Month: January 2008

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Macbook Battery Life

I’ve just replaced the battery in my first generation Apple Macbook, well worth the $129 dollars. For such a small battery I was always amazed that I was able to get more then 5 hours of battery life and about 9 months ago when it started to drop off a bit I realized how great that was.

I will admit that to get better then 5 hours use has to be pretty minimal, but if I’m in a meeting or surfing the web while relaxing with the screen’s brightness down to it’s lowest setting I have no trouble keeping it alive for 5 hours.… Click here to read more!

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Install Tiger on a G3 without a DVD drive

Here is a quick tutorial for anyone with an ancient Apple G3 Blue & White Powermac looking to install an OS via DVD. Basically, these machines are some of the first to have Firewire ports on them, the caveat is that they are plugged into the motherboard using a small daughter card. This allows them to be used in the OS normally but makes booting with the or using them for target disk mode impossible.

My first thought after discovering that was to install a generic DVD drive in the mac and use that but the drives on had on hand did not immediately work.… Click here to read more!

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Thecus N5200 Failure…. Again

Wow, this is getting old. 36 days in and I’ve had another drive fail.. only not really. Sure the N5200 thinks it’s failed but if I pull the disk out and pop in back in, the array rebuilds and all is well. The logs show no errors on the drive, no bad reads or writes, it just disappears. What a wonderful device it is….

Also, even though the email test functions work the N5200 still does not send me email when something like this happens. I still have to log in every few days and check manually. Very nice….

Toplakr

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Digital Photography Workflow

I shoot a lot of pictures so sorting, editing, and using them can be cumbersome. Over the years I have moved around from application to application trying to find a good way deal with all the data. The biggest issue for me is that the application doesn’t get in the way of my organization of images, but works with it. I don’t want my images stored in some kind of ‘library’ file, I want them stored in flat folders that are easy for me to move around as I need to.

Up until recently I was running Windows or Linux on my desktops but over 2007 I switched to the Mac platform full time.… Click here to read more!

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D300: MB-D10 Battery Grip

When I picked up my D300 I also bought the battery grip, as I mentioned in a previous post my primary reason for buying it was the ability to be able to use AA batteries if need be. I also bought a spare battery for the camera which also fits into the grip so when it came in I of course tried it out.

When you buy the grip it comes with two battery holders, one for the same type of battery the D300 takes, and one that holds 8 AA batteries. Also of note is that the grip is able to boost the frame rate of the D300 from 6 frames per second to 8 frames per second but there is a catch.… Click here to read more!

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D300: Buffer Size and Limitations

Lesson Learned: If using the D300 and you have Active D-Lighting enabled it will limit your frame buffer to 12 shots.

Active D-lighting is a new feature found in the D300, as well as the D3 I believe. Basically, it’s a way for the camera to optimize the image as you shoot. I’m really boiling it down here but it will enhance the dynamic range of an image to make the photo look more like you eye sees the world. Ken Rockwell has a much better explanation on his D300 review, an excellent resource. It’s the place I go for the real scoop on all things photographic.… Click here to read more!

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D300: Interval Shooting

I had band rehearsal last night and, just for fun, I put the D300 up on the tripod and set it to take a shot every minute. I was able to put the ‘Interval shooing’ option into my ‘Custom’ menu so it was easy enough for me to get to but it’s not all that intuitive to setup. Once I completed the options they made sense but at first glance I was somewhat confused as to what I was changing. They feature set offered for interval shooting is pretty good though. You call have it start shooing at an interval right away, or at a specified time which makes is versatile both for fun time lapse shoots as well as for some kind of surveillance shooting.… Click here to read more!

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Topslakr.com Format Change

This blog is now more then a year old, quite a milestone for me. Typically I throw a blog up, use it for a few months and then take it down and replace it with something new, overwriting any data that had been there before. I’ve been blogging for years now but all I have to show for it is 12 months of content. If you are stalking me though you could look over at the wayback machine which seems to have a spotty record of me online since 2004. They are missing anything older than that as well as 2006.… Click here to read more!

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Review: Nikon D300

Since I bought my Nikon D40 back about a year ago I’ve taken nearly 20,000 shots with it and could not be happier with the device. It does everything I had hoped it would and had a large enough feature set that I could grow into it a bit. I love it. It marks a real turning point for me in terms of becoming a ‘photographer’. One thing to be clear on though, spending money on cameras does not a good photographer make. What the D40 does do for me is allow the camera to get out of the way and let me take pictures.… Click here to read more!

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My OLPC Laptop

I’ve spoken about the OLPC laptop before, Twice, in fact. Mine has finally arrived after much wasted time on Fedex’s part. I still prefer UPS. Fedex was supposed to deliver the OLPC on Dec 20th, I didn’t receive it until the 26th. Whoops!

Within the box you find the laptop, a power adapter, the battery, a quickstart guide and a letter from Nicholas Negroponte.

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The first thing I noticed was just how small it is. For whatever reason I was expecting it to be about 50% larger. The keyboard is very small and I cannot touch type, I can only hunt and peck with my index fingers.… Click here to read more!