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Frontosa Collection Points

I was inspired me to create a Google Map on the collection points in the lake. This map can then be imported into Google Earth if you prefer.

Key for the map is based on the different types of Frontosa.

Burundi (Blue)
Kigoma (Pink)
Zaire (Red)
Tanzania (Yellow)
Zambia (Green)



The Google Maps version can be found here.

http://g.co/maps/95cz9

If you want to import the map into Google Earth you can download a copy of the KML file, see below. It is fairly straight forward once you download the file. It will open up in Google Earth but will place it into your temporary places and you can then drag it up into "My Places" You will need to right click and save the file.

http://mountainged.n...on%20Points.kml

I have tried to be as accurate as possible but if anyone spots a problem let me know.

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Guide to Fish Photography

A guide to fish photography.

A lot of people find aquarium photography very daunting especially if you’ve only tried it once or twice with poor results. Some of the problems experienced by those starting out in aquarium photography include, blurred images, not enough light, floating particles and tank reflection just to name a few. However by following a few simple guidelines, you will be able to shoot with more ability and confidence, and ultimately improve your success rate.

Most people will begin taking pictures of their fish using their camera's automatic mode or one of the preset modes, but if you want to start taking great pictures, you'll need to understand what your camera is capable of. Switch to manual mode and learn what all the features can control. You must understand that camera's work by capturing the amount of light that comes in through the camera lens. The more light that makes it through, the easier the picture is to control. Using a flash is essential in taking photos of fish but not always possible as the sudden burst of light can spook some fish.

The three main utilities of a camera are shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Each affects the final image in very different ways with the best results being achieved when they are all in balance to allow the correct amount of light into the picture.

Shutter Speed
The shutter speed is indicated as 1/8, 1/200 etc, this means that the shutter will be open for an eighth of a second and two hundredths of a second respectively. The longer the exposure time (ie. 1/8th is longer than 1/200th) the more light is let in, however a long exposure will make any movement in the picture blurry - still life will be sharp.

Aperture
The aperture is expressed as F-numbers, eg. F2.8 and F8, and creates the depth of field (DOF). The smaller the F numbers the larger the lens opening and the more light is let in. For example, when you take a picture of a fish from a front on angle, the focus should always be on the eye. With a small f number (F2.8) the fish's eye will be in focus and not much else. With a large F number (F16) the entire fish should be in focus as well as some of the background.

ISO speed
Digital cameras are made with an ISO speed ranging from about ISO50 or ISO100 up to ISO6400. The more advanced cameras get the larger the range of ISO speed. The greater the ISO speed, the more light is let in causing the picture to become "grainy." A small ISO speed of ISO100-400 should create no grainy effect at all.

Now that you know about the 3 basic utilities of the camera, you need to know how they all work together. If you choose not to use a flash, you will need to use high ISO settings, small aperture settings, and slower shutter speeds. Don't rely on the output of a standard fluorescent tube for lighting. Put as much light above the tank as possible. Lamps, spotlights, even floodlights if you're able to, just don't have them resting on the glass lids of your tank as overheating can crack the glass. To start with, try using a shutter speed of 1/60th, an aperture as low as your camera has and an ISO speed of ISO400.
If you do decide to use your flash, the whole situation becomes much easier because you can increase the shutter speed to reduce blurring, decrease the aperture settings to increase your DOF and lower your ISO setting to reduce digital noise. For a start, try 1/200, F16, and ISO100. Using a flash will give you a much sharper and crisper picture, however sometimes you will get a "washed out" effect in the colours of the fish or hot-spots from the reflection of light off the metallic sides of the fish. For those of you that own a Digital SLR camera, an external flash is essential for serious fish photography because You can adjust the angle of the flash to any direction. Bouncing the flash off a mirror or the ceiling can give you a more natural light and make the colours of the fish evenly saturated. Another step further would be to purchase a wireless transmitter for your Digital SLR to have the flash resting above your fish tank and pointed down.

The single most important challenge when taking fish pictures is to get the fish in focus. This is easy if you have a Digital SLR and difficult if you have a point and shoot camera. It seems to be the case of, the more you pay for your camera, the faster the auto focus is and in turn creates better pictures. It is also easier to focus without using a tripod because you can follow the fish with your camera (called panning) instead of waiting for the fish to swim in front of it. If you have trouble, try focussing on an object in the tank (rock, driftwood etc) by pressing halfway down on the shutter button, and then moving to a fish at about the same distance from the lens that the object was. This technique requires a lot more patience and luck, but it is handy when the camera you own has a slow auto focus.

Tips and Tricks.
• Take your pictures at night as many fish have different colours and patterns at night.

• Do a water change on the morning of or the day before you start taking pictures. This will minimise the fish waste and floating particles that ruin a good picture, plus fish seem to enjoy a fresh water change, enhancing their colours and can trigger behaviours such as spawning which makes for a much more interesting photo.

• Tripods are useless unless you're taking a picture of a stationary fish, like pleco's, bristlenoses and thomasi's etc. It's much easier to follow the fish. Make sure you are at a comfortable height to avoid stress on your back.

• Get to know your fish's movements. Watch to see which fish moves in which direction and is in a good position for capturing. For example, Clown Loaches tend to swim up and down the glass so try to capture them at the top of their turn.

• Make sure the focal point is the fish's eye. A focussed tail and a blurry eye will look terrible, but you can get away with having a focussed eye and a blurry tail but understand that higher F-numbers will improve this and give you a greater margin for error.

• Having a clean tank makes a big difference in picture quality. Clean the glass, inside and out, there's nothing worse than taking a great picture but having it ruined by a spot of algae or some dirty water drops, It also stops your camera from auto focusing on dirty glass. If you have air bubbles in the tank turn them off too; this also eliminates tiny particles in the picture.

• Taking the picture on a slight angle to the tank will eliminate the unwanted sight of the flash in your shot. Just be careful not to create too much of an angle as the refraction of light will distort your picture.

• If you're using a point-and-shoot camera switch to the macro function that is typically shown as a little flower. This will help focus on the fish much closer to the camera, however the disadvantage of using this mode is that you are often not able to use the macro settings with the manual settings on a normal point-and-shoot camera. It will also cause a shallow depth of field in automatic mode if there is insufficient light. A dedicated macro lens on a Digital SLR camera can produce more detail than you will ever see with your naked eye. Here is a photo of an Albino bristlenose catfish using a 60mm Canon macro lens.

• Have your batteries for your camera fully charged. There's no fun in having your camera go blank right at the time your fish is yawning or has its fins/gills flared.

• Try to capture you fish as close as you can to the front of the glass as the more water there is between the lens and the fish, the more difficult your camera will find it to focus.

• Where possible, remove any aquarium essentials from the background like heaters, filters and air tubing. Having these objects in the picture will make it look cluttered and messy. When setting up a tank, keep this in mind and make sure this equipment is at either end of the tank or preferably in a sump tank.

Post Processing
So you've taken that 1 in a 100 shot? Even if you haven't got it quite right, you can enhance the picture using a post-processing programs like PhotoShop and Paint Shop Pro.
Being able to digitally correct photos was once frowned upon, (and still is by some traditional film users) but is fast becoming an essential art in itself.
• Don't go overboard with the brightness and contrast controls. It is much easier to adjust the levels plus it will give a more natural look.

• The "Clone" and "Burn" tools come in handy when you want to remove unsightly objects from the picture like other fish, shadows, floating particles and air bubbles etc.

• Don't crop your pictures too harshly, leave enough area around the fish to give it that "swimming" feel.

• A nice way to give that professional touch is by adding a border and signature.

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Promoting Posts to Articles

Beginning with IP.Content 2.0, you can now promote forum posts to your articles section in IP.Content.

The administrator can configure the specifics of this feature in the ACP under My Apps -> IP.Content -> Promote Article Settings. You can turn the system on and off, control which groups can copy and move posts to the articles section, and specify a few other details for the feature. A new hook is included with IP.Content which adds a button to each post labeled "Promote to Article". This button only shows up if you have permission to use the feature based on the ACP configuration.

When clicked, the button will take you to a new form where you can formalize the details of the new article. You can tweak the text and title, upload an image, and specify other pertinent details. If you are able to both move and copy posts to the articles section, you will also be asked which type of promotion you wish to use. Upon submitting the form, IP.Content handles the rest.

This new feature can be used to showcase important content otherwise hidden in your forums by pushing this content to your frontpage. It is then up to you whether you want a copy made in the articles section (leaving the original post in tact), whether you want to actually move the post to the articles section, and whether you want any cross-linking left in place. With such powerful options, we are sure you will find many uses for this new promotion tool in IP.Content 2.0.

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What Is A Frontpage?

IP.Content 2.0 uses the term "frontpage" to refer to both the homepage of the Articles module, and the landing page of each individual category. We have introduced this new navigational structure to better allow you to showcase content, while presenting it in a standardized format that your users will be able to understand and jump into without assistance.

Firstly, you will now be able to define "frontpage" templates in the ACP for the Articles module. IP.Content 2.0 will ship with 3 defaults:

• 1x2x2 Layout
  This layout will display articles in a traditional "news" style layout.
  
• Blog format
  This format will display articles in a blog-style format.
  
• Single column
  This layout will force articles to display in a single column, one per row.

You can use one or more of these frontpage layouts, or you can create your own. Experiment with displaying articles in different formats on your homepage to determine which layout your users like best.

Articles must be set to "Show on front page" in order for them to display on the homepage frontpage.

In addition to the homepage frontpage, each category has it's own frontpage. The category frontpage functions identically to the homepage frontpage, except for two important factors:

• Only records from within that category (and it's subcategories) will be displayed
  
• The "Show on front page" setting is not honored for the category frontpage

You will be able to easily review and manage the articles set to display on the frontpage from a new section of the ACP labeled "Frontpage Manager". We feel that this new area of the articles section will help showcase important articles and increase user interaction with your articles section.

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Media Management

The media module in the IP.Content 2.0 ACP section allows you to quickly and easily manage multimedia files you may need to use with IP.Content. While you can certainly upload your files through FTP, or link to offsite files, you may find it easier to upload the files using the media section of the ACP, and then copy the links for use within pages, templates, and blocks.

From within the media module, you can create folders, upload files, move files and folders, rename files and folders, and delete files and folders. Files can be listed and you can click on a file to view it (or right click on the file to copy the link).

This simple tool can be a timesaver when you simply need to upload an image quickly for use within a page template. The media folder is defined in the media_path.php file in your forum root directory, giving you the freedom to move and organize your paths as needed.

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Page Management

The page management module interface has been overhauled for IP.Content 2.0 to make it easier to manage your pages in the ACP.

Firstly, the folder navigation utilizes AJAX to load the folder contents inline without requiring you to visit a new page to view the contents of the folder. We found that folder navigation was a slow process, especially when working with many files and folders, so we wanted to speed up the interaction with the software in this particular area.

We have also updated some common management features to utilize AJAX to help facilitate management of your pages. Actions like clearing folders and deleting folders, for instance, will now occur without page refreshes, making your managerial activities flow smoother and quicker.

Additionally, the interface as a whole has been updated to provide a nicer, smoother feel for the page management areas. In practice, we found that many administrators spend the majority of their time setting up and utilizing IP.Content in the page management areas, so we wanted to update the user interface to make this experience as easy and enjoyable as possible. Minor details like confirmation dialogs have been updated to bring everything together for a more consistent feel.

A new filter bar, utilizing AJAX to retrieve the results without the need for a page refresh, has also been added to the page management area. You can begin typing in the name of a page and a live-search action will occur in the background, showing you the results of your search as you type. If you have many pages and many folders (and many pages within those many folders), you will find that using the filter bar to locate your pages can dramatically speed up your navigation of IP.Content within the page management areas of the ACP.

Overall, we've modernized the IP.Content page management area of the ACP, polishing up the little details, in an effort to make your experience all the more pleasant.

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Template Management

In IP.Content 2.0, you will notice that there are 3 separate template sections of the ACP:

• Page Templates
  
• Database Templates
  
• Article Templates

In IP.Content 1.x, database and page templates were combined into a single "Templates" section, which worked fine for our original intentions. However, with the introduction of a separate Articles module, and additional template types related to the articles module, we decided to separate the templates so that each template type is displayed separately. This should help finding and editing your templates easier in practice, as you will be able to filter the template types and work with fewer at a time.

Within each templates section, you can create containers to group your templates into logical groupings. For instance, you may wish to create a grouping for each database you create, and then place the database templates appropriately into the container representing the database itself. Or you may wish to create multiple front page templates, and group them all together in the article templates area. You can use containers for whatever purposes you may have, or not at all: it's up to you!

Templates can be reordered by dragging and dropping the rows up and down, and they can be moved from one container to another via drag n drop as well.

Certain meta data about the templates are stored when you create new database or article templates, allowing IP.Content to tailor other areas of the ACP to help you out. For example, in IP.Content 1.x the software did not "remember" what kind of database template you were creating, so all database templates were presented in each of the dropdowns when creating or editing a database. Beginning with IP.Content 2.x, the software stores the template type when you create a new template. This allows us to show only "category listing" templates in the "category listing template" selection dropdowns. Similarly, the template tag help popup can automatically know which template type you are editing without you having to specify.

Properly making use of templates can help you push out pages on your site in a uniform manner quickly and easily, and without having to "reinvent the wheel" each time a new page is ready to be published.

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Store Comments In Forum

With IP.Content 2.0, articles and custom databases can now mirror a topic to the forums when a new article or database record is submitted. In doing so, IP.Content can also utilize that automatically-generated topic as the comment "storage" for the article or record. When a comment is submitted to the article, the comment is actually stored as a reply to the topic. Similarly, replies made directly to the topic in the forum also show up as comments for the record.

This new functionality can be enabled at a per-database and per-category level. You can specify separate forums for each category in your article section, for instance, or you can turn off forum commenting for a specific category, while enabling it for all others.

A few additional configuration options, such as allowing you to automatically remove the topic when the record is removed, and specifying a prefix and/or suffix for the topic title so that your users can more easily identify that such topics were stemmed from the articles section help round out the feature, giving you better control over how these automatically posted topics are handled.

These new forum cross-posting capabilities allow the administrator to better tie in articles with the forums, giving you better opportunities to expose your content to a wider audience. Additionally, forum management of comments provides for easier maintenance and stronger managerial options of the comments, utilizing IP.Board's powerful, proven feature set.

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Sharing links

IP.Board 3.1 introduces a new feature that is available for any application to make use of: sharing links. IP.Content 2.0 makes use of this new feature in the custom databases (and articles) modules to allow you to more easily expose your content to a wider audience.

Along with supporting sharing of your content with third party services such as Facebook and Twitter, you can now also send an article via email, print the article, and download the article easily by clicking the appropriate icon under the article body. The additional printing and downloading features allow the content to be shared, online as well as offline.

Within the articles module specifically, the article image that you upload when posting the article (optionally) will automatically be flagged for use with Facebook when someone uses Facebook to share the link. This ensures that the correct image is the one Facebook displays to other users. Similarly, we pull out an appropriate extract of textual content for Facebook to use as well. If the user is logged in to Twitter or Facebook, sharing the content becomes even easier, not requiring you to even leave the site.

We hope that by providing tools to make it easier to share content on your site, your content will be exposed to a wider audience, bringing you more traffic and making your content more easily and readily available to the world.

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Template Variables Help

All templates are capable of using template tags, and as such when you edit any type of template, there will be a "template tag help" link. Clicking this produces a sidebar (there is then a link in the sidebar to open a separate popup) that details all of the template tags you can insert to include IP.Content data within your template.

However, with database and article templates, there are additional variables that are passed into the template to allow it to manipulate and display the HTML that represents the content. For instance, different data is retrieved and available when you are looking at a list of articles compared to when you are viewing a single article. You need to know what these variables are in order to be able to properly modify the template to display data in the manner you want, and as such, a template variable help popup is available that will detail the variables available for each template type.

When you are editing a template, click on "template variable help" and a new window opens displaying the variables you can expect to be available to the template with a short description of each variable. If you get stuck, this help window can help shed some light on the variables that are available, what values they should contain, and how you can use these variables to your advantage to build a more dynamic and useful interface for your database.

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