Kategoriarkiv: English

English

Whitelines

I just found a great Swedish invention out there that I wanted to share with everyone who are taking notes at some time or the other. First of all, the idea is to have low contrast lines or squares on your papers so as not to be distracting as the normal patterns are on normal notebook / college book paper is.

The whitelines paper uses white lines by printing slightly grey around it. It is ingenious for many reasons, one is that the lines are not visible if you copy or scan your paperwork. And now with the digital mobile camera you can scan yours or your friends notes in a second and also send them automatically to dropbox, evernote or have them mailed somewhere with a simple app that you can get for both iOS and Android. Using the Whitelines Link it goes automatically and can correct for skewing and perspective. It’s awesome.

Here is the kicker. If you don’t feel like buying their pre-printed stationary you can print it yourself by downloading a PDF file from their home page. They have PDF files for lined and squared A5 and A4 papers. Print them, make your notes, scan them with the Whitelines app and then find them in your dropbox. Never loose a field note again.

The trick is that they have printed codes in all 4 corners of the papers. Codes that reminds you of QR codes (but are simpler). The app finds these codes and can then perspective-correct your photo scan of your notes.

On their site you can also buy tags to put on your white board. Then when you scan that it will also perspective correct and store your brain storms and what not in your phone or you can share with any one of your services really.

Check it out, it’s neater than you would believe!

 

English

Some nice ebooks for your EPUB reader (all free stuff)

These are from Project Gutemberg and converted to EPUB format for your ebook reader:

  1. Nostromo – A Tale of the Seaboard by Joseph Conrad
  2. The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper
  3. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  4. The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells
  5. The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle
  6. Captain Brand of the Centipede by H. A. Wise

Have a nice read.

English

Spam

På grund av den stora mängden spam har jag migrerat kommentarerna till Google Plus. De flesta har troligen redan ett google-konto men om du inte har ett kostar det inget att skaffa ett.

English

Convert pictures for upload to Google+

Google plus allows you to upload pictures without using your disk quota with Google if your images are up to 2048×2048 they will not be counted towards your disk space. So if you don’t need to back up your full size pictures you can use this script to convert them to the max size google accept without taxing your storage. The script is intended to run as a bash script and has been tested in several versions of Linux. It should work well also under Cygwin in Windows and in BSD et cetera.

You need to install imagemagick in order to use the script. It relies on the ”convert” binary in that package.


#!/bin/bash

# Find out if the destination dir already exists
# and if it does not, then we need to create it.

if [ ! -d "google" ]; then
echo "Creating dump dir google."
mkdir google
fi

# Save the internal file separator symbol and then replace it
# with UNIX line breaks so that we can handle file names that
# have spaces and stuff in them.

SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "\n\b")

# Loop over all files in current directory and then process them
# one by one storing the result in the "google" folder ready for
# upload to Google when done.

for f in * ; do
echo -n "Processing $f - "
if [ -f "google/$f" ]; then
echo "Exists, skipping."
else
echo -n "Converting - "

# Sharpen a bit to make it more enjoyable on small images
# convert image to 2048 pixels maximum side. This means
# we are able to store all files the way google allows us
# for free (not having to buy more space)

convert "$f" -filter bessel -resize 2048 -sharpen 0x1.0 "google/$f"
echo "Done."
fi
done

When the script is run it will create a subfolder named ”google” in case it does not already exist. Then it will loop over all your files in the dir trying to run the convert script on each of them. It takes a few seconds per file generally. It allso applies some sharpening which usually works well but if you don’t want that then remove that argument.

Save the script in /usr/bin/google-convert or something similar and then just cd to the folder where your jpegs are located and run the script there.

English

Getting your SB-800 speedlight to work again

I recently brought out my trusty SB-800 speedlight but could not get it to work. To be honest it has been sitting in my camera bag for a while unfortunately so with the batteries in, a definitive no-no when it comes to camera gear – always remove batteries when you put the stuff away for more than a day or two.

So I replaced the old dead batteries and found one connector that had corroded a little. Not good, but with some rubbing alcohol and patience it cleaned up nicely and I got a good electrical connection. Unfortunately that did not help much the flash refused to start anyway.

So I started looking around, not noticing anything in particular and I was prepared to ask Nikon for an RMA when I did a quick google on the problem. Turns out that several people have had problems with SB-800 and SB-600 when they have been sitting collecting dust for a while and then they don’t want to start up.

The solution was simple. Hold down the power on button while twisting the top back and forth as well as shaking the whole thing. I could not believe it, it started right up and now it is working fine.

I have no idea what was going on there but the twisting-shaking motion definitely brought it back to life.

English

Denmark

Sitting on this great X2000 train on my way down to Denmark. These trains may be rather old by now but they are still a bit of Sweden’s pride when it comes to rolling stock on the rail side. Wonderful construction with tilting carriages to compensate for the centripetal forces in the bends.

Going to Denmark for a day or two working with the Danish rail there as well as some other companies, lots to do with the rollout of their new GSM-R network and although there are a couple of small things to straigten out I believe I will be back in Stockholm pretty soon again