Peter's Blog

Some more tips for the k750i camera-phone:

• In camera mode, press * to turn the light on and off
• Also in camera mode, press 7 to turn 'night mode' on and off. 'Night mode' seems to slow the 'shutter speed', giving less digital noise on indoor pictures at the expense of blurriness if the subject is moving.
• The joystick can be used to switch from still camera to video mode
• When filming videos, don't be tempted to hold the phone in 'portrait' mode unless you have some way of rotating the videos when you play them (maybe put your tv on it's side).

I had 190 pictures to import into a Drupal based system. I had been avoiding using the image module as it is hard wired to upload one image at a time, give it a title and description etc and the whole thing would take hours.

I had been using Gallery2 till now because of the bulk picture import. Gallery2 is very sophisticated, has many features and is still beta software. I ran an update on my debian server and this managed to break Gallery2: any attempt to access the gallery gave a meaningless error and referred me to the gallery home page. Since the installation is quite complex, a mix of virtual directories, symbolic links and any number of other tricks to hide itself I couldn't be bothered to try to fix it. It is still beta so I'm not surprised it broke and it may well break again. Also it says in the blurb that it had not been through a security review and that did bother me.

I hadn't been impressed with any other gallery software I found so I decided to return to Drupal and the image module, if only because it is an integrated solution. Searching the drupal site, I came across the image_import module which allows what I wanted: bulk import of a directory full of pictures. I only had to install the image_import.module file, it seems I already have the 'walkah' version of the image module that is one of the requirements. I have only installed standard modules so the walkah one may be vanilla drupal 4.6 image module (it does say walkah at the top of the file).

It works as it said on the box, it imported all my files in minutes. It gave titles and descriptions based on the file names, e.g. DSC_123123.jpg but I don't really care about that. It has a nice 'trial run' feature that tests to see if the import is likely to work by checking file existence, permissions etc. It also has a timer facility to stop it from breaking any apache/php security rules that prevent long-running processes. My system limits a php run to 30 seconds so I had to set this time limit to 20 seconds and import my files in two or three chunks. This was not a big problem, the form settings were still filled in I just had to keep pressing the go button.

Two final problems, both with the image module:

• it would be nice to have 'prev' and 'next' links to walk through the pictures. Can this be rigged with the book module?
• drupal tries to theme the original images, although they are way too big to fit in the theme and look broken. It really only needs a link to the original jpg file. It is not important to me to show the title and description on the full image, it is mainly there for downloading. I can hack this one in myself.

Picasa can import pictures from cameras. It can hook into the windows XP WIA stuff (see here). In fact, as well as my Canon Powershot S1 it can also handle the K750i phone. There is only one problem I found with the way it imports: I could not see how to get it to delete the pictures from the camera once it had imported them. This is actually a bit of a pain as I have to delete them either through the camera (Canon) or file manager/salamander (K750i). Paintshop Photo Album has a nice checkbox for me to tick during the import process. Also PSPA automatically dumps the files in a directory named after the import date. Picasa prompts you for a name. I'm happy to file them by import date and organise them with labels.

Speaking of Paintshop Photo Album, they have bought out a new version but are charging for the upgrade. I don't think I'll bother to upgrade it, I'll wait paitently for picasa to evolve.

The more I use the K750i Phone/camera/mp3 player the more I like it. Some tips:

• when viewing photo's you can press the 'horizontal' button to view the pictures with the camera on it's side. This is good because the screen is taller than it is wide so you get a better view of landscape pictures.
• when in horizontal viewing mode you can use the + and - 'volume' keys to zoom in and out of the picture. You can also use the 1 and 3 keys to zoom. Not sure why it cannot zoom in the default view mode. With pictures taken at highest resolution it is a bit sluggish in responding to changes in zoom size, 2 seconds or so, similar to the sluggishness when stepping to a different picture.
• when you take a photo it is displayed so you can admire it. If you want to take another photo, press the photo trigger button again and it goes back into viewfinder mode.
• rather than fiddle with the four way cursor thing, you can press the number keys to go straight where you want. I think this is standard nokia behaviour of yore but the cursor thing on the k750i is rather fiddly.

My favourite Photo Album software, Picasa now supports my favourite online printing service, Photobox. This means I can upload from Picasa directly to Photobox where I currently have 400M of storage available. Every time I order more prints I get 50M more storage.

I would happily abandon Jasc Paintshop Photo Album but it still provides two useful functions for me:

• it is the default application for importing images from my camera. Maybe picasa can do this, I haven't tried, another job for my todo list.
• PSPA supports drag and drop of pictures to other applications like a file manager. This way I can use it with the flickr uploader. With picasa you cannot drag and drop outside the application, a flaw in my opinion. As picasa is owned by google and flickr is owned by yahoo I cannot see flickr support in picasa coming any time soon.

I use the photobox storage as a backup for personal photos and flickr to show off pictures of my daughter.

With my mum's new camera we got a photodock in an attempt to make it dead easy for her to copy photos to her computer.

Bullet point review:

• photodock conforms to 'pictbridge' standard which appears to support multiple camera and dock makers.
• the camera drops onto the top of the dock. It plugs in but with zero resistance.
• the photodock includes a printer that can print 6x4 inch pictures of good quality. When you put the camera in the dock it's screen comes on and you just pick a picture to print using the left and right arrow buttons and then press another button to print it.
• the paper and ink cartridges cost about £28 for 80 prints (I think it was) which is expensive: 35p a print. I can get them printed online for 7p each.
• the dock makes it very easy to copy pictures to a pc. Install the kodak software, plug in usb and it is a simple matter of putting the camera in the dock, the Kodak software fires up and copys the pictures. The kodak software is ok in a dumbed-down kind of way.
• the dock comes with rechargable batteries for the camera and will charge it. They were Ni-mh, which are not as good as lithium ion (memory effects and rapid ageing).

Conclusion: the dock is ok, it makes things easy if you find plugging USB cable too fiddly but the printer is an expensive way to print.

My Mother bought herself a Kodak CX7525 Digital Camera. It seems decent enough, it's 5 megapixel and the picture quality looks very good, no noticable digital noise like the Kodak CX7220 that I bought my mother-in-law for christmas. Other than the resolution and the noise it is very similar to the CX7220.

Potted review:

• smallish screen
• few controls, simple to use
• good picture quality
• flash seems powerful, maybe too powerful, pictures look a bit overexposed.
• AA batteries, always good.
• takes videos etc

It is a very easy camera to use, ideal for mum's.

Sony Ericsson K750i has come so here is a potted review:

• Nice, small, light. A tad wider and thicker than my old nokia 6610i but it's no brick.
• Big screen, maybe twice the size of the nokia.
• Camera is ok, not great. Here is a picture of my settee:
  
  This is at 'normal' compression rather than 'fine' and to my eye it's not as good as my Canon Powershot S1 which blows it away in most respects apart from small size. The picture it takes are fairly wide angle, I'd have trouble fitting the whole settee in the frame of my S1. You need to be pretty close to what you are taking photo's of or be prepared to use the digital zoom at the expense of resolution. The camera is still better than the one in the Nokia 6610i which can only be described as crap.
• MP3 player is, well, an mp3 player. Good quality, even through speaker it makes a decent sound.
• It plays mp3 ring tones. I've already set it up as I planned long go. Despite what the manual says there is no restriction on mp3 ringtones, it Just Worked.
• USB cable is cool: the memory stick in the camera appears as a USB disk, you just copy files backwards and forwards. Didn't need any special software. I can use Salamander I think it can charge from the USB cable, it doesn't say in the manual but the battery icon gains the charging lightning strike which may be a clue.
• I haven't played bluetooth yet, I suppose it works but I'd rather use the USB cable. I'm not a big fan of bluetooth, the Windows bluetooth stacks all seem overly complicated. I have to plug in a bluetooth dongle to use bluetooth, might as well plug a USB cable in and get something 20x faster and more reliable. Can still use phone with wife's jabra headset.
• Looking through the tools I found something called 'light'. Wondered what it did and it turned on two bright white LED's intended as a replacement for flash. It's not going to floodlight a room but it could be useful in a nocturnal crisis.
• It is heavily branded with vodafone. Press the wrong thing in the menu and you're into Vodafone Live and running up your GPRS bills.
• The radio is ok, even through the speaker. It's auto-search could only find two stations but others were around. It is supposed to have RDS but it wasn't showing me any station names.
• It can take video's but I haven't tried that yet. It has got video editing software built in (!).
• Haven't tried email client yet. It cannot be any worse than the Nokia 6600 I tried at work which had no option to download headers only.
• It has a voice recorder, voice activated dialling, voice activated answer, you can swear at it and it says sorry.
• Under the bluetooth stuff I haven't installed is something to remotely control your powerpoint presentations from the phone.
• Have I forgotten anything? Oh yes, you can make phone calls with it.

What I think I will miss most from Nokia:

• cannot set a time for profiles to end: will have to remember to manually switch from silent to normal when I finish work (especially with umbungo ringtone).
• every nokia seems to work with every nokia charger. Very useful when you leave your charger at home, wherever you go people have nokias. But then again, if I can charge through the USB cable I am fairly well served wherever there is a pc.

Conclusion: nice phone.

My Canon Powershot S1 IS has a panoramic picture mode that allows you to take a series of photos and then use a piece of software on PC to glue them together. I had my first go with it today and I am really impressed.

This is a picture from my mum's balcony, taken round a 180 degree sweep:

The camera has a special mode to support this: when taking the photos you see half the previous photo in the viewfinder which makes it easier to take the next photo. The PC software does all the stitching automatically, no manual tweeking or aligning things to the nearest pixel. You can see half a car and a bent line in the road and that's useful to bear in mind when deciding what to photo.

For the first time ever I had to send a personal FAX so I had to think about how to go about it.

I had a form to print, sign and Fax off to 123-Reg. I can print, sign and scan the form back in using my Canon CanoScan Lide 20 Scanner so that was not a problem. I had a large graphic file to send.

I'd decommisioned my fax/modem when I went broadband and I didn't want to fiddle around setting it up again. I looked around the internet for faxing services but these seem to be mainly commercial or email < - > Fax gateways, no services for one off graphic Faxing.

Then I realised that my Dell Inspiron 500m laptop has a built in modem. I searched the internet for fax software then, on a hunch, looked to see if Windows XP itself supports it and it does.

These are the steps to install it:

• Go into Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs
• Click on 'Add or Remove Windows Components'
• Click on 'Fax Services' and 'Next'.
• Go into Control Panel/Printers and Faxes
• Add a new Fax. This will take you through a Wizard where you put in your name, address etc.

The Fax device now acts like a printer: I opened my scanned form in Paint Shop Pro and just printed it to the Fax device. This triggerred another wizard that took the Fax number and allowed me to set up a cover sheet. Then it sent the Fax. Easy.

Lets hope someone is working at 123-reg on a Saturday and will read it.