mrossi

Scott, check out various birder codes of ethics and I think you'll find that calls can indeed be against the code. It can

also, depending on your jurisdiction, be against various leglislation such as the migratory birds act or other similar

laws. Don't dismiss it outright as not making sense, because it does in many circumstances. That said, I think it kind of

falls into a grey area because while it's probably against a purist's code of ethics, I don't know that enforcement

officials would really care, but that doesn't make it okay in principal.

 

Here's a great example. Where I live Peregrine falcons a protected under the endangered species act, and I know

where some live. To play owl calls or peregrine calls would definitely be construed as antagonizing the peregrines, and

as such is in contravention of both the endangered species act and also the broader migratory birds act. I know for a

fact if I did this and then told the enforcement officials (who I am in touch with on a regular basis as part of

monitoring), they would get very peeved and threaten me with action if I continued. Of course this is more of a precise

situation, and not the same as playing chickadee calls to attract songbirds.

<p>Get the 100-400. I use mine with a 30D and 5D and LOVE that lens, it's really excellent.</p>

<p>Have you looked at the Wacom Bamboo Pen Fun & Touch? I have an older Intuos but I LOVE the new Bamboo, I surf the web using my fingers, and for PS work it's great with the pen. Awesome piece of gear, I love it.</p>

<p>Edit - nevermind, I looked at the site, definitely need it done via flash...</p>

<p>Thanks for the responses guys. I went back into my Unified View to try to further assess what exactly I was getting at, and I see it now.</p>

<p>I understand where you're coming from and I know you don't want to shoot in the foot what has always been the strength of photo.net, namely a community helping one another.</p>

<p>Looking at my Unified View, I see what it is that bothers me more accurately. I don't mean to divide the community at all, but the more I look at threads the more I see that I'd really love the option to exclude users who have joined today, or perhaps who haven't paid to join. I'm not suggesting this as a global filter across forums, just a checkbox for my own Unified View that perhaps excludes people who are members for less than a year, or as I said unpaid.</p>

<p>As it stands right now, using the Unified View, and more so once Christmas comes and everyone and their uncle is asking questions that RTFM could resolve, the Unified View is just an exercise for my patience. I wouldn't want to globally "clique" people, but as I've done with facebook for pretty well every application there is, I'd love a feature to "hide farmville".</p>

<p>Let's say there was a Unified View as it is, and a second one "Custom Unified", or "Subsribers-Only" filtered, this would at least allow me a more filtered destination, and all the remaining forums would remain as they are.</p>

<p>Anyways, it seems clear my suggestion isn't getting a lot of support and that's fine, I just figured I'd explain more what I meant. Photo.net has helped me immensely over the years, I'm not going anywhere else, just suggesting...</p>

<p>The blog design itself is fine, what I find lacking is the context or commentary on any of the photos you've submitted. If you're posting an image of _____, why does it matter to you? What were you trying to do? Why were you there in the first place? Did you try a technique here or just snap a shot to post to the blog?</p>

<p>Overall, blogs can look this way or that, I don't really care much how they look if the material is interesting. If the photos were so thought-provoking that they spoke for themselves then I say let them stand on their own, but for the majority of photo blogs I think some commentary is needed. I can look at photos using images.google.com or just browse the top photos here, if I'm going to spend a few minutes at your blog it's got to be a bit better than just a list of images and their titles.</p>

<p>Just my opinion.</p>

<p>I'm not sure if I'm the only one thinking this, but over the past year or so Photo.net and many of the forums have become a little less enjoyable for me given a super-high number of repeat questions, questions that are very basic (and show a lack of research on the part of the poster), aimed at the preliminary steps of learning to take a photo or work a digital camera.</p>

<p>The problem is, there's currently no way to filter this in the "Unified View", where I've selected categories of interest to me. Sure I can opt out of the "Beginner Questions", but inevitably other areas get filled with these same kinds of questions, ie. the Canon EOS forum being asked total rookie questions or whatever.</p>

<p>I understand this site and the forums are intended to help people learn, and I love that. However, I'd really love if there were a way to say limit questions I see to people who've been members for more than X years or something like that. If you look at the forums you'll see that longer-time members are less likely to be asking the same questions as newbies.</p>

<p>I'm suggesting this because I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this. I like reading and answering questions from rookies wherever I can help, but sometimes I just want to read what like-experienced people are struggling with, not "help, I can't open my RAW files" or stuff like that. Having a unified view with an extra filter of "years as member" would be awesome in my opinion. I love Photo.net, don't get me wrong, I'd just like a better way to separate the forum into useful versus "less useful" posts. The alternative is to go to a site more aimed towards pros, but frankly I like it here.</p>

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<p>The 2 images I took the time to check the size on are over 300kb. I'm on broadband but the size factor tells me you didn't take any time to optimize things, hence the slower loading time and reduced visit time for me...</p>

<p>I'll go out on a limb and guess it's a user error.</p>

<p>All I can suggest is to start a good filing system. I find the paperwork and admin stuff overwhelming, but I file diligently and save the piles of stuff for my accountant to sort out. It's a pain but it's par for the course running any business.</p>

<p>Way too many ad boxes, it makes it difficult to know what is yours and what's going to jump me out to some other site. Your archive list should be at the top IMO.</p>

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<p>This is my first and so far only son, Dexter. He's 8 so he came long before the TV show by the same name.</p>

<p>Dexter is a purebred Parson Russell terrier, a breed I picked because they're energetic and I wanted a companion who could handle the outdoors and fishing with me.</p>

<p>The first time I took Dexter fishing, it was the opening of trout season. Dexter "caught" 2 porcupines, hurting his mouth pretty bad and requiring $300+ of work at the vet to remove the quills. That was one of the last times he came fishing with me.</p>

<p>Since then Dexter has been sprayed by 2 skunks, chased the FedEx truck around the neighbourhood, let himself into stranger's houses through sliding doors, caught raccoons, squirrels, a crow, smallmouth bass on a stringer under the boat, gone to tree-planting events with me (and helped dig!), and otherwise not stayed out of trouble very well at all.</p>

<p>He's far more than I could've hoped for in a dog, even with all his troubled exploits, he's a true gem.</p>

<p><img src="http://photo.asic.ca/client/asic/photo.nsf/bloglist/8F8D107D9D06743C8525762A000AE8FA/$FILE/IMG_4637.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="426" /></p>

<p>I'd stay away from weddings, not sure a bride wants anyone that would only be doing it because things are bad and money is needed...</p>

<p>I think the large images are too big, and it's pretty unsexy to have them open into a plain full-size image. The flow is okay but as said above could use some better font styling and color needs some rejigging too.</p>

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<p>Could it be that you're using spot metering on a dark or light spot? I doubt the crop factor has anything to do with it.</p>

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<p>I'd suggest a more prominent table or box that contains the size selection drop-down, plus the add to cart button. I'd put these both together where you have add to cart now.</p>

<p>Have it look in the C:\Windows\System32 directory, the boneheads at Microsoft amazingly don't get their own software to look in their own driver directory, but there's a bunch of signed drivers there and it's helped me in the past.</p>

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