There are bits of my CD collection that have never made it to MP3. I have spent the last few evenings importing them and have opted for MP3 @ 320kbps. This is to make them match the rest of my collection which has been stuck in iTunes to date.

I have previously converted some other odd tracks, eg: WMV to MP3. This will leave me with a full MP3 collection with only a hand full of Apple ACC files. I can then continue to use my iPod, with my MP3 collection.

My Next Steps:

• First, Convert the ACC files
• Second, Move away from iTunes.
• Third, When I have to replace my iPod, I will buy a player that supports MP3 and Ogg Vorbis.
• Forth, I will then convert my collection. I want to move from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis. (As the iPod does not support Ogg I am stuck with MP3 for now)

Found this online whiteboard tool and seems quite good. I would like to see more of this type of online collaboration software available.

Give it a try: http://www.imaginationcubed.com

I wonder if there are any open source applications like this….

Having been talking alot about Facebook with people over the last week, this vid shows another side to the ‘great new way to keep in touch with people and make new friends’. I can’t be sure all of what is said in the video is true, I don’t have time to check. I feel sure though, that after you have seen it, you will think twice about your Facebook Content.

Its just like we say, be careful what you post online….

Part 1 & 2 of “The Codebreakers”, with a show on FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). I saw these videos and have been asked about them several times, so here are some links. Enjoy.

Having come home yesterday to a dead UPS, I was hoping for a better day. Today I have been installing VMware Server and had one or two small issues, a quick tail on the messages log to check the status of things and I find this:

Aug 30 22:03:16 vm smartd[2477]: Device: /dev/sda, SMART Failure: LOGICAL UNIT FAILURE PREDICTION THRESHOLD EXCEEDED

Arr, Now, I know SMART is not always right, but now I know I really should replace that drive, I had been thinking about it. Off to the shops I think!

I have been working on a TomTom POI of sites I visit for work. It has needed a few little tweaks but these were due to issues with the location data I had. I now have the first real version ready and have several co-workers that are using it too! I have written a html page to go with it detailing a version history and hyperlinks for download. I am now thinking about the best way to make it available.
I am going to write up a basic howto at some point and post it. It has already helped me out several times over the last week, the time it took to work out what I needed to do and get it done was well worth it. If you think a POI may help you, I would recommend trying it!

I was browsing around on eBay the other week and happened to come across these DV182 digital video cameras made by DigiGR8. They were about £33 including postage from Hong Kong so I thought why not.

The only other bits I needed to get it going was an SD Memory Card & 2 AA batteries. After a quick raid of the desk draws, I had them.

It took around 10 days to arrive and I rushed to get it up and running. So far only a 33 quid camera, How good would it be. I shot some video and took some pictures. It gave good results when you consider the cost of the thing.

3.1 MEGA PIXELS Hardware Resolution on the Digital Camera
320×240 Video Resolution
4x Digital Zoom
5 Glasses Lens

The zoom is a bit of a let down, It does say “in video recording”, but mine will only zoom when in Snap Shot Camera Mode. Being a digital zoom, it is not really worth using, you can zoom and crop picture at that quality on your computer later.

Photo’s are good quality and are about Xmb in size. Video is recorded into AVI format and at abut 2.5Mb per min its not a bad size.

I have just ordered a 1Gb SD Card (To upgrade from the 64Mb one I had lay around) and think I will get around 6:30 hours of video on it.

Webcam? Well, I have used it as a webcam in a Skype conference on a Windows XP system as a test, but that’s about it. I have webcam’s already and am not going to use that feature much at all.

Downloading Pictures & Video: I have connected this to a Windows XP System and the device appears in My Computer as a Hard Disk, you can then copy off the files (.jpg and .avi). I will be connecting it to my Fedora System in the morning so I will update this blog post to reflect that.

Overall: I am very pleased with it. It has a few little problems but overall a bargain at that price. One of the chaps at work has bought one too having seen mine.