Trying out Topaz Adjust

This morning I didn't go to Church, instead I stayed home to look after Grandad.

Lad told me that on my Pog website, when you're logged in, it should say who you're logged in as. So I changed the code to do that, but when I tried to test it in the IE6 and IE7 Virtual Machines, it made the Ubuntu virtual machine (that hosts the testing copy of the website) close down, so I couldn't actually test it.

I did some googling, but couldn't see anything about this. So I tried to post on the VMWare forums to see if I could get some help. First of all the link to create a new thread was very difficult to find. Then, when I clicked on it, I got stuck in an endless redirect loop. I tried in both FF and Chrome (and clearing my cookies), but both had the same result.

Also, whenever I logged in, it would ask me to register, even though I'm already registered. All the fields would be filled out with my current registration details except the password, confirm password, and forums username.

I checked to see if the version of VMWare Server I was running was the latest, and it is. Virtual PC 2007 hasn't been updated since May 2008, so I'm running the latest version of that as well. It's strange how they both worked okay before I re-installed Vista though.

In the afternoon I tried taking some photos of the sugar crystals that G-Dad has in his tea at the moment.

In the evening I downloaded the Topaz Adjust Photoshop Plugin, and had a play with that, trying to create a 'HDR' style look to a single image that I had previously also processed with Photomatix. So I wanted to try and get the same effect with Topaz as processing the image through Photomatix had given.

But I found that Topaz Adjust was blowing the highlights in some areas of the image, loosing quite a bit of detail in the process. So I started a thread on the Topaz Software Flickr group to try and get some advice on good settings to use.

Topaz sell a pack of their various plugins for $180, which I didn't think would be worth getting really. It does include Topaz Adjust, Topaz DeNoise, and Topaz ReMask, which I thought might all be useful, but the other plugins looked more gimmicky than useful. But then in the Flickr Topaz Software group, I noticed this thread with examples of images processed using Topaz Simplify, which I must say, look pretty good to me.

In the evening I also watched a couple of Power Rangers episodes with L.

The weather was relatively cloudless all day today, and ended in a bare sky sunset (as well as starting with a nearly bare sky sunrise, I can't say exactly as I didn't go out to the fields where you can see it).

Food
Breakfast: ½ Waffle with Golden Syrup and Squirty Cream; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Chilli Con Carne; Rice; Tortilla chips with melted cheese. Pudding was a slice of blackcurrant cheesecake with Squirty Cream. Coffee; Piece of Fairtrade Fudge; Cadbury's Roses Toffee.
Tea: Rosemary flavoured ham with Iceberg lettuce sandwich; Apple; Slice of Stollen; Posh Chocolate biscuit; Cup o' Tea.
Supper: Dark Chocolate Digestive; Shortbread Finger.