Fighting with computers

I recently tried to learn a bit more about photography (I can recomend you this book ). I've owned several film-based cameras over the years (both compact and reflex) and since 1996 when I bought a Casio QV-10 (not that I can recommend that battery eater) all of them have been digital units (Canon S10 and A520 and lately Panasonic DMC-FZ7 , all of which I can recomend). I was thinking to finally jump to the Digital Reflex bandwagon but I was waiting to get a better idea of that segment. But it seems the waters are not that clear. Although it seems that Nikon has settled with the so-called APS-C sensor size, Canon has mixed feelings and now it has three different sizes from full-size 35 mm sensor (like the one on EOS 5D) to APS-C size (like the one on 20D, 30D or 350D). Why sensor size is important? Well, one of the reasons professional photographers have kept the reflex market going was compatibility. You cannot be compatible if you change the sensor size. And, it does not matter...

Every now and then we all face a common problem poorly solved by today's applications: You want to send a big file to another person (or you want them to download it). For files several megabytes long (or larger) email is not the right tool (as email servers will reject send attempts larger than a few megabytes). IM applications like MSN Messenger or Jabber might solve the problem, but only if you and your friend have that software installed and have a user account. But there is still another catch: This transfer happens between peers, so both you and your friend need to be online during the whole transfer. To fix this, some applications like Pando can help, as they provide a multiplatform solution that does not require you both to be online while the transfer takes place. However, you both still need to download and install Pando client. Upload centers allow you to upload files to be shared with the rest of the world. No user registration is required for some of them but some lim...

It turns out that Santa was quite computer- oriented this year, so we've got a Nintendo's Wii (it seems many people had trouble getting one this season) and a Creative Zen Vision:M. I knew nothing about the Wii but it's silly name and how much my children wanted to get one. It turns out it has integrated WiFi and even an Opera browser (as the sample figure shows a zoomed in page). Who wants to have another browser? But ... wait, this one can even deal with flash contents ... never wanted to get those videos from YouTube on your TV set? Now you can! (provided you have a wifi network nearby). Regarding Creative Zen Vision:M I already mentioned on a previous post: It seems to be a better deal if you plan on watching videos on it as the screen is brighter than iPod's. The white unit looks cool and quality made. The weird thing is that the four backlighted buttons require you to actually press them but when you want to click on the central scroll area no presure is required ...

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and although it is a concept more than ten years old it is new for me. Several processes are trying to mimic the way we see things: moving pictures, photographic prints, computer displays, etc. The underlying idea is that an accurate representation is achieved when "it looks like the real thing". Unfortunately, neither prints nor displays can exhibit the dynamic range required for a picture to look the same as the original. While our eyes have a dynamic range of 10000 light levels, a print can only represent around 100 different light levels. On the other hand, the whole range our eyes can see is around a million different levels, just not all at a time (i.e. you need your vision to adapt when you go from a dark place to a sunny one). While photographic cameras (either chemical or digital ones) can do a great job capturing a scene in one shot, some compromises are done down the line. The end result is that some saturation and some range comp...

I have been thinking on buying a new iPod. I've got a 4GB mini iPod since 2004. It works nicely and as my iBook it has been locked into my wife's gravity field. I have to admit that both devices come with a high WAF value (you know WAF , don't you?). The only problem with [her] iPod is that it cannot hold all the music we have. However it seems that Apple is not offering any education discount on iPod at the moment. Prices have not changed for quite a while and I find the thing a bit pricey. I've been a happy Creative customer and all our outher MP3 players at home are from them. They have a 30GB Zen Video player that seems to offer better image quality than iPod but it is 5mm thicker (though it has a mic for audio recording and an emdedded FM receiver too). Price is the same as 30GB Ipod ($249). And ... the Creative has host-mode USB (it means you can connect it to your digital camera to transfer the photos to the unit HD without using a computer). We will need to wa...

Both Sigmatek's dvbx200 and Woxter's xvid 675 dvbt seem to be the same: A DivX player plus a DVB-T receiver. As they look the same, they are likely made by the same chinese OEM manufacturer and just branded different. I've tested a Sigmatek unit and I've found it delivers what it promises: It plays back DivX files from either a DVD or a USB memory stick. It also plays back the photos of your camera (provided it uses SD format) using the built in slot. It also seems a good quality DVB-T receiver. It includes an ok remote control. Don't get me wrong, this is not a top of the line product, but you hardly can beat it at that price range (around $80).

I mentioned before one portable tablet from Genuis (the G-Note 5000) that can also be attached to the computer to be used as a regular tablet. I'm quite happy about it but unfortunately it does not have pressusure sensitivity (two is not enough for some applications). Wacom is the brand name drawing tablets. The problem is that Wacom tablets are quite expensive too. The main advantage of Wacom is that they pointer they use requires no battery. Other brands, however, although they have cheaper units, require a battery inside the tablet stylus. I think I can handle the extra weight so I have bought a Genius G-Pen 4500 for around $35. Besides I am also getting a small mouse I can use in the same tablet space. The included software worked Ok in Windows XP with The Gimp but not with Inkscape. The OS X driver seems to work only so an so (it might be it requires a good amount of processing power and my iBook is not that fast, I am not sure). Linux was a no go. Although the G-Note worked ...

The holiday season is approaching fast and so is my birthday. After having a couple of incidents of not finding my way driving the car recently, I decided it might be ok to get one of these GPS tiny toys. As I am not PDA kind of person I was thinking on a device that contains all what you need. Some other people might want to get a Bluetooth-based GPS antenna to be (wirelessly) connected to their PDA that, equipped with the right software, will do the work of a stand-alone navigator. As usual, there are just too many choices to make and many different brands and prices. To make things worse you learn that the unit could also include a Bluetooth hands-free adaptor or a TMC receiver. But wait, what's TMC ? I'd never heard of that before. Then you learn that the business is somehow selling you extra maps too (or new versions of the ones you already have). After all, a GPS navigator is as good as the maps it is based on. Can your GPS navigator play MP3 files or movies? Damn, this i...

I needed to get scanned some pages of a catalog. I own a cheap Acer 3300U scanner that works nicely under Linux. It is not fast: It scans a 300dpi A4 color page in 50 seconds and it halves that when using gray instead. Lowering scan resolution to 150dpi reduces the scan to around 15 seconds. But if you plan to scan more than one page you need to save each one and you have to provide a name for them. That means some mouse clicks and some typing at the keyboard. I was wondering if it was a better way, something like an automated script. I learned that there is a command line tool in the scan-tools package called scanimage that does just that: It allows you to launch a scan from a script. So what I did was to create a simple for loop and I used the loop variable to increase the page count. Each iteration was scanning a new page and converting it to a JPEG file with a sequential name. After a power problem with the scanner I learned that next reconnection used a different device name, so...

I've just came across this service. I'm sure they have been around for a while, but it is now when I learn about it. It seems like a good idea and a useful service. The sample below is just to show you how it works. Network Security View more presentations from hj43us . It is too bad that animations are lost in the process. But rest looks quite ok (all but some minor alignment problems). It imported the above document from an OpenOffice 2.0 Impress document.

As things were quite smooth lately, I chose to spice it up a bit: I've moved four of my blogs to the new Blogger beta. I was quite scared as there was a warning message telling you the process cannot be undone. So if I am not lucky with how it works I can do nothing. This is the first post and it seems to be working ok. The editing tools look quite the same but loading times look a bit longer. So don't be shy and use this damn "comment" thing to make us know your opinion as a user (no Mom, you do not have to do it). Update: Good news, what it has been improved is the publishing delay. Now it seems almost instantaneous. No more time waiting for a post to be published. Well done!

I've bought --from a brick and mortar shop-- a 4GB ECO pendrive (pendrive is also the brand name). It is a stylish and small pendrive with a rotating cap that hides or discovers the USB socket. It works nicely in Linux and it does too in Windows and OSX. However, it takes a non-negligible time to be detected under WinXP. It turns out that the device is not only emulating a hard-drive but a floppy disk too. So if you have a laptop and you still keep one of these old applications that insist on writing on drive A: you might be pleasantly surprised with this unit. You do not get any differentiation when plugging it in on a Linux box: Two different drives show up (one with 1.5MB capacity and another with 4GB). It seems only the 4GB is recognized by OSX though. My only complain is that the manufacturer only includes a keyring but not a necklace to carry the unit around. And the rotating cap is made of plastic so your metal keys will ruin its looks in a couple of days.

I was looking for a new 12x zoom camera with image stabilization. I turned to eBay to see if I could find better deals and, specially, more offer than you might get from local retailers. I settled with a reputed seller from Hong Kong, and I paid almost the same as the list price from a local seller but the deal included an extra battery and a 1GB SD memory. In the process of looking for a deal on eBay, I detected numerous problems on listings of various products (i.e: digital cameras and USB flash storage). I reported my findings to the Spanish branch of eBay but to date, four days later, I've got no answer from them. I did the same thing to eBay.com Safe Harbor and I've got an automated reply, but some hours later I could see that some of the users accounts had been cancelled. After searching a bit on the 'net I can see that a common scam is to sell fake flash storage (either USB or SD or any other format). The trick is that the storage actually works, but it only contain...

After some months of use I think I can provide you my impressions on how this Ubuntu thing behaves. I used to be a SuSE Linux user since 8.0 and then, after 10.0 I had several minor issues with some hardware. I decided to give Ubuntu a go and since then I have succesfully migrated six different systems desktops to it. I have also installed more than four other copies on several relatives computers. The net result is all of them are happily running. I have been consistenlty using Ubuntu on a daily basis since mid-June and I'm very happy with the result. I was familiar with KDE and I am now using Gnome and I cannot complain either. It just works, though I am sure some of the days I needed to pull one or two tricks out of the many on-line forums about Ubuntu (like getting 3D acceleration on some ATI cards). If you use Ubuntu Dapper Drake I can recommend you this site . My advice is: try it out. If you do not like you can get a refund. Till now it Ubuntu is the only distro you can get ...

Some days ago I saw this nice gadget on the website of a distributor. I thought it might be a good idea: A notepad you take with you, you write as many pages as you want and, when you are back home you can download all your handwritten text or drawings. Of course you can do this with a cheap scanner without having to recourse to buying any new hardware (provided you already own an scanner). However, what I was looking for when I learned about this product was a tablet for drawing. The Genius G-Note series does both: You can use it off-line to write more than 100 pages in the built-in 32MB of flash memory and it can also be used online as a mouse substitute (or companion). I feel much more comfortable when writing and drawing with a pen than with a mouse. The unit came with some Windows software which was ok. Without any software the tablet looks like a USB flash drive to your system where each page drawn shows as a different file. Filenames are numbered (i.e. BK-01-001.DNT, BK-...

I've recently learned that the software taught at the Fine Arts School at the university I am with is based on three comercial programs: Adobe's Photoshop, Macromedia's Freehand and Microsoft's PowerPoint. The three are nice pieces of software in my opinion and I am aware they are used by many companies. What troubles me is that students are left either bankrupt (Photoshop €1.042 , Freehand €520 and PowerPoint €338 , which totals €1.900) or having to get a pirate copy of the software. With all due respect I think they could teach the same concepts (which I guess are the very basics as it is an undergraduate course) using the free counterparts The GIMP , Inkscape and OpenOffice's Impress . These programs have a similar functionality (ok, maybe just 90% of the others features) but are available for free for almost ANY platform, including Windows, Linux and Apple's OS X. For those unfamiliar with the software world, let me put an example: If we compare the soft...

I've been visiting the School of Engineering and Business in Raahe , which belongs to Oulu University of Applied Sciences. It's a nice place to go and it has to get quite cold during winter time. I was giving a talk on Information Security. I was lucky I did not need to fight with any computer during my stay and even skype worked as expected to get cheap phone calls home. The most amanzing device I use there was the new Canon 5D reflex camera and 28-105mm lenses. It's worth more than $4,000 so you do not want this equipment to get lost of damaged. It seems to have very low noise 13.3 Mpixels CCD. Have a look at some of the sample photos . It's kind of heavy weight though (at around 4Kg including the lenses).

As you can see below, for reasons I do not know two copies of the same post are shown. I swear only one showed up when I did my original post, but somehow it appears now. Instead of deleting one I will keep it as a living proof of how many times our computer systems are unfriendly with us :-)

Not sure about commercial success. But it's just awesome.

Not sure about commercial success. But it's just awesome.