Author Archives: Joe Wein

About Joe Wein

Software developer and anti-spam activist

Canon PowerShot S95 vs DSLR

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Three months ago one of my brothers visited me from Germany and we had a great time together, but somehow in between taking him to Meiji Shrine, Harajuku, Asakusa, Kamakura and Mt Fuji, my old Sony DSC-W80 digital camera went absent without leave: It was there one day and I couldn’t find it the next day. It never showed up again and I’m not sure exactly where or how I lost it.

To be perfectly honest, the Sony DSC-W80 had been actually my least favourite camera so far, mostly because of its poor indoor / low-light performance. I was almost glad to have been presented with an excuse to start looking for a better replacement, even if it would cost me some money. Many point and shoot cameras attract buyers with ever increasing megapixel numbers, but draw them from a tiny image sensor that captures nowhere near enough light for all those pixels, so you end up with more noise and distortion.

Last Christmas I visited my sister in law’s brother in law, who is a photography enthusiast and owns a Nikon D90 with a 16-85 VR DX lens. He took some shots of us sitting around the kitchen table at what I would consider pretty minimal light (we’re talking Germany in late December after all!) without using a flash. The sharpness, the colours and the detail in the pictures were just amazing. I started reading up about the Nikon D90 and was very impressed. I later found the camera with a good quality kit lens, the 18-55 VR DX for about JPY 75,000 at Amazon Japan, but also looked at its lesser sibling, the D5000, which uses the same high quality image sensor as the D90 and D300, but a lower resolution LCD and is a bit cheaper than the D90 (just under JPY 60,000 with the same lens).

Back in the late 1990s I had a Canon EOS SLR (analog), but it developed a problem with its lens and I never bothered to get it fixed, switching back to compacts instead. What I found then was that actually having a camera on you usually is more important than owning a better camera. The best SLR or DSLR is of no use if you don’t have it within reach when an opportunity for a great picture arises. Cameras that fit into a jacket pocket ended up getting more use, since I was always reluctant to bring along the bulky camera bag needed to protect the SLR.

This is the reason why I have abandoned the idea of a DSLR for now (i.e. until I get rich and can afford a good DSLR like the Nikon D90 as a *second* camera for special occasions). Today I ordered the Canon PowerShot S95, which Ken Rockwell calls the “world’s best pocket camera”. It combines a large image sensor with a compact body. Its main difference to its predecessor, the Canon PowerShot S90 is added support for 1280x720p video at 24 fps. In a few days I should know how it actually performs, as I’m planning to hike in the mountains west of Tokyo for autumn leaves viewing with friends. Then I’ll just need to make sure the Canon S95 won’t disappear like my Sony 😉

UPDATE (2010-11-16):

I ordered the camera at Camera Kaikan (camera-k.net) on Sunday morning and it was delivered on Monday morning, little more than 24 hours later. I bought a no-name 8 GB class 4 SD card for it. The class (i.e. minimum writing speed in MB per second) of the card matters only for video, where data streams to the card continuously.

You can get really cheap class 2 SD cards, but that’s not fast enough to keep up with the 720p24 HD recording mode supported by the S95. Various people in online forums were saying class 10 was an unnecessary expense while recommending class 6 as the base line. However, looking at the file size of a one minute clip I took, 720p24 HD seems to result in a data rate of 2.5 MB per second, or 37% below the 4 MB/s minimum required for class 4. So theoretically class 4 should work as well as class 6 for HD recording on the S95.

I am very pleased with the picture quality so far, but I’ve only started experimenting with the various modes and menus for manual control to explore its full potential.

My public Picasaweb gallery

USDomainlicensing.com spam

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When I received the following email, I was scared for a moment that I might not have taken care of renewing one of my domains, but I think panic is exactly what the senders had intended to provoke:

US Domain Licensing
130 Church St Suite 280 New York, NY 10007
Web: www.USDomainlicensing.com
Email: support@usdomainlicensing.com
Phone: 1 800 690 1269

————————————————————–
Final Notice Of Domain Extension
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ATT:

ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT
joewein
jwspamspy@pobox.com
Address:
Phone:
Fax:
www.jwspamspy.us Notice Tracking Number: EXE2799704

Please be advised that the above noted domain name has now become available for registration. Consequently the possibility of a conflicting domain registration may occur. As the registrant of the commerce extension, you have been granted the first right to use preference in securing the intellectual property for the United States country code. If you choose to waive this right, the name will be available for public registration.

————————————————————–

Please note that businesses and consumers are increasingly losing the rights to their domain names caused by Domain Hijacking, Registrant/Registrar mistake, inadvertence, or Blocked Emails.
————————————————————–

This is an urgent domain notice to verify the rights to your name to prevent 3rd party infringement and unintentional name loss. Our organization is responsible for verifying the public and private Intellectual Property rights of domain holders, and to carry out UDRP Disputes according to the guidelines:

Protecting a domain name registrant or trademark owner from confusing and/or conflicting domain name registrations is not the responsibility of the domain and trademark registration processes. In the event of a registration of the above noted domain by a third party, the UDRP may be applied under the following conditions.

You may loose your domain if a complainant/competitor proves that each of these three elements are present with your domain registration. – For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:

(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
(iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith.

.(i) You acquired the domain primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant/ trademark or service mark owner, or to their competitor, or (ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, therefore revealing a pattern of such conduct, or (iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor, or (iv) by using the domain name, to create confusion with the complainant’s mark.

Note: You may disregard this notice. If you disregard this notice or fail to reply:
(a) The licensing rights of this domain name may be assigned to any other applicant, (b) UDL and or any ICANN accredited registrar will not be liable for loss of domain name license, identical or confusingly similar use of your company’s domain name; or interruption of business activity or business losses.

————————————————————–

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY:
If you fail to reply to UDL this domain may be registered by any third party without further notice. To protect the intellectual property rights to this name, you are required to advise us of your intent to (a) secure this domain name or (b) to leave this domain name for Public Registration.

————————————————————–
Call 1 800 690 1269
Notice Tracking Number: EXE2799704

Sounds terribly official and scary, but I’ve never owned any “.us” domains, so there is no domain registration to extend. Not being based in the United States, I have no plans to register any .us domains. I do own the .com and .net variants of the domain in question though and they are far more useful for commercial purposes.

These people seem to try to frighten recipients of their spam into signing up for a .us domain. They are not cheap: From the FAQ on their website it looks like they charge US$70 for two years.

Reputable registrars offer .us domains for around $20 for 2 years, so it’s unlikely anyone would pay $70 to register one through these people unless prompted to do so by deceptive advertising, even if they had a need for a .us domain in the first place.

By the way, domains USDomainlicensing.us and USDomainlicensing.net were still available when I checked, so they themselves don’t practice what they preach. The same people own domainregistryrights.com, which was registered about two years earlier (May 2008) than usdomainlicensing.com (February 2010).

See also:

Chilean mine workers rescued

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Ever since 33 mine workers were found to be still alive at the San José gold and copper mine near Copiapó, Chile 17 days after its collapse, I have been following reports about efforts to rescue them. It reminded me of Apollo 13, when professionalism and ingenuity of both the ground crews and the astronauts enabled their survival and safe return.

I can’t even begin to image what the first 17 days must have felt like for the miners, before there was any contact with rescuers. They had almost no food, surviving essentially on kilos of lost body fat. Millions of people around the world finally breathed a collective sigh of relief when the last man had returned to the surface safely and all were reunited with their loved ones. Such happy endings are rare in large mining accidents.

Fenix 2, the rescue capsule used to return the 33 mine workers and 6 rescuers back to the surface was built by Asmar (Astilleros y Maestranzas de la Armada chilena), a shipbuilding company of the Chilean navy. Its design is derived from the “Dahlbusch bomb“, a rescue vehicle designed by German engineer Eberhard Au in 1955 to rescue miners after a disaster at the Dahlbusch coal mine in Gelsenkirchen/West Germany. Similar designs are in used in many countries now. The Chilean version was designed with the help of NASA engineers. Eberhard Au never took out a patent for his invention: “The main thing is that the guys get out.”

Unlike the original (which is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich), Fenix 2 has 8 wheels, 4 at the top and 4 at the bottom, spaced 90 degrees apart so that it could run down the rescue shaft (which is not quite vertical) with minimal friction and wear.

The Chilean government has not revealed exactly how much it spent on saving the lives of the 33, but the Chilean national copper company that was put in charge is reported to have budgeted 15 million dollars for it. After the mine collapse on Aug 5, 2010 the miners first tried to escape on their own using ventilation shafts that connect all levels of the mine, but they found that metal ladders were missing. The mining company was supposed to have installed the ladders after being closed down for a previous accident. The company may have saved a little bit of money by not installing safety equipment, but at what cost to the nation and risk to the miners?

The wide publicity achieved by the successful rescue efforts has put a spotlight on mine safety not just in Chile, but worldwide. For instance, the safety record of Chinese coal mines is still terrible. Better safety regulations and stricter enforcement of existing regulations could save not only countless lives, but also money.

Skype on Android 2.1 but not in the US

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A year and a half after Skype launched a version for the iPhone (March 2009) it finally released Skype for Android for customers outside the US. In the US Skype has already been available for Verizon customers for a couple of months, but if you’re with a different US network you’ll still be out of luck.

Even outside the US, Android versions before 2.1 are not supported. My Google Ion which comes with Android 1.6 got this message:

Sorry, Skype is unavailable for your mobile. We add new handsets all the time so check back soon.

Last month, about 30% of Android users were still using 1.5 or 1.6.

This makes me even keener to find out when an Android 2.2 upgrade will become available for the Google Ion, as announced in May 2010.

Epson PM-A950 under Windows 7 64bit

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Earlier this month, an old eMachines T6212 bought in April 2005, a humble single core 1.6 GHz Athlon64 that had served me faithfully for more than 5 years, finally died. So two weeks ago I bought an Acer Aspire ASM3910-N54E, a Core i5-650 machine with 4 GB of RAM (max. 8 GB) and a 640 GB hard disk. It came with Windows 7 Home 64bit.

I replaced the C: drive with a 1 TB drive and added another 1.5 TB drive that I previously used in a USB-enclosure. I am using the on-board video with dual 1280×1024 monitors (Dell 1905FP), hooked up via an analog VGA cable and a digital HDMI-to-DVI cable.

The best thing I can say about Windows 7 is that it’s not as bad as Vista. I wish I could have stuck with Windows XP, but at least Windows 7 doesn’t get in the way as much as Vista did. It feels a bit more like Mac OS X, if that is what you like. It’s going to get more and more difficult to get drivers for new hardware that still support XP, but on the other hand older hardware may have problems working with Windows 7, for example my old Logitech QuickCam Zoom is not supported by Windows 7.

Epson PM-A950 printer driver

Today I tried to print from the new machine for the first time and found I needed a new printer driver for my almost 4 year old Epson PM-A950 USB printer/scanner. Though Microsoft’s documentation states that the printer is supported by Windows 7 out of the box, it will do so only using a generic Epson printer definition which probably will not support all the functionality. So I searched the Epson Japan website and found these two drivers (the 64bit version worked fine for my version of Windows 7):

  • Windows 7 32bit / Windows Vista 32bit / Windows XP / Windows 2000:
    http://www.epson.jp/dl_soft/file/7461/a950f652.EXE
  • Windows 7 64bit / Windows Vista 64bit / Windows XP x64 Edition:
    http://www.epson.jp/dl_soft/file/7462/a950h652.EXE

Energy efficiency

So far I’m very happy with the new machine. The machine draws about 40W when idle, considerably less than its less powerful predecessor (69W). The lastest Core i3 and Core i5 machines are very energy efficient. My i5 actually did better than a VIA MM3500 (1.5 GHz single core VIA C7). The only x86-compatible machines I have that beat the i5 on power usage at idle are either notebooks or are desktops built using notebook chipsets (i.e. the Mac Mini).

Excessive JPEG compression on Android phones

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A few weeks ago I got my first smart-phone, an HTC Magic (aka Google Ion or myTouch 3G) which uses Android 1.6.

Originally I had wanted to get the HTC Desire with Android 2.1 from Softbank, but they had no more stocks of the old model and weren’t going to start shipping the new model until October. I couldn’t wait that long. That’s how I ended up getting an Android phone from the US.

I first transplanted the USIM from my almost three year old Softbank Samsung 707SCII into the Android phone, which wasn’t locked to any provider. I could then make calls here in Japan.

Next I added Softbank’s “smart phone pakehodai” (smart phone unlimited data) plan to my existing contract, after telling the company that I was going to use my existing USIM in an imported Android phone. They didn’t raise any objections to that. The plan is about 5700 yen per month (about US$67), plus 315 yen to enable web access and mail (US$3.60), which I had previously disabled as I was only using SMS besides voice calls. I configured APNs for accessing the Softbank network using this link, which then gave me full web access from my new phone even when not on my wireless LAN at home.

So far it has been a fun experience and I’m still exploring new features and applications.

The application I enjoy most so far is Google Maps. Having moved from the semirural suburbs of Yokohama to a densely populated part of Tokyo recently, I’m now exploring local back streets on foot or on the bicycle as well as riding trains, of which there are plenty. Google Maps will easily find me a train connection to anywhere in this city of 13 million people, including directions for walking to and from stations and down to the minute connection schedules (Japanese trains are famously punctual).

I was disappointed however by the picture quality of the 3 MP camera (1536 by 2048 pixels) on the phone, not that my expectations were too high to start with. But I was shocked to see that when I copied these 3 MP image files off the phone using a USB cable, they were only 330 to 700 MB (500 MB on average) in size even when taking pictures at the highest quality settings. This is 2 to 3 times smaller than typical 3 MP cameras.

My old Sony P8 (also a 3 MP camera) averaged around 1.3 MB per image. One Megabyte or more per image is fairly typical for high quality settings at 3 MP. That means the Android camera must be using very aggressive JPEG compression settings, which reduce detail and produce artifacts, to squeeze pictures into 40% of the space used on other cameras. And you can really tell from just looking at the pictures: They look somewhat blurred and fuzzy, not as sharp and crisp as you’d expect even from a modest 3 MP camera.

What’s worse, I could not find any setting that would let me change this. A search on Google confirmed that others using different Android phones have the same problem, but currently no solution.

I hope Google will address this problem on the Android 2.2 upgrade, because with these software settings the capabilities of the hardware are wasted, even more so on 5 MP or 8 MP camera models. It makes no sense to aggressively compress pictures when the user has selected optimum quality, especially on a camera that can be expanded with up to 16 GB per microSD memory card.

Installing OpenWRT on WZR-HP-G300NH from DD-WRT

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Last month I bought a Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH router and flashed it with DD-WRT open source firmware to use at my new home. However, I had problems with the router resetting itself periodically and with a weak WiFi signal. It appears DD-WRT for this router is not yet ready for prime time, though it may be in better shape by the end of the year.

Since I read that OpenWRT for the same router was fairly robust, I investigated switching from DD-WRT to OpenWRT. It turned out easier than I thought.

Using putty under Windows I did a ssh session to the router running DD-WRT. From there I downloaded the new firmware into the /tmp folder, trimmed off the 32 byte header and wrote the result to flash memory:

# cd /tmp
# wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/backfire/10.03.1-rc3/ar71xx/openwrt-ar71xx-wzr-hp-g300nh-jffs2-tftp.bin
# dd if=openwrt-ar71xx-wzr-hp-g300nh-jffs2-tftp.bin of=firmware.trx bs=32 skip=1
# mtd -r write firmware.trx linux

When the mtd command finished it dropped the connection to putty. I waited for the router to finish its reboot. Then I released and reacquired the IP address on Windows using ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew. I launched the FireFox browser with 192.168.1.1 to configure OpenWRT. The first thing you should do once you’re connected to the web interface is assign an administrative password, because by default there isn’t one.

My next stumbling block was the fact that the WAN port had a different MAC address under OpenWRT than under DD-WRT. In DD-WRT the WAN and LAN ports on the WZR-HP-G300NH have the same MAC address, but in OpenWRT the WAN MAC address is larger by one. As a result DHCP from the ISP treated it as a new client that needed a new IP address, but the cable modem had already assigned its only IP address to the old MAC address. The solution was to pull the power cord from my Cisco cable modem, reconnect it and wait for the modem to reinitialize (watch the LEDs). Then do the same with the router. Reconnect ssh to the router and the WAN port has an IP address.

I also assigned Google’s open DNS server (8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4) to the router rather than leaving the default but I’m not sure if that was really necessary.

I set up the wireless SSID and selected WPA2 and a key. Finally I could specify transmit power to reach the whole building.

The OpenWRT UI doesn’t look quite as slick as DD-WRT, but it seems to work well and all the basic configuration seemed easy enough through the web interface. What I really liked best about the WHR-HP-G54 that this router replaces for me was its rock-solid reliability, followed by its WiFi coverage and feature set. With OpenWRT the WZR-HP-G300NH looks like a worthy successor to it.

DD-WRT on Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH (Japanese version, A0 A3)

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I’ll be moving to a new house next week, my first move in a decade. To make the switchover as smooth as possible I decided to set up and test the broadband connection and router at the new location ahead of the move, so I’d only have to bring along my PCs and everything should work on the new router that will duplicate the existing setup.

I chose the Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH because it is supported by DD-WRT, Linux-based open source firmware that I also use on my Buffalo WHR-HP-G54. The new router has 32 MB of flash vs. 4 MB on the old one and 64 MB of RAM vs. 16 on the old one, which will make it much easier to add more features. It also offers 11n with wireless speeds up to 300 Mbps versus up to 54 Mbps on the old router that supports 11b and 11g. One USB-port provides access to mass storage for hosting a website, for audio or video files or for a Samba file server.

Installing DD-WRT was much easier on the Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH than on its predecessor, as the DD-WRT team offers a special firmware version that can be flashed directly from the firmware upgrade menu of the standard Buffalo firmware. The older router required the use of TFTP for that and the steps involved were more complicated.

Here is what I did:

  • Go to http://dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database and search for WZR-HP-G300NH. Open the page for this router and download file buffalo_to_ddwrt_webflash-MULTI.bin to the local hard disk.
  • Connect one of the LAN ports of the router via an Ethernet cable to your PC. You can leave the blue WAN port disconnected. Check with ipconfig on Windows or ifconfig on Linux that you receive an IP address like 192.168.11.2. Start your Browser and open http://192.168.11.1/ (enter user name root and leave the password empty).
  • Select the firmware upgrade link on the initial configuration screen or Admin Config / Update in the regular menus. Select local file and browse to the buffalo_to_ddwrt_webflash-MULTI.bin downloaded above. Start the upgrade. This takes about 6 minutes, during which you must not reset or power off the router. When the progress bar reaches 100% and the DIAG LED stops flashing you’re done.
  • Start your browser and open http://192.168.1.1/ — you should see the DD-WRT menus. Assign a new user name and password.
  • Reset the router using the 30/30/30 procedure: Push the reset button at the underside of the router and keep it pushed for a total of 90 seconds. After the first 30 seconds, pull the power cable without releasing reset. After another 30 seconds reconnect power, still holding down reset. After the final 30 seconds release reset. This clears the non-volatile RAM (NVRAM) for a factory reset.
  • Start your browser and again open http://192.168.1.1/ — again assign a new user name and password, which were cleared by the factory reset.

Congratulations! You now have a Buffalo WZR-HP-G300NH running English language open source DD-WRT firmware.

CodeWebLog.com, a pile of garbage indexed by Google

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Often when I post on my blog, I get a linkback from another blog that has repackaged my posting. While I like other bloggers quoting from my site, many backlink-sites I come across look completely automated. They contain nothing but machine-generated quotes taken from fresh human-generated blog postings that have just appeared on other sites. Presumably these content thieves do it to attract search traffic (i.e. click revenue) and for boosting their own page rank.

However there are even more annoying sites, for example sites like CodeWebLog.com: While researching information for a programming project, Google repeatedly showed me hits on that site that looked promising. When I clicked on the links however I found meaningless garbage, consisting of hashed up partial sentences obviously quoted from technology blogs, but without any link back to the full source. None of the text really made any sense. It was total garbage, but with enough unique keywords to show up in search results and waste people’s time.

I reported these Google spammers to Google’s abuse department and hope they will ban them from their index.

World Cup: I hate the Vuvuzela

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As a long time supporter of the anti-apartheid movement I couldn’t be prouder for a free South Africa to be hosting the World Cup (I drink coffee from an ANC fundraiser coffee mug I bought when Nelson Mandela was still in prison, I have read Mandela’s autobiography, I own dozens of South African vinyl records and music CDs and I have friends who live there).

But when I watched Mexico vs. South Africa on TV last night I was deeply irritated by the constant drone of vuvuzelas, meter-long plastic trumpets played by fans that make it sound like a swarm of about 10 million wasps is hovering over the stadium throughout the games. There is no rhythm or melody to it, it is just noise at exactly one volume, extremely loud.

To me, part of the attraction of a football (soccer) match is in the crowd response, the ups and downs of singing and shouting and gasping by the crowd as the ball moves closer to their goal or the other team’s goal, as the teams gain and lose control of the ball, etc. It makes football games exciting when you listen to them on the radio, where you only get the crowd response and a reporter describing the action. None of that happens with vuvuzelas. If you close your eyes in this cacophony it’s like the audience is absent, but someone forgot to turn off a hundred jet engines.

It drives you crazy. I don’t know how the players can put up with it. How do they communicate with their team mates? How about viewers trying to follow reporters in the stadium, how about reporters who have to talk in this noise?

I don’t know about you, but if this pattern persists with other games, even ones not involving the South African team then I may give this World Cup a miss on TV and I pity those who traveled half way around the globe to see their favourite teams play, only to be drowning in an orgy of mindless noise.

Bring back the beautiful Brazilian samba drums, but ban the mindless vuvuzela. PLEASE!