Residual network problems

There may be some residual issues with connectivity to sites on this server, as it appears there are a couple of routers that were mis-configured. Hopefully most of it is sorted out by now, but if there are oddities, such as drop-outs in service for a few minutes, then please try again a few minutes later to see if it clears.

rsphoto.co.uk detagged

I decided that I was not going to renew rsphoto.co.uk – I haven’t updated the site in months (or years actually) and I know that it’s a bit of an odd time to choose to do that, especially with the new camera, but I can always integrate it into another domain, probably just use a subdomain of theshipmans. So the site is gone for now, but will return in some form or other – maybe Suzy will do a redesign of it for me if I ask her nicely enough. 😉

Oh, and apologies for the downtime over the weekend, the local substation had to be upgraded here, so there was no power to the networking equipment for the duration.

New Exhibit for the Museum

I got given a new exhibit for the Museum this morning that was quite exciting, Fred L presented me with a frame of Magnetic core store, he apologised for not being able to tell me what machin it came from, but it’s a very interesting and exciting addition to the museum. I’ll get a photo of it, hopefully tomorrow, and in due course hope to build a display case showing various forms of memory, with this being a primary exhibit.

Wikipedia link
Core memory at Columbia University
Detailed description of Magnetic Core Storage

Nice site with computer history on it

Oh, and my 1Gig CF card arrived for the Nikon today – I would not like to imagine how large a 1G core store would have to be!

Transport

My car failed its MOT today – little things, but they have to order in the parts, so it’s got to go back in next week for the repairs. The bike is back running again, after I found the problem – I went by the old adage “If you think it’s electrical, check the electrics. If you think it’s fuel, check the electrics.” I checked the electrics, cleaned and gapped the plugs, but still nothing. Turned the petcock from auto to prime, and she fired up :-D.
I’ve just got to reconnect the vacuum hose to the right place on the carbs, and then book that in for the MOT and get her taxed, and it’s on the road for the summer :-D. Then it’s just deciding where to go first. I really fancy the Viaduct De Millau, but maybe I’ll start with somewhere closer to home.
It’s nearly a year since I was out of the country, and I’m getting the wanderlust again – still hoping for that trip to India over the summer, but if nothing else a few days on the bike might help, and I need to start planning so I’ve got something to look forward to.

New Camera

I finally got hold of a Digital SLR – a Nikon D70 second hand to go with my existing Nikon lenses. It produces some great results, but shows some inconsistencies in software implementations – especially Gallery.
The D70 has an EXIF tag it adds to pictures if they are taken rotated to portrait orientation, and it then displays those pictures rotated on the rear LCD screen. If you open those pictures in Nikon’s photo editing software, they are shown in the correct orientation. If you load them into other photo editing software, they are shown in landscape orientation, requiring rotation.
OK, so I can live with using the Nikon software for now. I’ll look into writing a filter for Photoshop to rotate the image, and delete the EXIF tag at a later date, or see if there’s some other piece of software that will do that for me.
I then tried to upload them to Gallery, and admittedly I’m still using Gallery 1, so that might be a cause of my problem, but it might lie elsewhere. Anyhow, I loaded the photos into Gallery Remote, and that rotated the images correctly – so I didn’t need to hit the rotate button – I proceed to upload the images, and they display all in Landscape orientation :-S – Doing a search on the Gallery site tells me that the version that I am using 1.5.1 should support auto-rotate, but it’s not working, so it looks like I’ve got more searching to do.