This is the personal site of Tom Roelandts. It used to be solely about the photos, but lately I’ve started adding a number of technical articles. As far as the photos are concernced, I still think the thumbnails page is rather cute. On that page, all the travel photos are in a single heap. The pinhole photos are also noteworthy. Pinhole photography is a process where a small hole is used to form an image, instead of a lens.
The remainder of the front page shows the last few photos and articles that I’ve added to the site. Comments can be sent by e-mail to tom at tomroelandts dot com (sorry for the spam avoidance measure).
Laundry is always interesting, the shadow below and the pigeon made it perfect. This photo was taken in Trogir.
After the fun with the “doctored” photo from a previous article, I thought it would be nice to show another example of a photo that “fades to gray” if you’re not careful. This time the image disappears if it is converted to grayscale in the wrong way. This is…
Submitted on 30 November 2011
This arch is part of the archaeological site of Burnum, the remains of a Roman military camp.
I've been playing with the idea of allowing comments on my site. Technically, this is as easy as flicking a switch, but that's not the point I'm thinking about. The question is: would it actually improve the site? High quality comments can surely add value, but low quality ones can distract from the actual contents. Of course…
Submitted on 9 November 2011
This guy was really going for it, jumping from the falls in the Krka National Park. He did it a few times, so I had time to choose my position for this photo. It looked as if he was jumping straight into the frothy water at the bottom, although he probably knew what he was doing…
You have probably already encountered a few QR codes. These codes are becoming more and more common, and can be found on business cards, ads, historical buildings, T-shirts, etc. You're meant to scan them using your smartphone. They can contain all sorts of information, the most common being plain text, URLs, and contact information. The information is… [This article contains a demo in which you can create your own QR codes!]
Submitted on 25 October 2011
This article points out the danger of assuming that astronomical images are encoded using linear intensity. It is meant for the many people that are performing astronomical observations using regular cameras. Not because there’s something wrong with that, but because those cameras are optimized for “normal” photography and video, not for numerical calculations on their images. The illustration below…
Submitted on 17 September 2011
The distance between two points is a concept that is, in every day use, clear and unambiguous. Mathematically, the normal (every day) distance between two points is called the Euclidean distance, but mathematicians generalize this definition. I show how, and I try to make you think by showing how circles look using some of these alternative definitions…
Submitted on 6 July 2011
Still on the theme of bicycles, this is the front wheel of one, securely locked to an immovable object. The wall is the bank of one of the canals in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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