SQL tip: How to bind NULL with PHP and Oracle

Neat little trick to bind a null value without using an if clause. How often have you done something like this when a variable might be null: $sql = “SELECT * FROM someTable WHERE col1 = :firstVar”; if ($secondVar !== null) { $sql.= ” AND col2 = :secondVar”; } … oci_bind_by_name($stmt, ‘:firstVar’, $firstVar); if ($secondVar …

How to recharge your camera batteries in the Amazonian jungle

I’m going on a photo expedition into the jungle of Guyana up the Rewa river. I’m planning on bringing my Nikon D800 camera and the D300 as a backup. In order to be able to recharge the batteries, I had to come up with a solar solution since there is not going to be any …

Nikon D800 examples of bird photos with high ISO settings

Here are some examples of bird photos taken with the Nikon D800 and the 600mm or 300mm lens in Finland. The weather and light conditions were very poor, so high ISO settings between 1600 – 3200 were necessary.

What’s the fastest way to transfer photos from the Nikon D800?

I did some quick and unscientific comparing of different ways to transfer photos from my Nikon D800 camera to my PC. I also looked at the D800’s internal copying versus copying with a card reader. Setup Setup1: The Nikon D800 camera is used as the card reader and connected directly via cable to different USB …

Changing cursor to wait while request is in progress

Switching cursor to ‘wait’ and back to ‘default’ is tricky since some elements such as link, input or button have a different default style. Setting it back to ‘auto’ does not work in Firefox, but to an empty string works. Here’s how you would do it with dojo: require([‘dojo/_base/connect’, ‘dojo/query’], function(connect, query) { // change …

Using Nikon D800 for flying birds

Over the last three weeks, I’ve been using the Nikon D800 to shoot birds on my vacation in Florida. Here are my unscientific and personal findings for shooting birds in flight from tripod and hand-held with some example photos below: Auto ISO sensitivity control is bliss if you don’t use manual exposure mode. For birds …

Nikon D800: Beware of the 36 Megapixels

Have you ever laughed at the TV shows where they use a photo to investigate a crime and with the use of some piece of software they just can press the enhance button and then suddenly some detail appears magically out of nowhere? Laugh no longer. Below is just an innocent photo of a bird.

My First (Bird) Photos with Nikon D800 and 600mm f4

Only few talked about it being good for wildlife, most said it’s only for landscape, architecture or studio. Many would have preferred a lower pixel count and questioned whether it’s going to be of any use. But when shooting birds, especially small song birds, you never get close enough or can have enough pixels. So …

REST with dojo and PHP: Notes on using dgrid with a caching store

I would like to share some (personal) pitfalls I came across when creating the demo REST with dojo and PHP: Demo of a dgrid observing changes to the JsonRest store: dojo/store/Observable only works correctly when the object has an id. Unfortunately, dojo/store/Memory.add(object) does not add the id to the object when creating it (as of …

Canon vs. Nikon Telephoto Lenses: If weight plays a major role

The table (sortable) and charts on this page may help you decide which telephoto lens to buy if the weight plays a major role. It is kind of frustrating that the Canon lenses are about half to a full kilo lighter than the Nikon ones if you are an owner of Nikon equipment. For the …