Technology

Technology - TSSG - Waterford

FeedHenry and eircom launch Personal Services Portal

October 5, 2009 by 1 Comment

FeedHenry, one of the startup companies from Waterford Institute of Technology where I work, received some positive press today in relation to the recent launch of eircom’s new Personal Services Portal (PSP). The new Web 2.0 portal, called “my eircom“, is powered by FeedHenry and allows users to completely personalise their experience of the eircom website, allowing them to share the wide range of applications and services on offer to other web and social networking platforms as iGoogle, Facebook and many others.

Global Press Coverage

Technology

The Gigabyte has become the new Megabyte

September 15, 2009 by 0 Comments

Just when you think you’ve finally gotten your head around the fact that you can fit 16GB of data on a memory card no bigger than your fingernail (MicroSD), along comes the next-generation of memory cards, SDXC, which proclaim a whopping 2TB on the same form factor!

The website referenced above suggests that a 2 TB SDXC memory card could store around 480 hours of HD recordings, or 136,000 photos. However, looking backwards to previous technologies and storage terms, 2 Terabytes is the equivalent of two thousand Gigabytes, or 2 million Megabytes, and would be roughly equivalent to 1,388,888 floppy discs (of the 3.5″ high density variety from the nineties which had a capacity of 1.44MB).

Oh the times they are a’ changing…

Photography - Technology

Digital Camera Websites

September 15, 2009 by 0 Comments

While researching my recent purchase of a Canon Powershot SX200 IS, I considered each of the following websites (listed alphabetically):

There was actually €64 of a difference between cheapest (Simply Electronics) and the dearest (Expansys Ireland), for the camera only. However, Pixmania offered the best value for the package I wanted (i.e. spare battery, high-speed 8GB SDHC card and case) so I went with them in the end.

It was my first time shopping with Pixmania and I have say they provide a pretty good service. They provide an excellent tracking service (linked to DHL) and my package arrived safe and sound, and on time. The inclusion of a free Pixmania camera strap was a nice touch and my daughter was suitably impressed (as are her dolls who are now sporting said attire).

Photography - Technology

Canon Powershot SX200 IS

September 15, 2009 by 1 Comment

After seven years of faithful service, my trusty Canon IXUS V digital camera has finally been decommissioned. I originally won it on a radio phone-in competition back in 2002 and even though there’s actually nothing wrong with it functionally, I just found myself wanting more zoom on a number of occasions recently and so finally got around to upgrading. For it’s time, the IXUS V was a truly terrific camera – ultra compact, seriously rugged, 2 Megapixels, 2X optical zoom, video capture and superb picture quality.

On foot of the desire for more (optical) zoom, and with a preference to stick with Canon, I set about finding a replacement. Since High Definition movies and television are also the flavour of the month, I decided to go for something with HD movie capture too. Enter the Canon Powershot SX200 IS, with 12 Megapixels, 12X optical zoom, a 28mm wide angle lens, full 1080p HD video capture and a massive 3″ LCD screen, there isn’t much more I could have asked for.

If I were to have anything slightly negative to say about this camera it would be just that the pop-up flash takes a little getting used to. It would be great if it only emerged when actually needed. I also miss having a manual viewfinder. On the old model, I used to switch off the LCD display when running low on battery and use the manual viewfinder instead, yielding another 30 minutes of battery life instead. That said, I won’t be changing back any time soon and am looking forward to another 7 years of happy snapping.

Life - Technology

Hubble’s Amazing Ultra Deep Field Journey

August 13, 2009 by 0 Comments

Even if you have no interest in astronomy, this video is worth viewing. It describes (and shows in 3D) an incredible series of photographic experiments by the team behind the Hubble Telescope that reveal over 10,000 galaxies in the deepest area of space ever photographed, an area they are now calling the “Hubble Ultra Deep Field”. It makes for truly fascinating, and yet extremely humbling viewing.

Source: Gizmodo via Life, is grand

Technology

Using glob to simplify Tcl switch statements

July 30, 2009 by 0 Comments

I rediscovered a handy option in the switch statement of the Tcl language today. Consider the following (rather long-winded I admit) snippet that carries out certain actions for various similar type of values of the variable x.

switch $x {
typeA -
typeB -
typeC -
typeD { ;# Do something for all 4 types }
otherA -
otherB { ;# Do something else for all 2 others }
default { puts "Invalid Option: $x" }
}

Using the -glob parameter on the switch command in conjunction with the regular expression-like tweaks to the case conditions allows the entire construct to be simplified as follows:

switch -glob $x {
type[ABCD] { ;# Do something for all 4 types }
other[AB]  { ;# Do something else for all others }
default { puts "Invalid Option: $x" }
}

Technology

Using xcopy for backups

July 28, 2009 by 2 Comments

For DOS purists everywhere, you can use the Windows XCOPY command to carry out simple but effective backups as follows:

G:\BK> xcopy/s/e/d/y/r/h/c C:\*.*

This command will copy every file on C: to G:\BK and will include all subdirectories (/s) including empty ones (/e), copying only files that have actually changed (/d). It will also presume yes to any questions asked (/y), overwrite read-only files (/r), copy hidden and systems files also (/h) and continue if errors occur (/c).

Notes

  • The /c parameter is useful for when you want to skip past (system) files that are in use (normally reported as sharing violations)
  • The /d is only useful if your target disk drive has been formatted using NTFS (for me this is the most powerful and useful parameter.
  • Even though you might think that you don’t want hidden/system files to be copied, bear in mind that Windows Media Player stores the artwork images for albums and songs as hiddent JPG files so if  you leave out the /h parameter you wouldn’t necessarily be backing up everything in your music collection.
Technology

Understanding User-Agent strings

July 9, 2009 by 0 Comments

A User-Agent string is a small piece of text that your Internet browser transmits (each time you visit a web page) that allows the website you are viewing to know what kind of browser you are using. There are lots of different ways in which this information is used by the website, including: gathering of statistics about Internet Browser popularity, tailor the look and feel of the website for the device you are using (e.g. mobile phone), or enable/disable certain features based on the capabilities of your browser, and so on.

There are several ways to find out what the User-Agent string for your browser is (if you’re really that interested):

  1. Enter the following text in your address bar: javascript:alert(navigator.userAgent)
  2. Visit http://www.useragent.org (via Paul Watson)

Microsoft also has a good article that explains them in a little more detail.

Technology

Cisco passwords recognise trailing white spaces

July 2, 2009 by 0 Comments

We got bitten by a curious side effect of a feature of Cisco IOS recently which I felt was worth sharing. According to the Cisco Secure Router website, when enabling passwords (and secret passwords) on Cisco equipment:

Leading spaces are ignored but trailing spaces are recognized

What was interesting to me was the latter part about trailing white spaces. It may or may not be a well known fact but it was certainly not known to us. Now, take the following Cisco IOS command:

# enable secret NewPass9 ?

The inclusion of the question mark above allows you to take a look at any remaining parameters for the command you are entering, and it is very common to do this when you are new to Cisco systems. Now, consider that there are in fact no additional parameters for the enable secret command, so you go ahead and recall the above command, delete the question mark (i.e. press the backspace key once) and press Enter to commit the new password.

# enable secret NewPass9

Without realising it, you have now actually included a single space character in at the end of your password. Be careful out there!