The Author – Bart Busschots
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Mar
15
This photo was taken on the evening of the 18th of June 2007 on the playing fields on the South Campus of NUI Maynooth. The playing fields are large open grass areas for sport surrounded by wonderful old trees. This photo was taken just as twilight was ending when the Moon and Venus were very close together in the sky.
Click to View Full-Size (1.6MB)
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/30 Sec
- Focal Length: 34mm
- Focal Ratio: F5.6
- ISO: 1600
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Compensation: -1
[tags]Ireland, Maynooth, NUI Maynooth, Venus, Moon[/tags]
Mar
12
Don’t Be So Pushy!
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 5 Comments
I think it’s only fair to start this post with a warning. This is more of a rant that any form of coherent or well argued polemic. To me this stuff is as self-evident as the fact that 1+1=2 so I don’t see the need for fancy proofs.
What am I prattling on about? The ‘push phenomenon’ as I call it. You know, push email, push calendaring, that kind of thing. For those of you lucky enough not to have encountered it, push email is a new ‘feature’ in which email gets turned on it’s head. Rather than emails coming in when you ask for them they are pro-actively pushed at your device the moment they arrive at the server. You don’t have to check your email anymore, it comes and harasses you!
[tags]Push Email, Exchange, Apple, iPhone, Microsoft[/tags]
Mar
10
A Twist in the Tale of DRM
Filed Under Computers & Tech | Leave a Comment
It can certainly be argued that Steve Jobs kicked off a flurry of anti-DRM sentiment with his open letter on music last year. Since then we’ve seen a sharp rise in the availability of DRM free music. All four major labels are now selling music without DRM in some form. However, the letter is not the real reason for the demise of DRM, it was just a catalyst. Steve Jobs is still responsible though, just for two very different reasons. It’s these reasons that have ensured that the last company to benefit from the demise of DRM will be Apple, the very company responsible for causing it!
[tags]Apple, Music, DRM[/tags]
Mar
9
This photo was take way back in 2000 with the Olympus OM-1 I inherited off my parents. This was my first real camera and was completely manual. It was a great way to really get to grips with the technical aspects of photography. This photo was taken on our first trip to Spain as a family and it’s a trip I have many very fond memories of.
El Castell de Guadalest is an old medieval town high in the mountains in the provice of Valencia in Spain. It has been largely preserved and is now a tourist attraction. The village is surrounded on all sides by sheer cliffs and can only be entered via a single gate which has been cut into the rocks. The beautiful white tower you see in this photograph is perched at the top of the cliff over-looking the entrance.
Click for Full-Size Version (1.1MB)
Since good old fashioned 35mm film doesn’t store EXIF data I can’t give any technical specs for this shot.
[tags]Spain, El Castell de Guadalest[/tags]
Mar
7
Naas General Hospital – a Most Pleasant Surprise
Filed Under 42 (Life the Universe & Everything), Polemics & Politics | 4 Comments
You hear lots of stuff about how utterly inadequate, mismanaged and generally shambolic the Irish health service is. Those stories are unfortunately true, the experiences of my direct family speak to that. That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised by Naas General Hospital this morning. I’m suffering from a very bad chest infection at the moment which my doctor fears has developed into pneumonia. So he sent me to Naas for a chest X-Ray. I got there at 8:40, was seen by 9:10 and on my way home by 9:20. The place was clean, efficiently run and the staff were very nice. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. I’d gone in expecting the worst, that’s why I had my laptop, 3G card and iPod with me. As it happens I barely had time to check my email!
Lets hope this is a sign of the things to come and not just an isolated case of efficiency in the Irish health system.
[tags]Ireland, healthcare[/tags]
Mar
7
iPhone – the Successful Newton
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 3 Comments
It’s been over a decade since Apple released the last of it’s Newton message pads. The Newton was revolutionary, technically advanced and a head of its time. Technologically it was a marvel, commercially it was a flop. The world simply wasn’t ready. What has changed? I’d suggest that the most important change is not the advent of the iPhone’s amazing touch screen, or it’s fancy graphics capabilities. There are all great but they are not the crucial difference that will make the iPhone a success. That big difference is wireless connectivity. A Newton was a dead-end. The only way to get things in or out of your Newton was by tethering it to your computer. With the iPhone you are permanently connected.
What we’ve seen of the iPhone so far has been fantastic. It’s little brother the iPod Touch is also a fabulous machine. But we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. With the unbelievably full and open SDK released yesterday we’ve seen the birth of the second phase of the iPhone (and the iPod Touch), the point where it becomes more than a cellphone, PDA, mobile internet device & music player. The iPhone has become a real computer you can carry in your pocket. Remember, the iPhone has more computing power than the desktop you were using only a decade ago. The demos during yesterday’s Apple event really brought that home to me, particularly the one by EA Games and SEGA. I hadn’t dared to hope for such an open SDK. I’m so glad my predictions were wrong.
Keep an eye on the iPhone/iPod Touch, we haven’t seen the half of what this great platform can do yet!
[tags]Apple, iPhone, Newton, SDK[/tags]
Mar
5
Nice Update to SoundSource
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 1 Comment
Rogue Amoeba have updated their freebie menubar app SoundSource. I reviewed the previous version a few months back and this new version is very similar. The big difference is the addition of volume sliders for input, output and system sound sources right in the menubar. This cool new feature is Leopard-only but the new version is still Tiger compatible. All-in-all I think this is a nice update to a free app I use a lot.
[tags]Rogue Amoeba, Sound Source, Freeware[/tags]
Mar
5
I tend to avoid web apps because I don’t like having my apps stuck in a tab in a web browser. This makes it hard to command+tab to the app and impossible to assign that app to a particular space. I don’t use GMail but if I did I’m pretty sure I’d be using Mailplane to access it. Fluid is not as advanced as Mailplane but it does allow most webapps to be liberated from your browser.
[tags]Fluid, web applications[/tags]
Mar
2
This photo was taken on the morning of the 21st of December 2007 in St. Joseph’s Square on the South Campus of NUI Maynooth. St. Joseph’s Square is at the heart of the historic old campus in Maynooth and is the home of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth as well as NUI Maynooth. As well as housing academic departments the old campus also doubles up as a park for the residents of Maynooth who love to walk in the picturesque grounds.
Click to View Full-Size (1.8MB)
For those of you interested in such things here are some of the technical details of the shot:
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/200 Sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: F3.5
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Auto
[tags]Ireland, Maynooth, NUI Maynooth, winter[/tags]
Feb
29
O2 – The Irish iPhone Rip-off
Filed Under Computers & Tech | 15 Comments
I posted my initial comments on the Irish iPhone introduction yesterday and the more I think about it and the more I read about it the angrier I get with O2 and the less likely I am to buy an official Irish iPhone. Judging by the iPod Touch the iPhone must be a spectacular phone but I’m not prepared to be taken to the cleaners by O2 for it. The rip-off culture here in Ireland is so well established that we often don’t even notice quite how much over the odds we pay for stuff but O2 is going too far with this one. O2 Ireland obviously don’t think they need to learn from their colleagues in the UK who already have the iPhone.
[tags]Ireland, iPhone, rip-off[/tags]