Chaucery Blog

I used to use Photoshop to edit digital photos. But it was getting a bit long in the tooth, so I switched over to the Gimp, which has more than enough functionality for my needs. But, with the recent release of Picasa 2, I felt obliged to give it a go. I had tried Picasa before, but I didn't seem to offer enough for me to learn how it worked properly. This version seemed to offer a lot more, so it looked to be in my interests to fully explore it.

I'm used to graphics editors, where you load a picture, edit it, then save it, often to a different file. Picasa is a photo manager, not just a photo editor, so it works a bit differently. To load a picture, the picture must be in one of the folders that Picasa is monitoring.

When you modify a picture in Picasa, perhaps crop it, and do some red-eye reduction, then Picasa uses its picasa.ini file (stored in the same folder as the photo) to store the details of the modifications that you make. Although within Picasa it looks like the picture has changed, it hasn't really. Picasa never modifies your original picture. However, when you want to use the modified picture outside of Picasa then you can export it, or do as Save As.

This is a whole new way of operating for me. Instead of ending up with a multitude of altered pictures, I end up with the original plus a description of the modifications. For example, if I want to email the picture using Picasa's built-in Gmail facility, then I don't even need to export the picture, and it can be resized automatically.

Briefly:
- The picture tuning features are much easier to use than The Gimp's (and Photoshop's), so you're much more likely to fix up pictures before you get them printed.

- I used Picasa's labelling feature to categorise the pictures that I will be sending off to get printed. It's very similar to Gmail's label system.

- You can make Picasa rename your photos to include the date in the filename of the photo. Then, when they get printed professionally, this information will be printed on the back.

Finally, and most importantly, everything comes together in a package with such a great UI that anyone can have a go a fixing and organising their photos. And it's free.

Posted by James at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's always been something strange about the price of DVD-RAM blanks. Perhaps it's because of its use in high-end DVD recorders, where users expect to pay high prices for media. However, when I see a single-sided DVD-RAM disc on the Panasonic web site with a recommended retail price of $5.95, and find it being sold online for $59, I wonder if I've missed something. Is it in packs of 10 (no), is it double-sided (no, that's $75), is it in a cartridge (no).

I regularly buy Fujifilm DVD-RAM (4.7GB) blanks locally for $8, so I know what they're worth, but online prices seem to average $25. It's no wonder people prefer the less-durable DVD+RW.

Posted by James at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With five people living in one house, and a dialup internet connection on most of the time, our second phone line was well used. With the move to ADSL, and a reduced number of residents, we have removed one phone line, and replaced the corded phone on the other with a two-phone digital wireless solution. Generally positive reviews and a low price led us to the Panasonic DECT TCD440 phone and TCD445 answering machine, in a pack with an extra handset, the pack being the TCD447.

DECT is the digital cordless standard in many places. It stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, and according to the Panasonic manual it "is characterized by high-security protection against interceptions". However, they also state that "this cordless telephone system does not incorporate provision for secrecy of conversations. Appropriately tuned radio equipment and other cordless telephone systems in close proximity may be used by a third party to monitor and possibly interrupt conversations in progress when this system is on radio operation." In consequence, I have no idea it this is secure or not. I guess they're saying the DECT standard is potentially secure, but that they haven't bothered with that aspect of it in this phone.

Each phone uses two rechargable NiMH AAA batteries, so when they eventually wear out (in 5 or 10 years) they won't be difficult or expensive to replace.

There are two base units for recharging the phones. The larger one is also the answering machine and main transmitter and receiver for the handsets. It doesn't have any adornments at all, such as a light indicating that there are answering machine messages waiting. Instead, you have to peer closely at the LCD display of the handsets for one particular blob to be flashing.

The maximum earpiece volume of the handsets is much lower that desirable. You really have to press your ear close to hear. Alternatively, you can use the handy hands-free feature, which makes everything much louder. Also, the hands-free activates a great glowing red button. You can tell this is what Panasonic have been concentrating on for this phone. Perhaps if they made that same button flash for answering machine messages it'd be even more useful.

Having two handsets allows the use of them as walkie-talkies, as long as both are within range of the main base unit. This doesn't constitute a real phone call, so it doesn't cost anything. You can also use this feature to transmit streaming audio off the internet around the house, as long as you're not expecting any calls.

Each recharger base must be permanently connected to a power point, and the main base unit must also be connected to the phone line. Phone lines provide a small amount of power, enough to light their keypads, for example, but not enough to recharge cordless phones.

After using these phones for a fortnight, they have turned out to be more convenient and cheaper to run than having two fixed phones attached to two phone lines. Although they have a couple of flaws, neither are bad enough to dent enthusiasm for the use of the phones.

Posted by James at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Australia's monetary assistance offered to Indonesia in the wake of the Tsunamis certainly sounds genuine:

...Australia's generosity towards the victims themselves has been made clear as the country is the single-biggest bilateral donor to the tsunami-stricken nations by pledging $810 million. Germany stands in second with $660 million while Japan ranks in third with $500 million in amounts committed to the relief effort.

But when you have a look at the details of what is actually being given, it doesn't sound so good:

The Australian Government will contribute $1 billion over five years to this new partnership. The package will consist of $500 million in grants and $500 million in concessional loans over 40 years with no interest and no repayments of principal over the first 10 years.

So while some countries were talking about freezing, or even cancelling some of Indonesia's foreign debt, Australia will actually be increasing it by half a billion dollars. Maybe they should use the $500 million grant to pay off the $500 million loan.

Posted by James at 1:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been running Windows 2000 Professional since beta 3 in 1999. The only time that I've touched Windows XP was a brief play with an 64-bit beta a few months ago. It's just never been that enticing.

• prettier
• better software support (eg. Windows Media Player 10 is only available for XP)
• better security updates (eg. see problems with KB885835 and KB835732)
• the Wikipedia's list

• costs money
• uses more memory
• doesn't offer substantial improvements, as seen by the following table

  Marketing name	Internal name	Release date
  NT 4	NT 4	1996
  2000	NT 5	2000
  XP	NT 5.1	2001

Well, the price finally dropped far enough for me to overcome my pecuniary objections, so I bought it a few days ago. I was going to do a fresh installation (as recommended by most people on the net), but at the last moment switched to doing an upgrade just to see how well it would go. To my surprise, it went very well. When the system came up in XP for the first time, my desktop was just as I had left it. All of my programs appeared to work properly, and it seemed to be all systems go.

After a few days of use my summary of its use is:

• Boot time went from 2 minutes to 28 seconds (including POST), and restarting from hibernation from 35 seconds to 20 seconds).
• Most software looks much nicer. Even flashier widgets in Firefox make a difference.

• The Battle for Middle-Earth thought it was now a pirated copy, and insisted of killing armies for no reason in the middle of games. This was solved by reinstalling it.
• The flashy XP theme is barely configurable at all, with just three colour schemes, and no setting of specific colours.
• RAM usage has increased somewhat
• Sharing folders on Windows XP box with a Windows 98 PC broke. After some investigation I found out about a new security setting in XP that was not in Windows 2000. By default, accounts with blank passwords can't access file shares. The symptoms of this on the Win 98 box include a myriad of "access denied", "share not found", and "unknown error 31" messages. This can be easily remedied with the group policy editor (if you don't want to set a password).

Posted by James at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't mind the endless security patches for Windows 2000, except when they break something. In April, I mentioned how KB835732 broke my standby and hibernate timers. A similar problem presented itself after installing KB885835 a few days ago. In a Usenet post, Andrew Aronoff describes this in more detail:

Installation of MS04-044 (KB 885835) broke the S3 Standby
(suspend-to-RAM) timer on my system running W2K SP4. After
installation of the hotfix, the timer under Control Panel -> Power
Options -> Power Schemes (tab), "System standby:" would work if set to
5 minutes or less. The timer failed if set to 10 minutes or longer.
The timers for "Turn off monitor:" and "Turn off hard disks:" seemed
to work normally. The system would still go into standby via Start,
Shut Down..., Stand by.

Event Viewer, as usual for power management (PM), showed nothing.

Uninstallation of the hotfix restored full standby timer
functionality. Reinstallation of the hotfix broke the timer again.

Since all hardware and software on my system is otherwise working
normally, I fully expect this problem to be observed elsewhere.

<...>

I hope MS will fix this bug and, more importantly, test PM
functionality before releasing future security hotfixes.

Unfortunately, MS's track record is dismal. I already reported this
same problem after installing MS04-011 (KB 835732). (All but two of
the 25 files updated by MS04-044 were also updated by MS04-011.) The
Usenet post can be viewed here: http://tinyurl.com/5brk2 I also
reported it to MS Tech Support. The Microsoft case number is
SRX040507600406 AFAIK, there was never any followup.

Since the anomaly is identical in both hotfixes, it's obvious that MS
is omitting a step in hotfix testing to check for power management
compatibility. It's also obvious that posting here and reporting the
problem to MS Tech Support will, most likely, not result in a fix.
This post is therefore for info only. :-(

Some cynics might suggest that this is Microsoft's subtle way of forcing people to migrate to Windows XP, but I can't believe that a company as attuned to its customers as MS would attempt such a ploy.

Posted by James at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)