Macro Photography – Classic Prime SLR lenses vs Cell Phone with a Loupe

The capabilities of cell phone cameras are amazing, performing better than my classic SLR lenses. Here is how I used a simple analog loupe with my cell phone to do some great macro photography.

 

Recently I went to change the keyboard of one of my Acer laptops. As I disassembled it, the tiny mainboard connector part came off . It clamps the keyboard ribbon to the laptop’s mainboard.

It just wasn’t going back on. Part of the issue was that I was not sure which way it went back together. This side down, or the other side?

So I got out my photographer’s 35mm loupe to take a look. I could see a lot of very tiny teeth that had to be matched up.

Trying and Cracking Steganography

Once I read about how some spies were saving messages in pictures. Cool. So I thought I’d try it just for fun.

Steganography

It was a lot different from invisible ink we played with as kids. 🙂

First I looked at an article on StackOverflow

Successful Audio and Video Screen Capture on Windows 7

Occasionally, I see some great videos online, and I download them to my hard drive for my personal use. One reason, some videos can take a long time to watch.  So I download them and watch them at another time, like using a DVR.

Recently, there was another webinar. I thought it would be easy enough to download. But like so many other times, I had to spend a LOT of time installing and fixing the software first.  Here’s how I made it all work. 

Review – Nikon CoolScan 5000 ED

For over a decade, while I went to university, and for a few years after, I owned and operated a photography business. At that time, cameras were film cameras, not digital. After a few years, I had a big collection of negatives.

In 2007, I bought a film scanner to scan some family pictures, the Nikon CoolScan 5000. It’s been fabulous to use.

Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED

Recently, I’ve been using it again to scan some more 35mm negatives and transparencies. The software is so intuitive, the results so good, and it’s such a pleasure to use, that I’m inspired to write about it.

 

Traditional Darkroom Techniques:

For those of you who have never worked in the darkroom, it’s a very laborious process.

Some Great Software To Capture Analog Audio

 

Audacity Recording

I have a nice cassette deck that you would use with a stereo system and there are some old cassette tapes that I have never thrown out. Finally I’ve got around to copying some of these cassettes to files on my hard drive.

Here is a review of some software that I test drove on an old underpowered Windows XP machine: Exact Audio Copy, Wave Repair, and Audacity.       

HD Tune – Fabulous Windows Hard Drive Testing Software!

Recently I tested a number of my older Windows machines with HD Tune. It’s fabulous performance testing software!

HD Tune

HD Tune tests the slowest part of any computer. The hard drive.

If you have seen my database tuning presentation, you will know that it always amazes me why so many developers don’t realize that the hard drive is the slowest part of any system, and look to remove lines of code that run in memory. Sometimes only once! Duh!

What was really interesting was the the hard drives of three of my old machines ran at an average speed of 20, 50, and 70 megabytes per second. But one machine was running at less than 10 megabytes per second! It confirmed what I knew; that computer was really slow.

HD Tune is fast, easy and intuitive. Reading manuals is not required. Installs in one motion. Only works on Windows though.

The other really good testing software I’ve used is Passmark, that I reviewed previously.  Although, by just looking at the hard drive, HDTune seems to approximate the entire performance pretty closely.

Now, should I just get some solid state drives? Or just buy some new computers? Hmm.

Do check it out!

Review of Colasoft – Network Activity Analyzer – It’s Awesome!

The other week, I downloaded Colasoft’s Network Activity Analyzer, and took it for a test drive. Colasoft is a fabulous network analyzer, intuitively obvious and such a pleasure to work with. It installs and works in a few minutes. It’s highly recommended!

Colasoft Network Analyzer

I was prompted to download it, because I’ve often wondered about network activity on my machines.

In addition to seeing the total network activity on the machine, I’d like to see the network activity by each browser window. And further, by each tab in each web browser. So far, I haven’t found a product to do this. If anyone knows of a such a product, please leave a comment. I’d love to see the product.

Mobaxterm vs Xming: Remote Connections to Redhat 5.5

Putty, Sqlplus, and Cygwin:

I’m often working with my laptop. And I use putty and sqlplus to connect to the server. They both work fabulous! First time, every time. Do exactly as they are told. No surprises. Very reliable. And you can do most everything that you need to do.

I’ve also used cygwin for years, and have it installed on all my Windows machines. Although the cygwin installation could use improvement. Such as a button for: Install every last thing! Currently, installing everything requires a LOT of mouse clicks!

It’s such a pleasure to work with software that works right out of the box.   No wonder I use putty,  sqlplus, and cywin so much.

X Windows:

Recently I figured I would just install some X Windows software to connect to the 64 bit Redhat 5.5 Linux server. Shouldn’t take long. Yeah right.

Some Really Good PC Performance Testing Software!

After my rant the other week about video software that didn’t work, I have been very pleasantly surprised tonight by a number of benchmarking programs, so I felt some praise was in order.

I’ve noticed that one of my desktops, is considerably faster than the other one, even though it has much less RAM.  So, I wanted to stress test the machines, and get some real numbers.

Why Is Your Software Such Crap??!!!

Recently I had the idea of copying some old VHS cassettes that I have, into MPEG files on disk, and then upload them to Youtube.  Simple enough, right?

I did manage to get the transfer to MPEG files to work ok.  It’s so much easier working with MPEG files than dealing with tapes.  Interestingly enough, I’m told some companies still use tapes for backups.  And I still wonder, why??  Disk is so cheap now, and has so many advantages.  Would you ever transfer your MPEG files to VHS cassettes?

The Simple Design I Was Looking For:

I knew that for Youtube, I would have to split up the MPEG files into shorter 10 minute segments.  What I was thinking of, was something that I’ve already seen.  The software would take a long mpeg file: