2009-04-26 Hong Kong Museum
Back in Hong Kong for a few days. Today we’re in Kowloon visiting the Hong Kong Museum. I must be getting old because I remember seeing a lot of this stuff for sale in Woolworth’s when I was kid
Author: Garf
Digital Images | Japan | Journal | Photography | Travelogue
Shinkansen to Kyoto Japan
Today we went to the beautiful city of Kyoto, on one of Japan’s legendary Nozomi Shinkansen trains. The Nozomi is Japan’s fastest train service and runs on the Tokaido and San’yō Shinkansen lines. The service only stops at the largest stations. Its N700 series rolling stock reaches speeds of 83 metres per second (300 km/h…
Digital Images | Japan | Journal | Photography | Travelogue
Himeji Castle Japan
Day trip to Himeji Castle, photographed by my girlfriend Zsuzsi.
Digital Images | Japan | Journal | Photography | Travelogue
Himeji Japan
Took a short Train ride to Himeji today.
Digital Images | Japan | Journal | Photography | Travelogue
Osaka Japan
Decided to take a break from Hong Kong and spend a few days in and around Osaka, Japan. It rained quite hard today, so we took a riverboat trip. Also found some LED geese.
FAQ | General | Journal | Photography | Technology
Cleaning a camera CCD with a vacuum cleaner and a Lens Pen
I had Fuji S1, S2 & S3, all of which had dust magnets for sensors! They would get dirty even if I did not remove the lenses, simply from the air that got sucked in by varying the focal length of the lens. However, I cleaned them quite successfully with a vacuum cleaner. However there…
Southampton Common in the Snow
There was an unusually heavy fall of snow overnight. So I thought I would wander across to the Common and grab a few snaps.
FAQ | Journal | Linux | Technology
Is Linux a “disruptive technology”?
If you do a google search for “disruptrive technology” and the word “Linux”, you’re likely to get over 50,000 hits. Trouble is that many of the articles that appear are quite old, often going back as far as 2001 and further. A lot has happened in the last few years… For a start, today we…
Journal | Linux | Technology | Windows
Using VirtualBox to run Windows apps that will not run on WINE
I’m a big fan of WINE and an even bigger fan of CrossoverLinux. This is the commercial implementation of WINE by CodeWeavers. For many Windows apps it works very well indeed. In many ways I prefer it to using a virtual machine (VM) because firstly one does not have to start a VM just to…
Journal | Linux | Technology
UK taxpayers can submit tax returns online using GNUCash open source software
I just completed my UK tax return on-line today. At the end of it all, HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs) ask for some feedback. I thought that fans of open source software might be interested in my response:- “This is certainly a great improvement over previous years. It actually saved me a lot of…
Windows 7 – is it any good?
Amidst lots of puff & bluster, Microsoft has released a half decent Beta version of its latest Windows 7 operating system. One of the claims made for it is that it is faster than Vista. Mind you, it needed to be. I dumped Windows nearly two years ago, largely because of the slug-like performance of…
Merry Christmas 2008
The Shabby Trabi. Garf Technology Christmas card 2008.
Gibseys Christmas lights
I have a pal whose house lights up like a Christmas tree – literally. So whenever he does this, I always nip over thee with a camera…
How do I stop Google indexing a particular page on my site?
There are several ways to stop Google and most other search engines indexing a page. The simplest is to use a “noindex” metatag on any pages you don’t want indexed. Here’s the HTML code, in context. (Obviously the text between the <title></title> tags is just there for show and is not relevant to the workings…
Digital Images | General | Journal | Photography | Studio
Christmas tree lit by LED
Our little Christmas tree looks quite pretty this year. And we decorated it with a very long string of LED lights.
FAQ | Journal | Linux | Photography | Technology
Backing up using big, cheap hard disks and some nifty Unix tools
We all have our favourite methods of data backup. Certainly DVD is a good archiving and distribution medium. But for routine backup, I look for reliability, low cost, ease of use, high-speed, high capacity and redundancy – so I am not reliant on just one device. One of my favourite methods is a complete off-site…
Pécs TV Torony
Another pilgrimage to the top of one of my favourite places: the observation platform on the 197 metre Pécs TV Torony
Pécs
Some Autumnal snaps of the beautiful Hungarian city of Pécs
Digital Images | General | Journal | Photography | Road Trip | Travelogue
Langley Tavern and Lepe Beach
Went out to the New Forest to visit my mother, in the little red MX5. While we were there, I took the opportunity top gather some images of Lepe Beach and the now dilapidated Langley Tavern. I also took a few snaps of my shiny new Eton S350DL multiband radio.
Day trip to Brighton
A day trip to the beautiful seaside town of Brighton. I actually went there to visit a new client. Fortunately the meeting did not take long so I spent the rest of the days taking pictures with a Fuju S9600 Bridge camera.
FAQ | Journal | Linux | Technology
How to upgrade to “Goosebuntu” – a fully loaded (K)ubuntu 8.xx (Hardy) system
Note this primarily applies to (K)Ubuntu 8.xx. For (K)Ubuntu 7.xx please visit earlier (and possibly outdated) article:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=58 This is a quickand very effective way to beef up your (K)Ubuntu installation. Basically the list below contains most of my favouirite (K)Ubuntu applications complete with their code libraries. The name "Goosebuntu" is not entirely serious –…
FAQ | Journal | Linux | Technology
How to upgrade from Ubuntu to Kubuntu (version 8.xx – Hardy)
Firstly please back up anything that is important – as you would with any major upgrade on any computer system! Then you can either use the Synaptic package manager or in this instance it is probably quicker to install from a Terminal window. First we make sure the system is fully up to date. Simply…
Digital Images | General | Journal | Nature | Photography | Travelogue
Southampton Common
Another walk across Southampton Common, camera in hand
FAQ | Journal | Linux | Technology
Setting file and directory properties separately and recursively
Sometimes in GNU/Linux one needs to set file and directory permissions separately and recursively. This is a way to do it. Set file permissions:- find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644 ; Set directory permissions- find . -type d -exec chmod 755 \{\} \; Note these are powerful commands with which you…
Journal | Linux | Technology
GNUCash – serious open source accounting software
Nowadays, one reads a lot about open source equivalents of proprietary software. Often these are described as poor substitutes for the real thing. However, some open source apps are starting seriously to outperform their proprietary counterparts. Mozilla Firefox is a classic example of this phenomenon. GNUCash is another. GNUCash vs Microsoft Money I was a…