I finally got around to fixing my rss feed today, so I thought I would post this quick snippet as it may be helpful to others. I use the standard RSS template that came with Expression Engine to create my feed the problem was that HTML and images were not showing up in the feed.

This is a simple little fix which requires the following change to the RSS Template:

In the description tag change {exp:xml_encode}{summary}{body}{/exp:xml_encode} to <![CDATA[{summary}{body}]]> this will enable your feed to have both HTML and images shown. Quick and easy for something that can be a pain in the arse.

My most recent photography purchase is the excellent Manfrotto 190 XPROB tripod which came with the Manfrotto 486RC2 Ball Head. I have just received the tripod so I haven’t had an extensive play with it but what I have used I am extremely happy with.

I have had a few tripods so far and all of them(with the exception of the gorillapod, which is also excellent :-)) are, to put it crudely, shit. Firstly I should mention what makes the other tripods crap and lambaste them before I offer the benefits of the Manfrotto.

I love my Mac Mini but really the specs of the machine are a little on the low side, which I suppose is fair enough as it is pitched at switchers. Those getting into a Mac for the first time generally want a basic, cheap pc and already have all the other necessities like keyboard, monitor etc.

My Mac Mini came with 1Gb of RAM and a 80Gb hard disk, not really a lot of space for the modern desktop.  Almost immediately after getting the mini I upgraded the RAM, doubling it and now the latest upgrade… the hard disk.....

Firefox is a great web browser especially if you are a web developer. Through the Firefox extensions you can make your life a hell of a lot easier for a variety of web design/development tasks. I don’t normally have a ton of the extensions installed but below are my favourites and some I use everyday to make my life a little easier.

I have been wanting a wide angle lens for my 400d for quite a while now, problem is that they are not that cheap.  In Australia they retail at around $760 in the shops so it is quite an investment to make.  If you choose to go for a canon model then add a few hundred extra to that price. As I am going home to Northern Ireland in the very near future for a holiday I decided that now is the best time to get one.

The deciding factor was when I checked out the price in the US.  The Australian dollar is very strong against the US at the moment and makes it ideal to import. A strong dollar and the fact that the US has it a lot cheaper than here, $260 cheaper to be exact made this an easy option to make. Within a few days of placing an order in the US my Sigma 10-20mm F4-5.6 HSM DC arrived and I must say I am really impressed.

I have been using my Mac now for quite a while and I have used one at various times throughout my computer beginnings. One thing really irks me though and that is moving the focus on buttons on dialog screens with the keyboard.

On Windows its simple and intuitive to do simply press tab and you can cycle through the buttons.  On a Mac its needlessly complicated on what is generally a vastly more intuitive operating system than Windows. It gets even worse if you own one of the new aluminium keyboards as you have to add the fn function key into the equation.

I have been thinking lately of creating a photoblog, well not really a full blog but more of an experiment.  There are a few reasons for these thoughts creeping into my head, the first one being; I enjoy building websites so I want to build another one. Although I do this all day at work, there is nothing more satisfying than being able to create something that is specifically for you and also being able to use the latest technologies on it.

I have been meaning to write a post for a while about definition lists but have just not got round to it. Instead of covering just definition lists though, I thought I would make it a little more specific and talk about a very good use for them, styling forms.

It was not that long ago that I hadn’t even heard of a definition list, now this is one of the most versatile tools in the tool box that I use daily.  Definition lists are good for a variety of uses, including Faq’s, forms, images with descriptions or replacing unordered lists for drop down menus to name but a few.

A quick tip for any Photoshop users out there that I only discovered quite recently.  If you are a web designer or developer you fairly regularly wish to get colour values from photos or other websites on the internet. This can sometimes be a pain and I have many times found myself taking a screen shot of a webpage, pasting it into Photoshop and using the colour picker to get the values I was looking for.

There is a little known feature in Photoshop CS3 (it may be in other versions) where you can select colours from outside the document window. To do this is pretty simple....

I have been getting restless lately and trying to find the time to take some photos. I am not usually that motivated to go out after work so I have been trying to take my camera with me in the mornings and take a few shots.

The problem is that my camera bag just does not meet my needs when carrying my camera too and from work.  When I bought my camera (Canon 400d), I bought it with the lens kit. This included the standard 18-55mm lens and a 70-300mm lens. I also got a 2 Gig compact flash card and a lowepro ex160 bag. I also had a canon ef 28-105mm lens from my previous camera, this all had to fit in my bag.

The ex160 bag fitted all my gear but there was no room for expansion and room was rapidly running out. What’s more was that the bag had quite a thin, no padded strap which was quite sore on the shoulder when carrying the bag for a while and it just plain gets in the way. 

This brings me to my new purchase the Lowepro slingshot 200 AW .