Spotify, Wine and a Karmic Koala

I finally took the time to investigate the choppy sound problems with Spotify running under Wine on Ubuntu 9.10 (2.6.31-20-generic). A numerous different explanations and solutions to the problem can be found online, but the only one that worked for me was the following.


In the winecfg tool Audio tab select EsounD Driver and for the DirectSound Hardware Acceleration select Emulation.

That's it, no more choppy sound.

You can fly or sail, but you can't hide

Have you seen a plane high up in the sky or a ship far away at the horizon and wondered where it might be heading? I recently stumbled on two websites that make it possible to find out.

Real-time tracking of airplanes is provided by http://www.flightradar24.com/ and a similar service for ships is provided by http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/.

Both services project tracking data on Google maps. The flight tracker utilizes ADS-B data while the ship tracker uses AIS data.

Fisheye landscapes or: How I broke the rule.

Two landscape HDR photos shot with the 8mm Samyang fisheye. The key to somewhat distortion free landscape shots with a fisheye lens, without post processing, is to place the horizon dead center in the middle of the frame.

Sun still obeying the rule
(Canon 7D, Samyang 8mm, HDR)

Complete disregard of the rule
(Canon 7D, Samyang 8mm, HDR)

Photos from a fisheye perspective

First publishable shots taken with my new Samyang 8mm 3.5 fisheye lens.
Lets start with a self portrait:

Me at the fridge
(Canon 7D, Samyang 8mm)

Wide
(Canon 7D, Samyang 8mm, HDR)

Cropped bridge shot
(Canon 7D, Samyang 8mm)

Backup, Wipe, Reinstall...

and bang your head against the wall when you notice what you forgot to backup important data.

Backup, Wipe, Reinstall is a procedure that I have come accustomed to at every new project I start with. Also I'm slowly learning what to backup and what not. But however careful I am, I usually forget to back up something.

Normally a full backup is the best solution, but in a work environment the point of the reinstall is to destroy sensitive customer data. The important thing is to separate the customer data from your personal/company data. The checklist below should be helpful, or at least it should give some kind of direction to what kind of data is worth to save. The size of the data listed below is very small and can easily be stored on e.g. a USB memory. But please remember to store the backup safely and preferably encrypt it. For easy and safe encryption I personally use TrueCrypt.

Backup checklist:

• Web browser bookmarks. Remember, you might using more then one browser.
  
• Mail address book.
• Mailbox settings.
  
• PGP keys, both your private and the keys you have collected.
• VPN keys.
• All non project related documents.