Archive for the 'Technology' Category

GPS scripts

Published at 2:21 pm on January 10, 2010 in Technology and walking. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I have a simple walking GPS (Garmin Etrex H) which is great for walks, hiking etc. I wrote about using it under Ubuntu earlier.

I can input waypoints and use it to direct me where to go and it can be set to tell you where you are in BNG (British National Grid, i.e. Ordnance Survey map coordinates) so working with a map becomes almost trivial. One thing I found I needed was a way of creating a GPX file to upload to the GPS which is formed from these BNG coordinates. Some of the walking books I have give BNG waypoints but you can’t just upload that data into the GPS (unless someone knows better? I never got it to work).

So I set out writing a script to do this – BNG_to_gpx_route allows you to enter a list of BNG waypoints and it either outputs the GPX file (to file or stdout) or even writes direct to your GPS if you have gpsbabel installed!

I may well write a few more scripts to help me with my gps as I come across the need (though if you have a need maybe I will too, so let me know if you have a thought for a useful util for your gps).

Another good way to plan a route is with Marengo GPS Route Planner, which allows you to draw a path with a google-maps interface, and then simply download a GPX file which can again be uploaded to your GPS with gpsbabel

My GPS also records where you have walked which is known as a track. This can be used for finding your way back if the walk was difficult, or giving to someone else to follow your walk. One other use is for geotagging your photos, which means you run a script against your photos to add to the “meta-data” which describes details of your photos, and with the track file from your gps it adds the coordinates to the file, so when you upload them to flickr or zoomr they know where the photo was taken!

Like many others, I wondered if I would have to write this myself but it turns out there is a really good script called gpsPhoto (thanks to bluemonki for pointing it out) which already does this!

It is pretty simple, you just need to give it the path to a gps file, or directory of files, and a list of photos or a directory of photos, along with a time offset (in case your gps time and camera are different (i.e. a few minutes out, or even an hour out for daylight savings time etc)) and it will add the gps coordinates to your photos. Apparently it even works on Canon raw files, so hopefully I could just tag photos as I get them from the camera and then any time I create a new jpg from them they should automatically have the gps data in them!

Cross-platform realtime collaborative editing

Published at 12:04 pm on November 11, 2009 in Internet, Linux and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I recently stumbled across Gobby:

Gobby is a free collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-like platforms.

It looks really cool, and the realtime-editing would be very well suited to trying to draw up any form of document or source code at the same time when you will have too much activity for trying to use a code repository.

It is a shame Gobby does not have hooks builtin to allow loading code from a VCS or DVCS (that would be cool), but you can launch it headless on a server with an auto-save directory and then all connect in and start loading documents. There are times when I have wanted something like this, particularly when you are starting out a new piece of code and have several people wanting to get started right away. Once the pace dies down, it probably makes a lot of sense to move the file to your source code control system, but for that initial burst this looks like a fantastic tool

powerline networking

Published at 12:00 pm on September 30, 2009 in Misc and Technology. 1 Comment Tags: , .

After moving into our new house, I contemplated running a pile of ethernet cables before we got the new carpets laid, as I have always had issues with wireless. In the end I didn’t find the time to rip up floorboards and skirting boards to lay the cables I wanted, and as it turns out the solid brick walls reduce the wireless networking strength down to almost useless (it sometimes connects upstairs, and sitting at the wrong side of the dining-room table loses the signal).

I decided that powerline networking might be a better solution. I looked at linksys’ range and decided on the PLK300 kit which is a 200mbpss kit with a 1-port adapter, and a 4-port adapter. I suspect that 200mbit means 100mbit/s in real terms as powerlines have only one pair of wires, so it is simples (as opposed to ethernet’s two pair that gives full duplex).

Getting the encryption was simple enough – press the right incantation of buttons, but I actually have no way of testing the encryption works. As for real-world speeds, I only get about 4-5Mb/s (32-40mbit/s) which is not as fast as I was hoping, but the wiring in my house is probably quite old and it is going from the downstairs power ring to the upstairs ring. I think it is probably fast enough, and as wireless is slower (and less reliable) the only other alternative is carving up the floor and walls to run cable – and I am too lazy…

Of course, as the devices are just ethernet bridges, it works seamlessly with linux and my existing network, and has almost no configuration. The power rating of these devices totals about 50W, but they seem to use less than that according to my Current Cost meter.

BCC releases iplayer desktop for linux

Published at 7:04 pm on December 20, 2008 in Internet, Linux, Movies, News and Technology. 0 Comments

BBC recently announced that iplayer now supports downloads on windows an linux, in the form of iplayer desktop. You can get started on the iplayer labs page.

So I decided to try it out…

iplayer security dialog

iplayer security dialog - extremely bad! Why can't they get a digital signature for the download?

First I had trouble upgrading flash – Installing it was easy, but I found I still had a flash 9 install listed in my about:plugins page. Following the Flash – MozillaZine Knowledge Base page helped me solved this (it turns out I had a flash 9 file in my ~/.mozilla/plugins folder)

Then it was time to install iplayer. First it installed Adobe AIR, which was simple enough. Then the iplayer desktop app installed inside AIR – the security dialog for this was particularly unappealing as it did not have any knowledge of the publisher, let alone a secure signature or certificate to assure me it was really BCC content I was installing

After that it was plain sailing – Top Gear started downloading straight away, and was done within minutes.

It plays great, works fullscreen (though my laptop can’t manage full screen well, I probably need to look at setting up 3d acceleration which I didnt do when I installed it ~2 years ago as the drivers were rubbish), and the volume still goes to 11 like the iplayer.

Amazon UK online music store opens

Published at 6:04 pm on December 6, 2008 in Music, Rights and Technology. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Amazon UK recently launched their online music store, which seemed top open much quieter than I would have expected. It did make national radio (Radio 1) on my way home from work, however they were more interested in the fact that albums are £3 each (I think this is  promotional price) than the fact it is DRM free.

My biggest problem with iTunes (apart from the fact the iTunes software doesn’t run on linux) is that the files are DRM protected. This means I cannot play them on linux, and cannot play them on any portable player other than my iPod. Amazon’s music is mp3, DRM-free and will play on nearly all devices, all operating systems and I can even burn a mp3 (or normal audio cd) of songs to play elsewhere.

I seem to remember Apple trying to go DRM-free but the music companies objected (mind you, the music companies also wanted Apple to increase prices) but that doesn’t seem to have affected Amazon.

The radio news I was listening to suggested a price war resulting from this, however I am more interested in getting music I can actually play how and where I want.

As a side story, a friend recently had to get a new computer as their old one died. They got the music they had (windows WMA files, which were DRM protected) from the old disk, but had a hard time playing it. The new computer wasn’t allowed to play it! It took a lot of effort to get it working.

This is my biggest objection to DRM – It actually make things worse for the consumer, including making it harder to play and harder to backup.

LightScribe on Debian – burn your cd/dvd labels!

Published at 4:26 pm on October 25, 2008 in Debian, Linux, Photography and Technology. 3 Comments

I have started doing some photography for other people, so decided I should really put some effort into how I present the photos. I thought about buying an inkjet for printing labels, but they weren’t all that cheap and from my experience with inkets in the past the ink dries out and is rather expensive to replace.

I also had problems finding inkets that could print direct to cd from linux… Then BlueMonki suggested a LightScribe drive. LightScribe is a technology where you put the disk in the burner upside down and it etches a label onto it. Of course you need a new drive and specific media, but the drives are available for £20 and media is less than 30p each, which is more expensive than a normal dvd+r but not a problem for occasional use.

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