About

Everything is copyright © 1996-2005 francisco luis roque.
Ask for permission before using images & writings. Abuse is risky.

• about the site design
• about the photography
• technical notes about the site

about the site design

The black & white graphics you see on each page aren't random; they are stylized ants representing the first few letters of the topic of the page. Read the antennae and legs clockwise, beginning at the upper right, in binary, placing the first bit in the highest bit and going down for a byte. Thus each ant can represent one byte (six legs plus 2 antennae) and therefore one ascii character (that is, one character of text).

The top 4 ants on this page represent a, b, o, u, as in "about". The bottom 2 spell out r, f, as in "roque", "francisco".

Eventually i plan on getting a tattoo in the same style - that is, ants walking around my arm, each representing a character, and thus spelling out a sentence.

about the photography

I used to primarily use a Nikon 990. Now i use the Canon Digital Rebel (aka 300D, digital kiss) and a Canon Elan 7E to shoot with. I use a Canon CanoScan FS4000US film scanner, and Adobe Photoshop and GIMP for photo touchup work. Images from a variety of other cameras are also on this site, ranging from $10 disposable cameras to $10,000+ medium and large format cameras.

I use a variety of lenses, but prefer something that is comparable to 28mm-200mm on 35mm. As for filters, i sometimes use polarized filters, 82b, green, red, yellow, and homemade filters.

I prefer Fuji film for colour slides (their Provia smells better than any other slide film) and prints, Kodak T-Max for B&W, and occassionally drop the $20 for a roll of Kodak colour IR film.

Cameras i own or have owned, whose photos have appeared on this site:

• Canon A80
• Canon Digital Rebel
• Canon Elan 7E
• Nikon 990
• Pentax K1000
• Pentax/Honeywell Asahi 35mm
• 4x5 Press Camera
• Holga
• Polaroid iZone
• Gameboy camera

Cameras i've used but not owned, whose photos have appeared on this site:

• Hasselblad V system
• 4x5 View Camera (various)
• Mamiya 645

Cameras & equipment i want but can't currently afford (as of 20031222):

• Canon EOS-1 Ds ($7999)
• Hasselblad H1, plus lenses and conventional backs (approx. $8500)
• Kodak DCS Pro Back Plus for the H-1 (???)
• Better Light Super10K-2 4x5 digital back ($24,995)

technical notes about the site

Technologies used on this website include javascript, perl, php, mysql, ssi and tweaked apache configurations.

I've been working on images for my 404 errors.

In case you're curious, i've compiled all my Server Stats.

Here are my referer logs.

I started seeding my webpages for search engines. If a host requests my robots.txt file, then each subsequent page will have a dynamic link included with it. The link is generated by parsing through my referer logs. Any words that were searched for and led to a hit on my site are linked to the page that resulted. In this way, i hope to increase my listing with search engines.

I added an Instant Messaging feature. If i happen to notice that you are looking through my webpages, and i want to send you a message, you may see a little window pop up while looking through my pages. Click here to see what the window looks like.

I like graphs. Here are some graphs dealing with www.blackant.net's Code Red hits. For more security stylin', click here.

I really, really like graphs. Now you can see even more views of data in the maps i make of my website.