SiC – David Sidwell

Over the last few years I’ve re-discovered trains.  By that I mean longer trips, not just the 20 minute hop into Melbourne.  Here are some of the ones I did. But first:

• You can get timetable information from V/Line
• Most of the larger country stations have town maps or even tourist information stands in them.

Geelong

Only about 45 minutes away. I went from Newport station. Things to do:

• National Wool Museum
• Walk and coffee at Waterfront Geelong, including Eastern Beach
• Geelong Art Gallery
• Shopping/browsing

Ballarat

About 1 hour and 20 minutes from Footscray station, so catch a suburban train first.  Check the timetables for exact details as it may be easier to go into Southern Cross (not sure if all trains stop at Footscray).

• Beautiful goldrush-era buildings. Circa 1860s
• One of the best art galleries around
• Shopping etc
• The world-class Sovereign Hill  (an outdoor museum presenting the story of Australia’s fabulous goldrush history)  Whilst it is too far to walk to, it is a must-see.  I have just read about “A new V/Line train initiative – the Goldrush Special now delivers visitors directly to Sovereign Hill’s front door. As part of the Goldrush Special a courtesy return service coach meets the train at Ballarat station and brings visitors directly to Sovereign Hill.”  I’d be calling them up.

Continue reading “No car? Then here’s some day trips on a train”

A media centre lets you manage and play back your media files on your PC (Mac, Linux..) system.  XBMC is XBox Media Centre, and despite the name, really has nothing to do with the X-Box any more.  They describe it as “‘an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media”

I have it on my laptop and main PC.  It’s fantastic.  I have my avi, flv, mkv, mp4 etc movies in C:\Movies and use XBMC to watch them back. My quick steps:

1. Grab it and install it from their download page
2. It will get any extra s/w off the Internet if it has to, during the install
3. Run it and then make 2 quick changes
   • Add at least one Folder as a source for your Videos. (select Videos –> Add Source then browse for your C:\Movies or whatever folder they are in.)
   • Unlike some other players it can remember where it is up to for multiple movies, making it easy to Resume playing where you left off last time. This is off by default, so (System –> Video –> Playback, then change Resume From Where Last Stopped to yes)
4. Off you go to watch your videos

The default keys (at least under Windows) are

This topic came up yesterday and I was intrigued by what some quick research showed.

My first PC was an IBM JX, circa 1985.  My new smartphone is a HTC Desire.  And now to the numbers:

Then there’s Ethernet, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, 3D graphics acceleration, ‘mouse’, touch screen, multi-tasking…okay I can stop there.

Notes:

• “Disk” storage:  Non-volatile data storage (survives with power off) My JX used diskettes. No hard drive (!)  Maxed out at 2 x 360 Kb (3”) + 1 x 360 Kb (5”) drives. So about 1 MB total. Desire supports user-changeable microSD cards. I have 16 GB.
• JX had a special 720 x 512 graphics mode, but only in 2 colours (!).
• JX screen was physically bigger, of course.

This wasn’t my first computer, I deliberately said “first PC”.   I can’t quite recall, but I think the first one I used regularly was a Commodore 64, but I don’t think it was mine; maybe one of the brothers’ (?)   A bit later, I know I then paid for a Commodore Amiga.   Pre-dating both of these, I’m sure someone had a Sinclair ZX-81 that I used to briefly tinker with, maybe a neighbour.

Not much to say really. Except regularly backing up your key data is important.  I have an external USB2 hard disk (appears as my Q: drive) and use Microsoft’s free SyncToy 2.1

I run it in contribute mode with my synching folders (folder-pairs) something like this

SyncToy (ST) was initially designed to keep the two folder-pairs (labelled Left and Right) in synch. So if you added a file to the Left folder then ran ST, it would copy that new file to the Right folder…of that pair.  Or vice versa. Including changes/deletes.

Contribute mode in ST is newer and different, basically not really syncing, just copying from Left to Right and not deleting. It’s my quick and simple back up.   Mainly My Documents, Music,  business data (MYOB) and some text files/notes.

I’m gradually building up a few articles here on SiC about software I use and tips on how I do things.  This will be the Master List and thusly have summaries and links.

• Archiving and indexing your digital photos
• How I find my files (including on external disks and DVDs) & Blu-ray movies etc
• Backing up my PC’s main data

Now where are those files?  I’m looking for the movie Big Buck Bunny.avi  as well as the unpublished masterpiece  My Life Story by Me.doc

They are either on the main hard drive … or maybe on one of my archive DVDs or – hang on – are they on that 500 GB external USB hard disk?    Then there’s the files on that old laptop that I access via the network. Mmmm.

The solution is to use a Windows file catalogue program and then do a search.  I’m only going to give quick overviews so you can go off and have fun trying them out for yourselves.

Key point: I’m really only interested in file and folder names, not their contents nor their tags (like mp3 or jpg files have). It takes much longer to catalogue inside a file and there are programs that will do this.

I have covered my tips for Archiving and indexing your digital photos elsewhere on SiC.

Files stored on hard drives, including external USB/firewire and networked hard drives

I use the free Locate32 to catalogue these drives.   I can then search for the file named Big Buck Bunny with the extension avi.   Or all avi’s.   It can do more complicated searches (size and date etc).  My basic Logitech keyboard has a Search key and I assign that to start up Locate32.  I also have Windows update some of  Locate32’s catalogues every few hours; the main ones.

FYI: on the main hard drive I catalogue My Documents, my Music folders and Downloads

Continue reading “How I find my files (including on external disks and DVDs) & Blu-ray movies etc”

It’s now mid 2010. A quick search shows I have been taking photographs with digital cameras since 2005.  I was actually a late starter, but still have lots and lots of JPG and NEF image files. 

There comes a time when you have to move them off your hard drive to free up space. This is called archiving.  For my purposes this is different from backing up, which means taking a copy onto an external media, but leaving the original on the hard drive. Archiving means deleting them off the hard disk, once they are safely on your external media (like a DVD).

It’s a 4 step process:

1. Copy them to the external media, usually a DVD
2. Index them, including creating thumbnail (small) images of them, enabling you to still ‘browse’ them without having to hunt down your archive DVDs
3. Create a 2nd copy of your archive DVDs (for taking off-site, see later)
4. Delete the original files from your hard drive

I archive by year. In fact the photos on my hard drive are arranged by year too; I have top-level folders 2010, 2009, 2008. 

1. Copying them

Just use your standard DVD creation software. You are creating a Data DVD (not a Movie one!).  I use the free ImgBurn software.  Important point: give each DVD a sensible, unique Volume Label.  For my 2009 archiving it took three DVDs. So I gave them Volume Labels of DS.photos.2009.1   DS.photos.2009.2 and DS.photos.2009.3

After the files have been burnt, write the Volume Label on the DVD itself.

Verify the burning worked, by browsing a number of folders on your new archive DVD.

Continue reading “Archiving and indexing your digital photos”

Great walk, starting only about an hour from my place! Spectacular views over the steep Werribee Gorge. The river, of the same name, has cut a massive slice through the country over the millennia.   A relatively easy walk takes you from the car park, along a creek valley and some spurs to the Lookout.

More Pictures: At my PicasaWeb album of this walk.

Listed in: The Parks Victoria free PDF Werribee Gorge State Park – Visitor Guide plus a number of bushwalking books, including Walk 24 in Daywalks Around Melbourne as covered here.

Location: About 15 minutes from Bacchus Marsh (see map below).

Advice:  Books say to wear hiking boots (not runners) and take a walking pole. I agree as the walk, whilst under an hour each way, has parts that are a bit steep and with loose stones. I think it would be slippery after rain too.

Map:  created from my GPS logs and converted to Google Maps format. Note the link to view it in a larger map at the end. From that larger map, you can then view the route in glorious 3D in Google Earth; highly recommended.
View Falcons Lookout walk in a larger map

Thoughts of someone outside of the book industry on this most interesting of topics….

I understand that as of now – May 2010 – the eBook market is still quite new. However it does have some disturbing trends already; the main one being device specific formats, aka lock-in. I believe that if you buy an eBook for your Amazon Kindle that book cannot be read on your friend’s Nook reader device.

Note I say buy, the assumption being these are NOT the free, out-of-copyright texts such as Aesops Fables.

Hence you cannot lend them that eBook, nor can they buy it off you (assuming you can somehow sell 2^nd hand eBooks, legally). I understand that some providers will allow you to lend ‘their’ (your?) eBook out to someone else, but they must have the same device as you. So again device lock-in.

This is Blu-ray versus HD-DVD all over again. Or, if you are older, VHS versus Beta. Where there’s no neutral standards, vested interests dive in and format wars erupt. The consumer is the loser.

Continue reading “Ebook Redux Part 1″

I’m slowly updating this list. I’m trying to find a way to automate it, but for now it’s done by hand. So therefore it’s not quite up to date.