Julien Valroff's weblog and personal homepage
Posts tagged Tech
Laptop as desktop computer replacement
Nov 2nd
I am currently studying the possibility to change my current desktop computer for a laptop. This is the first time I am looking at these powerful laptops, as I now only use cheap laptops for small office use (email, web etc.) when traveling.
My aim is now to use a laptop for my daily tasks: picture editing, small development, multimedia etc.
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Firmware update for Sony DSLR-A700
Sep 20th
Sony has recently published an updated firmware for the DSLR-A700 camera.
Changes since oldest v3 firmware are:
- The choice to select auto exposure bracketing (single & continuous) with 3 shots in 2 EV steps has been added.
- The choice to turn [Off] the High ISO NR feature has been added.
- Improvement of the image quality in high ISO setting.
- Improvement of the auto white balance and D-Range Optimizer performance.
- Improvement of reliability for communication between camera body and vertical grip.
Though I haven’t yet tested the improvements of the image quality using high sensibility or D-Range Optimizer, I mostly appreciate the possibility to make 3 shots at +/-2EV in auto-bracketing, which eases creation of HDR or exposure-blended images.
Download link for Windows work well on GNU/Linux (using Wine to extract the firmware file): http://support.sony-europe.com/dime/digistill/alpha/alpha.aspx?site=&m=DSLR-A700&site=odw_en_GB&odw_model=DSLR-A700
Note that upgrading the firmware resets the counter for file naming.
USB card reader and USB power management
Jun 1st
I have received a brand new USB card reader.
At first sight, everything was working well “out of the box”, but when I have checked the log files, I could see the following lines repeated very frequently:
Jun 1 08:22:08 athyr kernel: [ 1412.134045] usb 6-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
I repeat everything seems to work OK, but I can’t stand this kind of messages, especially when it deals with storage (by experience, everything works well during the tests, you simply ignore error messages, and you loose your data the first time you really use your hardware!).
Hosting problems and side effects of the OpenSSL vulnerability
May 19th
I am in the process of moving all my services (including this website and my mail server) to a new host (actually a virtual server). Until now, almost all of them were (hum, are… see below) hosted on my home server on a DSL line.
The aim is to ease maintenance, reduce power usage, and avoid any risk of fire when not at home.
Most of the websites and the mail server were moved to the new virtual server at the beginning of the week.
I had to postpone my backup configuration to deal with the OpenSSL vulnerability.
Unfortunately, one of the filer of my new hosting company crashed on Thursday and all the data of my virtual host have been lost.
The server is still unreachable, I had to move back to my home server on Friday.
This lead to some outages on all my websites in the meantime. Sorry for any inconvenience.
I have also lost a few e-mail (which I have received on the new host, but not yet read, ie. not yet in my MUA cache). If you sent something I haven’t yet answered to, please send it again.
I hope I will be able to work on the virtual server again next week-end.
iPod nano video
Dec 26th
My girlfriend received an iPod nano video for Christmas.
As for music, it works fine with rhythmbox from experimental rebuilt against latest libgpod library.
But I can’t find any Linux software which would allow us to transfer pictures. I have tried gpixpod, but it seems the iPod is too new as it doesn’t even detect it. iTunes does not run with Wine.
I think I will try to set up iPod Linux some day…
New motherboard and CPU for my workstation
Sep 23rd
I have just set up my new motherboard and CPU on my workstation.
I have chosen an Asus P5B-V motherboard with an Intel E4400 Core 2 Duo CPU. I have also acquired 2x1Go DDR2 memory from Corsair.
I wanted an Intel based video card (the Asus has a 965G integrated chipset), and I am now able to run (useless) compiz-fusion without a problem.
So far, everything runs fine, and the system is very quiet, even with the fan and heat sink shipped with the CPU. lm-sensors work fine with this configuration.
For now, I am trying to get a 1680×1050 resolution in console thanks to uvesafb and 915resolution in initramfs, but still have issues. I have contacted the developer and hope to be able to write an article explaining the necessary steps.
