Archive for March, 2007

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DSLR Stereotypes

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

I have both Nikon and Canon APS-sensor DSLR systems. All DSLRs are pretty flexible, so it’s amusing how each model gets “labelled” (stereotyped) by users and the press.

Here’s a list of models and labels:

Camera Model Label
Canon D60 the astro camera (can do 4 minute exposures without CCD without internal filter modification)
Canon 1Ds the studio or digital landscape camera (slow but nice images)
Canon 1D Mark II the pro sports or bird camera
Canon 5D the wedding camera (full-frame, nice images, slow)
Canon 30D plus 500mm lens the sports or bird camera
Nikon D100 the Nikon astro camera (least amount of UV and infrared filtering for Nikon, can do long exposures)
Nikon D200 Poor man’s D2X (most of the features, 1/3 the price)

Canon Astrophotography Guide for EOS Digital

Posted in Photography, Tech | No Comments »

Review: “Introduction to the Nikon D200″ DVD

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

The Nikon D200 is a pretty big handful – lots of switches and menu options. I bought the Blue Crane Digital DVD “Introduction to the Nikon D200″ at San Jose Camera to help learn how to operate it.

This professionally-produced DVD is a combination of a male model lecturing, Nikon D200 close-up photos, and demo photos. The script is thorough and well-written, though could use more humor.

I found the chapter on white balance to be clear and especially helpful. They included a cool video of a block of carbon glowing at different temperatures to illustrate Kelvin light temperature.

The only negatives I can think of are that it is a Region 1 coded DVD (Region 0, no region coding, would be preferable), and it would be nice if there were on-screen navigation controls to rewind the previous explanation if needed. More humor would be nice, too.

The DVD plays fine on both Windows and Mac OS X and is about 90 minutes long. They also produce DVDs on a dozen other popular cameras, plus inBrief quick reference guides.


Blue Crane Digital

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Useful Windows Programming Utilities

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

Sometimes you’re stuck on Windows and still need to write and debug code …

These programs help get me through the day:

EmEditor ($40, free trial) freakishly-good Unicode and Asian charset support
Notepad++ (GPL)
vim (GPL)
UnxUtils (GPL) native-compiled Unix shell and tools for Windows
lcc-win32 (Proprietary) small, fast, free for non-commercial use Win32 compiler and IDE
PuTTY (GPL) small ssh client
gnumeric (GPL) Excel clone with scientific accuracy
Opera (Proprietary, free) when Firefox keeps crashing
Mozilla Thunderbird (MPL, free) usable email client
EndItAll2 (Proprietary, not free) process killer by PC Magazine is great for gamers and testers – google for it.

(Plus Internet programs like mirc, skype, ym, irssi and flickr uploader.)

JoS has a thread with some tools that other programmers find interesting.

Posted in Tech, i18n | No Comments »

Yahoo! Search Marketing Forcing Account Upgrades?

Friday, March 16th, 2007

Yahoo! LogoYahoo! Search Marketing has been bugging me for months to sign their new Terms of Service and upgrade my account via email, postal mail and telemarketers. I told them I’d think about it and let them know, maybe later.

I guess they got tired of waiting and just decided to forcibly upgrade my account …


Dear Advertiser,

Congratulations! Your account 'XXX' [188509NNNN] has been successfully upgraded to the new Sponsored Search*. You can now take advantage of all the new features that will help you better connect to the Yahoo! audience.


And for good measure, not allow me to reply back …


Please do not respond directly to this e-mail, as we are unable to receive replies at this address. If you would like to contact Yahoo! Customer Support, please log in to your account at https://login.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com and select the Customer Support link in the upper right corner of the page.


Not appreciated.

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LUG: IMUG “Getting it Right The First Time”

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Luciano Arruda from viaLanguage, Inc. gave a talk titled, “Getting it Right The First Time: Streamlining your software localization and avoiding costly mistakes”, at the IMUG meeting tonite at Apple.

He is originally from Brazil and had some good Portuguese and i18n stories.

Some of his anecdotes were that:

  • on a shrink-wrapped box, if the Portuguese is incorrect, then users will not buy it assuming the contents are also as bad
  • a classic example of bad translation context was translating “Download” from English as “Flush the Toilet” in Portuguese
  • Portuguese users often find Spanish mixed in with software localizations
  • when he has dialect comprehension problems when speaking with other people, he will try Spanish as a lingua franca.

There was a lively discussion afterward on a variety of i18n topics.

My question involved Japanese formal names and UTF-8 browser issues, someone mentioned the bizarre early Oracle UTF-8 effort, Joe’s question was on UTC/GMT/London timezone selection problems on Blackberry and other platforms, which segued into discusson on spring and fall time changes (some countries use solstice, some like Russia peg it on the 1st).

Someone mentioned the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository Project (CLDR) and geonames.de as sources of already-translated strings. Another person asked if anybody was exploiting community translation efforts as a fee-for-service business model.

Regarding Taiwan, the consensus was that the least objectionable way to refer to Taiwan is just … “Taiwan.”

Chuck Soper had a question about standards for specifying regions and “statoids”, for example Northern Italy, where they may use a regional spelling of place names.

Chuck Soper from Vela Design Group talked a little about his Mac OS X applet, VelaClock. It’s $9.95 and can show multiple timezone times simultaneously, as well as phases of the moon. It seems like users, especially in Australia, have been doing strange things to overcome recent timezone changes, like disabling ntp and manually updating their system clocks, due to unavailability of some tz patches.

I had a grilled sirloin steak and side caesar at BJ’s next door to Apple. Quite good steak actually, all for $23.


Vela Design Group Velaclock for Mac OS X
Vela Design Group’s Velaclock Mac OS X Applet

Posted in Business, Japanese, Open Source, Oracle, Tech, Toys, Travel, i18n | No Comments »

Microsoft Groove Thoughts

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

I’ve been looking around at collaboration tools for small and medium-sized companies recently.

Product-wise, Microsoft Groove is a real-time, integrated, encrypted, peer-to-peer, online/offline collaboration environment now built into Office 12. Technology-wise, you could argue that Groove is a network OS.

Overall, I’d say Groove is an easy-to-install clone of Andrews File System (AFS) (distributed storage with fine-grained permissions) with a graphical UI that’s oriented to communications rather than just file sharing.

From what I’ve read online, here is a brief comparison of the Internet and Groove:

Existing Internet Applications Groove Network Applications
email email and Groove messages
chat and presence detection Groove chat and presence detection
ftp, rsync, webdav, subversion, wikis, NFS, samba, Andrews File System (AFS) Groove shared file workspaces
HTML, etc. create forms with Groove (similar to Notes), Microsoft Infopath
VoIP, Skype, YM Voice original Microsoft NetMeeting for now
LDAP, Kerberos, NIS Groove User Mgmt, PKI
standards-based proprietary, Windows-only for now, likely Mac OS X later
not integrated integrated
search with Lucene, etc. Sharepoint search
not easy to install and manage idiot-proof – no servers needed for personal use, Groove server needed for corporate use

I can see why Microsoft bought Groove Networks and Ray Ozzie is now CTO there: to continue making life easier for users and Microsoft’s policy of “embrace, extend and extinguish.”

Windows gains some features that are not easy-to-configure on Unix, and lock-in is promoted in the enterprise similar to the central, exclusive role that Active Directory plays in the network. The lock-in is even worse if companies allow creation of external partner Groove workspaces.

I don’t really see using Microsoft Groove or Sharepoint because they force Windows lock-in on the corporate network. For now, MediaWiki or Twiki (free) over OpenSSL or OpenVPN (free) will have to do in the various heterogeneous environments (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, cell phones.)

wikipedia: Microsoft Office Groove
Marc Olson’s Groove 2007 Blog
Review Groove v.3 Beta – Very Promising New Features, Slick UI And Great Performance
JoS: SharePoint vs Wiki for developers
JoS: What is Sharepoint?
Alfresco Enterprise Content Management System
OpenAFS
Why Is the Internet So Unfriendly To Those Who Work in Teams?
jwz: Groupware Bad

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Photo Bag Notes for DSLR and MacBook Pro

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

I’ve been looking around at medium-sized photo backpacks for storing and carrying my Canon DSLR gear along with a notebook computer.

So I actually visited a few local camera shops with my MacBook Pro 15″ notebook, and tried them out.

Here are my notes:

LowePro

LowePro photo backpacks are well-designed, functional, comfortable to walk in, and usually feature an integrated pull-over water-repellent cover. A MacBook Pro 15″ notebook can easily fit in most Lowepro bags.

They come in black or dark green and have an understated appearance, which is appreciated when you’re on the road with expensive electronics.

CompuRover AW – medium-sized, can fit under airline seat (!) according to one user I met, comfortable, 3L lens plus body in base and computer and accessories in top and sides
CompuTrekker AW – medium-sized, $130 on sale at K&S now
CompuTrekker Plus AW – big but not deep, easy fit
Rolling CompuTrekker AW – medium, fit in carry-on airline bin, very tight fit for MacBook Pro 15″
Rolling CompuTrekker Plus AW – large, may not fit in 737 carry-on airline bin, easy fit for notebook computer

Tamrac

Tamrac products are not quite as well-designed as LowePro for pro photo use. The CyberPack bags are generally gratuitously 2 to 3 inches deeper than equivalent LowePro, more frilly. Some of their products look way too flashy, like the Expedition series of backpacks.

5256 CyberPack 6 Photo/Computer Backpack – does easily fit a MacBook Pro 15″ notebook and overall interior dimensions are about 1″ bigger than the Compu 9.
5259 CyberPack 9 Photo/Computer Backpack – does not easily fit a MacBook Pro 15″ notebook. I was able to stand up a Canon 70-210 f/2.8 IS lens vertically (no filters) in the bag and close the zipper.

Tenba

I looked briefly at some Tenba products at K&S.

Rolling Shootout – large, relatively heavy compared to LowePro, easy fit for MacBook Pro 15″, deep, $200 on sale at K&S

Apollo

On eBay you can buy the Apollo light-gray clone of the LowePro Trekker for $50 from some sellers. The construction is flimsier than LowePro or Tamrac, so you get what you pay for. It does have padded velcroed dividers and can hold almost the same number of lenses as a CompuTrekker 9 or Tamrac Expedition 5.

CaseLogic

CaseLogic cases might be ok for tiny point and shoots, but their larger bags don’t seem designed for pro photo use.

Which one did I end up with? The LowePro CompuTrekker AW.

photo.net: Case for Canon 30D/grip?

Posted in Photography, Tech, Toys | No Comments »

Manually Updating tzdata on RHEL3

Sunday, March 11th, 2007

Redhat LogoThe new US Daylight Savings Time (DST) settings will take effect about now … 1:59 am on March 11 PST.

For those not updating their timezone settings with the RedHat up2date -u tzdata command for various reasons, here’s a manual way of doing it using rpm commands.

For RHEL3, find and download the file tzdata-2007c-1.el3.src.rpm, login as root, stop database replication on the master then all slaves if applicable, then:

rpm -i tzdata-2007c-1.el3.src.rpm
cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
more tzdata.spec
rpmbuild -ba tzdata.spec
cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch
rpm -Uvh tzdata-2007c-1.el3.noarch.rpm
ls -l /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles
cp -p /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime
zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
sync;sync;sync
sleep 3
reboot

Success is indicated by each command succeeding, and zdump showing a bunch of dates for March and none for April:

# zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 09:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 PST
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 10:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 PDT
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 08:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 PDT
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 09:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 PST

To test that the tzdata update is working for MySQL, this command should result in same output for both time stamps:

SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2007-03-11 02:00:00'),
UNIX_TIMESTAMP('2007-03-11 03:00:00');

The reason replication needs to be stopped is to avoid transmitting differing timestamps to the slaves. sync and sleep are to give broken software like MySQL a chance to attempt to flush to disk before getting a TERM signal from reboot. (MySQL often does not shut down cleanly, resulting in database corruption.)

The reboot is needed to ensure applications are not caching old time and timezone values.

Resources

How to verify .rpm files vs. installation?
Re: Other than –rebuild, how do I use an SRPM file?
Using RPM
Redhat Network: tzdata enhancement data
Redhat KB 9950: What do I need to do for 2006 and 2007 Timezone changes …

Posted in Linux, Open Source, Tech | No Comments »

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