Time stopped at 10:09

February 19, 2006 eirikso15 Comments

The rich and sunny planet Ursa Minor Beta has the quite peculiar property that most of its surface consists of subtropic coastline. Even more peculiar, on this world it’s always Saturday afternoon.

From Wikipedia – Places in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
(Thanks, Oyvind)

And of course you would want to live on a planet where time stopped Saturday afternoon!

I have just visited Switzerland. The home of high quality watches. And the home of huge amounts of commercials for the high quality watches. I decided to check a little fact that most people involved in marketing know of. The world of watch commercials is a world where time stopped at about 10:09.

Click the pictures for larger versions:

Yes. It’s a fact. Time stopped at about 10:09!

All rules have exceptions. One German watch was 2:50. But we’re still talking about the same graphical appearance of the watch.

And, yes I know. Commercials from a world where the watch can show something completely different exist. I even discovered some of them in Geneva. You can find several explanations for the 10:09 rule. Here is one of them: Continue reading “Time stopped at 10:09” →

Webcam screensaver for your media center

February 9, 2006 eirikso5 Comments

Webcams are soooo last century. I remember how uttrly impressed we were when we back in 1995 discovered that a bunch of programmers at the University of Cambridge had placed a camera pointing at their coffee maker so they could keep an eye on the amount of coffee left while sitting in front of their computers one floor above.

Wow! We could actually see a live picture of the coffee machine at the University of Cambridge here in Norway. Big deal at that point. Not very interesting today. Like most webcams.

But, for some strange kind of reason it’s cool to have a screen saver on the media computer in the living room that gives a glimpse of the world. A screen saver that cycles trough a list of webcams that you can control yourself.

So, right now when I know that I am going to Zermatt for the weekend I have a nice live picture of the Matterhorn in addition to the mandatory pictures of Bergen and Paris. Not to forget the TullipCAM.

V-CamShow from Virdi software is free, flexible and works very well. It also has the very important feature that lets you name all cams and superimpose the name on the picture while cycling through the cams.

You need the direct link to the picture if you want to add a cam to your list in V-CamShow. Here are some cameras to start with:

(…and please add your favourite webcams to the comments here! Among others, I would really like a nice and frequently updated picture from a satellite… Anyone?)

Zermatt – Matterhorn
Webpage:
http://bergbahnen.zermatt.ch/d/web-cam/zermatt4.html
Direct link:

Paris, France – The Eiffel Tower
Webpage:
http://www.abcparislive.com/paris_webcam/eiffel_tower_webcams.htm
Direct link:
http://www.images1-abcparislive.com/eiffel2.jpg?1139513484641

Bergen, Norway – View from NHH
Webpage:
http://www.nhh.no/it/weather/
Direct link:

Voss, Norway – Hangursheisen
Webpage:
http://www.bt.no/kamera/
Direct link:

Devon, England – Tulip Cam
Webpage:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/webcams/tulip_webcam.shtml
Direct link:

The silence of the fans

February 3, 2006 eirikso17 Comments

I have my HTPC and the amplifiers inside a cabinet in the living room. The cabinet is well wentilated and has a specially mounted fan in the bottom to push air though it.

I have described the cabinet here and the mounting of the fan here. To put it short the fan is mounted in rubber bands to eliminate vibrations and noise.

However, I should have said “was mounted”. The problem is that rubber bands need maintenance. Of course I could try to find better quality rubber bands, but I have choosen another soultion. It works fine so far, so I decided to post a little “How-to” for the people that might want to build something similar.
To fix this mess I used a perforated strip and some parts from a kit for silencing fans and hard drives:

Mounting the fan using these parts you get rid of nearly all vibrations and can have a fan that push a lot of air through your cabinet. I’ll let the pictures talk for themselves and keep the comment option open for the people that have questions.
Continue reading “The silence of the fans” →

My next time lapse experiment – any good advice?

February 2, 2006 eirikso15 Comments

This experiment was a manual, “poor mans” time-lapse. Time to do something more advanced.

Time for a true time-lapse. I now have a Canon PowerShot S50 that I can play with. I can mount it in a window and connect it to a computer. Through such a set-up I can program the camera to snap a picture every hour for one whole year. I also have a couple of potential locations with a more interesting view than my own. (More than 100 000 people have seen the view from my living room anyway! My last experiment was popular way beyond expectations…)

A camera, a computer and a nice view is not enough. That’s where you come in. The utterly intelligent readers of eirikso.com. These are my main questions:

1. Software
There are several programs that can control the S50. I have found these:

– Canon’s own remote capture
– Cam4You Remote
– PSRemote
– inPhoto Canon Camera Control Software

Do you have any experience with any of these? Can you recommend other software? I have a dedicated computer for this project, so I can choose to run Linux if that helps…

2. Timing
Every hour for one year? Every half hour? etc… At some point I have to be able to discard the pictures that are taken during dark hours. In Norway this vary a lot. There are two possible solutions:

a) A table that controls the software so that it only takes pictures when the sun’s up

b) Software to extract only the pictures with a certain level of light during post production

All good advice appreciated! Preferably through comments on this post, but also through mail.

Web Browser for Media Center Edition

February 2, 2006 eirikso4 Comments

Browsing standard web pages on a TV screen with a remote is never very comfortable. Most web pages are made for navigation with a mouse and a keyboard.

Still, if you have a media center and an LCD screen it can be interesting to have a quick look at some news headlines, a couple of blogs or something like that.

Doing that from within media center has been difficult until now. Meet the MCE Browser. An excellent little plugin that gives you a browser with zoom functionallity and easy navigation with the arrow keys, OK and channel up/down for browsing links.

(Via Thomas Hawk and The F-Stop Blues)

A walk in the park

January 30, 2006 eirikso1 Comment

I live close to the wonderful Vigeland sculpture park in Oslo. It’s the masterpiece of sculptor Gustav Vigeland and one of the biggest tourist attractions in Norway. It’s free to visit and open 24 hours a day.

When you live close to such an impressive place you start taking it for granted. While people come from the other side of the world and have an experience they will never forget I walk through the park on my way to work.

The park includes 212 sculptures. Most of them showing people of different ages, moods and situations.

I have taken a lot of pictures of the statues, and through the year they change as the light, temperature and surroundings go through winter, spring, summer and autoumn.

During one of our many walks in this park my wife pointed out that it’s interesting to look at the people gazing at the statues.

How they pose in front of them when taking pictures and how they behave when observing them.

So yesterday I brought my new Canon PowerShot S2 IS and snapped some pictures of the real people instead of the statues (more info and experience with the PowerShot in an article here later).

Less than half an hour and I had a lot of interesting images.
(Click the pictures to enlarge)

Comparing the facial expressions of the statues and the people…

Comparing situations in the park with situations in the sculptures…

Or starting to see communication between statue and photographer…

Or simply realizing some slightly amusing situations…

There have been some discussions around the fact that the statues mostly show the so called “Aryan” editions of our species. Who cares? When the park is filled with people this place resembles one of the most international and open places in Norway.

Walking trhough the park on my way home after a late night in the city is of course a totally different experience than walking around with a lot of people in bright daylight. How people use the park during winter is of course totally different from how it is used during summer.

For those of you that want to comment on the individual pictures, see some additional ones or post your own pictures from this park I have made a Flickr Group with my images.

Living so close to the park I guess I’ll have to post back here as this little “The people of the Vigeland Sculpture Park” project evolves…

Thomas Hawk reports from a dinner with Microsoft Exec Jim Allchin

January 30, 2006 eirikso3 Comments

Thomas Hawk has been fortunate enough to be invited to a dinner with Microsoft Exec Jim Allchin and a couple of very interesting bloggers and technologists. As usual he reports with info, thoughts and some excellent pictures.
Not a 100% confirmation, but maybe we will be able to upgrade our Win XP media centers with WMP 11 and get better handling of large media collections?

I also talked with Jim about Windows Media Player. Last April I complained to Jim at our meeting about how slow Media Center handled large digital media libraries. This of course has more to do with Windows Media Player than anything. As I’ve reported previously, Jim also confirmed that we should expect to see dramatic performance improvements for large digital libraries in Vista and Windows Media Player 11 (can I get a “hot donkey” please!).

I also asked Jim if Microsoft would be releasing a standalone version of Windows Media Player 11 for people with XP and he said that they would. Although it may not have all of the features as the player shipped with Vista and although Vista is the priority right now, Jim said that we could expect an XP version of the popular player down the road as well.

Head over to ThomasHawk.com and read the rest. There are some updates and links to other discussions and blog posts at the end of his article.

(Screenshot of WMP11 from WinSuperSite.com)

A quick look at NRK’s new HD bus

January 27, 2006November 3, 2015 eirikso6 Comments

I had a short peek inside today. It’s called HD1 and is a brand new bus for outside broadcast. Producing HD video and 5.1 sound. The total area inside the bus when fully extended is about 60 square meters. It has already been used during the Norwegian skiing championship last weekend. Next trip is for the winter olympics in Torino, Italy.

I’m selling my old Canon PowerShot S20

January 26, 2006 eiriksoLeave a comment

And for the people that want to bid, it’s on QXL.no as soon as the auction is active. I’ll update this post with a direct link.

(You can click the picture of the camera here to get a better view.)

Update:
Here is the direct linkt to the auction: Canon PowerShot S20 (Norwegian!)

For the people that are not interested, feel free to read this post simply as a couple of very nice pictures…

Some quick specs:
Body: Aluminium / Magnesium alloy
Max resolution: 2048 x 1536
Low resolution: 1024 x 768 & 640 x 480
Image ratio w:h 4:3
CCD pixels 3.34 million (3.14 effective)

Here are some pictures taken with this reliable old camera:
(click the pictures for original versions)
Continue reading “I’m selling my old Canon PowerShot S20” →

The iPod is now mounted in the car

January 26, 2006 eirikso9 Comments

You find the brief introduction on how to connect an iPod to your car here. This is the short roundup:

1. Bought a Dension iceLink to connect the iPod to the factory mounted stereo in my 2001 Toyota Rav4.

2. 30 minutes of work to dismount the stereo and connect the iceLink

3. Bought a ProClip mounting bracket from brodit.se

For Norwegians, find the bracket you want on brodit.se and call MobilData and order it. For a piece of plastic it is horribly expensive: NOK 299,-

For the people that have no clue about Norwegian Kroner – that’s about $44 for the mounting bracket(!)

That said, the bracket was easy to mount, fits well and holds my iPod in place. Unfortunately it has a very ugly kind of leather imitation surface. (Click the images for more detail).

4. Mounting the iceLink dock on the bracket. About 20 minutes of work.

5. Mounting the bracket in the car. Also about 20 minutes of work.