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2009

research notes from DSLR hunt

Camera reviews at dpreview.com: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond80/ http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond90/ http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos450d/ (Canon EOS Rebel XSi) Lens reviews: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-S-17-85mm-f-4-5.6-IS-USM-Lens-Review.aspx http://www.photozone.de/canon-eos/181-canon-ef-s-18-55mm-f35-56-is-test-report--review http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/355/cat/all (Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 Di II …) http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/349/cat/31 (Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC Macro) http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/136/cat/11 (Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM) http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Tamron-17-50mm-f-2.8-XR-Di-II-Lens-Review.aspx (Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8) Shopping links:

2008

inline images in Gmail

·60 words·1 min
Officially inserting inline images in Gmail is not possible. However, there is a workaround: Open Google Docs in a new window, open a Word Doc. Insert the picture you want from your computer. This converts it into rich text format. Now you can click on the picture in Google Docs, Copy it, then paste it into your gmail compose screen.

info for Honda Civics

·18 words·1 min
Interesting forums http://www.8thcivic.com/forums/ and in particular http://www.8thcivic.com/forums/civic-coupe-sedan/ Also, brochures for my Civic ‘08 can be obtained from: http://www.hondaalberta.ca/models/6-2008_civic_sedan_brochure.html

(Windows) file managers

·23 words·1 min
Comparisons http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=176343 http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=117653 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_managers File Managers Total Commander Total Commander PowerPack Total Commande Ultima Prime xplorer2 xyplorer FreeCommander UltraExplorer PowerDesk Pro Magellan Explorer

2007

Windows STOP messages

·104 words·1 min
I just had Windows reboot out of the blue (no BSOD, just as if I pressed RESET). Looking at the system event log it seems Windows ran into trouble: Event Type: Information Event Source: Save Dump Event Category: None Event ID: 1001 Date: 12/11/2007 Time: 3:19:32 PM User: N/A Computer: SKYNET Description: The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck. The bugcheck was: 0x100000d1 (0x00000000, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0xba940dc2). A dump was saved in: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini111207-01.dmp. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. A useful website detailing the STOP codes: http://aumha.org/a/stop.htm Also of interest is the KB article on dealing with the minidumps: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315263

Java links

·58 words·1 min
Java 6 JDK 6 Documentation Setting the class path Lesson: Common Problems (and Their Solutions) Java SE Application Design With MVC Trail: Graphical User Interfaces A Visual Guide to Layout Managers OpenGL in Java

the water charlatans

·613 words·3 mins
This post is a cautionary tale, and a snapshot of all the relevant information I gathered in the process. It so happened that one day I get a phone call from a company “that deals with water quality”, and they claim that Cathy has done a survey with them, and has won some prize worth over $xxx (as a “thank you”). They wanted to know whether they can swing by sometime, drop it off, and do a free water test for us. As Cathy wasn’t home, I couldn’t check with her whether this was legitimate, so I said, what the hey, come on over. I was interested in the water test because I was wondering earlier whether we were suffering from excessive hardness of water here, but that’s another story. 6:30pm, the representative shows up. Sets up in the kitchen a row of plastic drinking cups, as if preparing for an elaborate shell game. Each cup is made to hold water from various sources (distilled, tap, Brita filtered, and various bottled waters in our house). He pulls out an upright binder with what seems like “informational material”. Oh oh, red flags start going off in my head! First test is using a TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) meter. Distilled water obviously gets a very low reading. Tap water is higher. The readings for bottled water shoot up to 265. The “gentleman” claims that this reflects the amount of junk and pollutants in the water. In actuality, this is totally misleading. See here for a full skinny on TDS measurement. It’s a bit of a misnomer, all it really does is detect charged ions in water, most of which are from the (benign, or even beneficial) hard water salts dissolved in the water (Calcium, etc.) The 265 p.p.m. figure for the bottled water was meant to impress and frighten us, but inspecting the label for the bottled waters in fact explicitly states that the expected mineral content in the waters is about 290 p.p.m., so if anything, the TDS reading for these waters was in fact a tad low. I had a pretty strong sinking feeling at this point, that we’ve been conned into a sales pitch. The final touch was when the guy pulled out a precipitator test device for next round of testing. I’ve heard of these being used for scaremongering, and a quick check on the Net (I excused myself to grab my tea from upstairs) revealed to be the case, and also turned up this interesting tidbit (government forbade this particular company to do chlorine testing without getting certified; I presume they were scaring residents with yet more deceptive tests). Anyhow, in short, the company was Glacier Water Treatment Systems of Newmarket, Ontario. They sell water distillers for homes. Links explaining the bogus nature of the precipitator test:

modifying the 'look-in' buttons in standard file dialog

·123 words·1 min
Standard file dialogs under Windows (2000 and higher?) have a set of five big buttons down the left side which you can click to be directly taken to the corresponding directories. It’s called the “Places bar”, and the buttons might be called “look-in” buttons. I went in search of how to modify them, as the default set was uterly useless to me. Here are interesting things I found:

notes: Martin's sugs/research on startups

·27 words·1 min
useful: CS course “Business of Software”: CSC2527F M6-8, M8 useful: http://paulgraham.com/ good read: Hackers and Painters, by same good read (slides): The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson

hard water woes

·560 words·3 mins
I’ve been having issues from the start with my shaving brush quickly becoming hydro-phobic after one or two shaves. I suspect one of the main culprits is hard water, although apparently Markham/Toronto has decent water. Here is a site that gives the water hardness of various towns around the GTA: http://www.justwater.ca/town.html Also of interest is a forum post about “Calgon”, and water softener agents in general: http://www.mothering.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=68131 Here is the particularly interesting bit of the thread: