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Journal

This area is reserved for my occasional ramblings  and musings.

Removing failed rubberised coating from equipment.
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Removing failed rubberised coating from equipment.

One of my pet hates is the soft-touch rubberised coating some manufactures put on their kit. It invariably fails sooner or later. Indeed, I’ve had quite a lot of kit over the years where the rubberised coating has failed. Fortunately it is usually fixable – or to be more precise, removable. Depending on the coating’s…

SD cards become read-only on insertion
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SD cards become read-only on insertion

One of  the most annoying features on standard SD cards is the write protect tab. This tab often seems to get caught and pushed into the “read only” position when one inserts an SD card into a card reader or camera. Thus rendering the card “read only”. It seems a particular issue with the slots…

Digital sounds dirt cheap
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Digital sounds dirt cheap

I’m often amazed by the money some Hi-Fi buffs spend on their systems. I’m something of a tightwad, and I took a rather different approach. This involves mixed tech – or as I prefer to call it, “appropriate technology“. I run one of these. It used to be an Acer Windows box, but all that…

Clownstrike fiasco continues in West, while Russia and China virtually unaffected
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Clownstrike fiasco continues in West, while Russia and China virtually unaffected

While the Clownstrike fiasco rumbles-on in the West, and people in our particular part of the planet can’t even purchase a train ticket, it seems both Russia and China are almost completely unaffected. Editor’s note 2024-08-17: Seems we’re not the only site referring to Cloudstrike as “Clownstrike”. Crowdstrike has issued several takedown notices to a…

Microsoft’s biggest ever outage, caused by Crowdstrike
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Microsoft’s biggest ever outage, caused by Crowdstrike

Today our planet is suffering what appears to be Microsoft’s biggest ever outage. Seems the culprit is a piece of buggy “security” software provided by a company called Crowdstrike. Or is that Clownstrike? It sends Microsoft Windows computers into a never-ending boot loop, from which users cannot escape, without going into “safe mode” and removing…

Arca desk clamp for a heavy smartphone
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Arca desk clamp for a heavy smartphone

I’m a clumsy clot and I’m always knocking my phone off my desk. OK it’s ruggedised and the floor is carpeted. Nevertheless, ruggedisation has its limits. Also my phone is a heavy old beast, weighing some 360 grams. That’s around 3/4 lb in “old money“. Which means that those flimsy plastic phone holders you see…

Tories trounced
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Tories trounced

Tories have just been well and truly trounced in the UK. Labour has officially won the 2024 UK General Election. Results still coming in but it’s set to be an absolute landslide… https://www.theguardian.Com/politics/live/2024/jul/04/general-election-2024-uk-live-labour-tories-starmer-sunak-results-exit-poll Not so much that Labour won, than the Tories lost. Granted, this time it was more about people voting out the Tories,…

Happy July 4
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Happy July 4

Happy July 4 to all our American friends, celebrating the fact their ancestors had the good sense to rid themselves of our awful Royal Family. Here in the UK, it’s General Election time again. For some strange reason, it was called for 2024-07-04. Hopefully the results of this election should be cause for celebration here…

Why I still quite like Micro Four Thirds
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Why I still quite like Micro Four Thirds

About a decade ago, I decided to go “mirrorless” – basically abandoning my heavy old Pentax DSLR and going for a system camera that is smaller and lighter. At the time I considered the new Fuji mirrorless offerings and micro four thirds. Problem was that at the time Fuji raw files would not work in…

Affordable CCT spotlights for the studio
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Affordable CCT spotlights for the studio

I’ve been flirting with affordable LED in the studio for over a decade. And on each experiment, I’ve had change out of fifty quid. My latest sortie involved a pair of these things  They have simple removable diffuser, reducing the need for a soft-box, they’re fairly robust and in addition to being dimmable they also…

Hostile server blocking – eliminate ads and other nasties, free
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Hostile server blocking – eliminate ads and other nasties, free

If like me, you are tired of having your screen cluttered full of stupid ads, c/w the general enshittification of the Internet by commercial interests, then you may wish to try /etc/hosts file “hostile server blocking”. It’s free and no additional software is needed. This is because your /etc/hosts file part of your computer’s TCP/IP…

Backup strategies
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Backup strategies

I suffered my first hard disk failure way back in 1987. Fortunately I recovered 99% of my data. However, successful recovery required quite a lengthy struggle and a somewhat inelegant bodge. Since then, I’ve held something of a fascination, some might even say an obsession with backup systems. Over the years, I have tried all…

Home-made detachable camera straps
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Home-made detachable camera straps

Today I decided to make my own affordable detachable camera and equipment lanyard straps. I used some cheap generic “Peak Design compatible” buckles, bought direct from China via Ali Express, together with some generic anchors from the same source. I also used some 25mm nylon webbing I’ve had kicking round for ages. Granted, perhaps bright…

Preventing cable connectors from falling out of cameras
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Preventing cable connectors from falling out of cameras

A couple of months back, a question was raised with regard to how to prevent cable connectors falling out of cameras during tethered shoots. Well my tethered shoots are almost always tethered wirelessly these days. However I do sometimes need to attach a power lead. As my wife reminded me, when we’ve done shoots with…

Repairing a dead YN565EX II speedlight
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Repairing a dead YN565EX II speedlight

Photographer pal changed the batteries in his dead YN565EX II speedlight flash gun. Unfortunately when he tried to witch it on, it didn’t work. He tried several sets of batteries. No luck. For those not familiar with the device, the Yongnuo YN565EX II is a relatively affordable battery-powered Chinese flash speedlight for both professional and…

How I mounted my 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens
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How I mounted my 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens

Several people have contacted me privately and asked for information regarding how I actually mounted my 120-year-old Bausch & Lomb + Beck lens on my µ4/3 camera. I hope in this article to shed a little light on how one can make such an old lens and seemingly-incompatible lens actually stay on a modern mirrorless…