I recently upgraded netbook using the distribution upgrade and didn’t like the results, so I reinstalled Ubuntu Notebook Remix 9.10 Karmic Koala. Well, I’m sorry but I don’t think this Koala was ready for release. First there was the issue of where the heck are all the beloved Ubuntu tools. Gone is the Add/Remove software progy (you have to install manually), now we have Ubuntu Software Centre. Gone is being able to check off multiple packages for batch install, USC installs apps one at a time (which takes two mouse clicks per app).

To top it off — atleast in UNR 9.10 — there is no install button once you click on the arrow beside the packages. No, it’s not a problem with root/admin, I tried running it as root and same thing, NO INSTALL BUTTON on the install screen. Anyways it turns out once you get past the gargantuan Windows XP like update (125 updates) using the following two commands, the Ubuntu Software Centre magically comes back to life and gives you the “oh so important” install button. Come on Ubuntu…..I thought you were friendly. This Koala Bites HARD!!! :-). So the magic commands are….yeah you guessed it:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

BTW. If at some point the upgrade asks to replace /etc/defaults/grub say “yes” and go with the newer version. It does not harm the system.

Someone must have screwed up something in the freshclam plist as part of the update for Leopard (2009-05). I was getting this error constantly in my system.log which was not only annoying as hell, but also kept clam from downloading new virus definitions. Anyways, here is how you fix it.

Wow…..Another amazing feature brought to you just in time for X-Mas by the google…..Auto Captioning or Auto-Cap. You might be wondering Caption-Schmaption…..Why? Well first on the list would be accessibility which is self explanatory, but also searchability and auto-translation. You see once a video has been captioned, google can provide searchability, you can do word searches and literally jump to the point in video where the word is mentioned…..That’s really cool. Auto-translation is another natural fit, once you’ve got the english captions, you can do machine translation to any of the other 51 languages google translation engine supports.

To achieve this google combined their automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions. Auto-caps uses the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they’re off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

In addition to automatic captions, google is also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and google will use their ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video. This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don’t have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks.

For now, auto-caps is only visible on a handful of partner channels (UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia,PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google & YouTube channels.) Auto-timing, on the other hand, is rolling out globally for all English-language videos on YouTube.

THANKS GOOGLE :-)

Normal Digital Camera’s — including DSLR’s and high end medium format cameras — all use a method called Bayering. This is achieved by overlaying a colour filter across the imaging device (CCD/CMOS) to capture a single colour (R, G or B) per pixel. The final image is a interpolation of these individual R-G-B pixel values.

There have been some technology developments recently like the Foveon X3 that allow RGB colours to be captured at every pixel site, but their sensor size and resolution is limited for now. That’s where the Hasselblad H3dii-39MS fits in. This body is fitted with the medium format (36x48mm) 39 megapixel sensor that can be optionally used in what Hasselblad calls Multishot mode.

The multi-shot technology realizes the capture of still life subjects with all details represented in true detail and color resolution. High precision piezo motors control movements of the sensor in one pixel increments. By capturing a sequence of 4 shots, each offset by a one pixel increment, every point on your set is rendered with its true red, green and blue color components. The result is full colour information from the sensor with no artifacts like moiré, common with single shot capture.

Neato!!!!

If you like wallpapers like the one above — you know the abstract, grungy, urban silhouette style — but don’t know enough about Adobe packages, you’re in luck. Head over to X3Studios and use their free tool to create your very own, one of a kind, wallpaper. It’s like doing Photoshop and Illustrator by numbers, really neat. The wallpaper creation tool at X3Studios is free and requires no registration for use.

Well It was only a matter of time as they say…..first Sony, then JVC and now Epson.

Seiko Epson Corporation (“Epson”, TSE:6724) today announced that it has developed the world’s first* 4K-compatible high-temperature polysilicon (HTPS) TFT liquid crystal panel for 3LCD projectors. Measuring 1.64 inches diagonally, the new panel supports displays with resolutions up to 4096 × 2160 pixels.

With a resolution of nearly 8.85 megapixels, 4K panels offer four times the resolution of full HD (1920 × 1080), making them ideal for the high resolutions required by special applications such as industrial design, architectural design and simulations, as well as for presentations and projecting four full HD images at the same time.

Panel features:

• High-resolution 4K-compatible
• 1.64″: 4K (4096 x 2160 pixels) – the world’s first 4K HTPS panel*
• Includes Epson’s original LCD driver optimized for 4K resolution
• Benefits of using C2 Fine:

1. High contrast
2. Smooth images
3. Jet-black color reproduction

* C2Fine: An original Epson technology for achieving high-quality, vivid images with high contrast by combining an inorganic liquid crystal alignment layer with vertical alignment technology

Panel specification:

• LCD type:  C2 Fine (VA inorganic alignment layer)
• Process technology:  D7
• Effective pixels:  4096 x 2160
• Panel size (diagonal):  1.64 inch (4.2 cm)
• Pixel pitch:  9 µm

Have you ever put your email online in a comment for example. Were you concerned about Spambots harvesting your email address? If so, did you use some weird trick (eg: replacing @ with “at”) to try to hide your address from spambots? That’s where Albion Research’s Email Address Obfuscator comes in handy. Follow this link, type in your real email address in the field and click “Obfuscate”. Their program will spit out two different “encodings” of your email that will be readable to humans (and clickable), but will cause havoc for email harvesting spambots. Really cool and innovative.

Yah, I know, Wallpaper…..boring…..right? Well, take a look at the walls over at Desktopography and I think you’ll agree they are special. My Favourite right now (has lots of Toronto themes).

Yep, a whole archive of ASCII Art, brought to you by Christopher A. Johnson……Ahhh, just like heaven….

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Yep, neat little free utility I came across today. Copy Cat 2.0 actually skip the bytes which are not readable from file and copy all other bytes therefore it extracts max data which is normally not done by windows copy operation. Copy Cat can be helpful at times when you want to copy a CD or DVD which is scratched,when you want to copy data from harddisk area which is partially not readable , when you want to copy data from floppy which is currently not being copied by windows. So download and enjoy.

• Copies your oldest collection of CDs and DVDs
• It even tries to copy a highly damaged media byte by byte
• It gives you the option to skip the bytes if bad area found
• It is a very fast data recovery tool
• It also tries to copy damaged files on your hard disk
• Unlike Windows copy operation it does not stop the copy if bad area found

I’ve been using Synergy for about 3 years now and never really thought about writing about it. Tonight I came across Synergy+ which is a maintenance fork of the original Synergy. So I thought about writing a small note about it since it’s now maintained again.

Synergy+ (synergy-plus) lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, without special hardware. All you need is a LAN connection. It’s intended for users with multiple computers, where each system uses its own display. It’s a little like having a 2nd or a 3rd desktop. It’s not a KVM or VNC tool, but it does achieve similar results (but with added convenience). No need to press any buttons when you want to change desktops, and your keyboard input goes to the same screen that your mouse cursor is on.

Main features:

• Move your mouse easily between computers
• Requires nothing other than existing ethernet
• Copy and paste between your computers
• No need to press any buttons (unlike KVM)
• You can still use multiple monitors on the same computer
• By using the ScrLock (or “Scroll Lock”) key you can prevent switching from one monitor to another, which is useful for gaming and other full screen applications.

So head over to Synergy+’s home over at Google Code and grab your copy. Synergy+ is free open source software.

It’s probably not right to compare the Comodo EasyVPN with it’s cousin LogMeIn’s Hamachi2. Both products are free and allow you to setup groups of privately connected computers and access them from within that private network. Both are available for Windows only (although there are command line versions of hamachi for Mac and Linux). The thing that sets EasyVPN apart though is the fact that it comes in 32-bit or 64-bit flavours and that it includes remote desktop capabilities between all the machines participating in the network. For remote desktop capabilities with Hamachi2 you need a extra product called LogMeIn Free, which btw is also available for OSX. To grab your copy of EasyVPN hop over to the following link.

Wow, I still remember this day. I was a first year Mathie at University of Waterloo and was having my “liquid lunch” at the bombshelter when the live coverage of “Mauerfall” started……What a amazing experience that was. Follow this link for a set of amazing pictures from past and present, from the fall of the wall.

Picture courtesy of Sue Ream, photographer (San Francisco, California)

Had sometime to kill on the weekend and a couple of Pomegranates were asking to be eaten :-). So I decided to photograph their trip to my tummy….complete flickr set here.