I talked with several friends who are way more “camera geeky” than I am… I’m pretty ignorant of photography for the most part, but I wouldn’t mind learning a bit more. So I only had a few basic criteria:

• Pretty decent low-light (indoor) photos
• Use AA batteries (I really like having easy access to spares in a pinch)
• Some advanced features so I can learn more if I get motivated

Not required but very nice to have items were:

• Big optical zoom (because its really nice)
• Viewfinder (because sometimes glare just makes LCDs useless)
• Semi-fast flash recharge

It was soon obvious that I was looking for an “Advanced Point and Shoot” for which a few of the top players were Nikon’s P80 and Canon’s SX10 IS. I have some friends who are die-hard Nikon fans and others who are die-hard Canon fans, so this was tricky.

The P80 was a bit more inexpensive, and Pro Photo Supply in Portland, is primarily (though by no means completely) a Nikon shop, so they packed some extra value with their Nikons, including a free 2-year add-on to the already present 1-year warranty, and a basic leather camera case. The biggest single downside for me was that it uses a custom Li-ion rechargeable, and one of my bigger criteria was to use AA batteries. However, it is pretty light, has a nice interface, and seemed good overall with an 18x zoom and a nice wide mode too (27mm - 486mm range).

The SX10 IS is the new version of the S5 IS (and S3 IS before it); I’ve got friends with both the S5 and S3, so I’ve had the chance to play with them before. Both friends are nearly fanatical about these cameras, so they were hard to ignore. The SX10 cost about $60 more than the P80, but very importantly, it is powered by AA batteries. It also boasts a nice wide mode and an even larger 20x zoom (28mm - 560mm range). This one is a bit heaver than the P80, but has a nice LCD that actually pivots out and can be turned around to protect the screen and save battery, or be used to aid in self portraiting. One downside is that it doesn’t have a provided lens cap keeper string, but I should be able to pick one up very cheaply (Pro Photo was out of stock).

Both cameras were very nice, but the SX10 fit my criteria more closely, so that’s what I went with. Of course, I’ve left out the internal battle I had one whether or not I should get an “advanced” Point and Shoot like this. I figured I could get a much cheaper small P&S with a 4x zoom, and perhaps someday later explore the SLR world. But I think I’m happy. My biggest concern was that the wife would find it too bulky to mess with, but she seems to like it quite well! It IS after all a Point and Shoot and has all the preset auto and scene modes to make things as simple as you want.

To test low-light shots, I took the following three pictures as soon as I got home tonight. I don’t think they do the camera justice, but I’m a rookie and I’m just demonstrating some fun differences I found.

All three were taken at ISO 800. I think the images are a bit noisy due to the higher ISO, but bleh, I’m new and playing around. This is my sons room and crib, no lights on with a half-open door letting in some fairly dim incandescent light.

The first image is auto-mode with the flash and auto white balance on. I really want to learn to avoid the flash (or maybe just when to use it), as it almost always makes weird shadows and strange highlights. Anyway… here it is.

This second is in aperture-priority mode set to f2.8, with the flash off and auto white balance on. It’s very obvious this is a dark room in this shot.

My next thought was “I think I could make this photo better by setting the white balance.” So I did just that. I used evaluative white balance to set the the wall as the white but kept it at f2.8 priority and no flash. I then snapped the same picture again. Amazing! It’s hard to tell the room is even dark!

I know I’m going to have lots of fun with this camera. Though it doesn’t yet support the Digic 4 processor, I’m looking forward to seeing what the CHDK addon firmware will do for me when it does. Plus, I look forward to lots of fun learning more about photography in general. And the most important thing; the wife seems to like it!

Not much more to the story, but I did make a few tweaks to my sample code. The mod_rewrite rule and javascript have been a tiny bit improved, so now after a successful login, it will try to redirect you to where you intended to go. (Previously, it always sent the user to /) 

Also, in the comments I made it MUCH clearer that this is NOT intended to be a secure solution, just a simple way to keep Google and random people out of things. Anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML/Javascript/Cookies (or less than basic) could read the source and figure out how to create the “secure” cookie, and BAM they’re in like Flynn.

This plugin provides a control panel where I can globally enable/disable plugins, set plugins to be auto-enabled for new blogs, and give users the ability to enable/disable only selected plugins.

The perfect scenario is, I want to auto-anable Akismet for my users, so they get spam filtering on comments. Also, I want them to have the ability to try out other various plugins, but don’t want them able to turn off Aksimet.

I’ll echo the sentiments of others I read when discovering Plugin Commander, “this functionality should be in WPMU core!”

I could still write my own version, but eh, what’s the point. Seems to work great!

Then I moved on to bash, but for some reason, I never investigated using vi key bindings. I simply lived with the defaults (which, for the record, are emacs-like key bindings).

So, just the other day I said to myself, “Self, I want to use vi key bindings in bash. I want to again experience the joy of traversing and editing my command line in COMMAND MODE. I want the speed and the power of my precious vi (well, I use vim) at my finger tips. And I NO LONGER want to waste time holding arrow keys or to think about using emacs-like commands.”

So, I fired up google.com; low and behold I stumbled onto this little post about using vi key bindings in bash and zsh. So sweet!

In a nutshell, the bash command to enable vi mode is:

set -o vi

This can be set in your .bashrc file, and if it doesn’t pickup when you start a new terminal session, add something like this to your .profile or .bash_profile:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi

With vi mode enabled, you’ll start your bash session in insert mode, so things should behave as normal. But, to turn on the power, just hit the ESC key to enter COMMAND MODE. Now all your vi commands are availble. Move to end of line with “$”, beginning of line with “^”, delete a word with “dw”, etc.

Enjoy!

First, I nixed netatalk for direct AFP support. My primary reason for using it was to gain a more Mac-like network filesystem which would make Time Machine happier. Well, Time Machine uses a sparse bundle disk image on it’s target; after learning about that, using AFP seemed a bit unnecessary. Also, Samba CIFS/SMB seemed to perform better. I don’t have solid benchmarks for this, but simple file copies seemed to be consistenly faster with Samba. One of the biggest annoyances about netatalk was all the extra hidden files and folders it created. I run a hybrid network, I have more Mac machines, but also Windows, plus I browse file systems on the command line quite often; and those excess files pushed me over the edge.

Second, I nixed Time Machine. Just when I thought everything was working perfectly, it completely blew up and could no longer access its data store. Not good for a backup solution. I plan to write about my new home backup solution sometime, but it’s basically rsync with a few key points.

Lastly, I streamlined my Linux avahi config using some pointers here, suggested to me by George the commenter on my above linked post.

Previously i had a service config file for each service, but this resulted in my server having multiple entries in the OS X Finder, one host for Samba, one host for AFP (when I had it), and one host for RFB. So, I merged all of those files into one.

multi.service

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
<service>
<type>_smb._tcp</type>
<port>139</port>
</service>
<service>
<type>_rfb._tcp</type>
<port>5901</port>
</service>
<service>
<type>_device-info._tcp</type>
<port>0</port>
<txt-record>model=RackMac</txt-record>
</service>
<service>
<type>_http._tcp</type>
<port>80</port>
</service>
<service>
<type>_ssh._tcp</type>
<port>22</port>
</service>
<service>
<type>_sftp-ssh._tcp</type>
<port>22</port>
</service>
</service-group>

Now everything that can show up in the OS X finder, shows up on one host entry. Plus thanks to the tip I linked to above, the “_device-info._tcp” section sets an icon for the server in OS X Finder.

Enjoy!

Currently the process to put photos into a gallery is:

1. Choose photos in iPhoto
2. Export chosen files to disk
3. Create new Wordpress post
4. Add media via Wordpress uploader

This isn’t too bad, especially for a geek who’s used to lots of arcane workarounds to accomplish simple goals. But… for my wife or others who don’t want the hassle, this is basically annoying.

So I have this idea to create an iPhoto export plugin which will upload directly into Wordpress!

Roadblocks to completion:

1. Time and Commitment (typical)
2. Objective-C (don’t know it)
3. Cocoa (don’t know it)
4. X-Code (don’t know it)
5. Non-Javascript/Java development on Mac OS X (new to me)

So… this is going to be a slightly ambitions undertaking… but I’m excited about it! I’ll be learning a bunch of new stuff. It’ll take more time than I’d like, but I expect it to be a rewarding process. At some point, I’ll be able to create a “project” home for this bad boy, and make it available to all!

If anyone has pointers on OS X development, I’m all ears.

Hopefully, all will be well again soon.

It’s cool to see good feedback on the company I work for and our flagship product, Clearspace. Of course, since I’m friends with Matt (mentioned in the post), it’s nice to know he’s doing a good job. Gotta keep him on his toes! D00d!

So I set out to find a solution and I found a post by loudhush which described using the scutil to modify DNS network settings after connecting to a Cisco VPN. This was great, but I needed something a bit handier.

So, I cranked out the following which goes in my /Users/username/.profile:

# .profile or .bash_profile
function myvpn {
vpnclient connect VPNPROFILENAME user MYVPNUSERNAME
myworkdns
}
function myworkdns {
printf "get State:/Network/Service/com.cisco.VPN/DNS\nd.add ServerAddresses * 192.168.1.252, 192.168.1.198\nd.add SearchDomains * example.com, other.example.com\nset State:/Network/Service/com.cisco.VPN/DNS" | sudo scutil
}


These are bash functions which i run from the command line. (I also find the Client GUI Cisco to be a pain, and prefer command line)

So, obviously, you’ll need to substitute in your Cisco VPN profile name ( found in /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles), your VPN username, your DNS server IP addresses, and your DNS search domains to your legitimate values.

To use, run Terminal, then type myvpn. The VPN client will prompt you for your username and password. You’ll then have to hit CTRL+Z to suspend the VPN client so the script can run the DNS updates; this part uses sudo to run the command as root, so you will probably need to type your Mac password immediately after hitting CTRL+Z. If you didn’t want to bother with the command line VPN client, you could just use your GUI Cisco VPN client, then run myworkdns from Terminal, which will still probably prompt you for your Mac password.

Hope others find this useful. If I find a cleaner way, I’ll post that too.