iPod Camera Adaptor Revisted

Having been using my camera for some photo journalism today (well, recording the postion of buried water pipes, anyway) I decided to give my iPod Camera Adaptor another go with the EOS 350D. I set the camera to ‘Print/PTP’ mode and hooked it up… Now I tried this once before but I didn’t have any luck but I’ve updated the iPod firmware since then so who knows?
I shoot RAW + JPG so I was expecting, if it was going to do anything at all, that it would copy the JPGs and probably ignore the RAWs but when I checked the iPod hard drive from my PC there were the RAWs too!
So, the iPod does work as a photo storage drive for RAW images. I’m not sure whether it can handle displaying them, I doubt it but it can cope with eight megapixel JPGs without any trouble.

Take Two Browsers Into The Shower?

Those boys at Google have done it again (maybe).

They’ve released an extension for Firefox 1.5 (you are using that, right?) that synchronises your browser state between machines. What do I mean by ‘state’? Well, try this:

 

·         Cookies

·         Saved Passwords

·         Bookmarks

·         History

·         Tabs and Windows

 

Tabs and Windows! That’s pretty cool. Any or all can be switched off (switching them all off would make the extension a bit pointless though) and they can all be encrypted.

I’m trying it at the moment and don’t have an opinion on the performance yet, which is why I said they may have done it again.

If you’re feeling adventurous, give it a try. The FAQ is here. It’s good to see some cool companies give you information.

 

Wearing Out F5?

Windows PCs are funny things; each one has its own unique personality. My work PC, for example, wouldn’t show changes to the file system through Explorer unless I manually refreshed the window by pressing F5. This was particularly irritating when creating a new folder because while the folder was created with the name highlighted to allow me to rename it, I couldn’t see it! Refreshing the window displayed the folder but cancelled the rename operation, so I had to highlight the folder and select rename again and finish the job. It doesn’t sound much but when a two step task becomes a five step task for no good reason it makes me wonder why.

The cure for the problem is of course in the Registry and if your PC is afflicted with the same problem here’s how to fix it:

Start RegEdit and work through the tree until you reach ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update’. In that folder there should be a Value called ‘UpdateMode’, if it’s not there, create a binary Value and give it that name. On my work PC the value of this Value (stay with me) was 1. I’m guessing this a polling interval or something similar. Change the value to 7 and close RegEdit. That’s it; you’re done. Make a change in Explorer that normally would need you to refresh by hand to see it and you should see the change immediately without having to do a thing.

Alternatively, save the text below as refreshfix.reg and double-click it, agree that you are sure you want to add the information to the Registry and you’re ready to go:

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Update]

"UpdateMode"=dword:00000007

 

Sshhh… It’s Apple

Me: Well, Apple have released a firmware update for the iPod.

Not Me: I didn’t hear about that! Did you get an email?

Me: Nope. iTunes has been updated and I was using Google to find out what had changed when I saw mention of the iPod update.

Not Me: Hang on, you mean Apple didn’t say what was changed

in iTunes?

Me: Not a thing. The forums say it’s something to do with the

Nano/Nike bop while you jog thing.

Not Me: I see. Well, I’m capable of choosing my own music and have

no need for a musical pedometer.

So about this iPod update; what does it do?

Me: Apple say ‘Bug fixes’.

Not Me: Bug fixes are good, but that’s a bit vague.

What kind of bug fixes?

Me: Not a clue.

Not Me: Alright, so they didn’t go into detail but they said something about the video playback bug, right? I mean, that screwed-up a lot of the Apple faithful.

Me: Nope.

Not Me: I see. I’m noticing a pattern here: So I’m expected to install this update which may or may not fix something that’s been bothering me and it may introduce more problems or change functionality, like the last one did?

Me: Pretty much, yes. Though I don’t think Apple actually care. It’s not cool to worry about things not working. People who aren’t cool aren’t Apple.

Not Me: Have Apple even heard of release notes?!

Me: I’d have to go with ‘No’ on that one. You see, my confused friend. Apple aren’t like other companies; their products exude an… Appleiness that means that details like what’s wrong, what’s fixed and when it happens just aren’t ‘cool’ and don’t matter. In the same way that things like good engineering, customer support, value for money, profit and loss, working Wi-Fi, overheating and lifts that work just don’t matter; they’re not ‘cool’.

Not Me: I’m installing Linux on a home built rig and listening to FLAC files on a valve amp.

Me: You said it.

Some Vista Graphic Cleverness For XP

One of the few things I’m looking forward to in Vista is the 3D Alt-Tab mechanism. Well, now that’s available on XP thanks to TopDesk from the good people at Otaku Software. Click the link to see what I’m talking about if you don’t already know. Give the trial a run.

Something to watch-out for is if you have another application, like the Microsoft Alt-Tab Replacement PowerToy, then that will have control of Alt-Tab and prevent TopDesk from working. The solution is simple; remove or disable whatever else you’ve been using!

An additional benefit for users of Logitech mice with a task switch button is that the program doesn’t have to respond only to Alt-Tab. So what? Well, this provides an opportunity to get away from the <cough> functional task list provided by Logitech by re-mapping the mouse button to a key combination in the mouse driver and then telling TopDesk to use that combination to activate. Once that’s done, all the task switching gets done using the same cool technique.

All this for about £5 a go! Can’t be bad. Now if only Linux had the same kind of thing…

In case you’re wondering, alt-tab won’t work as a key combination for the mouse button because you’ll switch away from the software before it can record it. Which is why if you do this make sure to re-map the mouse button before configuring TopDesk or you’ll have the same problem.

Poor Man’s Hybrid Drive

I haven’t heard anyone else suggest this so either I’ve had a really good idea or I’ve been missing out on something:

Hard drive manufacturers are starting to make drives with a lump of flash memory in them so that frequently used files can be reached more quickly; the trouble is, these drives are so new they’re barely available and the ones that are available are as expensive as you’d expect something as new a revolutionary as this to be. So, what to do? Well, the other day I saw a message box pop-up on my PC , followed by a click from my hard drive as it woke-up followed a second or two later by the playing of the sound file associated with the message box and I thought to myself how that whole process wasn’t as smooth as anyone would like and won’t it be great when we get these hybrid hard drives. Then it hit me: Use a USB flash memory stick to hold files that get used often! Things like sound files, wallpaper, all the things that are used so often they more or less blend into the background (or at least, are supposed to). This idea can be used for other files too, like perhaps mail client files (Outlook PST files, for example). The only real limitations are how much space is available and whether the program can be convinced to store it’s files there. I’m thinking this will let things happen more smoothly on PC’s where the hard drive has spun-down and also save power and wear and tear on the hard drive. I’m also thinking about perhaps installing Firefox on a stick to see whether there’s any performance gain to be had there. This ties in neatly with Portable Apps and the work they’re doing on being able to take your most important applications with you from computer to computer.

[Edit] Apart from the limitations mentioned above, the real disadvantage of this approach is that you have to do it by hand, finding the files and changing settings. The advantage, apart from cost and availability, is that you get to chose the files that are stored in flash. The files I mentioned above are most likely not going to stay in a cache for long because they aren’t used often enough so by my choosing which files to move I can taylor the storage as I want it and after all, isn’t that all any geek wants?

So, what do you think? Is this old news or a good way to get flash storage working for you without the big outlay?

Podless, I mean, pointless (IMHO)

Since I had the opportunity to read PC Gamer today, I happened on an article highlighting that iPodLinux is now available for the video iPod. Now, I’m no stranger to Penguin love so I thought I’d take a look. Well, I sort of wish I hadn’t. Why? Because for all the brilliant work that’s been done to make the project work, I have to ask, what’s the point? Sure, on an older model you can now run videos and that can be a good thing depending on the screen but other than that and the ability to play FLAC files on some of the variants that’s about it. It seems to me that the vanilla iPods (no, that’s not a new colour for them) are slooowly catching-up with what iPodLinux can do. Oh, you can run a file browser and Doom and there’s a Matrix style screen saver thingy that doesn’t save the screen but take another look at those three and the flaws soon appear: Doom is never going to be as playable on an iPod as, well, practically anything else with an interface so that’s more of a technology demo than a real game. The Matrix scrolling demo is just that, another demo among many that are available and as for the file browser; without Linux there’s no need for it anyway! Who would sit on a park bench and need to know where the files are organised on their iPod? Bearing in mind that we’re talking about files that aren’t video, photos or music because they have dedicated lists in the iPod interface.

I don’t know… it’s very clever, no question. There are a lot of talented and dedicated people producing iPodLinux and they’ve been doing it for some time but it seems like a solution looking for a problem; unless someone produces a killer app for it, what’s the point?

If I’ve missed the killer application that’s going to make me want to use it just show me and I’ll flash the little fella right there and then

Is Your PC Vista Ready?

Do you care? If you do, run this handy tool from Microsoft to get the bad news on just how much of your PC will have to be replaced in order to get all the Vista UI niceness. Which, lets be honest, is about the only thing left in Vista worth having.

[Update] Hey, whatdoyaknow? My PC is Vista ready. I should *&$@ well hope so too! Well, all apart from the SCSI card but I think Microsoft or Adaptec take some perverse pleasure in not providing updated drivers because I had that problem when I upgraded to XP too. This time, when I’m eventually forced to upgrade, I’ll just ditch the drive altogether.
Interestingly, having seen what Vista does on my PC already and how it handles the hardware, the upgrade advisor lumps the SCSI card for which Vista doesn’t (yet, I suppose I have to say) have a driver together with cards like my Nvidia graphics card which is definitley supported both by the manufacturer and out-of-the-box. Is that a pre-production short-fall, lazy research or intentional muddying of the waters? A bit of each I suspect.
Incidently, I installed Vista on one day, a Wednesday, I think, and having waited about four hours and tricking it into ignoring the SCSI card (there’s no option to ignore the hardware, it’s either all supported or Vista WON’T install. Thanks, Microsoft, for giving me the option. Isn’t it still my PC?) I took a look at it, had a bit of a rumage and swtiched back to XP the following day. Why? Well, from what I saw of a recent beta it wasn’t really worth the bother. Office 2003 got broken in the upgrade (ah, the I love the smell of irony in the morning) and frankly Vista didn’t offer enough of an incentive for me to try to fix it. How’s that for a damning assessment?
So, until I discover something new my official teccy.com rating for Microsoft Vista is: Feh.

Ding ding ding! New Gadget! Ding ding ding!

I’ve been reading a few camera magazines at the moment so that I can feel like I’m contributing to the process of Owen and H spending about half a grand of my cash on a digital SLR. I’d like to go on record at this point by saying that I have complete faith in their recommendations and guidance on this and it’s not often I say that about anyone.

Anyway, back to the magazines. One of them was talking about how to get extra storage space while on the move by dumping pictures on to an external hard drive and suggested the iPod was good for this sort of thing. Now, I thought that the camera interface wasn’t compatible with the iPod Video but it turns out that’s just not true. So what does it do? Well, plug the small white box into the bottom of the iPod and a new menu appears, plug the camera USB cable into the other end of the white box and click the option to start the transfer on the iPod and wait. When it’s done, all the pictures are copied into their own ‘film roll’ folder and you’ve got the option to remove the pictures from the camera so you can take some more.

The pictures can be viewed on the iPod and used in a slideshow if you want to and when you’re ready to copy the pictures to your PC it’s easy; they’re in a ‘DCIM’ folder on the iPod just like they would be on a flash card ready to be copied of by Explorer or photo software.

 

In summary; how cool is that?!

Crazy tin-foil hat

I noticed this the first time a few years ago but this time I have to get the story out:

 

I’ve been looking for a new digital camera for about a year now; I was hoping to get the Canon PowerShot S90, working on the theory that the S70 does most of what I want but it’s a bit slow and the resolution isn’t high enough, I’m after 8 Mega pixel, it’s successor, the S80 does most of what I want but it doesn’t support Raw (see a pattern here?). So how does the S90 match up to my requirements? Well, it falls at the first hurdle; it doesn’t exist. For some reason Canon haven’t updated that particular part of the range this year. I’ve noticed that Canons compact cameras seem to be settling at about 5 Mega pixel while the low to mid-range D-SLRs are hovering around 8 Mega pixel or so. So what’s this about tin-foil hats? I’m coming to that…

So, this week, having discussed it with my two go-to guys for photography, Owen and Henry, I’ve settled on the Canon 350D with a Sigma lens rather than the standard kit lens because it gives a bigger bang for my buck. This camera is 8 Mega pixel, supports Raw, it exists (always a bonus, and one-up on the S90), and will let me try out all the stuff I’ve been wanting to try like long exposures (so to speak) and short depth of field, not to mention being cool.

You’re still wondering where the metal headwear features in this, right? Okay. I’ve been a subscriber to PC Plus magazine for a number of years now, and while it’s a great magazine it has one particular trait that I don’t see in any others, which is that they seem for some reason to have articles on what I’m doing at the time I’m doing them; putting in a wireless network, there’s the article. Having anti-virus trouble, there’s the group test. Setting-up a Linux box, here’s the new beginners guide. You get the idea. Now, understand that these articles don’t appear within a couple of months of me doing that stuff; they’re there in that month’s issue. And no, I don’t read the magazine and then decided to do it; the idea comes first, then the magazine.

So, here I am, deciding the time has come for a new camera and opting for the 350D but with a different lens. Wondering whether their track record will hold up I decided that I’d wait for the next issue of PC Plus before parting with any cash just to see what happens… I got home today and sure enough there’s PC Plus with an article on D-SLRs and a review of the 350D that says it’s a great camera but the kit lens isn’t up to much. 4.5/5 Stars.

As if that doesn’t have me reaching for the bug detector, this week I also replaced the fans in my Mum’s PC with quiet ones from QuietPC.com just like the ones I put in my PC a while ago, and PC Plus are also running an article on making your PC quieter!

What are the chances of digital SLR cameras and making PCs quieter being in the same issue at the exact time I’m doing that stuff?!

 

Okay, I know they’re not really bugging me and watching my every move and that they try to give their readership topical information but wow, that’s some sort of sustained coincidence. I’m not complaining; getting the information I need exactly when I need it is great!