Thoughts of a Techie.... » Photography

It’s been a while…..

slimboyfat — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:57:47 +0000

I know it’s been a long time since my last post – but as with everyone else in the world (seemingly) – I’ve been busy…..

Just got back from a week cruising the Venetian Lagoon (Le Boat do brilliant “self drive” trips) – Chioggia is MUCH nicer that Venice I have to say…. and Venice Lido is a dump…. but I’m suitably relaxed and feeling like posting something

I’ve wiped the X41 I blogged about last and I’m preparing to get it in condition to bung on E-Bay – I’ve found the restore CD’s, so XP will be put back on to give it that “factory fresh feel”. I’ve got a Vista Upgrade for it too – but I think I’ll just leave it up to the new owner whether to install that or not

Windows 7 has been pre-ordered for all the boxes at home – plus a spare licence (at £50 a pop it was a bit too good to not get my full allowance!)

I’ve also ordered a Xtreamer from Tranquil.co.uk to give me some additional options for the TV in the back room (Freeview signal no-worky with the internal ariel I got and I can’t be arsed getting an external one and doing all the cabling…..) but this solution should allow me to use the content in my Media Collection wirelessly – I’ll let you know how I get on….

I also invested in a DSLR camera – I’ve been hankering after one for a long time, and I finally bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago – a second hand Nikon D50 with kit lense from E-Bay was my 32nd Birthday pressie to myself…. with a bit of assistance from cash gifts from family So far, I’m VERY happy…. I’ll post some example shots from the Venice trip once I get them organised and pick out some good ones….

Anyway – seeing as this is the most typing I’ve done in one go in months… I’ll stop now and try and think of something meaningful to write about soon

Excuse O’Clock….

slimboyfat — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:01:38 +0000

I know it’s been 5 months since I last posted… but I’ve been kinda “busy” …. 6 weeks holiday: UK – Hong Kong – Singapore – Australia – New Zealand – Cook Islands – USA – UK. No more than 3 days in any one place, LOTS of flights (17ish), 3500+ photo’s and some killer jet-lag for christmas

Obviously, this break left me with a fair bit of catching up to do – both at work and in my “real life”

The mini-note (HP 2133) was been superb – it’s everything I was hoping for in a “netbook” – the reviews generally speak for themselves – so I won’t bore you with another one…. but suffice to say it’s now running Windows 7 and it’s flying – much better than Vista I have to say!

I’m hoping to post a bit more now – work is interesting… VMWare is looking like a winner in our investigation of what Virtualisation software to use, Exchange 2007 is upcoming (pending proof we can support IPhones with it) and a gentle roll-out of Windows 2008 (and maybe SQL 2008) is looking likely I’m finally getting my head around sysprep – as we’re finally rolling out XP – Vista / Win 7 is a while off due to some DOS requirements (I kind you not!) so hopefully I’ll have some bits to blog about soon

I’ve also caught the “Twitter-bug” http://www.twitter.co.uk/slimboyfat if you’re interested (I’ve had the account for quite a long time – but never really “got it” until recently)

Watch this space……

I want one….. please let me beta test this?

slimboyfat — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:03:44 +0000

I’ve NEVER been as excited about a Microsoft announcement as I am about this one.

Charlie, I’d more than like to test this – I’d LOVE to…… I think I’d be a perfect example of what you need to test it – data syncing using a combination of Foldershare and SyncToy and a bunch of batch files / ftp’s etc.

Music / Photo’s / Documents etc. on 3 Laptops and 4 PC’s, Firewire attached disks with loads of storage and multiple copies of all my data – I’ve probably got in the region of half a terabyte of backups dotted around my house (and with my parents for offsite storage) - all being updated (at least) once a day (if not in real-time) and weekly / monthly archives I’ve got for a final worst-case rollback…

Please, please, please can I it? I’ll test any hardware you like – it doesn’t need to be the HP kit – although it’s rather nice and might just have the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) that I’ve been looking for – the heat / noise / power use combo that my current strategy has is something of a problem on the WAF front – it’s not very popular – but probably not a Divorcable Offense like losing all of it!!

The Xbox360 is coming soon to complete the setup – and one of these to go with it would be perfect – it might just justify the 360 – anything that makes it easy to show off the wedding photo’s whilst streaming the music to go with them would be considered a “Good Thing” TM

The ideas that Rick has are excellent and to have voiced them a year ago is visionary, I have to agree with him that they could have done more - but for version 1.0 it’s looking pretty good!

So, if there’s anyone out there from the Windows Home Server team that wants to send me some test kit – I’d be more than happy to give it a trial run?

Zooomr – Pro Account?

slimboyfat — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 08:09:36 +0000

Apparently I can get a free Zooomr account by linking to a photo I have hosted there – but I’, not sure how I’m meant to do that….

Possibly like this http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/gmail_slimboyfat/75655

of maybe I need to do so HTML coding and do this:

Dunno….

but I want a pro account! So I’ll see what I can do and let you know how I get on….

Microsoft Max – Hello Killer??

slimboyfat — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:28:32 +0000

One of the first things to come out of Microsoft’s PDC is Max a photo “organiser” and sharing tool.

I grabbed a copy* and had a play to see if it was any good… and it is… sort of…. it’s no Picasa as it has no editing capabilities – but it does allow you to do Hello-esque photo-sharing (I don’t know anyone else who has it yet… so I haven’t really been able to test that side of it fully – but I’ll get Grasshoppermind on the case later….

* it’s a tiny initial download – but don’t let that fool you – it automatically goes off to get the handily named “WinFX Beta 2 Core Redistributable Package” when you start the install

The interface is clean – but not hugely intuative (but neither is the Picasa / Hello integration…) and it’s not the fastest software in the world – but my test PC istn’t bleeding edge either…. According to Neowin.net:

Microsoft Max requires a minimum of:

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP2. (Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition not supported.)

1.0 gigahertz (GHz) processor.

256 megabytes (MB) of RAM.

200 MB of available hard disk space.

Super VGA (800 x 600) resolution monitor.

All in all, I’d say that the jury is out for now – but it’s a very “nice” demo of things to come in Vista. For more information, have a look at their Blog

Super Cool Flickr add-in app

slimboyfat — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:45:43 +0000

The team at airtightinteractive have a superb flash application that lets you select a tag – and see all the flickr photo’s relating to it.

They also do a variant called simpleviewer that you can run on your own site – I have it running here. I spent about 40 minutes setting it up – and most of that (probably 25 minutes or so) was spent finding a way to generate the thumbnails as my hosting company doesn’t support the GD Imaging Library.

I ended up using Easy Thumbnails from Fookes Software, it’s free, quick and fairly easy to use – and only a 1Mb download!

Give it a go – it’s easy free and looks really nice….. my only complaint is that I can’t change the layout / positioning of stuff in the flash page….. no biggy!!

Thanks to Grasshoppermind for the original heads-up on this.

SpreadHello

admin — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:25:27 +0000

SpreadHello is a newly created community site for promoting the use / enjoyment of Hello – the Picasa add-on that allows you to publish your photo’s straight to your Blogger blog, or share them with friends / family quickly and easily….

I looks like a great site, and I wish Yogarine the very best of luck with it – I strongly recommend it to you if you are a Picasa or Hello user – try it…… what’s the worst that could happen???