Snowflake flash drives from USB Memory Direct

An American company USB Memory Direct specializes in producing USB flash drives with custom shape, color and print on drive's surface, and has been a leader in the industry for over fourteen years. They can make flash drive case from many materials: plastic, metal, silicone, rubber, and even wood and leather. The company offers wide range of drive shapes and designs - more than 50, and will even make exclusive shape, based on drawing or sketch that you'll provide them!

For my order, i instantly selected these twist drives: this nice hexagonal shape is great for snowflake design. For logo background, i've picked silhouette of big snowflake Silverware / Neon.

The result looks even better than i expected. I'm impressed by drives exclusive look:

Snowflake flash drive: angle 1

Flash drives in my order already formatted in FAT32 file system and instantly ready to work.

I like print quality very much: logo printed directly on drive case, it's glossy, have good resolution, contrast and colors, and smooth blue/white gradient in the middle of logo looks perfectly even at magnified photo:

Snowflake flash drive: angle 2

I'm very pleased by drive pack from USB Memory Direct, and certainly will make new orders in the future! I recommend this company for anyone who need custom flash drives with exclusive look and feel.

Pack of 25 custom flash drives by USB Memory direct

Artist website is ready

Artist website alexey-kljatov.pixels.com is ready and fully functional:

Every purchase includes a money-back guarantee. Products delivered to any destination in the world.

Some HDR photos is not uploaded yet, but my best snowflake, macro and still life pictures are here.

Website powered by FineArtAmerica, one of the largest, most-respected giclee printing companies in the world with over 40 years of experience producing museum-quality prints. All prints are produced on state-of-the-art, professional-grade Epson printers. Site have exactly same content, and almost the same functionality as it's mirrors at Pixels.com and FineArtAmerica.com, but have some important advantages.

It's fast. In my tests, main page loads twice as fast as same page on Pixels.com profile. Also, website have nice customization abilities, and it's look and feel can be changed dramatically. For this moment, however, i've selected default color scheme, but spent many time on photo and text content.

Website, also as FineArtAmerica.com and Pixels.com, offers money-back guarantee for every purchase.

This website will be my main print-on-demand place, though some additional products also available at RedBubble.com.

If anyone interested, i glad to offer one-month 100% discount. That not means free prints, however: my commission will be zero, but discount does not apply to manufacturer's materials, print process and delivery. Here is it, 6-symbol code: LSVXZY. On final stage of ordering any product, there is special field for discount codes:

Major blog update with HTTPS support

With recently added HTTPS support for Google Blogger, i've worked hard to make my blog fully compatible with it:

At first, i checked all scripts in use, and make sure that they can be loaded over HTTPS, so i don't get mixed content warning from browsers, when protected page contains some unprotected elements. Also, i got this warning because my old code for E-Mail subscription from Feedburner service contains two HTTP references. I took new code (it refers to HTTPS), and problem was solved. With all blog photos and graphics i have no problems, thanks to Flickr, who switched to HTTPS long ago. Although, i checked posts with old Flickr embed codes (taken before Flickr HTTPS support was rolled out), and get new codes for all these images.

But then, i need to change all internal links in all posts and pages from absolute to relative form:

http://chaoticmind75.blogspot.com/...
should be
//chaoticmind75.blogspot.com/...

Then, clicking a link on protected page will load protected, and click on standard HTTP page will load standard. This was really hard work, because my blog have almost two hundred posts and static pages, with hundreds of internal links. As side effect, i checked also all outgoing links: updated many of them to HTTPS versions (for sites that supports it), and removed several dead links (or updated them to proper versions, if they can be retrieved).

So, if you will go to any protected page, you'll surf protected version of blog:

https://chaoticmind75.blogspot.com

...and standard HTTP pages are fully functional, too:

http://chaoticmind75.blogspot.com

Laurent Memmi - "Asylum Benefits EP"

I'm happy to announce that my snowflake photo was chosen as cover for music disk "Asylum Benefits EP" by Laurent Memmi, a French drone / ambient music producer.

This genre of ambient music is one of my favorites, and i like this music disk by Laurent Memmi very much. Excellent work!

And here is album in different genre: 1975 Triptych by M-Opus, Irish progressive rock band, featuring my snowflake photos on cover and in booklet:

Don Komarechka. "The Snowflake" - ultra high resolution snowflake poster

I hardly imagine how much time and effort it takes to create this ultra high resolution poster by Don Komarechka!

Canadian professional photographer Don Komarechka (Website, Google+, Facebook, Flickr) individually captured and processed all those 400+ snow crystals using focus stacking technique. Sometimes i use focus stacking, too, and i can say that this technique requires patience, accuracy and lots of time and effort.

This poster can be ordered at Don's website:

SkyCrystals.ca/product/poster

Interesting fact: all snowflakes you see here presented in their real scale, relative to each other. This was not easy to achieve, said Don. For each snowflake in this poster Don carefully adjusts lighting and shoots lots of source photos with different focus, required for later processing.

Good light means a lot in snowflake macro photography, especially for snow crystals that shows wonderful rainbow-like thin film optical interference effect. This effect can be seen only on snowflakes, which contains air cavities in their body, and interleaved layers of ice and air very thin. And even if snowflake can produce these colors, they need proper light to be seen. Don Komarechka a real magician, who able to make these snowflakes to show the best they can offer:

Don captures and processes wide range of snow crystals, showing their huge diversity: from tiny and very unusual snowflake types...

...to big, "traditional", but unique and extremely beautiful stellar dendrite crystals:

I'm big fan of Don Komarechka's snowflake photography, and always wait for his new Snowflake-a-Day project. During whole winter, Don processes and posts one snowflake photo each day, including weekends and holidays. Because processing of every single photo requires several hours of careful and accurate work, this project is really hard task!

This winter, Don already started his project. On very first photo from this winter, you see rare and complex snowflake formation: two rosettes of bullet crystals with branched caps:

If you would like, you can follow Don Komarechka in social networks:

Google+, Facebook, Flickr

and enjoy his new snowflake photos every day!

Also, i recommend to see another excellent work by Don Komarechka - illustrated hardcover book about his way of snowflake photography, physics of ice crystals formation and many other interesting topics:

(photographs in this post and the book cover (c) Don Komarechka, posted using embed codes from his Flickr photostream)

Article about snowflake macro photography reached 1 million views

This milestone means a lot for me. All blog pages and posts (including that article) reached only 1.5 million views by now. Currently, i work on third major update of snowflake article (russian update already done, translation to English in progress). In a few days, article will be bigger, more accurate, and, i hope, my terrible English will be slightly more readable, thanks to Google translate (it helps me often).

Instagram page

Just created Instagram page with my photos (nickname alexkljatov). When i'm done with uploading all good photos, will try to keep it up-to-date.

M-Opus - "1975 Triptych"

I'm happy to announce that my snowflake photos was chosen as cover for music album "1975 Triptych" by M-Opus, Irish progressive rock band.

Digital booklet available at M-Opus site. Digital artwork (c) M-Opus.com

I have only little listening experience of progressive rock, but i like this album very much! In my opinion, this is beautiful and serious work.

Nice reviews of this disk available at: Prog-sphere.com, EchoesAndDust.com, Dmme.net, Itdjents.com, DangerDog.com.

Album can be ordered at CDbaby.com, ITunes and Amazon.

My big thanks to M-Opus and Jonathan Casey!

And here is album in different genre: Asylum Benefits EP by Laurent Memmi, French drone / ambient music producer, also featuring my snowflake photo on cover: