cast42

Cast for two

Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Bye bye battery of MacBook Pro


Today, I replaced for the second time the battery of my Macbook Pro. The battery had 560 reload cycles. Apple's documentation states that normally a battery should be able to deliver about 800 cycles before replacement is needed. I got my (now iconic) Macbook Pro beginning of 2007 and this is already the second time I have to replace the battery. So with my (heavy) usage the battery worked for two years. The new battery is again made in 2006. So problem's again in 2013 ? Or will I have a new Macbook Pro with a fixed battery by then ??? Maybe I have to recalibrate my battery more often.

Posted by cast42 at 7:27 PM 1 comments

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Saturday, September 11, 2010

Fireworks shot with Canon Ixus 300HS

Yesterday evening, I went to the yearly firework held in Leuven, Belgium. I filmed the finale with my new Canon Ixus 300HS (aka Powershot 4000 SD) at 720p. Here's the result:

I also took some pictures in the fireworks mode. I think the movie catches the moment much more than the pictures. But for those interested, here is a picasa album containing the original unedited files. Here's a nice one:

From Vuurwerk

Posted by cast42 at 11:40 AM 0 comments

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Saturday, July 31, 2010

Darth Vader on a Chipmunk, the analog way ;-)

Posted by cast42 at 8:10 PM 0 comments

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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Hosting my pictures in the cloud: Google Storage

Picasa Web Albums - cast42

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

I finally did it: ordered 20 gigabyte of Google Storage to store my pictures in the cloud. I need to pay 5 dollar every year. A real bargain if you ask me. I wished to upgrade my quota because the free gigabyte everybody gets on Picasa Web was getting full. My pictures are stored on my mac and are backuped by Time Machine. So a solution to safeguard my pictures in case of a real catastrophy that destroys both the mac and the backup was not in place yet. With the extra gigabytes on Google storage, I now can store an extra copy in the cloud. It's not only an extra safety for the storage but comes in very handy because of the convience of the Picasa tool and Picasaweb website for sharing pictures.

My workflow is now as follows:

  • Copy the pictures from my digital camera (currently a Canon Ixus 300 HS) to my mac with Iphoto. Iphoto puts the pictures into new events (= pictures taken at the same time of the day)
  • Then I select the pictures I like and put them into an album of Iphoto.
  • Next I export the album on Picasa Web using Picasa Web Albums Uploader, selecting "Actual Size" so that it archives the original files in the cloud. This may take a bit longer for uploading but will save the day when all my pictures disappear from my mac and backup.

If I manage to fill up the 20 Gigabyte, it can upgrade to 80 GByte/ year for 20 dollar/year. So that's save for the future ;-)
My Account
Uploaded with plasq's Skitch!

Posted by cast42 at 9:08 PM 1 comments

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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

HTML5 example to change the opacity of an image via CSS3

Here's a simple HTML5 example that changes the opacity of an image via CSS3 using an input range element and some Javascript.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
 <title>HTML5 example to change the opacity of an image via CSS3</title>
</head>
<body>
<img id="img_0576" src="IMG_0576.jpg" alt="My bike"style="opacity: 0.5;" />
<input id="img_op" type='range' min='0' max='100' value='50' onchange="changeOpacity()">
<script>
function changeOpacity() {
 var opacity = document.getElementById('img_op').value/100;
 document.getElementById('img_0576').style.opacity = opacity;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
This example is mainly to test out the use of code highlighting on Blogger as explained by Luka Marinko. It seems to work well. Huray!
If you're interested in HTML5 you can follow the Friendfeed on HTML5.

Posted by cast42 at 2:04 PM 2 comments

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Monday, April 26, 2010

Trailer for the episode 3 of the virtual revolution on the Flemish television

On tuesday 24 april 2010, VRT will air a dutch spoken version of the third episode of BBC's Virtual Revolution. Here's the trailer:


The code to embed this:

<!-- BEGIN EMBEDCODE CANVAS--> 
<div id='canvasvideo_container_47281' style="width: 507px; height: 320px; border: 1px solid black;"> 
  <object id="canvasvideo_47281" width="507" height="320"> 
    <param name="movie" value="http://static.vrt.be/swf/jwplayer45.swf"/> 
    <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /> 
    <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> 
    <param name="flashvars" value="config=http://video.canvas.be/embed%3Fvideo%3D47281"/> 
    <param name="wmode" value="transparent"> 
    <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" name="media" src="http://static.vrt.be/swf/jwplayer45.swf" quality="high" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" flashvars="config=http://video.canvas.be/embed%3Fvideo%3D47281" width="507" height="320"> 
    </embed> 
  </object> 
</div> 
<!-- EINDE EMBEDCODE CANVAS-->


It's a pitty the embed code is not working on Blogger.....

UPDATE: It tried to solve this by using an Iframe:

usign this code:
<iframe src ="http://programmas.canvas.be/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/The-virtual-revolution-Aflevering-3-trailer.html" width="507" height="320">

But that is still not working. Strange.


UPDATE 3: maybe I have to URL unescape the value of flashvars to
http://video.canvas.be/embed?video=47281

Posted by cast42 at 10:34 PM 3 comments

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Skiing in Stuben am Arlberg, Austria

In a yearly tradition, I publish a short movie about the skiing holiday. It's not as cool as with a Go Pro Hero cam but still interesting. This year I edited again with Imovie on the mac. Imovie is really the tool you need for such a job. When finished, I pushed the button to upload to youtube and half an hour later:

This year we stayed in Stuben am Arlberg in Austria. They say that stuben is the capital of off piste skiing, but this year we stayed on the slopes because the danger of snowavalanches was very real.

I only noticed an annoying bug. Although the star wars end trailer is in imovie:

the end of the movie on Youtube is just the black background with white stars but without the moving end credits. Annoying bug !

Posted by cast42 at 3:07 PM 2 comments

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Monday, February 01, 2010

How to deal with search crawlers for your mobile site

So you've setup your mobile site (for example hosted at http://m.yoursite.com) derived from a desktop version (for example hosted at http://www.yoursite.com).Typically, you're using a Content Management System and by providing adapted templates for your mobile items, you can provide a mobile version of your site. The question is now how to deal with robots that crawl the web to build a search index. The danger exists that the robots detect duplicate content because the mobile version from a content item might contain the same text and pictures but wrapped on another template. I think the following steps should be taken:


  1. Only allow the mobile web crawlers with the following robot.txt in the root of the mobile site (for example http://m.yoursite.com) by allowing bots with user agent "Googlebot-Mobile" or "YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2" and to disallow all others:

    User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
    Disallow:

    User-agent: YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2
    Disallow:

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /

    Also, disallow mobile crawlers to your desktop version of your site by adding the following robot.txt in the root of your site (for example http://www.yoursite.com/robot.txt ):

    User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
    Disallow: /

    User-agent: YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2
    Disallow: /

    User-agent: *
    Disallow:

    With the first robot.txt in the mobile root and the second one (here above) in the root of your desktop site, your mobile site items should only appear when people search with a mobile search engine (for example by using http://m.google.com ) but not when searching with the desktop version (for example http://www.google.com ).

    As far as I know, the MSNbot that crawls for the Microsoft Bing index together does not have a bot version that crawls strickly for the mobile Bing search engine at http://m.bing.com.

  2. Add your mobile site to Google : http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40348 , Bing http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx, Yahoo (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mobilesubmit) and other relevant mobile indexes

  3. Create a mobile sitesmap : http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34648&cbid=-1rt6r3us7wrvl&src=cb&lev=answer


Let me know I've you have anything to add to this strategy in the comments.

Posted by cast42 at 5:51 PM 0 comments

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