PCMag review of picture packages. Pictures, Pictures, Everywhere

My Blog is becoming my PIM. I used Info Select years ago and I keep thinking I should try it again. But I realized today that what I really want are the features of Info Select on my blog. IE I want to be able to really quickly sort and search the blog based on any string I enter. Because increasingly my blog is my PIM, i am dumping all my notes up here for my own future reference. I don’t have Favorites or Bookmarks in my browser anymore, they all go in the blog with annotations. All the little notes I used to keep – up on the blog. If I had a reasonable security model, I’d move my todo list and a bunch more notes up here. And all my contacts – tho for that I need better security and better DB functionality. I’d love to see a blogging package that implemented a lot more of the PIM feature list, I’d move to that.

PMA 2003 Software announcements. A quick review of these – Minolta Messenger lets you add hotspots to photos, an idea we were kicking around yesterday. Not sure it is worth a whole separate app! Adobe Album gets lots of press – I hear it blows chunks on large data sets. Preclick gets some nice press, I am downloading now. It is pretty fast at importing my pictures (about 2000). And it is very fast navigating thru photos – this may win the speed war! but it has very limited org tools, it is just a reflection of what folders you have created in the filesystem, and then you can add ratings to photos. it has a fast search feature but i think it only searches on titles. and has an “autofix” feature as its only real editting tool – i kind of like the simplicity here. Qimage is supposed to be a killer printing program for photos – looks kind of geeky. Ulead announced its latest -- I’ve never been overwhelmed with Ulead product quality but worth looking at I guess.

Marc doesn’t have a blog. Via Scripting News, marca doesn’t have the “time or ego need” for a blog. My paltry traffic level certainly doesn’t result in an ego boost! And I get great payback on time spent. Maybe marc is worried that his postings can’t stand up to the full light of day (obviously that hasn’t stopped me).

PMA 2003. Need to check out the awards for digitial photography at PMA – Tong Family Blog: PMA 2003

My new camera phone. I am using a panasonic gd87 on the att gprs network now. Very cool, a nice form factor, an integral camera, small size – lots of wows from folks at Ignition today. But it was a herculean buying and provisioning effort requiring the aid of literally world experts.

I wanted a cool small form factor phone with an integral camera, not some clunky addon camera that I would lose or never use or end up breaking the fragile connector. And it had to be gsm for travel. All of which pointed me towards phones available in Europe, not in the US. Besides the panasonic I also looked at the Nokia 3650 and a siemens model. I went with the panasonic because it has the most active ebay presence at the time but the nokia may have passed it now.

Ebay is definitely the place to find these phones – ACS has an ebay store with a lot of camera phones as does wireless express. I bought from ACS. Wherever you buy, make sure the phone comes in an english language version – some foreign phones don’t, particularly if originally intended for the asian market. And make sure the phone is unlocked and can be used on a US network.

The phone shipped promptly, and on initial receipt I was a little scared. It was originally intended for the Vodaphone network and the box was all in german, the instructions were in german. Taped to the side was a converter for the charger plug (german of course) and a photocopied set of english instructions. Did not inspire confidence!

I bravely moved my ATTWS SIM over and no problem, gsm voice service was available immediately! But no data services worked – I dug into settings and the WAP browser and email service were all pointing to vodaphone private IP addresses, clearly this was never going to work. So I moved the SIM back to the ATTWS phone and dug through all the screens to find the IP, WAP, and MMS settings – a very painful process going thru all the menus. And this is where I needed the world experts – Adrian and his buddies among the att alums and current employees helped find all the right settings. Once I had all the settings, I moved the SIM back to the panasonic, set all the settings, added the settings for my work SMTP server, and amazingly it mostly worked. MMS doesn’t seem to work but I can do email, browse the web, etc.

Was it worth it? Well the phone looks cool. The UI is very hard to use tho. And the pictures are izone-like in terms of quality. But a great learning experience.

Migrating to a new PC. Installed a new PC last night and migrated all my apps, settings, and docs off the old using Alohabob. Pretty much without a hitch, this is a real timesaver. The only hurdle I hit was Office, which complained that machine configuration had changed substantially, and that I needed to insert my CD and reactivate. So I had to find the freakin’ CD and screw around with activation. The new PC came with corel’s wordperfect and quattro pro, I kind of wonder why I even need to screw around with office anymore. Certainly I won’t be buying new Office licenses or upgrades for my home pc’s in the future, it is just too expensive to use on a home network. Openoffice or corel or something else will have to do.

OK problem 2 with the migration. Printers didn’t move over at all. I have to re-setup my printers on the new machine. bummer.

Firewall went toes up last night. Our Sonicwall at work went toes up last night, a hardware failure. Hence my blog was dead for a while. We are back limping with a temporary firewall solution, will have a new firewall in place by tomorrow am. A morning without net access is painful, I felt like I was missing an arm or something.

Intermixing MIDI and DMX. I may need a box like this to intermix MIDI and DMX in my control system for halloween.

Harvard Joke. From Dave. Ha.

Controlling solenoids. As i plan my pneumatic system, I need some way to control my solenoids. I am thinking about possibly a midi-based system, and need a device that converts midi wiring/protocol to the 12/24v required by most solenoids. Mediamation seems to make such gear. Another one from Laserium tho it only support signals up to 10V. The Gilderfluke Servo controller or analog brick may do the trick, but using DMX digital input instead of MIDI – but this is ok, my control software is native DMX anyway – I have email into gilderfluke requesting advice.

Update: nice mail from the gilderfluke folks:Are your valves analog or digital (just on off)? If they’re analog, then, yes, you are correct. The BR-ANA card will fit the bill. If they’re digital, either the MultiBrick32 or our Zbricks would do nicely. I recommend the more expensive MultiBrick 32 because it has a microprocessor that is able to filter out the occasional bad packet of DMX. If your application doesn’t have a critical need to prevent the occasional “hiccup” (1 or 2 frames worth) and the valves are digital, then the Z-Bricks are a very cost effective solution.

Another DMX alternative is a Dove Analog Dimmer. I use Dove dimmers now for my 120V and 240V gear (lighting and fog systems) and I have been happy with their sturdiness. $795 for the unit I want.

Cheap Long Distance. Nice comparison site found by Rich. We’re gettign screwed. Time to switch.

BBerry Free Weekend. Left the BBerry on my nightstand this weekend. How refreshing! I have been a slave to email, you start to get driven by your inbox and forget what your goals really are. It was great to be free, I am going bberry free every weekend from now on. And another huge benefit – my family is much happier!

Pneumatic Circuit Software. I’m trying to find some software to help me calculate loads, capacities, latencies in pneumatic circuits. Up at FluidPower.net they have lots of pointers to various packages but they seem more academic and less engineering-oriented, or they are expensive industrial control packages. Automation Studio looks pretty cool actually – but there is no price listed, you have to contact them for a quote, that means \(\)$. Autocad has pneumatic symbols but it doesn’t look to me like it does the calculations (and I don’t want to pay that much). Nothing on download.com, nothing on sourceforge.net. There must be some cheapo package somewhere that universities use – couldn’t find much tho at the UW fluid mechanics course site. I guess I have to calculate my Halloween circuits by hand – I am going to have 10 loads of various sorts with various duty cycles, I was hoping for some software that would calculate reservoir tank needs and compressor size needed based on input configuration, duty cycles, cylinder sizes, etc.

Fluidraw is another option I just found. Seems to be more a drawing package tho than an analysis package. But a good site on pneumatics.

Some nice overview and prop ideas at Earthsands. The Stumpjumper is a classic. And another great overview article.