Torsten Curdt’s weblog

This is really amazing. There is an alternative firmware available for (some) Canon point and shoot cameras. But instead of having to flash it, you just copy it onto the memory card. It gives you RAW, auto bracketing, bursts and much more. This seems to be especially interesting for underwater photography, but will help whenever you don’t have your full gear with you and you want to do a bit more than just “click”.

Some while ago someone posted an AppleScript to optimize the Mail.app index. I prefer bash over AppleScript. So I just dump my version here:

killall Mail
BEFORE=`ls -lah ~/Library/Mail | grep -E 'Envelope Index$' | awk {'print $5'}"`
sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/'Envelope Index' vacuum
AFTER=`ls -lah ~/Library/Mail | grep -E 'Envelope Index$' | awk {'print $5'}"`
echo "before: $BEFORE"
echo "after:  $AFTER"

For more details see this blog post or hawk wings.

These guys from Australia came up with something amazing. Tracing and modeling 3D objects from video. Just have a look at the demo yourself.

It reminds me a little on something I previously blogged about.

Did you know that Skype actually understand some of the IRC commands? I personally find the “alertsoff” command to be very useful for group chats. So while a direct contact gives me the usual pop up window, my group chats are now without alerts. This is much less disruptive. If you use Skype a lot it’s well worth looking into.

Available commands:
  /add [skypename]
  /help
   /topic [new topic]
  /me
  /history
/leave
/goadmin
/get creator
/get role
/whois [skypename]
/setrole [skypename] MASTER|HELPER|USER|LISTENER
/kick [skypename]
/kickban [skypename]
/get guidelines
/set guidelines [text]
/get options [text]
/set options [[+|-]flag] …
/setpassword [password] [password hint]
/clearpassword
/get password_hint
/set password_hint [text]
/set password [text]
/get banlist
/get allowlist
/set banlist [[+|-]mask] …
/set allowlist [[+|-]mask] …
  /alertson [text to match]
  /alertsoff
/call [skypename[,skypename,...]]

Sometimes badges just don’t go very well with the design of a web page. So while during the overhaul of this site I was thinking of creating my own custom feedburner counter. You can easily use the feedburner awareness API with some AJAX to create your own. In the end I opted out because you lose the trust and recognition value of such a well known badge. But maybe it’s something for you.

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