This has been a continuing problem since I got this printer: our Canon LBP5050n network printer only works occasionally, throwing up “network board error” messages when used under Windows 7. All documents, web pages etc. first have to be opened in our Windows Server 2008 (or my netbook, with Windows 7 Starter edition and Wifi connection), where printing goes fine. I have been changing router settings, putting the printer into different configurations, but nothing seems to be helping. It might be that this is caused by the complex network topology (there are several routers in our home network), but it is still curious that sometimes I manage to print a page from even these Windows 7 workstations, but then, quickly, the damn error message comes up again and the network connection to the printer is apparently lost again. Most annoying.
Category: technology
anything technology related, not fitting into other categories
Internet in television
Television has its limitations, but it still remains unsurpassable as the big screen, social media for the living room. Television is also changing. It is perfectly possible to use your computer (even mobile phone) to sample video content from the internet, and the variety and quality of internet video is evolving all the time. Yet, combining lean-forward interactivity and lean-backward broadcast media experiences is not completely without its problems. It was interesting to notice that the first televisions with integrated internet video services have started to enter the market. Our choice was Sony KDL-40NX700 model. It is not one of the latest 3D models (Sony brought also some of those out during the summer), but it has rather decent image quality and I really like the way Sony has implemented the user interface. The best improvement to older televisions has proved to be Bravia Internet Video, which is Sony’s implementation of internet video into television. It provides Youtube and a load of other video sources (even one key Finnish one, YLE Areena) in an easily browsable, unified interface. Even HD video works fine, but a full HD video stream might lag and stutter for a moment if not paused for a moment for buffering the download. (We have a 8/2MB DSL connection, and television is connected using Wi-Fi, n+ standard modem.) Otherwise, with lower quality bitstreams, the video works surprisingly well.
The television was bundled with a blu-ray player, BDP-S470 model. These things have improved as well. Unsurprisingly, KDL-40NX700 and BDP-S470 work together excellently. Also, the player upscales DVD disks so fine that the difference to blu-ray is not so great. Happy for that. Shame though that it was impossible to get all key features in one device. For example, Sony has omitted a “presence sensor” system from NX line, even while you can find it from the EX models. Weird choice.
On reception and playlists
Working today in our cellar I developed a theory that people generally fall into two categories in their attitudes towards music: the playlist people and the radio people. While the former take care to build their own playlists and choose music to match the mood, situation and company, the latter just open the radio. I mostly belong to the latter category, but it is sometimes surprisingly difficult to get the exact radio station where you want and need it. For example, I often work with media (or do house maintenance work) in our cellar, where the earth and concrete walls block the reception. In the picture you can see one work-around: take iPhone and purchase a RadioBox app (or just use a free flash player if you have a Nokia or some open device like that), then tune up those favorite Finnish YLE radio channels, and plug it into your Philips brightlight-radio-combo-device. It works!
Going MeeGo
Today I experimented by replacing Ubuntu with MeeGo 1.0 in my older netbook. The result was an immediate boost in speed and the overall quality of user experience. The old Acer Aspire One has only half a gig of memory, and Ubuntu was choking. MeeGo is running speedily with this kind of older, more limited system. The tabbed interface also makes sensible use of the small screen, and transfer from task to task is snappy. Unfortunately heavier software still runs slow, e.g. Evolution mail has trouble accessing my Gmail inbox with its thousands of messages. But using the web interface makes more sense in Gmail, as in many other services today. — It should be noted that MeeGo is still a developer/tester oriented release, and there are several rough edges here and there.
Site back online
It has been a really irritating week, but now this blog should be back online. The root of problems was my attempting to do a quick MySQL security update, without really having enough time to do it properly. Things went bad, and finally my server was so messed up that a reinstall or more advanced tinkering with system registry or something like that would have been necessary — and I did not have time for that, either.
So, the final step was to outsource the server tech and blog software maintenance, and reinstall the site under WordPress.com server farms. There were several technical and communication issues involved in getting the SQL backup file translated into XML that could then be imported into the new blog site. The registration of the new Finnish domain for my name (fransmayra.fi) and its linking into the WordPress.com site was another hassle, but now everything seems to be working. There are still some links leading into the old unet.fi blog site, but I have some static files still available from there, so at least images should display fine. And most of my blog photos and videos are embed code from Flickr or Youtube in any case.
But: sorry for the hassle — and if anyone drops by, and finds some broken links, or links leading to the old unet.fi blog pages, please let me know (fransmayra [at] gmail.com should work).
EOS 550D with RÖDE Stereo Videomic
EOS 550D with RÖDE Stereo Videomic, originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Continuing blogging about my experiments with the new Canon EOS 550D: my first tests with the video audio point out that there is actually no sense in attaching an external mic to the camera right now. The AGC (automatic gain control) issue is much worse than what I thought. Here are two tests, the first with the internal mic, the second shot using the Röde Stereo Videomic, and in this latter one the “hiss” is almost intolerably loud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMEeTO-22eY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=940cEEOen6U
Apparently the sensitivity of Röde is different from the internal mic, and the automatic gain control keeps on boosting the sensitivity up, until the audio becomes saturated with the background hiss.
There are a couple of potential work-arounds to this, but neither makes me very happy. The first one is to wait for a patched firmware to Canon EOS 550D; it is unlikely that Canon will provide a way to turn off AGC through the official firmware, but there are unofficial projects working on this kind of things. The most famous of these is the Magic Lantern project, but it is highly uncertain whether they will ever produce a hacked firmware for EOS 550D (the main focus is on 5D). More:
The second way that I know about is the “bypass trick”, where you fool the AGC to keep down by pushing synthetic tone to the other audio channel, and record your movie to the other channel. In the post-production you can then remove the extra channel. There is this video that explains the technique:
Neither way is that kind of quick fix that I would be hoping for (and I am not interested in plugging in extra sound sources every time I will be recording a short video clip), so any further ideas or advice on how to work around the AGC issue in EOS 550D are highly appreciated.
Testing the EOS 550D
EOS 550D, originally uploaded by FransBadger.
Ok, my new SLR arrived today (sans VideoMic & Eye-Fi card, those will arrive a day or two later), and it is time for the first impressions. Firstly, it is a real pleasure to shoot using this thing. It is much faster than my 350D used to be, and the large, sharp LCD display makes a real difference. The photos immediately jump to life, and it is possible to get right kind of feedback while trying to get the right tones, field of depth, or exposure. Also, since the camera is so light, it is easy to handle and I can picture myself carrying it around in our regular family travels. I have not got time to test the Full HD video properly, but it seems to be sharp, and camera easy to control while recording. There are some settings I still need to check out from the manual, though. AF point control, for example, was still evading me. It is good to notice that all the controls automatically feel like they are on the right places. Probably that is because they are mostly on their old, EOS-style places, on the other hand, the few changes feel natural and motivated. A good camera. Here are some test shots uploaded into Flickr.
Going for Canon EOS 550D
It was five years ago (time really flies!) when I got my previous Canon SLR, EOS 350D. The photos from the very first session should still be here. The body is still working fine, there are only a couple of dust particles inside, but the feature standard and user experience of today’s top cameras is completely different from 350D. I have now placed an order for Canon EOS 550D (with the kit IS zoom lens), and the key features are worlds away from the 2005 situation:
- 18 million pixels
- Full HD video (1080p)
- DIGIC 4 processor
- sensitivity range ISO100-12800 (extended, 6400 native)
- 3 inch LCD display, 1040k pixels (live view — the quality of in-camera image display has grown more and more important during the years)
- etc.
The manual for this thing is 260 pages (there is some reading and learning waiting for me) Continue reading “Going for Canon EOS 550D”
Harvia Figaro
Sauna enjoys a semi-religious status in Finland — there are over 2 million saunas in a country with a population of 5,3 million. Choosing details of your own sauna is therefore not a joking matter. There are several schools of ‘proper’ or ‘right’ Way of Sauna in Finland, and a passionate (or even heated) discussion can ensue when competing views collide.
I have a pretty typical sauna in the cellar floor of our house (rintamamiestalo house type in Finnish). It had been recently renovated and I had no intention of changing ventilation or lauteet (the seats or platforms). But our kiuas (the stove, or heater) was an old Narvi electric kiuas, which was small and apparently also partly broken: it would only heat the room into c. 60°C in an hour. Probably there was problems in the heating resistors. I could have tried to get the old kiuas fixed, but it made more sense to try and get a better model.
I ended up with Harvia Figaro FG90 model. It suits our particular demands which actually fuse two sauna cultures or styles: the slow and mellow, and the hot and aggressive style. Since Iki Kiuas introduced their massive stoves, the mellow school of löyly (steam or ‘spirit of sauna’ that you evoke by throwing water to the hot stones) has been gaining in popularity. I personally like a bit hotter löyly though, which has also some ‘kick and punch’. So we tried to find a kiuas that would scale from massive-and-mellow löyly up to the hot ones.
Our sauna room is 2,30 m x 2,10 m x 2,05 m in size, which means c. 9,9 cubic meters of space to heat. But you need to take into calculation also the cold stone or concrete walls and glass walls or doors (we have both) that leak the heat, rather than work as insulators. FG90 is a 9,0 kW model, so it specs say it fits 8–14 m3 saunas.
My first test run today was principally positive. At the start of the evening Figaro behaved like a slow, massive kiuas (we loaded it with c. 80 kg of stones). After another hour with the settings in the maximum, FG90 put the room into 122°C temperature, which was as far as I wanted to push it this time. That was more than what I needed anyways; 90-100°C is mostly hot enough for me, and for a slow and mellow family bath, 65-75°C is probably the optimum range.
I like the design, too. It is not as fancy as a ‘full tower model’ like Iki Kiuas or some of its clones would be, but you get a rather compact stove that is flexible in its use range, and while installed in a small to medium sauna, it shows towards you a long flank of dark Finnish stone, packed behind bars of stainless steel.
More of Harvia Figaro (in Finnish) from here: http://www.harvia.fi/products?lang=fi&gid=991.
Nokia BTH-905
Nokia BTH-905, originally uploaded by FransBadger.
There are moments when noise cancellation headphones come in handy. I tested my new Nokia BTH-905 today as I mowed our lawn. Klippo is not the most silent of lawnmowers, but having these on my ears made the motor sound become like quiet hum. And I could enjoy my favourite music, so the damned exercise was much more tolerable.
I tested the compatibility with two mobile phones, Nokia N900 and Apple iPhone 3GS. Ironically, N900 did not fare so well. The sound started cutting and breaking up immediately, and closing the bluetooth connection actually froze the headphones so that a reset to the initial configuration was needed before I was able to continue using them. I guess the bluetooth stack in N900 is still “under construction” — there are many other people also warning against this particular phone–headphone combination in the net. Nothing like that with iPhone. After enabling the bluetooth linking, you can use the headphones for making calls and listening to music perfectly normally. The sound is pretty good, even if I think my Sony DR-BT50 actually deliver more clear and articulate soundscape. (Now, if I could only find the lost power adapter for that Sony from somewhere here…) The main attraction for Nokia BTH-905 is nevertheless the decent noise cancellation technology. The sales package of BHT-905 actually claims 99 % reduction of noise, which is probably a bit too much to promise (or something that will only be reached with precisely right kind of noise), but it is nice in any case. I haven’t tried out the popular Bose QuietComfort models, so cannot really make comparisons, though.
More about Nokia BTH-905: http://www.nokia.com/microsites/bh-905
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