Looks like I’ve been neglecting Windows apps for a while. So here is a neat free (donationware) application……Marxio Timer . It’s a “simple” timer program that can pretty much do anything a user does on a pre-programmed timer loop. You can set Marxio Timer to perform a preset action or set it to execute an application or keystrokes of your choice. You can specify a time or have it perform the action after a recurrent event like your computer idling or when CPU usage reaches a certain percentage. Marxio Timer has password protection and will even take a screenshot at the moment if you need to document it. One of the handier features is the ability to save your settings, a big time saver if you’ve created a number of elaborate timers and actions.

Hot on the heels of cometdocs and it’s free document conversion webservice comes Gantter. If you’ve ever used Microsoft Project, you’ll feel right at home here. You can think of it as a web-based Microsoft Project. It helps you to:

• Plan and estimate your project (duration, work, cost) by splitting the project into a number of tasks
• Review you plan using Gantt chart
• Manage project resources (work or material) and assign them to tasks
• Manage project calendars (set working times, add holidays etc)
• Manage resource calendars (working times, vacations etc)
• Control your project’s progress by setting % complete values to each task
• Review critical tasks

Just like in MS Project you start by adding tasks, setting dependencies between them (Finish-to-Start, Start-to-Start, Finish-to-Finish, Start-to-Start), indenting them to create summary tasks. Then you add resources, modify their calendars if necessary, assign resources to tasks.

Gantter also supports more advanced features:

• Plan your project either from its start date or its finish date
• Mark tasks as milestones
• Set task deadlines
• Set task constraints: As soon as possible, As late as possible, Start no earlier than, Start no later than, Finish no earlier than, Finish no later than, Must start on, Must finish on
• Set task types: Fixed Units, Fixed Duration or Fixed Work, set Effort driven flag when applicable.
• Set lag time and lead time between tasks.

Gantter saves the result in MS Project’s XML format, which means that you can open Gantter projects in MS Project. Gantter also supports importing projects created in MS Project.

Well just came back from NAB’09 in Vegas. NAB was a bit thinly attended this year (I hear ~85,0000 people, as opposed to close to 200,000 in previous years). Had lots of time to browse the entire show floor. Lots of neat little booths and an entire section for experimental media in North Hall which was kinda cool. Anyways, in catching up with the feeds, today I came across cometdocs . It’s a free document conversion web service. Its unique features include on the fly OCR conversion capabilities, over 50 different conversion options and proprietary XPS and PDF conversion abilities that retains formatting, images and text in the selected output format.

A List of Online Conversion Types:

Convert from PDF:
(some conversion support OCR conversion for scanned PDF)
PDF to Open Office Writer format
PDF to Open Office Calc format
PDF to Open Office Impress format
PDF to image BMP
PDF to image JPG
PDF to image GIF
PDF to image PNG
PDF to image TIF
PDF to text
PDF to HTML
PDF to MS Word
PDF to MS Excel
PDF to AutoCAD (dwg)
PDF to AutoCAD (dxf)

Convert to PDF:
Bmp to PDF
Word (doc) to PDF
Gif to PDF
htm to PDF
html to PDF
jpeg to PDF
jpg to PDF
log to PDF
mht to PDF
mhtml to PDF
ODF to PDF
ODP to PDF
ODS to PDF
ODT to PDF
PNG to PDF
PPS to PDF
PPT to PDF
RTF to PDF
SDA to PDF
SDC to PDF
SDD to PDF
SDS to PDF
SDW to PDF
SXC to PDF
SXD to PDF
SXI to PDF
SXM to PDF
SXW to PDF
TIF to PDF
TIFF to PDF
TXT to PDF
WRI to PDF
XLS to PDF

Convert from XPS:
Convert to Open Office Writer format
Convert to Open Office Calc format
Convert to Open Office Impress format
Convert to image BMP
Convert to image JPG
Convert to image GIF
Convert to image PNG
Convert to image TIF
Convert to text
Convert to HTML
Convert to MS Word
Convert to MS Exsel

Other File Conversions:
Excel to CSV (XLSTOCSV)
XML to LINT (XMLLINT)
HTML to RSS (HTMLTORSS)
ASC TO PDB
ASC TO EBC
UNIX TO DOS
DOS TO UNIX
MAC TO UNIX
FIX TO DELIM
DELIM TO FIX
CSV TO DELIM
SORT FILE
PDF INFO
COMPARE FILES
MP3 INFO
FILEINFO
ICONV

So head on over to cometdocs for some conversion goodness…….

Okay so the title is long….but now you know what’s coming….right? TPMG (Toronto Photography Meetup Group) visited The Carlu courtesy of Jenn. We were group number four and there was 15 of us. The Carlu , for those of you who don’t know, is the new name given to the 7th floor of Eaton’s College Street store. An Art Moderne masterpiece, the Eaton’s Seventh Floor was at the heart of Toronto’s cultural life for many years. The Auditorium played host to the major performers of its day, including Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra. The first performance of the National Ballet of Canada was on the stage of the Eaton Auditorium. Canada’s own Glenn Gould, fond of the Auditorium’s excellent acoustics, used the hall for a number of his recordings. I’m get to go back again this Wednesday to do some gigapixel images of the space. Should be fun. The complete set is on flickr .

Today, the TSG (Toronto Strobist Group) met at Ryerson. We decided to take the gig outside and do some outdoor shoots with strobes. I decided to use my Canon G9 (instead of the usual 5D), so that I could take advantage of its electronic shutter and get a higher flash sync speed. This helps with (literally) turning down the sun light during the day. You can get some nice effects with this (using Sun light as fill light). Below are a couple of examples. As usual the complete set is on flickr here .

Well, I guess we all better thank Steve Wozniak…..I wonder what their idea of a portable computer would have looked like? I wonder what the steering wheel is for? The MOUSE?