Steve

Mobile Phones

Some technology in our lives become things that we depend on from day to day. Mobile phones are certainly fit in to that guise. I first used a mobile phone back in 1986, but it was only on loan to me for a business trip. Back then phones used analogue technology. Modern day GSM phones were not available then. They were also still very expensive. Not many people had mobiles back then.

It wasn’t until 1995 that we got our first mobile a Nokia Orange. It was a GSM phone, but phones of this sort or era would struggle to last more than a couple of days on a single battery. I used that one for a couple of years before we got a couple of Nokia 702’s a bit more chunky but better battery life.

Then in 1999, along came the Nokia 7110, it was quite a revelation at the time. A big screen a roller for navigation. It supported WAP. A slider covers up the keyboard when you aren’t using it. The previous phones were recycled, but this one I couldn’t part with. Sure it got replaced with more modern phones, colour displays, cameras, all the things we now expect as usual in a phone. But I kept the 7110 going on Orange just for the Orange film Wednesdays.

It wasn’t until the other day that I realised that the 7110 was now over 10 years old. It still works, I quite like using it as a second phone, the large display is great because I can read it without my reading glasses. Sure it’s simple but for a phone for texting (it has predictive texting) or for calls it’s fine.

Contrast this with another gadget I found in the cupboard the other day a Sony MZ-NF810 Mini Disc recorder. I bought this for my wife Alison in about 2004, this was just before iPods took off, but at the time she wanted something with an FM radio. Alison moved on to an iPod Nano and like other bits of technology the Mini Disc recorder got put away in the cupboard.

I am looking in to doing a project at the moment that I needed to interview people. I remembered the Mini Disc recorder… perfect I thought… but when I looked in to using it, the software isn’t available for the Mac OSX, but even with the PC software installed whilst I could find a way of putting audio files on to the MD recorder, I’m not discovered a way of transferring it off the MD recorder on to a PC in a digital format. The best way seems to be just linking the headphone socket to the line in on my iMac.Then I discovered the Voice Memo recorder on my iPod Touch which can save files in MP3 format, so with a small external microphone I’m sure this will do the job perfectly, so the MD recorder I think will end up back in the cupboard again, such a shame in a way,

Panoramic Photography

With the advent of digital photography it has opened up a lot more opportunities for me to experiment with techniques which whilst they were not available with film, they tended to be a lot more expensive to do. Panoramic photography was one of these techniques I’ve previously tried using film, but it was never that successful for me.

With digital photography it is a lot easier to achieve good results, but certainly not fool proof. Some of my earlier attempts where quite good, although I found it difficult to repeat these earlier results successfully every time, so I recently had an opportunity whilst over in France to refine the technique and capture the same scene on several days using different techniques to see the overall results and to learn from the exercise.

I started off playing around using the software supplied with my Canon EOS 20D, called Photostitch. It does a fairly good job of joining your files together. But this software doesn’t work on my Mac, or at least it didn’t work under Snow Leopard. I discovered a later version of the software on the net that now does work. It’s nice and easy to use. You just assemble the photos in the right order and it then stitches them together. What could be easier….

The photo above I took quite early on and I must have hit lucky in one of my early attempts. Subsequent panoramas just didn’t have the same impact as this one so I went back to the drawing board and tried out various options to discover what I was doing wrong.

I found that in order to get consistent results you need to lock the exposure of the camera, so this means putting your camera in to manual mode. Then I found it is best to pan across your scene and look at the variation in exposure you are getting as you go from one side to the other. You might need to make some adjustments so that the exposure falls slightly either side of what the camera considers the correct exposure. You are however aiming to get the least variation across the whole scene. To achieve this I found after a few attempts it’s best to aim for the sun at its highest point in the day so that your scene is illuminated as evenly as possible. Being cloudy isn’t too much of a problem as long as the cloud isn’t too patchy, otherwise you will have quite large differences as you pan across the scene.

The next important thing you need is to the ability to hold your camera as steady as possible so that your pictures scan across the scene in the same plane. I have done some handheld, but using a tripod or mono pod makes the task that bit easier.

When you are taking your frames for your panorama, I found it important to have a decent overlap from one frame to the next, rather than getting all technical with angles and things I just used the focusing spots in the viewfinder, the outer ones on my camera are at about a quarter and three quarters across the frame. So take a picture note where the three quarters one is in the scene and move the camera so that the quarter spot is roughly pointing at the same point in the scene. This also helps you keep the camera level if you are doing this hand held. Just keep repeating this until you have covered the whole scene.

Most people do panos in landscape mode, the photo below was done with a series of portrait pictures, you get a much more ‘natural’ landscape across the scene that way, but you do have to take more shots.

Try different view points, just moving a few feet to the left or right can make a difference.

As you can see with this image there is also the risk of getting your own shadow in the scene! I could have cropped that out and I did in other versions of this image, but I have left this one as it came out of the software to start with.

Be prepared for some seriously big images, I’ve reduced these ones in size to get them on to the blog in a reasonable time.

The best advice I can give though is to keep trying to shoot different scenes. I’m lucky in that the above scene in the second picture is only about 50 metres from our house so I can quickly walk there take a series of pictures, nip back to the house, download the pictures and go back again if I’m not happy with the result!

Have fun….

Going Native….

We moved to France last May with a UK right hand drive (RHD) car. Driving it here in France didn’t cause me any real problems as I had driven many miles, or should I say kilometres, here over the years. I’m lucky I can quickly adapt to driving in different situations. I’ve been driving for 35 years this year (eek!) And I’ve driven a variety of vehicles in that time from small cars to 7.5 tonne trucks and things like Land Rovers with big trailers.

Over the years I’ve driven left hand drive (LHD) vehicles, hire cars or vans mainly. Being here full time though has exposed me to more of the hazards of driving a RHD car in France than you would experience in just a holiday.

We are awaiting the delivery of a new LHD car next month, I hope. In the meantime, we have hired a Fiat Punto, which of course is left hand drive. So what is it like swapping over to LHD after years of driving RHD vehicles?

You still do odd things like walking to the passenger side rather than the driver’s side in supermarket car parks! Or going to release the seat belt on the left hand side when you are sat in the driver’s seat rather than the right hand side. But I’ve quickly adapted to driving a LHD car again for longer than a few hours. The other change over for me with the Fiat is that it’s a manual and our previous car which we had for two years was an automatic. So far I’ve only forgotten to use the clutch once when coming to a halt!

One thing I have noticed is how much safer it is sitting on the correct side of the car when you are driving on the right. You have a better view of on coming cars on roundabouts and you can see other vehicles so much better without having to look around the windscreen pillars. Likewise when turning into right hand junctions you have a better view of the road you are turning into.

I have heard people quite concerned about driving on the other side of the road than the one they are used to driving on, but concentrate on your driving, which of course you should be doing anyway, and you won’t have any issues. I use my TomTom SatNav to warn me of speed limits and speed cameras. The French police seem to be pretty active with their mobile speed camera cars in our area, so I suggest you need to stick to the speed limits wherever you are.

Safe and happy driving, which ever side you drive on….

Orfordness

Those of you who like High Power RF engineering in the form of MF transmitters should take a look at this video, that features my old friend Andy Matheson G3ZYP who I first met when I was in Cyprus back in 1983. Andy showed me how to use Wordstar for the first time on a CP/M computer… memories!!

The 648 kHz service is about to disappear at the end of March, never to be replaced. I’m not sure if the DRM service will be continuing from Orfordness or not.

2012 Tribute to BBC 648 kHz Orfordness – The Enthusiast's Version from Jonathan Marks on Vimeo.

Dropbox

I’ve been using Dropbox now for over a year. I don’t know what we would do without it. We have had shared folders on our network for many years, but Dropbox takes this one step further and adds many additional useful features.

Even if you only have one computer Dropbox can act as a useful on-line back up for all your regularly used files, just store them in your Dropbox folder and they will be backed up securely on line. If you have more than one computer, then Dropbox will keep the files on both computers in sync automatically. So you will always have the latest up to date versions of your files with no need to use USB sticks and concerns about do I have the latest one on here or is it on that other machine.

You can also share Dropbox folders with other users which I find extremely useful for keeping up to date information on the Pembury website, people manage their own sub-domains on the site and I just have to upload the files. It saves them having to email me all the files each time there is an update. You can also share photos with Dropbox, privately or publically.

Dropbox works on PC’s, Mac’s, Linux machines, and mobile devices too (iPods, iPhones etc), take a look at the video on the site.

Grab yourself a free Dropbox account, use any of the Dropbox links on this page and you will get some extra storage for free. Let me know if you sign up and I will tell you how to get some more space for free as well.