Computing | Keys Corner

Gravators

By John, on February 16th, 2009

You may have wondered why, when you comment on some blogs these days, you have a little symbol like the one to the left, displayed with your comment. It is because many blogs allow people to define a gravator (globally recognized avatar), which identifies them when they write a comment. The gravator can be . . . → Read More: Gravators

New toy – an Eee PC

By John, on February 2nd, 2009

The PC is the white box (the black one behind it is a wireless printer server) We had an old Dell PC in the cellar which we used when some piece of equipment insisted on having a firmware update under Windows. However it was quite slow, and having a, ahem, not exactly legal copy . . . → Read More: New toy – an Eee PC

Microsoft Internet Explorer

By John, on January 10th, 2009

I have changed the template used for this site over the last week. And I have decided that I have spent enough of my life fiddling around with all sorts of hacks to fix the appearance of sites I have produced so that they appear correctly in Microsoft’s web browser.

All versions of Internet Explorer prior to version 8 are extraordinarily poorly programmed. They wrongly calculate border widths of elements that make up a typical website and put background images in the wrong place. Web site development is a hobby for me, not a full time job, and because I don’t work every day with tricks needed to make MS IE behave, I end up spending at least half of the total time I need to develop a site fiddling around making Internet Explorer display it correctly:

msie-mess Messed up by MS IE
firefox-ok As things should look

Not any more.

If you use MS IE 6.0 or earlier to view this site, the site header is not displayed correctly, and you will see a message telling you that you are using a older browser and suggesting you install one of a number of browsers that work correctly.

Continue reading Microsoft Internet Explorer

Adobe, Mac and the Post don’t get on

By John, on December 15th, 2008

Unsuccessful print using Adobe Acrobat Reader

The German Post and their parcel service, DHL, have a great internet service – you can print your own stamps online (Just don’t try to use the internet address printed on the stamps – it doesn’t exist! It seems to have been a temporary glitch – the . . . → Read More: Adobe, Mac and the Post don’t get on

Getty Images slammed for hounding people

By John, on November 27th, 2008

Getty Images was the company which cost us over 870 Euro, despite our engaging an intellectual property lawyer to defend ourselves, for using a 180 x 90 pixel image on another of our web sites.

I can confirm that our experience with Getty was in line with the cases described in today’s Guardian, . . . → Read More: Getty Images slammed for hounding people

Geocoding photos for the Mac

By John, on October 20th, 2008

When we were in Spain, we took our i-Blue 747 GPS track logger with us and left it running most of the time when we were out with the cameras. I was expecting that it would be a simple matter to geocode the photos when we returned.

But it turned out that there were a couple of snags to overcome first.
Continue reading Geocoding photos for the Mac

Useless technology

By John, on October 14th, 2008

We were in Spain the last two weeks, and while we were there, we bought the Franklin TES-120 translator for spanish / english pictured above. It cost 39 Euro, and claims to translate 800 000 words (the screenshot shows part of its “boot” sequence, which repeats this claim every time you switch it . . . → Read More: Useless technology

WLAN SD-cards for cameras

By John, on September 20th, 2008

One hassle with using a digital camera is that you have to transfer the photos to your computer to process them. There are two ways, usually, that this is done: use a memory-card reader (often attached by a propriety USB cable which the camera manufacturer sells at a high price, if you ever need . . . → Read More: WLAN SD-cards for cameras

Getting an i-Blue 747 GPS logger to work with OS X

By John, on September 13th, 2008

I bought an i-Blue 747 GPS track logger recently. You can pick one up, new, on eBay for around 40 – 50 Euro. The idea is to use it to tag photos with their position – our cameras don’t have GPS receivers built in, and often when we get back from holiday, its difficult to remember where exactly we took which pictures. If you set the clock in the (digital) camera before you set off, the time-stamp from the GPS log, together with the position data allow you add the exact position of each photo to the EXIF data that the camera stores when each picture is taken.

The problem is, few GPS loggers come with any software for downloading and processing the track data on a Mac. I’m not aware of any that supports OS X “out of the box”. However, there is lots of third party software around which can be used to read out the scans and process them on the Mac. It takes time to track them down, however. So here’s what works for me:
Continue reading Getting an i-Blue 747 GPS logger to work with OS X

How long is a piece of string?

By John, on August 18th, 2008

How long is a piece of string? … or are Macs more expensive than Windows PCs?`

The answer is: it depends. About the same price for a similar specification About double for a basic machine

So it depends what your priorities are. But if you are considering buying a new Mac, remember that the . . . → Read More: How long is a piece of string?