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Tuesday 10 November 2009
By HotShot on Tuesday 10 November 2009, 22:55 - Cheesy
When it comes to debating the anthropic vs. natural climate issues
,
many weird - not to say dumb - arguments and defences show up around the
corner. How could we infer a future global warming when we cannot predict
snow storms or fair weather next week?
they say.
Here you go! Bingo!
A French, static version is available too.
Let's hope someone will come up with the same "game" applied to creationist arguments... ;)
By HotShot on Tuesday 10 November 2009, 22:41 - Geeky
A really nice (read: efficient, light and uncluttered) piece of software is provided for free (and with source!) to help you mount your ISO images as if they were real discs: WinCDEmu (now in version 2.3, works under Win7)
Monday 9 November 2009
By HotShot on Monday 9 November 2009, 16:18 - Geeky
Just stumbled upon imo.im, a new web interface and desktop client allowing multi-messaging including (but not limited to) MSN, ICQ, Google Talk... and Skype. That's a big WOW!
The desktop client (available for Windows at the moment) looks like nothing more than a wrapped up browser window (... MSIE, sigh) but gets its own taskbar/tray icon.
Now that's what I call convenient! Long live imo.im!
Thursday 29 October 2009
By HotShot on Thursday 29 October 2009, 22:55 - Rocky
In an article entitled Med students hoist P2P Jolly Roger to get access to papers,
the online magazine Ars
Technica reveals how students and researchers rely on peer-to-peer
sharing to gain access to scientific literature.
Tuesday 27 October 2009
By HotShot on Tuesday 27 October 2009, 15:04 - Cheesy
To mark the opening of our new "cheesy" category, let's have a look at what's happening on the other side of the big blue wet thing - at Pharyngula.
You sometimes find some fresh, light and inspired cartoons (see above) among
the abundant biological ejaculations
of P.Z. Myers.
As a sidenote, most of PZ's prolific posting on his blog seems to happen at night - I'm a subscriber to his RSS feed and frequently get something like 5 to 10 new messages in my morning e-mail - so I guess his so-to-speak seminal work is a kind of nocturnal pollution. ;)
What do you mean by time zones
? Nonsensical on a Flat
Earth...
By HotShot on Tuesday 27 October 2009, 14:45 - Shortly!
Some hard-to-find yet really useful utilities that might be of some help...
Don't expect me to describe them, this is a short note.
If you were to need one of them, you probably already know why... ;)
By HotShot on Tuesday 27 October 2009, 14:19 - Geeky
After months of development and refinement, the author of FastPictureViewer has released (for free!) a pack of WIC codecs for Windows Vista and 7.
They add improved support for a number of Raw formats straight from the explorer: metadata reading and sorting, thumbnails, and display with WIC-enabled software (e.g. Windows [Live] Photo Gallery, Microsoft Pro Photo Tools etc.)
Saturday 24 October 2009
By HotShot on Saturday 24 October 2009, 17:31 - Geeky
My DSL Modem-Router (a Fritz!Fon 7150 from AVM.de) has been a real pain in the ass for the last year, because of both the terribly poor quality of our analog phone line and the lack of firmware support.
Only recently (July 2009) have our ISP Freenet and the company AVM improved the firmware of this (otherwise) nice device, releasing a 38.04.71 version (not enticed by Freenet though) and two weeks ago (October 2009) a rebranded 38.04.77 firmware. Despite a very high CRC error rate on our side, the .71 has been working like a charm. Let's see if the .77 keeps up...
As usual with up-to-date geek delicacies, I archive the previous firmware hereunder...
AVM FRITZ!Fon 7150 firmware 38.04.71Looks like this time, I met the Ugly and its fistful of desyncs... Back to firmware 38.04.71!
Thursday 22 October 2009
By HotShot on Thursday 22 October 2009, 15:36 - Blurry
When it comes to compact-yet-complete digital cameras, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 is a wonderful and successful piece of technology. It has a huge community of enthusiasts, fans and supporters hanging around on all continents (see for instance its popularity on the Panasonic forum at DPReview.com or the dedicated group at Flickr).
This nice little toy comes with many advantages and actually very few drawbacks:
Among the few drawbacks:
Well, that's a really brief overview of why I bought one last spring for my trip to China. I've not really been disappointed ever since, in spite of the short zoom - by looking at my photographic archive, I rarely shoot over 60mm, with 95% of my pics taken below 80mm.
Panasonic has made a good job of providing its customers with regular firmware updates. Not only do they correct bugs and tweak a few things (white balance...), they also add some new features that LX3-fans have been expecting for ages.
A recent mishap resulted in the withdrawal of a short-lived 2.0 firmware, released at the beginning of october with many interesting features but unfortunately a couple of bugs too. As the new corrected DMC-LX3 Firmware version 2.1 (Zip, 6 MB) has been released two days ago and the japanese web site does not seem to save deprecated versions, I will keep a copy on this website for future archival and downgrading if needed...
By HotShot on Thursday 22 October 2009, 15:04 - Blurry
A few months ago, Colin Walker published a bunch of custom (and largely accurate) DNG color profiles for Raw development on his Huelight web site.
It looks like the site has been down for some time now, but I managed to find the Huelight DNG profile from some other source. So here it is, for archival purpose: Huelight DMC-LX3 DNG Profile (28 KB). Can be used with Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom and so on (try to figure how... google is your friend).
Will post a short before/after comparison very soon...
By HotShot on Thursday 22 October 2009, 12:53 - Shortly!