Archive for February, 2006

Maybe not all the secrets, but a good number of ideas to keep in mind about the storage and archival of data that is pouring out of our digital cameras. Here is what is proposed by the article “Storing Your Digital Images”
(by Vincent Bockaert) seen on dpreview.com.

All you have to keep in mind is that optical media is not eternal (far from that as you know if you have been reading this web site lately).

This is just a silly attempt to create some search engine buzz around a merely invented word. Some bloggers are currently trying to give this word a maximum visibility. And it works, despite being mostly silly.

You may have wondered were the drawings of the Linux penguin come from. As a matter of fact, there was indeed somebody who draw the cute logo and it is rather easy to find the real author.

Larry Ewing is this guy with a pen. You will find nearly everything you want on his web site. Including a description of how he drew these penguins.

Consequently, we can learn everything about drawing Tux – this is the nice name of this nice penguin.

US girls are easy to date online! At least, that is what is told by The Register. Don’t miss that special issue article for Valentine’s day.

I thought this one was for you, Frank

This is the blog I use to test the operation of the ready-to-be-used blog installment in WordPress.com:

Microsoft announced that the poor sequel to Halo (the console video game shooter) will appear on the PC platform. But this is going to bring a new marketing twist: It will only run on Vista, the upcoming Operating System of Microsoft.

It is not known if the reason is to use an environment where copying a HD-DVD media will certainly be more difficult than on any other platform (software copy protection), or if the reason is just to try and find a way to promote Vista (surprisingly, Vista is not considered by the consumer as the next great thing).
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When you use a blog engine software as WordPress, you soon discover (as I do right now) that one of the great helps this is bringing to the web site owner is the quick and easy reconfiguration and the fast adaptation of the web site that becomes possible.

For example, the categories list (the news themas appearing in the menu on the right side here) can be modified in a matter of seconds without the need for a lot of HTML code. A few clicks and the list is changed. A mere program line and the presentation changed.

WordPress users know that it is possible to automatically ping search engines (inform a search engine of the updates of the contents of the blog/web site. WordPress uses XML-RPC and RPC2 protocols for this.

I collected a number of ping services that are compatible with WordPress
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Did you notice that? Now, you can leave a comment or write an answer to the articles you find on this web site. It is as simple as registering yourself on the site (go to the right menu, down to Meta). You will also be able to post articles of your own on the web site (but only after my subjective approval, of course).

Some new features to improve the communication between ourselves.

Long ago, I have abandonned Dimage Viewer, the free image viewer coming with the Maxxum/Dynax 5D and 7D. At first, I thought that it was not really compatible with my old Windows 98 configuration. It kept crashing unexplicably and I was really fed up with the thing. As it was mostly uninteresting, I switched to the excellent viewer irfan View and the pretty good RAW converter RawDrop (a front end for DCraw).

I recently discovered the very probable reason for these crashes. It seems that in the forums people repeat that anytime the Konica-Minolta program sees a JPEG picture that has been rotated by another program, it reacts by crashing. Probably insufficient testing.

Anyway, the other programs I use are more than what I need. So, forget about Dimage Viewer.

There are days when you are lazy (you don’t want to open the box of your PC to check what’s under the hood). There are days when all is against you (that cheap PC card only has a reference number printed on it). The rest of the time you’d just like to have a nap.

Here comes Everest Home Edition (successor to AIDA32), a freeware that allows to detect your hardware and software configuration. It comes most handy when you have no clue as to what your hardware is (It happened to me recently with an old PowerColor Radeon VE graphic card that did not show any sign of recognition and I could not find the right driver). This little gem of software will simply tell you all about your hardware and software equipment (it did recognize all of this old hadrware I was using).

Unfortunately, Everest Home Edition is no longer distributed (or it is discontinued) by its original manufacturer (Lavalys). You will have to use Google to find it. But the program is a little gem.

I found it on MajorGeeks.com. You may find it elsewhere, too.

This is probably what happens when an alcoholic sailor meets a mod’ PC geek. The English Metku.net web site shows us the building of a micro PC inside a whisky bottle. Yes, this is no typo: A micro PC made out of very small boards installed inside a whisky bottle. Even if you don’t want to know the details, have a look at the photos…

For lazy people, Google prepared a set of free software programs, easy to use and supposed to create some competition for the major software companies (like Microsoft). This is called the Google pack and it works with Windows XP.

The installation of a brand new blog engine on a web site like mine (containing a lot of things I do not want to change despite the useful addition of new features) was something I feared slightly.

It was not half as difficult as what I expected. Let’s see how it went.

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As you may have noticed a few little things changed recently on this web site. Actually, I have added a new blog engine to handle the bulk of the daily publication of news: WordPress.

If you are interested in what I found on the web in 2005 and before, just have a look at the original page.