Camera Modding - Canon SD 1000
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/05/2008 - 12:39Some video game players like to modify their video games, a practice known as ‘modding’. There are many different approaching to modding a computer game, and it possible to apply some of these to other digital devices as well. Last night, I modded my camera.
I have a Canon PowerShot SD 1000. It is a small but powerful little camera, and some Canon camera users have gotten together to create CHDK, free software to modify how your Canon PowerShot cameras operate.
I first heard about CHDK last May when I still had a PowerShot SD 410. It wasn’t clear if I could get CHDK to work with the firmware on my old camera, so I never got around to testing it. Later, my old SD 410 died, and I upgraded to the SD 1000, which clearly works with CHDK.
However, it wasn’t all that simple to get CHDK working on my camera. The way CHDK works, is that you install some files on the memory card which changes the operation of the camera. The SD 410 used a Compact Flash (CF) memory card that I could plug into my HP C 3100 printer, and the memory card would act as a disk on the computer the printer was connected to.
The SD 1000 uses the Secure Digital (SD) memory card. I have an eight gigabyte Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) card. Unfortunately, the printer cannot read the high capacity card. I can connect the camera, with the card to my laptop using an USB cable. However, the driver doesn’t allow me to place the sort of files I need in the appropriate directories.
However, I also have a Motorola RAZR V3xx cellphone. I’ve put two gig microSD card in the Razr, and have an adapter to use the microSD card as a regular SD card, and that card works in my printer.
The first thing that I did was put a file named ver.req in the root directory of the memory card. Ver.req is an empty file that tells the camera to allow the user to do a Version Request to determine the firmware version in the camera. My camera was running version GM1.02A. This version on an SD 1000 camera can run the Allbest build #50.
So, I downloaded that build, unzipped the file, and copied the files into the appropriate locations on the memory card. Then, when I started up the camera in playback mode and went to the menu, which had a new option and the bottom of the list to do a firmware update. When I attempted to do the update, it asked if I wanted to update from firmware version 1.0.2.0 to 1.0.1.1. It is worth noting that CHDK does not really update the firmware, and instead runs as a memory resident program, so this is safe to do.
With the update installed, the camera works basically the same as it did before, except that there are new options on the display and new functions that can be run. As an example, it displays how charged the battery is. That, in and of itself, makes the program worth it. It provides many options for overriding settings. For example, you can use higher shutterspeeds, ISO settings, use the zoom while filming video and even read text files off the memory card, play a few games, and run any scripts you’ve written.
I haven’t written any scripts yet, nor have I tried taking advantage of any of these new features yet, but I look forward to it.
Since this is a memory resident program, you need to reactivate it each time you start the camera. This is nice since it makes it less likely for you to turn the camera into a brick. For me, right now, however, it has a downside. I can only use the new features when I’ve taken the microSD card out of my cellphone and placed it into my camera. In addition, you need to be careful about moving the card from the cellphone to the camera. In some cases, the memory card will end up locked. To avoid this, it is best to turn off the cellphone before removing the memory card.
So, the next step is to get a new SDHC reader so I can install these files on an SDHC card. If this works, I’ll start using the features all the time.
It is pretty satisfying to be able to install some extra software and get new features on a digital device that you have, especially if it is open source and extensible. Now, if I can only find ways of doing this for my Motorola RAZR V3xx, my 2001 Toyota Prius, the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 4200 set top box, or many other random digital devices around the house, I can have even more fun.
A Busy Weekend
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/04/2008 - 17:41Monday is Fiona’s birthday. So, this afternoon, we had a birthday party for her. Pictures will be up on Flickr soon. Tomorrow there will be a family birthday party for her, and then Monday will be her real birthday.
Meanwhile, down in Virginia, Miranda is performing the role of Sister Mary Robert Anne in Mary Baldwin College production of Nunsense. Last night I went to a gathering of Twitter users from Connecticut and Rhode Island over on Chester. Tonight, I’m going a fundraiser for the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee. (Yeah, there website needs a little work.)
One thing that I did get done yesterday was a minor tweak to the website. It now shows the seven topics I’ve written most about over the past month up as a menu line. With that, I haven’t gotten much other writing done today. Tomorrow will probably be fairly busy as well.
Social Browsing
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 10/03/2008 - 16:20Recently, I’ve been experimenting with different tools for ‘social browsing’. By social browsing, I mean having the ability to chat with others about the webpages you are visiting. In a sense, people have been doing this for a long time. When I find a webpage that is interesting, I may send an IM to my wife, and we might chat about the page in IM for a while. I’ve talked about websites with other chat tools, from IRC to Twitter and other microblogging sites and to virtual worlds.
I’ve also bookmarked sites that I like using Mento, which automatically book marks to del.icio.us and ma.gnloia, as well as a greasemonkey script that automatically bookmarks to some other sites, I forget which ones right now, since I lost the script in one of my upgrades, and never got around to finding it again.
Yet none of these tools are specifically aimed at synchronously sharing and talking about bookmarks. This is starting to change, and I’d like to highlight some different tools that I’ve been exploring.
The first is RocketOn. In RocketOn you get an avatar that walks around the website you are visiting. You can chat with other avatars that are visiting the same website. As you explore websites, you win prizes that you can use to modify the appearance of your avatar, and who knows what else.
When I first started using it, I chatted with a few different people. However, it seemed that most of them were refugees from AOL Chat rooms and none of them had much of interest to say. I’ve kept the tool running, but normally in a disabled mode, because there is one annoying downside. When you click, most of the time, RocketOn intercepts the click and makes your avatar walk to where you clicked. Not particularly friendly.
Today, I downloaded Weblin. I was struck by how similar Weblin is to RocketOn. At first glance, it does not seem that Weblin has the same level of avatar customization available. The little icon for controlling Weblin sits in the lower left hand corner of the website right on top of the RocketOn control button. I played with Weblin briefly, but soon wearied of it. The one feature that I did like was Weblin’s ability to bookmark a page to various social bookmark sites like Digg and del.icio.us from their control button.
Another tool I tried briefly was Exit Reality. It seemed similar to Weblin or RocketOn, with a little bit of Google’s Virtual World, Lively thrown in. Unlike Weblin or RocketOn, Exit Reality is three dimensional, and you can change the look at feel of a room. However, when I ran it on my machine, it slowed Firefox down to a crawl, and would crash if I went to any complicated pages. So, I disabled it, and can’t figure out or remember how to restart it. Maybe I’ll check that out again in more detail later.
Social Browse approaches things a little differently. Instead of having avatars running around the screen, they are much more like Twitter or some other microbrowser customized for sharing bookmarks and talking about them. They have a sidebar for Firefox, where you can see the latest messages. The sidebar is fairly similar to the Plurk sidebar for Firefox. In addition, they add some buttons to the navigation tool bar, so you can quickly share a link or comment on a link. One final aspect, they have a popup window, similar to GoogleTalk’s popup window so you can see messages of your friends.
However, as far as I can tell, you can only see the messages and links of your friends, and so far, none of my friends on Social Browse are posting that many links or comments that have drawn me into discussions. Nonetheless, I can see this as being a tool that has great potential.
If you use any of these tools, or any other interesting tools for sharing and talking about links, let me know.
The Long Blue Tail – Columbia, MO
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/02/2008 - 20:04While many of my friends are focusing on the Vice Presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, I hope that some of them get a chance to visit Crown Candy Kitchen while they are there. I wrote a little bit about St. Louis when I started my Long Blue Tail series.
However, I skipped over Columbia when I started. However, my wrong turn down to Lebanon, MO led me to circle back around to Columbia, and the timing seems about right. This weekend, there will be the second annual Roots ‘N Blues ‘N BBQ Festival.
One thing the festival has done is set up a website, My Story, My Roots. It is based on ning.com. They’ve posted a few videos there and have a play list of various bands. Not a lot of people have joined the community, but through them, I found the Megan Boyer Band, whose MySpace Page, which also has some good music. I’m streaming her music on my PC as I start writing about Columbia. When she was asked what her favorite BBQ food is she said Cole Slaw, noting that she is a vegetarian.
Reading more about Megan lead me to CoMoMusic. This is a site for musicians from CoMo, Columbia, MO, to connect. Reading through this, I found Bob Hague. Bob doesn’t blog that much. Since last May, he’s put up around 14 blog entries. His most recent post is an experimentation with macro photography, including some intriguing close up images of an old saxophone. He writes about once, when he received “about 3 feet of old LPs”, and talks about the biking the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Trail down to the Katy Trail, parts of the which are still flooded due to the remnants of Hurricane Ike.
I stopped over on Twitter to see whom else I could find that would give me some insights into Columbia. Bob Martin, who writes a blog, The Teacher Teacher, moved to Columbia three years ago. His portrayal of Columbia matches the impression I’ve been forming. BBQ is an important part of the town and BBQ aficionados are split between the Kansas City saucy style of BBQ and the Memphis dry rub style. He writes that he secretly covets good barbecue and is “on a quest to find the perfect biscuits and gravy”. Yet, I don’t know what type of barbecue he favors, although he does speak very highly of Spicewine Ironworks and their sauces.
Spicewine’s site states,
Whether you're a weekend backyard BBQer or a competitive BBQ Chef, we all strive to produce delicious, award-winning BBQ. As competitive chefs ourselves, we wanted to build a commercial quality smoker at a price that everyone can afford.
I wonder how many of the teams competing at Roots ‘N Blues ‘N BBQ Festival will be using some of Spicewine’s equipment.
Bob also describe himself as “a wanna be runner”, which might not go well with being a barbecue fan but may have placed him on some of the same trails that Bob Hague bikes on. Bob Martin did note that Columbia has “a parks and trails system that is second to none”.
William Least Heat-Moon taught writing, and Bob Martin teaches teachers to make better use of technology. I asked Bob how he saw technology changing writing. He noted that a ‘lot of schools still block access to things like blogs and wikis in the classroom’. My hope, is that as I explore the long blue tail, I’ll find good examples of people writing compelling blogs about their localities, it may be a bit of a search. Bob suggested speaking with folks at the University of Missouri Journalism School in Columbia, but it is time to move on. Nonetheless, if you know of good blogs writing about the local flavor of our country, drop me a note, and I’ll see if I can visit them on my virtual travels.
So, now, I am back on track with Least Heat-Moon’s travels, and expect to stop in Lebanon, IL next before heading to Grayville, IL an on to Kentucky. Who knows what I’ll find next.
Critical Rescue Plan or the Mother of All Earmarks
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/02/2008 - 08:34Last night, the U.S. Senate passed an amended version of Paulson Plan to bailout Wall Street. The amended bill has a couple particularly notable aspects. The first is that it is no longer being referred to as a Bailout for Wall Street. That language did not seem to gain it as many supporters as commentators on CNBC may have hoped. Instead, it is now a Critical Rescue Plan for our economy. This reflects a marketing shift attempting to sell the plan on Main Street as well as Wall Street.
The second major change is the number of pages. The plan is now 451 pages long. A drastic change from the short of sweet plan that Paulson proposed. Fortunately, for people having difficulty sleeping, perhaps due to the anxiety over the economy, the draft of the plan is online. Some sick souls have even spent time reading the plan and posting about it online.
