Greg N Baker » Tech http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog Greg Baker's personal website Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:19:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 en hourly 1 New 50mm lens http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/new-50mm-lens/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/new-50mm-lens/#comments Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:18:38 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/?p=361 Inspired by various posts on the interweb about 50mm lenses (including this one), my parents (with some helpful suggestions) bought me a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens to use with my Canon 450D body. I haven’t experimented too much with it yet but two things have struck me about having such a fast lens and a wide (1.8) aperture:

  • Firstly I can take photos with remarkable detail in very little light; pushing the ISO up to 1600 results in very little noise.08-12-25 Christmas 20
  • Secondly, I can take some great nightime shots without the use of a tripod using faster shutter speeds with the larger aperture.08-12-27 16

    • As VothPhoto writes:

    There is a difference of approximately 3.5 stops between f/1.8, the typical maximum aperture for an entry-level 50mm lens, and f/5.6, the typical maximum aperture at the portrait end of a “consumer” zoom. This is a huge difference in practice. Lighting that would require a difficult shutter speed of 1/8 second at f/5.6 would permit easy hand-held photography at 1/90 at f/1.8.

    I’m looking forward to experimenting some more and also trying some portrait photography.

    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/new-50mm-lens/feed/     Get Shorty http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/get-shorty/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/get-shorty/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 15:55:36 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/get-shorty/ Shorty “is a simple tool for creating shorter, human- readable links from long URLs. You install Shorty on your server, so the links you create with it never go away.” I like the sound of this service, I’m a big user of TinyUrl.com when sending links to family & friends…their Amazon example is spot on!

    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/get-shorty/feed/     Movable Type Motion: Installable Multimedia Microblogging http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/movable-type-motion-installable-multimedia-microblogging/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/movable-type-motion-installable-multimedia-microblogging/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:34:08 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/movable-type-motion-installable-multimedia-microblogging/ Movable Type Motion: Installable Multimedia Microblogging - I cam imagine this being pretty popular…design looks fancy.

    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/movable-type-motion-installable-multimedia-microblogging/feed/     Access US-Only Web Content with Hotspot Shield http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/access-us-only-web-content-with-hotspot-shield/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/access-us-only-web-content-with-hotspot-shield/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:10:13 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/access-us-only-web-content-with-hotspot-shield/ Featured Windows Download: Access US-Only Web Content with Hotspot Shield - Handy for those US-only video sites!

    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/access-us-only-web-content-with-hotspot-shield/feed/     Lifehacker HowTos 2008 http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/lifehacker-howtos-2008/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/lifehacker-howtos-2008/#comments Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:05:51 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/lifehacker-howtos-2008/ Best Of 2008: Most Popular How-To Features of 2008 My favourite, just for the title, is “Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster”.

    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/lifehacker-howtos-2008/feed/     Five best Stephen Fry tweets this month: @stephenfry http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/five-best-stephen-fry-tweets-this-month-stephenfry/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/five-best-stephen-fry-tweets-this-month-stephenfry/#comments Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:26:32 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/five-best-stephen-fry-tweets-this-month-stephenfry/ 7 Days on the Internet: From Stephen Fry tweets to LOLCats | News | TechRadar UK

    Five best Stephen Fry tweets this month: @stephenfry
    I have nine macs!!!!!! I don’t need another f*cking mac. I just want ONE ARSING PC that isn’t complete SHIT

    Forgive intemperate language, but every time I buy a PC they’re worse, not better than they were before and it make me so angry I could kill

    Unbelievable. I sent that Vermeer COMPLETELY by accident. Was showing someone how pants the BB Storm is. In pocket. Sent by nut pressure?

    Just done Richard & Judy. On my way home. Have momentous announcement to make. *clears throat* I’m gay. No, that’s not it. Await next tweet.

    Now look here, filthy-minded dogs. When I say I am “doing” it means - as well you know - that I’m on their prog, not shafting them x

    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/five-best-stephen-fry-tweets-this-month-stephenfry/feed/     CellarTracker & my wine http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/cellartracker-my-wine/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/cellartracker-my-wine/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:04:55 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/?p=271 I’ve recently started spending a lot more time buying, sorting and researching wine. This is partly in preparation for the ‘party season’ but also I’ve caught ‘the bug’; I’ve been to a number of wine tastings recently (Virgin Wines, Bibendum, The Wine Show) and have ended up buying various mixed cases of my favourites.
    I’ve reached the point where I have circa 120 bottles; some for drinking now, some to be kept for special occasions and about 20 which could do with about 2-6 years of cellaring. My physical organisation and storage of these wines is fairly haphazard, the wines for laying down sit in a wine rack in a cool room in the flat, whites for immediate drinking are in the fridge, bottles sealed with a cork are in various cool cupboards in makeshift racks, while the rest are still in their cases until I find more rack space.
    Dealing with 10-15 bottles at any one time was fairly straightforward and I had been using Corkd, a great little Web 2.0 site (now owned by Gary Vaynerchuk, the wine/vlogging fanatic) that allowed me to write brief reviews, keep a track of what I paid for them and so on…but it’s shortcomings were quickly exposed once I reached 40-50 bottles. So the hunt began for a new solution…

    There are many new sites promising to bring Web 2.0 to the wine world, LogABottle, Winelog.Net and OpenBottles to name just a few. However, I wasn’t looking for fancy graphics, smooth contours and tagging this time, just:

  • A large enough community that the majority of my wine would already be in the database
  • A solid import AND export facility, preferably based on a spreadsheet, so I could export my Corkd database and have it imported with the minimum of fuss
  • Cheap to use, or free
  • The ability to add not only my own tasting notes but to see the notes of others
  • Any kind of integration with professional publications and reviews would be preferable

    • Having read a number of reviews of other cellar management sites & services, I decided on CellarTracker. In terms of pure functionality, CellarTracker is head and shoulders above the other online offerings with an extremely large and active community.
    The site is designed and run by one man, an ex-Microsoft programmer with a love of wine by the handy name of Eric LeVine
    .

    Here is a full list of features, taken from the site:

    Cellar Inventory Management

    * Report and search by producer, vintage, varietal, drinkability, etc.
    * Purchase price and valuation data (locale settable)
    * Consumption history
    * Barcode support
    * Restaurant-quality printed wine lists
    * Per-bottle location & bin tracking
    * Personal tasting notes
    * Uploadable label images
    * Wish lists and shopping lists
    * Track pending deliveries (a.k.a futures)
    * Premium feature: Automatic valuation of your cellar (read more)
    * Express import tools for existing spreadsheets (read more)

    Tasting Notes

    * Record your own notes
    * Group a series of notes into tasting events
    * Read community tasting notes
    * See what others say about wine in your cellar
    * Automated integration with Stephen Tanzer’s IWC (for co-subscribers)
    * Store other professional reviews and scores (in compliance with copyright)
    * Community bulletin board

    The import process was relatively smooth and involved sending a formatted spreadsheet to Eric who imported it and prompted me to map each wine to either an existing database entry or create a new wine. From then on, I’ve diligently added each purchase, ‘accepted delivery’ when the case has arrived and have started to record proper (but still rather amateur) tasting notes.

    There’s a great Getting Started page on the CellarTracker wiki if you’re interested, plus I am able to expose the data on my wine cellar to the web via RSS and have added two pages to this site, my Wine Cellar (using the WP plugin Winex which is a little temperamental on my installation) and my Tasting Notes.

    Finally, to view my cellar on the CellarTracker site, click here!

    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/cellartracker-my-wine/feed/     Top Ten Reasons to Love Netbooks http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/top-ten-reasons-to-love-netbooks/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/top-ten-reasons-to-love-netbooks/#comments Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:24:40 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/top-ten-reasons-to-love-netbooks/ T3 Top Ten: Reasons to LOVE netbooks | T3 magazine online I’m holding off on buying a netbook and waiting for the next generation; 10″ screen, >90% keyboard, 6-cell batteries, mobile internet and maybe even Windows 7 <gasp>. I have a great desktop, files sitting on the server and no need for a full size laptop, a netbook would suit me fine.
    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/top-ten-reasons-to-love-netbooks/feed/     Toucan portable backup http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/toucan-portable-backup/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/toucan-portable-backup/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:44:51 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/toucan-portable-backup/ Toucan | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives Toucan is a great little portable backup app for your USB stick; lots of advanced features, fairly lightweight and a great addition to my PortableApps suite. It my even replace my copy of SyncBack. From Lifehacker.
    ]]>     http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/12/toucan-portable-backup/feed/     Portable Digsby http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/11/portable-digsby/ http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/11/portable-digsby/#comments Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:34:01 +0000 Greg http://www.gregnbaker.com/blog/2008/11/portable-digsby/ Digsby Portable
    Get it here (RAR)! Works fine sitting in my DropBox.
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