Found link on Bruce Schneier’s site. Very interesting:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,770191,00.html
ATC9K Review – Follow Up #2: Mount Options
It looks like Oregon Scientific realized where the weakness of their ATC9K camera is – the mount system. This morning I went to their site to look for a spare battery, and saw that they started selling two additional mounts!
UltraClamp Camera Mounting Kit
and
Fat Gecko Camera Mount with suction cups
Additionally, they’ve added an external battery charger and a standard mount kit which is available separately from the camera.
This is great news. As I wrote before, I believe that the mount options were the Achilles’ Heel of Oregon Scientific’s camera system. What I still would like to see is stronger connection between the Camera Clamp (the “hugger” that holds the cylindrical body of the camera) and Base Mount. They both are made of plastic, and I am just a little nervous about how well they will hold in more extreme conditions of Down Hill riding, or exposure to high airflow of motorcycle riding. If only the Camera Clamp was made of more substantial plastic and had a standard photo tripod screw thread!
What I also like about the setup is that the connection is the standard connection for photo equipment, which means that when you are buying the UltraClamp, it’s compatible not only with ATC9K, but also with other cameras, so you can use a point’n’shoot as well.
Additionally, it would be great if Oregon Scientific came up with sticky mounts like he GoPro’s which you could stick to places like car’s bumper or motorcycle’s swingarm for impressive video angles, leaving the mount there, and attaching camera to it when you want to make a video.
Arduino-based Geek Excitement
I am sitting here smiling like an absolute idiot and just need to share the excitement with somebody. I recently was looking for some inspiration in photography and bumped into Matt Richardson’s video on how to make a sound-activated flash trigger for high-speed photography (such as pictures of a bullet going through something, or a glass being shattered) based on Arduino chip.
I realize for some, this may not be a reason for much excitement and Arduino chips are nothing new to them, but keep in mind, I’m no engineer, I barely understand electronics, but i do like little DIY projects.
Because the trigger is Arduino-based I can just write code to perform tasks (turning off lights then arming the trigger then waiting for the sound, triggering the flash, closing the shutter and turning the lights back on)
I’ve never heard of Arduino before, and yesterday after getting it in the mail, I started reading up on it, was playing around, and that thing is amazing – I just can’t believe how easy it is for somebody who doesn’t know the inner workings of IC to make that chip perform tasks according to program. I have not assembled the trigger yet, but I did figure out how the Arduino needs to be connected to the rest of the parts by looking at the code and i got all the parts working – Now it’s just a matter of putting it all together.
Now I have whole winter to figure out what kind of Arduino-based mod to make for my bike. Last winter, it was my own LED brake light repeater/blinker, this time, i’m getting into programmable stuff!
Microsoft and Adobe
Microsoft executives met with Adobe executives, and apparently, topic of merger was discussed.
Makes sense,from business standpoint, but I get chills once I imagine the result:
Microsoft Photoshop CS7 Service Pack 3 build 4398
I can see a mass suicide by photographers and designers, lead by the especially sensitive/creative souls (the Mac users of Photoshop soft) 😉
So appropriate:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=13
Read today: Ballmer on tablets:
Steve Ballmer thinks that tablets are tomorrow.
“Tablets are clearly an important piece of the consumer puzzle. You guys have had tablets forever, but one of the things that makes the iPad compelling is its really long battery life and instant-on abilities. Can full-blown Windows slim down fast enough or do you see a need for, say, a grown up Windows Phone device that is bigger?
Ballmer: I think probably the things of tomorrow are best left for tomorrow and the things of today are best discussed today. So today, I will focus on Windows Phone.”
Ironic, given that Microsoft has had a tablet for years now. I’m not a target customer for a tablet – I do fine with a laptop and a B&N Nook for now, but given that iPad sells faster than iPhone in the first year, I’d say tablets are “today”, not “tomorrow”.
OnStar Facebook
OnStar announced today that they will/may offer Facebook link via voice-to-text.
I suppose it should offer an alternative to texting while driving, but I seriously doubt that the texting audience will switch. I wonder what the updates will look like now:
John Doe turned left
John Doe ran the red light
John Doe via OnStar: “Oh shit…”
John Doe likes Concrete Retaining Wall
Google Sync / Blackberry / Multiple Google Calendars
I find Google Calendars quite useful and I use them quite a bit. I have multiple calendars, one for personal items, one for my work, one for activities, etc. When I just got my Blackberry Storm and installed Google Sync on it, it worked perfectly fine and allowed me to sync all of those calendars. However, somewhere between upgrading firmware I realized that Google Sync stopped syncing any of the calendars except for the default.
Searching for answer on forums only lead to suggested answer:
Go to Google Sync > Options > Calendars and choose the calendar from the list.
The problem is that I had only one calendar on that list – Default Calendar (which is not even the name of my default calendar – it’s called Main Calendar)
I tried upgrading Google Sync, reinstalling it, resetting sync – nothing helped.
Just for kicks, I decided to sign into Google Sync using not my usual email, but the gmail email (which i’m not using, yet it was created, since i’m using multiple Google services). And voila! The calendar list got loaded and events from all of them synced!
Also, while in the process on the new firmware for Storm and Storm 2, it appears that Google Sync starts running in Compatibility Mode, which prevents people from being able to log in (user can type in the email, but not the password, and only portrait mode works), the solution there is to go to Settings > Applications > Google Sync and check Disable Compatibility Mode
Hopefully folks at Google will work out these bugs, until then, I hope this helps
Orphaned .msp files
Today got a call from a client of mine – one of the machines has full hard drive. You’d think – what can be more obvious – you pile up files, the hard drive gets full! Something seemed odd though – that computer has a lot of space on hard drives. So i decided to investigate. Downloaded WinDirStat, ran it and saw that 2/3 of the space is occupied by a bunch of 100Mb files which are located in C:\Windows\Installer folder. Odd. Started digging, and here is what I found: those are orphaned installer files – microsoft update program had failed repeatedly for some reason (happened to be failing on Office Service Pack 3, a 100Mb pack), and computer had automatic update “on”. Which means that every day for a few months the update program would go, download the file and try to install it, fail, complain in a form of a small pop-up, yet do the same thing next day.
Solution (found here):
a) Download what is known as Windows Install CleanUp Utility which includes program called msizap.exe (this program is also included in Windows SDK, so if you have SDK, no need to download the CleanUp utility)
b) Run the msizap.exe with parameter G! (stands for “delete orphaned packages silently”)
Voila! 2/3 of hard drive space is available!
Hitachi SimpleTough 500 Gb Drive
As I started preparing for my trip to AZ, I decided to check my Hitachi SimpleTough 500 Gb drive that I bought back in August. And here, as they say, things got interesting. My laptop cowardly refuses to see the drive when i plug it in! LED is on, I can feel vibration, so the drive is getting power, but I cannot see it neither in USB “Safely Remove Hardware” window, nor in Disk Management utility. I also tried it on my Dell Precision workstation with exactly the same result.
SimpleTech’s Support site is not particularly useful. The FAQ section lists this useful blob:
1) I have the drive plugged in but I cannot find the drive in “My Computer”, why? The most likely cause would be not enough power provided by a single USB port on your computer. Unplug the portable drive from the cable and unplug the cable from the computer. Now, plug the cable into 2 USB ports directly on your computer. (If you have a desktop, you should plug the USB cable directly into the USB ports on the back of the computer. If this is a laptop, you should plug directly into a USB ports on the computer. Do not plug into a USB hub or docking station). Then plug the drive into the cable. In a few seconds you should see the drive listed in the “My Computer” window as a SimpleDrivePS.
Granted that there is no FAQ for SimpleTough drives (these come with USB cable permanently attached to the drive (photos later tonight), and adjusting for the difference in cables, we are still stuck with a recommendation to plug drive into 2(!) USB ports. One of my first portable USB drives (it was some generic brand) came with an adapter like that – there were two male USB connectors and one USB female. One of the male connectors was the main and second one was only pulling power. I bought that drive some time in 2006, and it died on me in a matter of year or so. I expected a little better from SimpleTech/Hitachi.
I’ve placed a support inquiry, so we’ll see what comes out of it.
The interesting thing about this particular drive is that there is a DC connector that is visible right underneath the rugged cable, though the drive itself does not come with a DC adapter (well it is a PORTABLE drive, right?). I can see support response being something along the lines of “you need to buy a DC adapter in RadioShack (support site even lists a particular model) and then it will work”. I don’t know about you or folks at SimpleTech, but to me, having an additional cable and/or dual USB cord with a portable drive really outweigh thebenefits of portability. I’ve bought this drive because i needed a portable drive that i would not be afraid of tossing around a little, when I’m on a run.
Photos and updates to follow.
Headhpones Wiki
Courtesy The Audiophiliac : Wikiphonia wiki about headphones.
I would not call myself an expert, but i do care what i put on/into my ears. what i liked the is this table (trip down the memory lane) – Russian headphone models and the Western(Eastern) models they were cloned (read: “skommunizdenny”) from.