condemned apartment block
This block was just off Alexanderplatz and it had obviously been condemned but I noticed that these interesting decorative bits has been added.
From a 5×5 print - Scanned with a Canon Lide60 scanner and imported into Gimp via the XSane plugin (os Ubuntu Intrepid)
Misty - Seven Sisters at Cothelstone
There was a surprising amount of mist at the top of Cothelstone Hill on Thursday.
This group of trees is called “Seven Sisters” but there are only 3 large trees so I assume the other 4 must have died or got blown down at some stage as this bit of hill is really open to the elements.
There is a group of smaller trees behind that must have been planted more recently.
The trees were only visible when I was within about 25 metres if that.
(Photo taken with the Samsung G600 Mobile Phone)
About a week ago I accidently managed to zap my windows XP partition but I was not too worried because I did not really have any reason to need windows XP anymore.
The only trouble was that I had carefully backed up my Outlook 2003 data file (outlook.pst) but I did not have a copy of Outlook to read the file! I could have probably installed Outlook under WINE, but I did not really want to have to do this.
A bit of searching led me to this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=894633 where “Cheesehead” suggested the package readpst.
The command to install the package is:
sudo apt-get install readpst
and once installed to run the command:
readpst -r Desktop/outlook.pst
(as my data file is called “outlook.pst” and is located in the folder called “Desktop”)
There were a few error messages in the console output, but the end result was that my messages were sucessfully extracted to my home folder. The actual data files were called “mbox” and it is these “mbox” files that Evolution can then import.
File > Import > Import a single file
There are quite a few “mbox” files that will have been created but the trick is to look at the ones with a large file size. I had several hundred email messages in Outlook to the mbox files were about 50MB or so. Evolution recognised the mbox file as “berkeley mailbox (mbox) format” and then I was asked to select a folder within evolution where the messages were to be imported. I created a new folder as I did not want these imported emails mixed up with my current mail!
The odd thing was that my original inbox and outbox all seemed to be mixed up together, but it was simple enough to sort them by sender and separate them into separate folders again.
Weltzeituhr, Berlin
This is the Weltzeituhr in Berlin which is a world clock.
It has a moving model of the solar system on top. In the background is the Park Inn hotel which I think is the tallest hotel in Berlin.
Taken with a Holga medium format film camera.
Jumping High
Muddy!
What I forgot was that before getting off the trampoline I should wait to stop bouncing up and down first!
The end result was that I tripped on the edge and stumbled into the muddy grass that surrounded the trampoline.
I still have a very painful shoulder to remind me of my mistake.
Firefox 3
Opera 9
This is the default browser that comes with Ubuntu Intrepid and since I have been using it in WinXP for a while I have been quite familiar with it and know that it’s an excellent browser with good customisation and plugins.
I wanted to check what my blog looks like in another browser and as IE does not run on Ubuntu (well it might under WINE but I have not tested it).
I was pretty impressed with the simple install as the download page recognised I was running Ubuntu Intrepid and offered me the correct download. The file was opened via GDebi Package installer by default so getting it installed could not have been easier.
I like my browser set up with as little “clutter” as possible, and with Firefox it’s easy to have Menu, Buttons & URL bar all in a single row. Opera wanted to have the menu on a separate row so the answer was to hit ALT+F11 to hide the menu. Firefox seems to come out first here.
Another annoyance with Opera was that I had to double click the URL bar to select all of the text, but Firefox can be configured with about:config to only require a single click.
I have not got many plugins yet on Firefox but I quite like “stylish” which has some good styles which strip out the ugly colours & backgrounds that some websites use. I hate having to read white text on a dark background so when I encounter such a site stylish comes into action.
I have also got the Search Status plugin which displays the Alexa Rank and I can see that my blog ranks 3,316,815 compared with 23 for google.co.uk!
Opera is “closed source” which is possibly not quite as good as having an open source browser. I like the idea of open source as do no doubt a lot of Ubuntu and WordPress users.
I think I’ll probably stick with Firefox as my main browser but keep Opera as an good alternative browser.
pipe and berlin apartment block
One interesting thing I noticed in Berlin was that pipes were above ground rather than being buried under the roads. I guess it saves having to dig up the road if there is a leak.
I have been trying out a bit of scanning using a combination of GIMP, XSane and my Canon Lide60 Scanner.
A building in Berlin
I have got quite a few pictures from my recent trip to Berlin. As they were taken with a Holga it means that they need scanning which is where XSane comes in handy.
I prefer the flexibility of XSane compared with the basic windows driver that comes with the scanner.
It will autoajust Gamma, Brightness & Contrast for the area selected and it makes quite a good job of this, but I tweaked the grey point slightly on the histogram so it’s not so dark.
My prints are all 5×5 (inches) so I preset the scan area for this size.
The preview area I selected 18×13 (cm) as this is the smallest preview area that covers the entire print as there is no point in doing a preview scan of the whole platen area.
That's a lot of space
Up until now I have had an old hard drive that I put into a caddy for storing music and photo files, but I have now upgraded to the Western Digital Elements 640GB external hard drive.
I’ve now had it a week and it’s working pretty well. It comes formatted as FAT32 but I reformatted as ext3 which seems to work well with Ubuntu.
It will take me a while to fill this monster drive!
I got it from Amazon for £60 including free delivery which is not bad for 640GB.
I have now managed to get UFRaw & GIMP working properly on Ubuntu Intrepid.
This shows people looking for whales while en route to the faroe islands
It looks like it’s possible to put text next to images as well as above or below them.
The text flows round photos “magazine style”. I have exported the NEF from my D70s from UFRaw to GIMP and the resized to 33.3% which seems to be a good size on a standard 1280×800 laptop display.
In some ways I think I prefer this to the way flickr displays photos as it’s more customisable as regards photo display size.
