by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 12, 2005 | Front Page
Everyone by now knows about the Mac Mini. I think I will be placing an order for one on Friday, I am having some trouble deciding on the configuration though. I know I need more than 256 Mb RAM, but I wonder if they would be as user serviceable as other Mac’s – I suspect not.
The Apple Store charges ยฃ50 for the upgrade to 512 which is a bit mad really. I also do not know if it will be worth getting the faster model for the extra money. I do not need a new/another computer. It is more a matter of wanting to properly evaluate the Mac OS X and so forth so therefore I am aiming at affordability really.
Eventually I see this machine sitting near my TV and plugged into it with a wireless keyboard/mouse. Will use it for a media player etc, I recently pushed the configuration of my main desktop way up so I am not expecting to use this for a day to day machine, but it would make a very sexy media center pc especially since it has no fans.
I am leaning towards the smaller CPU version with wifi, bluetooth and 512Mb RAM this should set me back ยฃ480 which is a steal really.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 12, 2005 | Photography Equipment
I recently bought a Sigma 18-125mm F3.5-5.6 DC lens. It cost me just over ยฃ200 which is dirt cheap for a good range Zoom lens.
My initial reaction to the lens is favorable – though I have not used it much – it is a good zoom range and the optics seem to perform well. I did notice some barrel distortion and vignetting but this is to be expected on a low budget lens. The vignetting is easily fixed in the Photoshop RAW plugin.
I do not really have a good sample to post that was taken with the lens, the weather has been bad here for some time and I have been spending some time off work and off life in general being incredibly lazy at home.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jan 12, 2005 | Photography Equipment
Nikon announced a new version of the “B” firmware for the D70 digital SLR. The fix is pretty small and not something I have noticed:
When the mode dial was set to an exposure mode (P, S, A, or M) and II selected for the Color mode setting in the Custom item of the Optimize image menu, and then an option other than Custom (such as Portrait) selected from the Optimize image menu, JPEG images captured after this procedure were recognized as having the Adobe RGB color space when opened in applications with a color-management function such as Adobe Photoshop. This problem has been corrected.
The firmware can be downloaded for Windows users here and for Mac users here.
by R.I. Pienaar | Dec 16, 2004 | Photography
A few weekends ago I spent a day in Paris. The weather was mostly crap and no good for photography but I did manage to get a few decent shots.
I am planning to go there for a few days in December so should hopefully have more luck with it, the day I was there I mostly spent orientating myself a bit and getting a feel for the place. Next time I’ll find it easier to take photos there since I know it a bit now.
Click the image above to see a couple of photos from there.
by R.I. Pienaar | Dec 10, 2004 | Front Page
A Post on Bugtraq identifies a lot of issues with wget. Comes down to dodgy webservers can overwrite any file that the user running wget can write to. He also provided a proof of concept.
So far no fixes have been created and if the author of the advisory is correct about the state of wget’s source I wouldn’t hold my breath.
