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Remote shooting using “IP Webcam” software.
ByGarf 2020-11-032025-08-18

Folks considering remote shooting via smartphone may wish to experiment with Pavel Khlebovich’s “IP Webcam”. Basically it’s an amazingly clever and full-featured app that allows you to control the camera(s) on your smartphone with a remote computer, using standard internet protocols. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam I initially got into it because it plays nicely with Zoneminder. Thus any…

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Digital pictures | Electronics | Equipment | FAQ | Journal | Lighting | Photography | Studio

A surprisingly straightforward studio flash repair
ByGarf 2020-11-012025-08-18

Back in 2015 I bought 3 pairs of studio flash heads (one pair 400 joule, one pair 360 joule and one pair 200 joule). They were supplied as bargain bundles, complete with stands, brollies etc. via sellers on eBay. They were quite a bargain. Each flash head worked out at approximately £50 per unit, They…

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Digital pictures | Electronics | Equipment | FAQ | Journal | Photography | Technology | Video

Repairing PTZ IP camera
ByGarf 2020-10-122025-08-18

Our Floureon pan tilt and zoom external IP camera has shipped a bit of water. It lives on the south west corner of the building and gets battered by the strong south westerly prevailing winds we have here. So I took it off the wall this morning and dismantled it on my work bench. General…

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Digital pictures | Electronics | Equipment | Journal | Linux | Photography | Review | Studio | Technology

Clevo N150CU running GNU/Linux
ByGarf 2020-09-052025-02-06

Seems it’s time to buy another laptop. My trusty old Thinkpad has seen better days. Worse, a company with somewhat ironic name of “PCSpecialist” made a total pig’s breakfast of repairing my new Clevo N141ZU I had purchased from it earlier. “PCSpecialist” also lost my hard disk, then denied having it. And what “PCSpecialist” laughingly…

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Digital pictures | Electronics | Journal | Linux | Photography | Radio | Technology

Ulefone 3w ruggedised smartphone
ByGarf 2020-07-012025-02-06

I recently purchased an unlocked Chinese Ulefone Armor 3W ruggedised smartphone – c/w Mediatek chipset, 8-core 64-bit CPU, dual unlocked SIM slots, 256GiB TF slot and 10300mAH battery. I have quite a soft-spot for cheap generic Chinese phones. Of course, one has to choose the product quite carefully. You need to ensure your preferred device…

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General | Journal | Technology

Why does Google think I’m at Barnard Castle?
ByGarf 2020-05-272025-02-06

In fact, I am 416 kilometres away from Barnard Castle, as the crow flies, or about 500km by road. Granted, I very seldom use Google as a search engine. I use privacy-aware searches instead such as DuckDuckGo. I have also been to great lengths to prise my rooted smartphone from Google’s clutches too. But my…

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FAQ | General | Journal | Technology

Sliderule – the eco-friendly computer from days of old
ByGarf 2020-05-112025-08-18

Some of my favourite computers require no PSU, no batteries, no RAM, no disks, no upgrades and they are 100% resistant to all known malware. No, I’m not talking about some newfangled Linux. I’m talking about good old fashioned sliderules. 🙂 Sliderules top to bottom… Top: Darmstadt 304. Despite its German-sounding name, this sliderule was…

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Digital pictures | Electronics | General | Journal | Photography | Technology

I’m the operator with my pocket calculator
ByGarf 2020-05-092025-02-06

Like in that old Kraftwerk song, I have a bit of a penchant for small pocket calculators. These are a few of my oldest examples. In fact the Sharp Elsimate dates back to 1973 and belonged to my late father.

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Digital pictures | Electronics | Equipment | FAQ | Journal | Linux | Photography | Technology

Backups: NAS vs external hard disk
ByGarf 2020-05-042025-08-18

Discussion came up on a forum to which I belong whether it is better to use NAS (network attached storage) or external hard drives for backup. My answer is why not use both? Effectively I have three NAS servers. One is a media server. The others are purely backup – though they can quickly be…

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Digital pictures | Equipment | Journal | LED | Lighting | Photography | Studio | Technology

Home made light modifier
ByGarf 2020-05-012025-03-12

OK, so we are still in coronavirus lockdown here in the UK and I have spent the afternoon playing! 🙂 I saw the basic idea on a web forum on a photography site, and decided to look around my garage and see if there was any thing suitable to produce something similar. I also took…

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Digital pictures | Electronics | Journal | Photography | Radio | Technology | Vintage Radio Equipment

Roamer Ten in the shed and garden
ByGarf 2020-04-202025-02-06

A few snaps of my old Roamer Ten kit radio in the garden and in the shed, on a bright sunny day. Well, it seemed a relatively enjoyable way to spend a sunny COVID-lockdown day.

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Freebie | Journal | Linux | Photography | Technology | Virtual backdrop | Wallpaper

Virtual backdrops and wallpapers
ByGarf 2020-04-162025-05-25

Freebies to beat those lockdown blues This is a collection of virtual backdrops and wallpapers that you may download, manipulate and enjoy, for free. These images were created by capturing and saving a large number snap-shots of an open source music visualisation application for GNU/Linux called ProjectM – not to be confused with a 2008…

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Digital pictures | General | Journal | Photography

Easter display
ByGarf 2020-04-102025-02-06

A little thing like Covid was not going to prevent my Zsuzsi creating one of her Easter displays. We photographed the 2020 edition in the garden.

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Digital pictures | Journal | Nature | Photography

Not a plane in the sky
ByGarf 2020-04-092025-02-06

It’s a beautiful spring day here in south east Hampshire. And it’s dead quiet thanks to the Coronavirus lockdown. And the northern sky that normally liberally criss-crossed with vapour trails is a perfect clear sky blue, with no aircraft within 50 km or more.

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Journal | Radio | Technology | Vintage Radio Equipment

Roamer Ten
ByGarf 2020-04-052025-08-19

I was 12 years old when I built my first multi-band shortwave radio – a Radio Exchange Roamer Ten kit – as pictured above. After many nights surreptitiously listening to it hidden under the bedclothes so my mum never found out, I soon realised just how insular and generally pisspoor most our media is in…

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Journal | Radio | Technology | Vintage Radio Equipment

Sony ICF2001
ByGarf 2020-04-032025-02-06

The lovely Alexa Allure wearing a cheongsam dress and listening to the world on a 1981 vintage Sony ICF 2001 multiband receiver. Back in the day, Sony used to be one of the market leaders in shortwave radios. Its big selling feature was the continuous AM band that covered all the standard LF, MF and…

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FAQ | General | Journal

Working from home during the current crisis
ByGarf 2020-03-252025-08-18

Seems a lot of people are struggling working from home rather than going into the office. Some are suggesting that a daily routine helps them. Personally, I don’t really have a daily routine – providing I can start the day with a strong black coffee and have my daily “number two’s”, then I’m sorted. 🙂…

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Digital pictures | Journal | Nature | Photography

First day of National Lockdown
ByGarf 2020-03-242025-02-06

So here we are, first day of national lockdown here in the UK. How are things in your part of the world? Round here (South East Hampshire) things seem eerily quiet this morning. Our street is a sleepy little cul-de-sac and pretty quiet even at busy times. But we are 300 metres from the main…

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General | Journal

Coronavirus misinformation
ByGarf 2020-03-232025-02-06

Evil bastards exploit crisis in order to turn a fast buck Seems Facebook does not have a monopoly on coronavirus misinformation. Just checked a honeypot email account I keep active just to see what spam is currently doing the rounds. In addition to the usual plethora of luscious babes who are dying to have sex…

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FAQ | General | Journal | Nature | Technology

Shattaf – a healthy solution to the toilet roll shortage
ByGarf 2020-03-222025-08-18

Left: complete installation including toilet, cistern, isolating valve hose, mounting bracket and the shattaf itself. Right: Close-up of shattaf. It is quite small, measuring approximately 11 cm long and about 6 cm front-to-back. As the coronavirus crisis deepens, seems we also have the deeply undignified spectacle of fully grown adults publicly fighting each other as…

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General | Journal | Spoof | Video

Covid 19 “Honest Government Ad”
ByGarf 2020-03-212025-02-06

They say “many a true word spoken in jest“. This seems particularly applicable to this short “honest government” video produced by Australia’s JuiceMedia… Background to the video JuiceMedia’s “Honest Government Ad” started life as satire. But its probably the most truthful representation where we are right now with COVID-19. This associated video podcast explains its…

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FAQ | Journal

Reliable COVID-19 information
ByGarf 2020-03-202025-08-18

The World Health Organization is arguably one of the planet’s foremost sources of accurate medical information. I have admired WHO for many years and its site is always worth a visit, even when there isn’t a global public health crisis. But its Daily Situation Reports are superb. Lots of information presented in a clear and…

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FAQ | Journal | Linux | Photography

Batch processing in GIMP
ByGarf 2020-02-292025-08-18

In my early days of using GNU/Linux full time, we had an application called Gwenview. It was, and still is an excellent thumbnail viewer. But back then it also used to have an excellent set of plugins called KIPI. Sadly the really useful ones such as resizing and changing format completely disappeared when KDE 5…

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Christmas Cards | Journal

Merry Christmas 2019
ByGarf 2019-12-242025-02-06

Where’s Boris? By Zsuzsanna Dora Majlati

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Digital pictures | FAQ | Journal | LED | Lighting | Photography | Studio | Technology

Safer modelling lights for Chinese flash head units
ByGarf 2019-11-202025-08-18

An interesting question came up a little while back on one of the photography fora to which I belong “I’d be interested in knowing how you swapped the halogen bulbs for LEDs because I have the same problem and as you say those bulbs are hotter than hell, makes using modelling lights with a grid…

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