Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

From the BBC Editor Blog:

I have restrained myself to such an extent that I have not uttered a single word about the new iPhone in the last 36 hours, on TV, on radio or online. So, while I’m here, wasn’t it just a little disappointing? Still no video, the camera stays at the original 2mp, and no ability to cut and paste. And isn’t the price cut proof enough that Apple misjudged the European market, and needed to kick-start sales?

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Canon 40D Remote Live View

Tonight I finally got to play with my new DSLR camera, the Canon EOS 40D. As Royal Mail are taking their time to deliver my Compact Flash Card, I have been unable to use it in anger until now. I had read about the Remote Live View feature of the camera so I decided to try it out tonight. As you can see from the picture, not only can you remotely operate the camera from your PC, you can also see the real time Live View image that the camera will display on its LCD. The photos are instantainously downloaded to you PC as soon as you take them too. It is a brilliant bit of software, a lot more interesting than developing financial software that is for sure!

I am only really starting out in photography so I have a lot to learn. Apologies for the flash reflection!

This week I purchased a pro-sumer Digital SLR camera from a well known high street chain. I was encouraged to take out their accidental damage policy claiming that I was actually buying my next camera. If it was broken, they would replace it “whatever happens”, if it couldn’t be repaired within 21 days, with an equivalent model, even if it was more expensive. It works out at around £30 a year for 5 years. So if in 4 and a half years a new model comes out and I accidentally run over my camera with my car, I should* get it replaced by the newer model. Of course it doesn’t cover loss or theft. I was thinking of getting some sort of after care as DSLRs are known to be delicate and very expensive to repair and it should give me peace of mind when using it “in the field”. I have 14 days to cancel the policy, what should I do??

* Whether I do or not I don’t know, sounds a bit too good to be true IMHO.

Well if you have been following my tweets recently, you will know that I have decided to move on to pastures new after nearly 3 years working for one of the largest financial services companies in the world. Having been off for a few days now I’ve had a chance to reflect on my experiences and what I have learned from it.

When I joined, I hoped that being at the technical sharp end of the high-pressure trading market would provide me with valuable experience. I wanted to learn what it took to build large scale, n-tiered, fault-tolerant and highly performant software. I thought I would be building software to strict specification and detailed designs as part of a water-tight software development methodology. I also was led to believe that I would be working with other teams, identifying common funtionality and building reusable services and common infrastructure. I also wanted to help in setting up an brand new technology centre. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as I had hoped. Read on to find out why. Continue reading →

OK I know there really is only one answer to this question…

The real question is how to backup in a secure, robust and efficient manner? But I have to admit that I don’t have a great backup strategy at present. None to be exact. I do keep a copy of some data on my external HDD but it is really an ad hoc manual process.  It wasn’t really that big an issue as there was nothing I couldn’t live without on my PC.  Now however there are a few things that have changed my mind:

1. I now have GBs of priceless photographs/video stored on my PC/External HDD as well as my music collection.
2. I have recently replaced my aging pc with a 1TB RAID 0 disk array. This means my data is more vunerable with 2x the risk of disk failure. Also, HDDs are said to be more likely to fail early if defected or last for a long period of time. So I am on shaky ground at the moment.
3. I have already had a couple of scares where it looked like my RAID had died and I thought I had lost everything. I don’t want to go through that again!

I have been thinking about getting a good backup strategy for a while. I will write an update soon detailing my options. In the mean time, I would love to hear some suggestions/requirements etc…

As we settle into the high-definition era of console gaming, we can bask in the warn glow of our 40″+  LCD TVs (even warmer glow of plasma TVs) and the crisp 710p/1080i/1080p graphics appearing before our eyes, safe in the knowledge that it just doesn’t get any better. Or does it… Continue reading →