Out of the Woods

Ever since I started taking digital photos seven years ago, I've been absolutely paranoid about losing them. As the old adage goes when dealing with a hard disk drive, it's not if it will fail but when it will fail. I started making backups to CDs, then to DVDs, but there is always that time between backups that has me nervous. I'm also bad about remembering to make new discs.

I started making continuous backups to my server machine in the basement, but that drive was getting full. Besides, there is also the threat of a fire taking out all the physical copies stored in the house. With bandwidth to spare and on-line storage costs coming down, I started looking around at on-line backup solutions.

Most of the services have free trials and make perhaps 1 or 2 gig available at no cost, but the cheapest plans that included at least 10 gig run $15 or more per month. When you start adding up the costs, you'll find that you can buy a lot of large hard drives for that kind of money. That's when I came across Jungle Disk.

Jungle Disk uses Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3), which is an API that developers can use to create applications that use storage on Amazon's servers. The best part is the Jungle Disk program that lives on your PC costs $20 and the monthly cost of Amazon's storage is dirt cheap. I'm able to back up 10 gig of photos, financial, and genealogy data for about $1.50 per month, and the backup store is updated automatically and continuously in the background. It took a few days to upload everything initially, but now it takes just a few minutes a day for the changes to be sent.

If you're looking for good, reliable, cheap on-line backups, Jungle Disk is it.

Posted by Ken at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This has to be one of the most exciting developments in electronics since the creation of the transistor back in the ’60s. The memristor was first conceived in theory back in 1971 to sit alongside the other mainstay passive components: the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor. It took until now for scientists at HP to figure out how to build one. This opens the door for even smaller and higher-density nonvolatile memory, but even more importantly, analog computing that works much the same way the brain operates. Check out this article for more details.

Posted by Ken at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I continue to be blown away by the free software available from Microsoft as part of their Windows Live suite. One of the things I like to do when I'm somewhere that offers a stunning view is to take a series of photos that, when stitched together, makes a very nice panorama. It results in a photo that is much more striking than you could take with a single exposure.

After I took several such photo series at the Atlanta FRC championship a few weeks ago, I started looking around for current photo stitching software. "Free" was my goal, and after looking at a few hosted on SourceForge, I was starting to get disappointed. That's when I saw someone mention a feature of Windows Live Photo Gallery that does photo stitching.

I quickly downloaded and installed it and started poking around. With most stitching software, you have to manually assign some common points in two adjacent photos to give the software something to work with. With Photo Gallery, all you do is give it a list of photos and, bam, out pops a nearly perfect panorama. If you know where the edges are, you can find a few artifacts, but the results are better than I've ever seen, especially for software that requires no user tweaking. I haven't even looked at the other features of the program. Go download it and take a took. You may also find my photo set from the championship here.

Posted by Ken at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As most people with busy families, I rely on my calendar to try to make sense of all of our daily activities. I used to keep everything in a single Outlook calendar on my work laptop, but if I wanted to quickly check a date while at home and the computer was off, it was most inconvenient, to say the least.

Then I changed jobs and the laptop went away. That's when I started using Google Calendar in a big way. Now I use it for everything, and create separate calendars for different types of activities. For example, I've created public calendars for the UConn men's and women's basketball schedules, the upcoming Stafford Motor Speedway racing season, and even my son's Boy Scout troop and daughter's Venturing crew. Since they are public, others can benefit by including them in their own calendar display.

So it was with mixed feelings that I saw the announcement that Google Calendar could finally be synced with Outlook. It's something I would have killed for about six months ago, but now that I've weaned off Outlook, it's something I'm not particularly excited about. I toyed around with using Plaxo to sync Google Calendar, Outlook, and Thunderbird, but as the various pieces have evolved over the past few months, Plaxo has been getting more and more broken.

I'll probably give it a shot, because I'm now using Outlook 2007 on my new laptop, but I'm not straying far from the basic Google Calendar interface. What I really want is two-way syncing between Thunderbird and Gmail contacts. Oh well...

Posted by Ken at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You have to check out this video. Lots of fun when you have nothing better to do. Down the program (it's free) from here.

Posted by Ken at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I love finding free tools that work better than commercial versions. I have always tried to keep a pair of file archiving utilities on all my PCs: WinZip and WinRAR. However, I was reading some comments where people were talking about WinRAR, and someone mentioned 7-Zip. I quickly discovered that it's a SourceForge-hosted open-source project that handles more file formats than WinZip and WinRAR put together, integrates into the Explorer shell, and is just as easy to use. I've already deleted WinRAR and plan to use this one almost exclusively.

Posted by Ken at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a while. The device bounces infrared light off the human body and records the light reflected back. Different tissues absorb and reflect different amounts of IR light. The computer then uses a DLP projector to display a real-time image on the surface of the skin that gives the illusion of peering under the skin. Another video gives a brief explanation of how it works. Excellent for aiding in starting IVs or checking for broken bones.

Posted by Ken at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here’s a post about some nice tools for geotagging photos and for linking Google Earth to geotagged photos. A geotagged photo has latitude and longitude coordinates of exactly where it was taken attached to it. Until we have digital cameras with built-in GPS receivers, we have to take a few extra steps to do the tagging, but the latest round of tools is making that process a bit easier.

Posted by Ken at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s safe to say that the Digi-Comp was my first real computer. I used to love sticking bits of straws on the “programming” pegs, cycling the “clock,” and watching the results. I first learned binary on this thing. Now, version 2 of Digi-Comp is available. Rather than delicate plastic, this one is made from laser-cut paperboard. The reviews I’ve seen are glowing. I may just have to get one so my kids (who are now the same age that I was when I had one) can get a feel for what really goes on inside the box.

Posted by Ken at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oh, this is so cool. Chip PC has announced a new thin-client PC that resides inside a standard dual-gang outlet box. Plug a monitor, keyboard, and mouse into the JackPC, and you have a complete networked PC. The company has a standard wall box that has contacts on the upper inside edge. You run network cable (which also handles power) to this box when you install it, and put a blank cover over it until it’s time to use it. When you want to install a PC, it simply slides into the box, making contact with the connector inside. There is also a wifi access point that can be installed in the same box instead of the PC. If you simply need network connectivity, there is a slide-in module that gives you that as well.

Imagine installing these boxes all over the house or other building during construction as you might install ordinary network jacks. When you need a PC at some location, simply slide it into the box and you’re done. Very nice.

Posted by Ken at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several years ago, the Connecticut DOT installed dozens of cameras on the interstates in and around the Hartford area. I’ve been waiting patiently for them to finally come on-line, and I’ve just discovered that day is here. Now I can check the Hartford area cameras before leaving in the morning to see if I might run into any delays.

Posted by Ken at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not being a Mac person these days, I’ve watched the development of the various flavors of OS X from the sidelines. One of the more recent additions to the OS is widgets. These are small gadgets that sit on the desktop and do something simple but useful. Examples might be a clock, news ticker, or battery gauge.

Now Windows users can get in on the action, and I have to say these things are mighty fun. Konfabulator has dozens of widgets written for it, and I’m finding all kinds of useful devices. I have a nice analog clock in the lower right corner of my screen. What makes it unique is that I have its opacity set to 50% and it’s always on top, so I can see what time it is no matter what else is open, but I can also see the windows under it. The best part is it’s completely transparent to the cursor, so I can click on the window under the clock as if the clock wasn’t there.

Posted by Ken at 4:57 PM | Permalink

Since Google released an official API for their map service, we’ve seen even more awesome-looking hacks show up on the net. This one overlays the New York City subway system on top of a map of Manhattan and the other boroughs. As one who’s had to deal with that subway system, I can truly appreciate this hack.

Posted by Ken at 4:54 PM | Permalink

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a homemade air conditioner that circulated cold water through tubing strung across the front of a fan. In the same vein, here is a homemade swimming pool heater that uses similar techniques.

Posted by Ken at 9:36 AM | Permalink

While I’m on the subject of geocaching, both Google and Yahoo have announced APIs for their popular map services. Now it will be easier than ever to include maps on custom web pages. I can’t wait to see what kind of applications people come up with now.

Posted by Ken at 10:55 PM | Permalink

Unless you are a geocacher, you probably don’t know the frustration of unexpectedly seeing a nearby cache on your GPSr screen, but have no additional information about it. Often times a cache description page contains details needed to find the cache beyond a waypoint coordinates. While scanning the logs of some nearby caches, I came across a mention of a geocaching WAP interface, and immediately Googled to find it. Point your WAP-enabled cell phone to http://rtr.ca/geo and search on a waypoint or your ZIP code. I really could have used this last week!

Posted by Ken at 9:26 PM | Permalink

Wow! Google does it again. If you thought Google maps was cool, then Google maps with satellite images was even cooler, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Go to earth.google.com, download their app, and prepare to have your socks knocked off. You can actually fly over any area of the U.S., panning, rotating, tilting, and zooming at will. It's almost like having a private helicopter available at your fingertips. While you can't read the license plate off a car in a parking lot, you can certainly get a feel for what an area looks like if you've never been there before.

Posted by Ken at 11:05 AM | Permalink

Quick, how does an air conditioner work? If you said by blowing air over coils that contain a cold liquid, you'd be pretty close. Who says that liquid has to be freon, and who says you need a compressor? A bucket of ice water and some simple plumbing is all you need. It's not exactly convenient, but it certainly appeals to the hacker crowd.

Posted by Ken at 4:05 PM | Permalink

I've never particularly liked NTFS for the sole reason that should the hard drive refuse to boot, I wouldn't be able to boot into DOS to recover files from the drive. Now all that has changed. Using files from your Windows XP master CD and Bart PE, you can now create a bootable CD that will get you into Windows XP with full support for NTFS, networking, CD-ROM, and more. Life in computerland just keeps getting easier.

Posted by Ken at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's the perfect geek story. It's not uncommon for stores to have video surveillance set up, but this geek set up a camera with motion detection software in his house. When a burglar broke in, not only did the computer capture the perp's image, but it sent the images to an on-line site so the owner could retrieve them even when the computer itself was stolen. The story was picked up by the BBC and another British news site. Nice.

Posted by Ken at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the ever increasing use of tiny microcontrollers, gate arrays, and programmable logic, discrete TTL is in danger of going the way of the vacuum tube. It's nice to see someone getting back to basics and brushing people up on logic essentials. However, this time it's being done with a toy: Lego Mindstorms. This gives new meaning to hands-on learning.

Posted by Ken at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The simplest inventions are usually the most elegant, and Chris Farley sends me a link to one that is truly elegant. The digital sundial works the same way as any other sundial: using the shadow cast by the sun. This one displays the time using discrete numbers.

Posted by Ken at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now the Man is in cahoots with private industry, and that industry is admitting to it. We have a Xerox color laser printer at the office. Now where did I put those blue LEDs...?

Posted by Ken at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In life, it takes all types. Here's a guy looking for his fifteen minutes of fame by spending the next 45 days drinking nothing but Pepsi Holiday Spice. His ongoing story is pretty funny.

Posted by Ken at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)