Linux Raw Image Management

I’ve steered clear of RAW photography for some time. Maybe it’s the extra few steps required to get a finished product, or the very large file size, or just that “it’s not jpeg!”
I changed the quality mode on my 20D to RAW this afternoon and was shocked when it told me that I could only take 79 shots! *gulp*
I fired off a shot, of an old Honda parked in front of my car and as I was in a hurry, forgot to do any more.
Later on I went searching and found a number of sites:

  • Raw Digital Photo Decoding in Linux – Dave Coffin’s dcraw seems to be the basic library that everyone else builds their GUI tools on. He went to the trouble of decoding the various RAW formats in existance.
  • Nikon D70 under Linux – plenty to read here, including a section on noise removal and links to a few GIMP noise removal plugins I must try out!
  • RawPhoto – the author says it’s beta quality code, but it works. I haven’t tried it yet however.
  • UFRaw – you can install this in Debian with apt-get install gimp-ufraw. I tried it. It works, now I have to read the user-manual to figure out what all those controls mean!

I’d post an example RAW photo but the only one I have is nothing to write home about so you’ll just have to wait in line like everyone else!

T-Engine: Ubiquitous Computing

That T-Engine sounds mad! Computers everywhere talking to each other!
I could bring home my camera after a hard day taking shots only to have the photos transfer by wireless comms to my desktop PC when I drop my bag next to my desk!
When I’ve been working too long at my PC it could order the kettle downstairs to turn on and then chime a bell when the tea’s made!
Ah yes, interesting times ahead!
The slashdot discussion has a few more bits, including a better explanation of why i-Tron is better than past attempts at ubiquitous computing.

Simple MySQL Backup

If, like me, you have a database full of small tables, but all amounting to a large amount of data then dumping the data from it into a single file is handy, but not very useful when it comes to retrieving a backup of one single table.
Instead, wouldn’t it be easier to dump each individual table into it’s own file? What about keeping a week’s worth of backups? Here’s one way I backup my WordPress db with a little Bash script:

export d=`date +%u`
mkdir -p backup/$d
for i in `echo "show tables" | mysql -u username -ppassword database|grep -v Tables_in_`;
do
  echo $i; mysqldump --add-drop-table --allow-keywords -q -a -c -u username -ppassword database $i > backup/$d/$i.sql
  rm -f backup/$d/$i.sql.gz
  gzip backup/$d/$i.sql
done

Behaviour : Using CSS selectors to apply Javascript behaviours

Lurvely! This is a very neat method for removing Javascript from html pages! Embed it in the CSS! (sort of!)
He has a couple of examples on his page, and it looks easy enough in principle. The devil’s in the details don’t you know but it looks like it’s worth trying!
He’s a busy beaver too.. he has an MVC framework and tutorial that steps you through an example.

Naval Ships in Cork Harbour

Today myself, Ryan and AJ went down to see the various naval vessels docked in Cork Harbour.
Ryan has already posted some great photos and here’s some of mine here. The URL will change but I’ll update this post when it does!
I had a great time, the Germans got a great kick out of seeing a crazy photographer lying down on the quay taking snapshots of a coiled rope, but they did pose for a photo afterwards! It’s a pity my camera crashed minutes later and several of my shots were ruined 🙁