technology and audio matters

I’m embarrassed to say I’ve just discovered that Thunderbird can display emails by day received i.e. Today, Yesterday , Last Week etc. I stumbled across this only by accident and had to ask a neighbor who kindly new how to setup. It’s certainly not a default view as I’ve never seen it on a fresh install. In case I’m not the only one, first simply select the sort view first then ‘group by sort’ . Image below:

Always wanted one of these ultrasonic cleaners, Maplin have had them in their catalogue for some time as well as CPC. Just bought one today in Tchibo (Richmond , Surrey) for a little under £14. I think they’ve a bit of sale. Cleaned my watch bracelet and a spectacle or two. Came out gleaming , well a fair bit cleaner, great! I guess it might be useful for other bits around the home, like the odd CD, clock or watch parts…

So now we have a new camera from Canon the A650 with a whopping 12.1 Mega Pixel image capability and 6X optical zoom. Might this now be as a good as a Canon G7 which I had my eye on? It’s got more pixels although as I’d be the first to acknowledge pixels alone aren’t enough. Still it might satisfy my needs. There’s also the announcement of the A720 with similar 6X optical zoom and 8 Mega Pixels. Think I best wait for the A650 reviews before rushing into the G7.

This might sound familiar to you. You buy all the magazines, study the on line reviews. I’ve even printed the latter out and used up half a ream of paper! I’ve been hard at work reading about the Canon G7 trying to weigh this up against the A710 and A640. All different animals I know but their possibly better than my current crop of digital cameras, certainly in the pixel count. OK so the G7 doesn’t have RAW output, the flash I understand is feeble on the A710 (well it takes forever to recharge), the A640 takes 4 cells and only has a 4x optical zoom. Then what happens, within a year of all of these models coming out, we’ve got a new Canon G9 announcement (with RAW support), a A650 and A720 all during this month! Sometimes don’t you just wish for a slower rate of change?

Very entertaining series by Sanjeev Bhaskar on his trip around India and Pakistan. Last nights episode (sadly the last in the series) included a visit to Pune. I made a brief visit their (as well as Bangalore) on behalf of Psion back in 2000 whilst looking for software developers to partner on the failed Odin project. I have fond memories of my trip to India and would love to return if I had the chance. I still remember asking the concierge in one of the hotels (4/5 star) if they suffered locally from mosquitoes. “None Sir” – came the immediate reply “we don’t have any in the hotel” I should hope not I thought!  A couple of photos below, originally taken on 35mm (Olympus mju140) that broke subsequently on the trip. Amateur prints scanned. (Come to think of it , both Olympus’s I’ve owned have failed on me!)

Struggling with Wifi in your home? I’ve just been looking at a couple of solutions at a colleagues house :

- Devolo dLAN Ethernet Homeplug adapters, model 1154

- Netgear WGXB102

Both seem to just work, not a full endorsement I know but the technology seems mature today. Take care if fitting on surge suppressor type outlets as these may reduce the data rate. Reviews around , Personal Computer World Magazine (UK) and earlier reviews in PC Pro Magazine. I’ve struggled a bit to get Wi-Fi installations working in both my home and other friends/clients. Mains networking in these circumstances might be the simpler solution.The Netgear product contains a wireless feature too, hence it can provide wireless networking where it previously might have proved impossible. Expect to pay about £80 a pair. Thanks to my friend Robert for the demo.

For me , something I’d like to master. Thanks to Freecycle (http://uk.freecycle.org/) I’m now the proud owner of ‘Teach Yourself Photoshop’ and a Tutorial CD. All I need to do now is put in the time… Best stop the writing on here then!

I created the header image on top of my blog using Canon’s Photostitch program. (I think there are some free equivalents on the web.) Basically it enables you take a series of photo’s and merge them into one scene. Some cameras superimpose a previously taken shot at the time of taking a second image to help with the process. My old Canon Ixus 500 had a panaromic mode with this feature. Here’s one from my recent trip to Chania.

Mentioned in one of my earlier posts that my father was a professional photographer. Sadly we’ve only a few examples of his work around today. You can rent them at http://www.photoshot.com/home.jsp

Here’s a couple of examples from the 1960’s (exact dates not known)

Forgot to mention this in my other post. Why do I have to turn the camera on it’s side to take a picture? Well you don’t really but you have to use the dedicated ’shutter button’ on the camera’s side. I’d be happy to use the joystick button for this purpose, but that’s not an option. The normal phone mode is in the vertical position of course, so why not allow me to take a picture in this configuration? Anecdotally I’d guess this applies to many camera phones. I’ve often missed a shot by fiddling with the camera and turning it