Blog

Moving mobipocket books to the iPad

2010-10-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

A few years I owned a Cybook Gen 3 and at the time I bought a number of books in mobipocket format to read on it. I gave up on the e-ink experience a while a go (took too long to turn a page and the flashing to clear the screen was irritating) but since I picked up an iPad I decided to look at converting those books so I could use them.

Luckily some people have put all the tools in place to let this happen. Firstly there's calibre which converts .mobi and .prc (i.e. mobipocket) files into ePub format which can then be read by iBooks, Stanza or other ebook readers that support that standard. Unfortunately it can't convert DRM'd books but that's where MOBIDEDREM comes into it. Version 013 seems to be the current one at the moment and it allows you to remove the DRM from books you've previously purchased.

More details on using MOBIDEDREM can be found here.

Which Lumix DMC-TZ to get?

2010-05-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

I've decided it's time for a new camera and after looking around for a bit have decided that one of Panasonics Lumix DMC-TZ series is the way to go. The primary use for the camera will be for taking photos while travelling and the name (TZ = Travel Zoom) is the giveaway here. They've packed a 12x zoom into a compact camera body and for what I want it looks perfect.

Cons
A little bulky to comfortably fit in some pockets
Not to going to get anywhere near the same quality photos as a SLR

Pros
Long zoom
Compact enough to carry comfortably while travelling

So which one?
I'm taking three models into consideration here:

DMC-TZ7
DMC-TZ8
DMC-TZ10

DMC-TZ7
This is last years high end model and was met with great reviews. It has a high res LCD screen, 12x zoom and takes photos at 10 mega pixels.

DMC-TZ8

This is the update to last years DMC-TZ6. It has a lower res LCD screen, 12x zoom and takes photos at 12 mega pixels. The main new feature, and why I'm considering it, it is the addition of manual controls.

While the resolution of the images has increased the size of the sensor remains the same meaning that there's more noise and therefore more noise reduction is required which has an impact on the quality of the images.

DMC-TZ10

This is the update to last years DMC-TZ7. It has a high res LCD screen, 12x zoom and takes photos at 12 mega pixels. In addition it offers manual controls and GPS.

So why would I consider the TZ7 over the TZ10?

Well from what I've read the GPS absolutely murders the battery, there's numerous reviews complaining about the constant GPS updates that have meant that the battery performance is severely reduced. The camera updates the GPS every minute while turned on and every 15 minutes when turned off though will stop this after not being used for a few hours. You can of course turn the GPS off.

Some reviews complain that the quality of some pictures taken are worse than last years model. This is due to the fact that like the DMC-TZ8 while the resolution of the images has been increased, the size of the sensor hasn't.

In comparison to the DMC-TZ8 the main advantage is the higher res LCD as the main extra feature - GPS - is something that it sounds like I'm probably going to disable.

Verdict

Reading through numerous reviews I have an idea of what I ideally want:

good image quality
manual controls
large zoom
good battery life

I've also decided that while I like the idea of GPS in a camera that the time it takes to resolve the location and the affect on battery life probably don't make it worthwhile.

Unfortunately what I seem to be left with is a choice between better image quality at higher ISOs or manual controls. I think it's a real shame that Panasonic felt the need to increase the resolution but not the sensor size as if they hadn't the choice would be easy. As it is I'm leaning towards the older model and going for picture quality over manual controls with the DMC-TZ7.

Some other cameras to look at:

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5
Canon PowerShot SX210 IS
Samsung WB650

Some useful links

Sensor Sizes

TZ10 Specs

TZ8 Specs

TZ7 Specs
TZ10 vs TZ7 Specs

Reviews

http://www.photoreview.com.au/reviews/advanced/panasonic-lumix-dmctz10.aspx

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC_TZ10_ZS7/verdict.shtml

http://www.trustedreviews.com/digital-cameras/review/2010/02/26/Panasonic-Lumix-DMC-TZ10/p1

http://www.dcresource.com/reviews/panasonic/dmc_zs7-review/compare

http://www.digitalversus.com/news_id-12512.html

Tweaking Google Notifier for Mac

2009-11-06T10:35:00.000-08:00

Google Notifier for Mac has some basic settings available in the Preferences menu but the useful ones are hidden.

To be able to change these settings you need to hold down the Option and Command buttons when clicking on the Preferences... option in the Notifier menu. This brings up a key/value dialog that you can use to set the options below. The keys are case sensitive

Check Interval
By default the Notifier only checks for emails every 10 minutes, this setting lets you change that.

Key:	AutocheckInterval
Value:	The interval in minutes, e.g. 2

Secure Login
You can make sure that Notifier always encrypts your password when in it logs in.

Key:	SecureAlways
Value:	1

New Site

2009-10-29T11:58:00.000-07:00

While I was in Africa I managed to loose hold of the www.maxieduncan.com domain due to limited internet access, and after problems with Mastercard not allowing me to pay my host I had to give up on the VPS that my previous site was hosted on. I could have simply moved my old site to a new host - and to be honest if I still had control of my old domain I probably would have - but instead I've decided to try out some new technologies.

Where as my old site was implemented in LAMP the new one uses Grails and is running on the Google App Engine. It also takes advantage of the Google Data API to present the photos and of course Blogger now replaces Word Press.

As part of the whole move I've also totally redesigned the layout to something I think looks a lot nicer. One thing to note is that the css I'm using won't display rounded corners in IE but that's because they make it so much harder than all the other browsers.

Trip Advisor travel map

2009-10-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

View my profile
Create your own travel map or travel blog
Deals on airline tickets at TripAdvisor

O2 mobile broadband image degrading

2009-03-03T13:10:00.000-08:00

It seems that O2 - and most other mobile broadbrand providers such as Vodafone - have a "feature" that they don't market. To reduce the amount of the bandwidth that you use they degrade the quality of the images that you see, severely.

O2 seem to provide the option to load the standard image via javascript but this doesn't always work and is very annoying if you want to look at a lot of images.

To get around this Aitne Software have created a bit of software for the Mac called ByteMe Optimiser that when running ensures that the proper images are loaded without any degredation.

Books

2008-11-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

Really cool list of books to read.

User Agent String

2008-11-04T05:36:00.000-08:00

Amusing description of why it is such a mess these days, http://www.webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

No Smoking Version 2.0

2008-10-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

There's a new version of the No Smoking widget that features a new look as well as the ability to display how much money has been saved.

Scheduling applications to run using iCal

2008-09-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

Setting up an application to run at a scheduled time in iCal is pretty easy once you know how.

Instructions:

In iCal create a new event. If using Leopard set this to the time that you want the application to be run rather than selecting all-day.
Set up the event so that it repeats however often you want the application to be run, for example Every day.
In the alarm section of the event choose the Open file option then select the application that you want to run and when it should be run.

Personally I have a seperate calendar set up called "Tasks" that I use for setting up these kinds of things so that I can hide it and not have them clutter up my normal calendar.

It should be as simple as that.

Leopard Screenshot:

Tiger Screenshot:

There are some nice clear instructions on how to this on Maria's Guide as well.

Egypt

2008-09-28T07:41:00.001-07:00

Photos from OnTheGo trip to Egypt are on Picasa.

Spore Update freezing on the Mac

2008-09-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

After downloading and installing Spore it said there was an update on start up, downloaded it and started to install it. When almost completed it stopped updating and became unresponsive for more than half an hour. While I was tempted to kill it a number of posts on the web that said to wait it out and it would come back; they also said that killing the update would break the game. Well waiting it out definitely seems to work.

Firefox Plugins

2007-09-01T06:45:00.000-07:00

The great thing about Firefox as a browser is that it has so many plugins available for it. There are plenty of extensions out there, but the ones below are those which I use.

General

Google has some useful extensions, I especially like the Notebook one.

Flashblock is great if you find Flash based ads annoying. It disables all Flash content on websites but lets you enable the parts you want by either clicking on the animation that you want to see, or unblocking the entire site.

Stylish is a useful extension if you want to change to default look and feel of a particular site.

Download Status Bar is a nice little extension that replaces the default download dialog with a small unobtrusive bar at the bottom of the page.

Programming

Firebug is by far the most useful web development tool that I know of. It allows you browse and edit the DOM, javascript and CSS, and is much more powerful than the default DOM inspector that is provided with Firefox.

HTML Validator is another using debug tool to make sure that a page contains valid HTML.

Tamper Data can be used to intercept and modify requests and responses.

Bloglines Skin

2007-08-27T02:00:00.000-07:00

While there are many RSS aggregators out there the one that I prefer is Bloglines. As it's browser based it's platform independent and I can view my RSS feeds the same way anywhere. While there are other browser based versions, such as Google Reader, this is the one that has worked best for me.

The only problem that I've had with it is that it is ugly; that has now been solved by hicksdesign who has provided a css skin to make it look more attractive.

National Geographic Picture of the Day Wallpaper

2007-03-11T12:03:00.001-07:00

29/Oct/2009 I no longer support this script as NG changed the way that photos too regularly. The previous versions are supplied for reference only.

8/Mar/2009 - National Geographic no longer provide a downloadable picture every day. The new version checks to make sure there is an image before replacing the desktop picture. What this means is that the desktop picture will no longer change every day.

Thanks to Anton for supplying the fix.

I've just put up a simple automator application that downloads the latest Picture of the Day from National Geographic and sets it as the desktop wallpaper. You can of course just go to the previously linked page to do this but if you set up this in iCal to run daily then you'll get a nice new desktop everyday without having to do anything.

Technical notes

Using Automator you can edit this application to do the following:

You can remove the step that stores the image to the Pictures directory.
By default the 1280 x 1024 image is downloaded. If you change the grep argument from "xl.jpg" to "sw.jpg" then the 800 x 600 will be downloaded instead and if you change it to "lw.jpg" the 1024 x 768 will be.

I also written up some instructions on how to set up iCal to run the application daily.

South & Central America Phot

2006-12-29T11:25:00.001-08:00

The photos from my trip to South and Central
America are now uploaded and online. It's taken me a while to get around
to it but they are finally there.

You can see them in
my photos
section.

No smoking widget

2005-10-22T19:30:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately I have become a bit of a
smoker and while I find it easy to stop smoking for a while I usually
start back up again after a month or two. To provide me with some
motivation to really give up I have created a widget to let me keep track
of the number of days that I've managed to not smoke. It works quite well,
seeing the counter reset to 0 after you give in and have a ciggy hurts
because you know how hard it is to get it back
up.

You need to have an Apple Mac to use the
widget. The widget itself can be found here.