Dan's Data - PC hardware reviews and tutorials!

Dan's Data - PC hardware reviews and tutorials!

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Fun, and educational.

Mirra - personal server

Is Mirra for me » Mirra. The first Personal Server: "With the release of Mirra Personal Server 1.1, Mirra just got even better -- easier set up, thumbnails for improved photosharing over the Internet, better performance, and much more."

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This is clever. I presume it's a Linux box with some big drives. They bundle some custom software for backup/versioning and some tunneling software so you can server images and access files form inside a software using an external Mira Proxy. (Probably a Linux VPN solution.)

Nice packaging of hardware and software. This is very innovative use of basic technology.

The drawback of the backup is that it appears to be on-site only. There's no reason they couldn't setup a companion off-site service for an extra fee, that may come later.

Usenet posting on Acrobat 6 JPEG 2000 compresion - poor results with grayscale images

From: jfaughnan@spamcop.net (John Faughnan)
Newsgroups: adobe.acrobat.windows
Subject: JPEG2000 and grayscale image size growth
NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.138.188.194
Message-ID: <5c0dbfb4.0404081405.1e8f3bd@posting.google.com>

I did some initial testing using the most extreme (low quality) JPEG
2000 image compression settings with Distiller 6. (JPEG2000 is new in
Acrobat 6. A primary potential application is scanning color documents
including maps.)

I first scanned a sample document at 200x200 16 bit color, producing a

10MB tiff (lzw compressed) file. The JPEG 2000 PDF of this image was
only 160K. The text in the 160K file was quite readable. I considered
this to be a very good result, almost a 70 fold compression with
preserved text readability. In my past experience JPEG compression of
a scanned text image makes the text unreadable due to jpeg artifact
even with moderate (10 fold) compression. This is a qualitative
improvement over JPEG. (For reference, past experience using B/W
images scanned with CCITT 4 compression produces typically a 40K image
of the same test document.)

I then scanned the same document at 200x200 gray scale. This resulted
in a 3.6MB TIFF (lossless compression). The JPEG2000 compressed PDF,
however, was 1.77MB! A JPEG PDF of the same file was only 300K (and
was quite readable). Something's wrong here - I expected a JPEG2000
maximally compessed PDF of this grayscale image to come in at about
60-80K. I suspect a bug in Distiller's handling of JPEG2000 compressed
grayscale images. I wonder if Distiller is not honoring the
compression setting for grayscale images.

Has anyone seen anything like this?

john
jfaughnan@spamcop.net

meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, jpeg2000, jpeg 2000, pdf, jp2k, lossy
compression, scans, scanner, scanned image, acrobat, adobe acrobat 6,
text

Mac OS X: Computer Won't Start up After Resetting PRAM

Mac OS X: Computer Won't Start up After Resetting PRAM
If you have a RAID scheme set up, your computer may not start up if you reset parameter RAM (PRAM) when you restart.
Restart your computer while holding down the Option key to select your startup system.
If this doesn't work, restart your computer while holding down the Command, Option, Shift, and Delete keys.

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Startup disk info is stored in PRAM, so if a Mac can't find it's startup disk try these methods, then try zapping pram if they fail. I think there's also a key combo that will select classic vs. OS X on dual boot startup.

BYTE Media Lab 2004 Imaging Awards: Analog to Digital Converters

BYTE Media Lab 2004 Imaging Awards, Part 2

Best Video Product

The Best Video Product goes to Canopus for its $549 ADVC300 analog to digital video converter. Pros and consumers alike have mountains of analog video tapes that need to be converted for both archival and production purposes. We've used a variety of systems to accomplish this task over the years, but the ADVC300 is the best implementation we've seen.

The right way to apply signal and image enhancement corrections to flaky analog signals is on the way in via hardware during the capture stage, but few products give you this option. The ADVC300 cross-references each NTSC frame with the frames immediately preceding and following it, applying digital noise reduction and image stabilization using Line Time Base Correction (LTBC). You can control brightness, contrast, saturation, noise level, and other settings via software. The unit captures to DV tape or disk, and it's compatible with Final Cut Pro, Avid Xpress DV and Adobe Premiere Pro, as well as Canopus's EDIUS editing system. It works on both Mac and PC.

I'll be discussing analog video capture in greater depth in an upcoming article, but based on our initial tests, the ADVC300 stands head and shoulders above its competition.

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I looked into this a while back. The various alternatives are using a service to burn video to DVD (but what if the priceless original family video is lost or damaged?), using a digital camera in pass-through mode, or using a PVR. It's really, really, tough to find knowledgeable reviews comparing the alternatives.

This is a big vote for the Canopus. I've got a pile of 8mm SuperVHS home video I need to move to digital media, then edit to DVD. Part of the equation is a future Mac (a high end G4 laptop or a G5 server) and FinalCut Pro, but this may be another part of it. Not cheap, so I can wait a while.

Plaxo Opt-Out: That hideous tracking service

Plaxo Opt-Out

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I think spamcop blocks Plaxo for me now, but I used to get their tracking service emails all the time. This takes one to the opt out page. Worth keeping handy.

BYTE.com - back from the grave?

BYTE.com

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The death of the original BYTE deserves an essay by itself -- suffice to say many of us suspected Bill's little finger flicked a weakened entity into the grave. Even in its twilight years, BYTE was unrivalled. It's loss hurt.

For sentimental reasons, I paid to subscribe to BYTE online. It was pretty weak and I stopped reading it. I just took another look. It's much stronger now. I'll have to add it back to my reading list.

shutterbug: a nice digital photography website

shutterbug: Recent Additions

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When I was a child, when slide rules were still widely used, Photography Magazines were thicker than PC Magazine in its glory days. They burst with ad pages. Then they all but died out.

Now they're back. Shutterbug has a rather interesting web site. A new addition to my web addiction.

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - Make audio files bookmarkable

Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes - Managing Files: "Make Bookmarkable

written by Doug Adams
posted: Mar 1, 2004
downloads: 1341

This script will change the 4-character file type of the selected AAC tracks to 'M4B ', thus making them bookmarkable. (That is, the track will resume playing wherever you left off the last time you played it.) Works on protected and non-protected AACs."

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Very handy for my medical CME lectures.

Macintouch: DotMac Alternatives --- ISPs, hosting, webdav, registrars

DotMac Alternatives (Part 2)

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Nice set of recommended services.

Alexa Web Search: Amazon company powered by Google?

Alexa Web Search

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Weird. I never heard of this one. I thought Amazon and Google were competitors.

iPhoto 4 unexpectedly quits when opened, Insufficient disk space in iPhoto 2?

iPhoto 4 unexpectedly quits when opened: "... delete
1. Thumb32.data
2. Thumb64.data
3. ThumbJPG.data"

This fixes:

1. Insufficient disk space when exporting
2. Quit when open

I'd guess it would fix the disk space problem for iPhoto 2 as well. That problem is apparently due to thumbnail corruption.

update: this didn't work for me. I had to use Panther Cache Cleaner to do a deep cache removal. See my posting of 5/1/04.

Recent personal thoughts on higher end digital cameras

John's Digital Photography Page

Advice to a friend on buying a digital camera. I wrote this in a quick email, but it might be of broader interest. My friend's daughter has a G2 she likes, but she's bothered by the "shutter lag" and is shopping for the next step up. I start by discussing how to make the Canon G2 work better:

The G2 actually has very good responsiveness, but there's a trick to it. She needs to pre-charge the CCD and eliminate the slow focus-acquistion phase. For the zoo pictures she can lock aperture and focus and then depress the shutter button slightly prior to shooting. If she squeezes to take the shot the lag will be very short. I've gotten very good pictures of our kids that way... (This was the reason I bought the G2, I knew beforehand that the timed lag was among the shortest in the industry -- assuming CCD pre-charge and pre-focus.)

Another trick is to drop the image res slightly so it will cycle into memory faster without overflowing the internal buffer, then put the camera into burst mode. Do as above, but when the picture is taken it bursts and you get more chances to capture an image.

Still, there's a lag. The pros use Canon CMOS SLRs mostly. I think some pros even use the $1500 10D, of which the Digital Rebel $900 is a cheaper version. Canon just introduced a new camera, the Pro1. It's a descendant of the G2 with a large zoom and up to 8mpixel. I think it has a faster bus and will capture quickly with a high speed card. The Nikon D-70 is also very new and very hot. I guess, but don't know, that the CMOS sensors don't need to be pre-charged and thus are less prone to shutter lag.

Another BIG factor is light sensitivity. Is she taking flash pictures at the zoo? If she's not, she needs ISO 400 or higher pictures with good light sensitivity. That's very rarely discussed. Most digital cameras have far too much noise at ISO 400. The main exceptions are the Canon CMOS cameras, including the rebel and the 10D. They have very nice images at ISO 400 and tolerable at ISO 800.

Digital SLRs all have problems with dust on the image sensor. I think the D-70 may have some new technology to help with that. Need to be very careful when changing lenses esp. in dusty settings.

I think for her needs I'd look at the

1. Canon Pro1: Just on the market, very hot -- but not my first choice because I of some "purple fringing" that's a side-effect of pushing smaller CCDs too hard. (The industry is selling megapixels now -- and pushing current CCDs further than they ought to. They depend on heavy post-processing in the camera to fix the images -- but it's not perfect).

2. Canon Digital Rebel (price is falling fast as the D-70 comes on board! Might get a good bargain. The Nikon D-70 is about $300-$400 more than the Rebel since it doesn't include a lens.)

3. Nikon D-70: Excels in burst mode, very new.

4. Canon EOS 10D: the $1500 version of the Digital Rebel, price probably falling because of the D-70. This camera is due for a refresh this fall I think.

5. The SONY alternative to the Pro1 ... SONY and Canon are in a dogfight with Nikon starting to come on fast.

Or she could try my tips on the G2 and see if they work :-).

I think the key discriminator for her may be image quality at ISO 400 and higher. If she wants more zoom (typical of zoo) she wants a smaller sensor, which does favor #1 and #5 above (smaller sensor --> smaller lens/higher zoom).

john

PS. Everything we need for a GREAT $800 camera is in place, it's just a matter of time. I want JPEG 2000 on the camera (better color management, better edge feature capture, better compression esp. at higher ratios), faster datapaths and bigger buffers (trivial), ISO 800 with tolerable noise, better manual focus/focus lock, image stabilizer technology, no perceptible shutter lag and D-70 level burst mode, internal but serviceable 20GB microdrive (forget the dinky memory cards), the Canon 6 megapixel CMOS sensor and a G2 style body (NOT an SLR -- I don't want the mirror complexity; I refer the swivel LCD feature of the G#/Pro1 line.) The only fly in my ointment is the CMOS sensors are larger than CCD (the "wire" problem) so I may need to live with a bigger camera. I'm fine with my G2 until I get the above -- though the market rarely delivers exactly what I want. I'm figuring on replacing my G2 in the spring of 2005.

PPS. Since cameras are going to get immensely better over the next 18 months (no new technology required, we have all the technology already) she might consider getting a Rebel now (since it will do very well I think) and then replacing it again in the spring of 2006.

iPhoto 4.01: more than a bug fix

John's Digital Photography Page

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iPhoto 4.01 was more than a bug fix. They fixed some big usability problems -- especially cropping. I'll update this page with what I notice:

1. Cropping works! Now after you crop and go to the next picture, iPhoto remembers your last aspect ratio. In edit mode it even gives you a crop box oriented around the image. It's emulating the behavior of GraphicConverter prepare for photo service features (I think I might have had a role in GC's implementation of this behavior, so it's nice to see it appear in iPhoto too!).

2. The JPEG decompression has changed. Images render in stages and they appear oddly softer. I'm not sure whether I like this or not. I suspect it would look better on some displays than others.

3. I haven't noticed any more integer overflow bugs (petabyte file sizes), but I'm watching.

4. Although some have had problems with the active folders (canned queries) I haven't run across that yet. (Bug is query selects all images, workaround is to enter a 2nd clause that returns null.)

Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts File

Blocking Unwanted Parasites with a Hosts File

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Old trick, but I'd forgotten it. Download this hosts file to block traffic to evil sites.