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Posts Tagged ‘Memory Card’

10 Interesting Links From February 25th

February 26th, 2009 Greg Smith Comments off
  • Naked corporate FUD-wrestling: Intel, NVIDIA hit the pit – Ars Technica – The fact that Intel wrote a confidential Ion-smashing document for internal use is scarcely surprising; the company prefers to sell an entire Intel solution rather than just an Atom processor. Rather than assaulting Ion with a strong, product-centric argument, however, Intel chose instead to ladle enormous amounts of FUD over the entire document and goes as far as to borrow quotes from other tech sites that were arguably pulled out of context. I won't belabor that point—it's up to the sites involved to decide whether or not their own quotes were misused—but it's fair to say that Intel did some extremely selective quoting.
  • Los Angeles Music – Google’s New Killer App? Why Are Music Bloggers’ Posts Disappearing, and Who Is Deleting Them? - – But in November, some of Spaulding’s posts, both recent and older, long-forgotten ones, started disappearing from his site. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. One moment they were there, the next they were gone. Confused, he started comparing notes with other music bloggers, and they noticed a trend. A lot of posts across the Web, on everything from Abba to Zappa, had vanished.
  • ATP GPS PhotoFinder Mini Review — NaviGadget – Have you ever looked through old photos and wondered, “Where did I take this picture again?” If the answer is yes, then allow me to introduce you to the GPS PhotoFinder mini, the latest geotagging gadget from ATP Electronics. This handy little device will record your GPS position and with the help of a standalone docking station, add it to the image’s EXIF metadata. No need to remember where you shot that photo. After matching the GPS coordinates to the photo’s date and time stamp, your pictures can then be copied from the memory card to a PC and used with a geotagging compatible website such as Flickr. The PhotoFinder mini can also create ‘KML’ route files that are exportable to Google Maps and Google Earth – no computer required.
  • Urine-Fertilizer DIY Kit – We all think of human pee as gross and something that ought to be vigorously “cleaned up” or sanitized. However, human urine is actually sterile (unlike faeces, urine is bacteria-free). This liquid by product of our daily lives can be a rich food source if it gets into the RIGHT part of the right ecosystem. Now, most human urine travels untreated into the waterways and is a significant cause of eutrophication, a toxic condition caused by harmful algae blooms, in the oceans. The excess Nitrogen and Phosphorus in our urine overfeeds algae (like Red Tide) and effectively suffocates fish. However, a pioneering biological waste treament process being used in Switzerland can extract this phosphorus & nitrogen for use as a fertilizer, leaving the rest of urine almost harmless to aquatic life. This kit gives users the opportunity to replicate the new technique at home and fertilize their plants with their own pee.
  • Atlanta police look to restore trust after drug raid killing | ajc.com – The federal sentencing of three ex-Atlanta police officers for the illegal drug raid that left a 92-year-old woman dead closes only one chapter in the tragic case, the Atlanta Police Department said Wednesday.

    “Restoring trust and confidence as well as healing the communities we serve are paramount in our efforts to rebuild a positive relationship with citizens of Atlanta,” the department said in a statement.

  • The Navy Has a Top-Secret Vessel It Wants to Put on Display – WSJ.com – One is called Sea Shadow. It's big, black and looks like a cross between a Stealth fighter and a Batmobile. It was made to escape detection on the open sea. The other is known as the Hughes (as in Howard Hughes) Mining Barge. It looks like a floating field house, with an arching roof and a door that is 76 feet wide and 72 feet high. Sea Shadow berths inside the barge, which keeps it safely hidden from spy satellites.
  • What should government do? A Jindal meditation – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com – But both sides, I thought, agreed that the government should provide public goods — goods that are nonrival (they benefit everyone) and nonexcludable (there’s no way to restrict the benefits to people who pay.) The classic examples are things like lighthouses and national defense, but there are many others. For example, knowing when a volcano is likely to erupt can save many lives; but there’s no private incentive to spend money on monitoring, since even people who didn’t contribute to maintaining the monitoring system can still benefit from the warning. So that’s the sort of activity that should be undertaken by government.

    So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.

  • Amazon.com: Clear Butter Gadget – Maxspace: Kitchen & Dining – If you're the type who struggles when trying to spread cold butter on toast, this is just the gadget you need. My father-in-law loves kitchen gadgets, but this is his very favorite. Simply turning the handle forces a thin ribbon of butter to be extruded from a slot in the end of the dispenser. Even straight out of the refrigerator, the ribbon of butter is soft enough to spread with ease. The handle is big enough that it doubles as a stand, allowing you to store the dispenser in the fridge standing on a shelf. The dispenser is easily washed in the dishwasher.
  • Ergen: Must-Carry Is Due for a ‘Tweak’ – 2009-02-25 15:52:43 – Multichannel News – Armed with market-coverage maps, Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen sat down with reporters last week for a breakfast briefing here before his testimony on reauthorization of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act, the bill that sets the rules of the road for satellite carriage of local TV stations.
  • Kindle 2 Rips Off Authors And Publishers, Says Authors Guild – "Audio rights" should not encompass technologies that convert text to audio on the fly. The audio book industry is about hiring actors and paying them to "act" out books. When you buy an audio book, you don't get the actual book–you get a recording of the actor reading it. When you buy a Kindle book, meanwhile, you get the actual book…and then you ask your computer to read it to you. You're paying for the book–so the author and publisher already get paid. But now they want a double-dip!

Ski Tracking

June 22nd, 2004 Greg Smith Comments off
Skiing is so much fun. Although I don’t do the bumpy stuff very well (thought my 6 year old straight skis don’t help) I do like to go fast. This year we went to Durango during the last week of the season and decided to take some hardware with me and see exactly how fast I was going.

The hardware in question is a Palm Tungsten T3 and a Globalsat Bluetooth GPS receiver. Since the battery life of the T3 is somewhat undesirable I purchased a Palm Power To Go from eBay, but due to a mix up on the sellers part I received DocsToGo instead. This trip was going to have to work with just the battery in the Palm. The battery life of the Globalsat has been reviewed at close to 8 hours which is plenty for a day of skiing.

The software is Cetus GPS, an excellent freeware GPS that describes itself as the “Swiss Army Knife of GPS tracking and field data collection”. It doesn’t do maps which is fine because I need it’s logging feature, that writes the position data to the memory card.

THe rig is pretty simple, I tried to put the GPS somewhere near the top of my body (one day I wore a shirt with pockets in the sleeves that worked really well). I pared the Palm and GPS and set up the software to run. Cetus GPS will keep the Palm on and running as long as it’s getting a signal from the GPS receiver. I turned down the brightens on the screen to the lowest settings to save battery life.

The only real problems I had was the GPS receiver would take some time to get a sat lock, much longer than it takes me here at home. Not sure if that’s due to trees or whatever. The palm and GPS receiver sometimes lost each other, which I didn’t notice till I was done with my run, with the palm securely locked up in my pocket it wasn’t easy to get to. Next time around I’m going to try to find a way to mount the GPS receiver to my helmet or make use of the external antenna port. I then want a way to put the Palm on my chest so I can easily open my jacket and get to it.

To generate a map I used a website called GPS Visualizer which describes itself as “An on-line tool that creates SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) maps and profiles from GPS waypoints and tracks.” I cannot tell you what an excellent tool it is. The website allows you to upload native cetus track files in pdb (palm database format), no conversion needed. It gives you more options than you would ever need to generate the maps and the author only asks for a donation! If you use it, send him a few bucks. The only problem I had was needing to install the Adobe SVG browser plugin. Once installed it worked just fine on Safari. I had tried other MacOS native programs but they all required that I converted my cletus track files and then they didn’t even work with the converted files. What I would really like is to be able to play back the runs, showing a movie like interface that I could download into iMove.

Shown are several runs (not all complete) that had the most interesting looks to them. The original maps are huge so I shrunk them down and increased the scale text in the upper left hand corner. As you can see in the speed map I got up to 36MPH! Improvements to my rig should allow me to record the entire day without interruption.
 

Elevation Map

 
 
Speed Map

 

Day Trip To Santa Fe Photos

November 28th, 2003 Greg Smith Comments off
Today I took a trip to Santa Fe with my parents. There isn’t a whole lot there, for being the capital city of New Mexico. No high rises, just a small square in the middle of the city. A lot of artsy shops and Indian jewelry surround the square. It was pretty cold, under 40 degrees, so we didn’t stay long. Yeah yeah, 40 isn’t very cold compared to some places but it’s cold enough not to want to be in.

I’m having some problems with my Camera. Take the image titled “Looking tword the cathedral”, Images that are dark sometimes have some graininess to them. I also find that I get about 2-3 corrupt pictures. I don’t know if this is some problem with the memory card or the camera. There are a few images I took of the monument in the center of the square, where they removed the word savage describing the indians, that were corrupt.

There wasn’t any protesters in the plaza today but there were some along the way.

Race track
Race track
Edge of town
Edge of town
Protesters
Protesters
Santa Fe
Santa Fe
Near the cathedral
Near the cathedral
Native American art work
Native American art work
Looking tword the cathedral
Looking tword the cathedral
Rooftops
Rooftops
About the monument
About the monument
Down town square
Down town square
Santa Fe Public Library
Santa Fe Public Library