and wrote my own using plenty of excellent data on Robert Wlodarczyk’s Blog and the Windows Imaging Component. First, let’s look at the metadata stored in my two files using WICExplorer: [Read More] |
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A Never Ending Flight from Chicago
by
Ben Vincent
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| So you left Lisa and I sitting comfortably in United’s new Business class seats in Chicago. We thought our day wouldn’t have any more problems, little did we know! We boarded the flight at 3.40 and were actually looking at an early departure. But time kept going by and we both finished our first movie and we still hadn’t moved. [Read More] |
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Birthday Gifts from United Airways
by
Ben Vincent
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| So it's my Birthday and Lisa and I are trying to maximise our vacation\holiday time by getting home on Sunday, in time for work on Monday. Travelling on my Birthday isn't my idea of fun but if it means one more day of diving or snowboarding then I'm happy! The good news was Lisa booked dinner with Daniel & Ellie at Zuni Cafe, one of my favorite restaurants. So we had something to look forward to. [Read More] |
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It’s Goose time
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Ben Vincent
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| It’s my fourth year of cooking Roast Goose for Christmas, my second in San Francisco. Whole Foods gave me a bit of a shock by letting me know last minute that they couldn’t get one. Thanks to Yelp I found Guerra Quality Meats in the ‘Outer’ Sunset. We were pretty lucky because we got the last one! [Read More] |
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Christmas Tree v2008
by
Ben Vincent
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| Well it’s that time again, we’ve down sized a little from last year, just a 7 foot tree this time: [Read More] |
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A Fire Shrimp
by
Ben Vincent
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| We’ve started restocking the fish tank after a couple of deaths… We’ve added another turbo snail, the last one ended up on his back, which they can’t recover from! We were planning to add another cleaner shrimp, but the shop didn’t have any stock but now we have a cool Fire Shrimp: [Read More] |
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Lisa, Will You Marry Me?
by
Ben Vincent
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| Well we've been back for a few days now and we've finally had a chance to look at the photos and put some online. This is a quick preview of the holiday and more will be up in the next few days. Everyone’s been asking about the proposal, so we wanted to get some photos up now. First, let's set the scene, it's sunset on the 6th night of our liveaboard dive trip on the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea: [Read More] |
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Where Mountain Bike’s were Invented
by
Ben Vincent
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| In 1979 Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly coined the phrase Mountain Bike after riding the Repack race on Pine Mountain. This weekend Darren persuaded Anton and I for what he termed an easy Mountain Bike Ride on Pine Mountain. Except it really wasn’t easy, it was some of the most technical cycling I’ve done, with some long (30 minute) climbs and some really step descents on fist sized rocks. I guess it was inevitable that one of us would have a tumble and I was the luck one! [Read More] |
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Sorry for the Spam….
by
Ben Vincent
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| Every so often, I’m tired and I do something silly! This time I was trying to fix a broken link in a blog when I accidentally uploaded my test config, used on my laptop, onto tassography.com! So you will probably have got 4-5 “This Week” postings, most of them with broken links and no images displayed! I’ll try and not do it again! [Read More] |
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Tassography v3 Goes Live…
by
Ben Vincent
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| For the last couple of weeks I’ve been trickling out a couple of changes, which I have now wrapped up into what I’m calling Tassography v3. The site has come pretty popular to the point that I’m getting about 10,000 hits a day on a consistent basis. So hopefully these changes will be some freshness to the site and some new features. New Design I’ve had the same design since I launched Tassography in 2007, so it was time for a refresh. [Read More] |
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When passing all the tests just isn’t enough….
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Ben Vincent
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| The fish tank has been going well, perhaps we have a little too much Algae (it drives Lisa up the wall) I’m not certain we have a problem. But anyhow, it was time to give our home chemical testing kit a run for its money. After 3 tests at our Aquarium (Lucky Ocean in Inner Richmond) which we ‘passed’, here’s the results of our own test: [Read More] |
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A Long Labor Day Weekend in Mendocino and Russia River Valley
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Ben Vincent
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| Lisa and I got away for our long Labour Day weekend. We started with two days in Mendocino in our luxury room with a sauna, a log fire and a hot tub on our own deck. We stayed at the The MacCallum House Inn. [Read More] |
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TransRockies (Stage 6-7 & The End)
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Ben Vincent
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| Well that’s it, Darren and Jackie have finished and we’re all back to the day jobs. I’ve just uploaded photos for Stages 6 & 7 and a few more highlights for the rest of the week: http://www.tassography.com/photography/2008-08-08-darren-and-jackies-transrockies Darren & Jackie finished, just as they started, 21st in the Open Mixed competition, out of 30. I think they are both relieve it is over but I suspect they’ll be looking for a new challenge soon! Whilst waiting for them at the finish line, one of the girls I got to know in the support group had a bit of a surprise! [Read More] |
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TransRockies (Stage 5)
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Ben Vincent
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| After my flying visit to the Internet cafe, it turned out that our ‘Campsite’ for the night has free Wireless access :) So I’ve uploaded some more photos in Darren & Jackie’s adventure: http://www.tassography.com/photography/2008-08-08-darren-and-jackies-transrockies I’ve also started off a separate Album for other teams I’ve taken photos of this week: http://www.tassography.com/photography/2008-08-10-the-transrockies-2008 The fast driving was worth it because I finally managed to get Jackie and Darren crossing the finish line: [Read More] |
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TransRockies (Stage 4 & 5)
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Ben Vincent
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| Once again I find myself at a coffee shop, I think they must be replacing Internet cafes as the place to get online! Darren and Jackie had an excellent Stage 4, they came in 17th in the Open Mixed group with a time of 7 hours 14 minutes. That’s up from 21st place and they are now 126th overall! Another few days like this and they’ll be in the top half, which is really their aim, well at least Darren’s, I think Jackie will just be very pleased to finish and not come in after the cut off times! [Read More] |
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TransRockies (Stage 2 & 3)
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Ben Vincent
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| I’m back in the same Internet cafe, and I’ve uploaded photos from the end of stage 2 and start\finish of stage 3: http://www.tassography.com/photography/2008-08-08-darren-and-jackies-transrockies Darren & Jackie have had a much better day, finally some real biking and they have pulled back 4-5 places and are now 21st out of 27th Mixed teams. And they only have 20 minutes to make up to get into 22nd place… Stage 3 was a timed event, so no early morning packing for me. I spent the day taking 850 photos of the riders as they did 40km figure of eight course around the forest. [Read More] |
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TransRockies (Stage 2)
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Ben Vincent
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| Ok, so I know that I’ve just put up day 1, but I’m taking full advantage of a cafe with wireless whilst I can find one! It’s called the Smoking Water Coffee Co, I guess because the hot spring up the road makes all the streams smoke! [Read More] |
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TransRockies Mountain Bike Race
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Ben Vincent
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| This week I’m in British Columbia, Canada, helping Darren and Jackie do the TransRockies Mountain Bike Race. Whilst they compete in the ~600km race, I’m driving the Ford Explorer (which is full to the roof), taking photos and catering to there every whim (which usually is just an energy drink). It’s the seventh year it’s been running and Darren had this crazy idea to take part. They’re only on day one and I think Darren would agree, it’s been a little bit tougher than they thought! Here’s how the rest of the week will pan out: [Read More] |
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Airline Tax (cont.)
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Ben Vincent
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| I’m still confused how tax can be 75% of a flight leaving Heathrow, then it got more confusing when Lisa got a quote from US Airways. The tax was less! Well that makes no sense. So I looked at Expedia UK and US and the tax is different based on the country you book from. [Read More] |
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bmi and the case of the over taxation!
by
Ben Vincent
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| For the last couple of months Lisa and I have been trying to book our holiday (vacation in American). For various reasons our first few ideas fell through. So then we had the idea to visit the UK for a few days and go to Sharm for some diving. The first problem with this is the fact that bmi and in fact all of Star Alliance don’t allow you to book points across multiple carriers online. So you have to phone them up, which for a complex trip can take anything up to an hour to work out with the agent. [Read More] |
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Introducing Sofia and Matias
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Ben Vincent
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| Well we now have our first fish tank residents Sofia & Matias. Introducing Sofia [Read More] |
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10 Years at Microsoft
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Ben Vincent
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| It’s the 20th July 2008 and today I have been working at Microsoft for ten years! I thought I’d share one useless fact for each of the years I’ve devoted to Microsoft. 1 million emails - Last year I worked out I had received 100,000 emails that year, an average of one every 37 seconds in a very theoretical working day. Things have changed over the years but I don’t think the volume has really changed that much, so it’s safe to say I’ve probably received\sent 1 millions emails since I joined! 2 hundred and 30 Flights – I’ve flown roughly 230 times for Microsoft, including 42 flights across the Atlantic. This also shows that I’ve been tracking 10 years of my life in Outlook. 3 dollar drop in share price! [Read More] |
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The Windows Live Calendar Refresh gets noticed!
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Ben Vincent
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| For the last two months, I’ve been the Lead Program Manager for Windows Live Calendar. So far it’s been one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve done at Microsoft, and it’s nice to see people appreciate the work we do. Here’s two postings today on the web about our latest upgrade: CNet: [Read More] |
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Windows Live Calendar Beta Update
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Ben Vincent
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| I’m just about to roll off the Calendar team but we’ve just done another update, so I thought I’d forward on the good news: The Windows Live Calendar team has been working hard the last few months on a cool update to the Windows Live Calendar beta. After many more bowls of udon noodles, lots of lattes and many late nights …we’re live! Everyone on our team is fired up about the release and we’re looking forward to your feedback. [Read More] |
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My first Blog...
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Ben Vincent
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| This feels a bit like writing a Hello World application, but I guess it's where we all start. Welcome to my Blog, which I will be writing to supplement the photos that are already published to this feed. My aim is to share random things that I think people will find interesting, useful or amusing. Hopefully I'll also try and share some of the technology behind www.tassography.com, so I can do some small part to pay back all the bloggers that help me solve numerous hurdles I've overcome. [Read More] |
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Monday, March 01, 2010
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2010-02-16 Parking Only While Patronizing
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Friday, February 12, 2010
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2010-02-08 The Shadow Goverment Organisation
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Sunday, January 24, 2010
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2010-01-23 Lisa's Birthday
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Sunday, January 17, 2010
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2010-01-17 Weekend in Half Moon Bay
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Sunday, January 17, 2010
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2010-01-18 Things We Collect
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Saturday, January 16, 2010
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2009-12-31 Holiday in Beaver Creek
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Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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2010-02-08 The Shadow Goverment Organisation
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Sunday, October 18, 2009
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2009-10-10 San Francisco Fleet Week 2009
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This website, all photography & other content is Copyright © Ben Vincent. Unauthorised use of images is strictly prohibited.
Catalog Last Updated: Fri, 5 Mar 2010, 19:04:53 | Version v4.0.3717.32580
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