I have been a Nokia fan for many years. Like many people, I guess, my first mobile phone was made by Nokia. I have certainly owned more Nokia mobiles than those from any other single company. One of my favourite mobiles (which I still own as a backup) is the 6500 slide. I also still …
Category: multimedia
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/07/15/nokia-lumia-1020/
Dec 11 2012
moonlighting in parliament
Yesterday I followed a link from Duncan Campbell’s Reg article on the joint parliamentary committee’s scrutiny of the Communications Data Bill referred to in my post below. That link took me to the UK Parliamentary website which I confess I haven’t visited in a while. I was initially irritated that the video format used on …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/12/11/moonlighting-in-parliament/
Oct 23 2012
book theft
Back in August 2011. I wrote about my preference for real books over the emerging electronic version. In that post I noted that Amazon had famously deleted copies of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm purchased by some customers. It now appears that Amazon has gone even further and deleted the entire contents of a Norwegian …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/10/23/book-theft/
Apr 16 2012
rockbox rocks
Some time ago my wife bought me a Sansa Sandisk Clip+ music player. When she asked me “what kind of MP3 player” I would like, I specifically specified the Clip+ because it could handle ogg vorbis encoded audio files. All my audio disks are encoded in this format. Picky I know, but there you go. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2012/04/16/rockbox-rocks/
Nov 23 2011
google buys advertising
In an interesting reverse of the norm, google paid for three full page adverts in the guardian a couple of days ago. Today there is yet another full page ad in the same paper. I assume they have run similar campaigns in other UK newspapers over the past few days, The ads are quite intriguing …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/11/23/google-buys-advertising/
Sep 27 2011
webcam mark II
Upgrading the slugs to squeeze killed the webcam. At first I thought that squeeze was missing the necessary gspca drivers, but no, a quick look in /dev revealed an entry for video0 and “lsmod” reported “gspca_zc3xx” loaded correctly. This is a different driver to that which my camera loaded in lenny (spca5xx) but a quick …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/09/27/webcam-mark-ii/
Aug 14 2011
my wife bought me a kindle
I feel it only right to add to the post below by noting that my wife bought me a Kindle for my birthday. I have since found one useful aspect to electronic publishing. A Kindle can reduce the weight of your luggage when going on holiday. But I still prefer the “real thing”. “Speedbump” cartoon …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/08/14/my-wife-bought-me-a-kindle/
Aug 14 2011
in praise of dead trees
As an unashamed gadget freak I suppose I should applaud the rise of the e-book in all its wondrous forms. But actually I much prefer the “real thing” (TM). Some while back I became involved in a series of email exchanges about e-books in general and the Amazon Kindle in particular. That exchange made me …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2011/08/14/in-praise-of-dead-trees/
Sep 04 2010
kseniya simonova
This has absolutely nothing to do with my usual topics but I make no apology for posting this because the artistry is stunningly beautiful. I was sent a link to Kseniya Simonova’s sand art by a correspondent on a mailing list I subscribe to. Apparently the artist is telling the story of a ukrainian family …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/09/04/kseniya-simonova/
Mar 21 2010
psp video revisited
I last posted about ripping DVDs to PSP format back in November 2007. Since then I have used a variety of different mechanisms to transcode my DVDs to the MP4 format preferred by my PSP. A couple of years ago I experimented with both winff and a command line front end to ffmpeg called handbrake. …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2010/03/21/psp-video-revisited/
Dec 30 2009
shiny!
Well I finally cracked and ordered an N900 on-line just before Christmas. Nokia had been promising since about August of this year that the device “might” ship in the UK around October. Since then, the release date has slipped, and slipped, and slipped (much to the amusement of an iPhone using friend of mine who …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2009/12/30/shiny/
Nov 29 2009
apple antipathy may be misplaced
Apparently the lastest release of the iPhone OS (v 3.1) has caused a few minor problems with WiFi and battery life. This has led El Reg to moan about the fact that you can’t downgrade the iPhone OS to an earlier version. I’m no great fan of Apple, but to be fair, this situation is …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2009/11/29/apple-antipathy-may-be-misplaced/
Jan 13 2008
psp hardware and software specs
I have just stumbled upon a very good resource listing specifications of the hardware and software revisions for the PSP. I would have found this site most useful when I was researching how to format video for the psp last year. The site is at www.edepot.com/reviews_sony_psp.html
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2008/01/13/psp-hardware-and-software-specs/
Nov 30 2007
if Microsoft made the iPhone
I’m sorry. I know I really shouldn’t do this, but I loved this so much I watched it three times in succession. It’s vicious, it really is. And best of all, it was apparently made on a Mac.
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2007/11/30/if-microsoft-made-the-iphone/
Nov 25 2007
update to ripping DVDs to a sony psp on linux
Since writing the entry below, I have discovered a much simpler way of ripping and transcoding DVDs – k9copy. I really should have noticed this earlier because I investigated k9copy when I was playing with dvd::rip and winFF as GUI tools for ripping. I had (stupidly) assumed that k9copy could only copy a DVD to …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2007/11/25/update-to-ripping-dvds-to-a-sony-psp-on-linux/
Nov 04 2007
ripping DVDs to a sony psp on linux
I spend a lot of time on trains – I mean a /lot/ of time. My daily commute amounts to around 6 hours in total each day. Of that, at least 4 hours is spent sitting on a train avoiding listening to the cacophony of irritating chunterers and morons on mobiles. The worst period is …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2007/11/04/ripping-dvds-to-a-sony-psp-on-linux/
Jan 04 2007
vinyl to digital
Recently you may have seen adverts in a wide variety of publications for a USB turntable. This product is aimed at people (like me) who have a collection of old vinyl recordings but no longer have the means to play them as they have moved to CD and/or digital recordings. Most of the turntables I …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2007/01/04/vinyl-to-digital/