In my oh so rare moments of idle time, I am starting to mine the data stream from Twitter for bits of wisdom and truth in 140 characters or less.  It somehow seems appropriate that our instant gratification 30 second soundbite society is now coming down to this. - but I digress...

One of the neat tricks used by Twitter folks (Twits) to get the maximum bang for their 140 characters is the use of Tinyurls or other services which provide an abbreviated short URL (internet address) for a link they are recommending.  One of my concerns is that you don't really see where you are going until you click on the link - which can lead you to harmful sites - so lets be careful out there.  If you know the person you are following on Twotter or have followed him (or her) for a while and know the type of links they are providing, you should be ok.  I have noted previously that those who use the FireFox browser may follow Twitter traffic on the excellent TwitterFox add-in for the browser.  Among its features is that you may mouse-over a TinyURL or abbreviated link and (most of the time) see the real address before you click - very handy for the paranoid surfers (like me).

My random searching brought me to Stephen Kiernan's site Project Visual (located in Ireland, by the way).  Stephen is a competent photographer posting fun HDR images and providing good technical advice.

Stephen also has an excellent article on his blog providing advice on settings for tone mapping in Photomatix. He admits that the settings are a matter of personal preference (his preferences are a little on the hot side), but he provides some starting points for experimenting with the capabilities of the Photomatix program for HDR processing. I have reduced his images here, which is sometimes unkind to HDR stuff - so take a look at his site for these and many more pictures.  <link>  (he is currently overwhelmed by the fact that it is snowing in Dublin - apparently an unusual event.)

I am following Stephen @ProjectVISUAL on Twitter and subscribed to his RSS feed.

It is amazing the things you can find out there, if you are not careful.