Archive for the 'Non-techie stuff' Category

Super-8 cine film conversion methods

Friday, December 5th, 2008

We have some old Super-8 cine film reels and have been looking around at places that will convert it to something newer e.g. DVD.  It looks like there are two main methods:

  1. Frame-by-frame conversion, where each frame is scanned separately and the frame rate adjusted by occasionally doubling frames.  This seems to be quite expensive!
  2. Filming a projected image.  This sort of conversion is done at (for example) Aarchive.  This is much cheaper of course and there is a shop within walking distance that can convert it like this, so that’s most likely what we’ll do.

Anyone have positive/negative experiences about either method?

dawdlr

Monday, December 1st, 2008

My first dawdlr postcard has finally been scanned in and published.  Seems like absolutely ages ago that I posted it… and THAT’S THE POINT.

Royal Mail: isn’t it quicker to knock?

Monday, November 24th, 2008

A quick search shows I’m not the only one this has happened to: having been in all day long I discover a card from Royal Mail has come through the door saying “Sorry you were out” and telling me to pick up a parcel the next day.

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Chip and PIN

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Part of the problem with Chip and PIN is the logo.  It subliminally tells you to use one out-stretched finger to type in your PIN, in full view, as clearly as possible to any onlookers.

This seems to be the wrong message.  There are plenty of things wrong with Chip and PIN, but mostly it isn’t an intentional lowering of security. (In fact it mostly seems to be about shifting liability onto the consumer).  But this logo doesn’t even seem to be trying to get it right.

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Stitching panoramics

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Earlier this year I took five side-by-side pictures of Bournemouth Pier and stitched them together using hugin.  It’s quite easy: you just click somewhere recognisable on one photo, click on the same feature in another, and repeat several times.  I took the entire set of pictures with exposure lock set, although it doesn’t seem to have worked very well for a couple of them.

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