Technology played a key role before, during, and after this trip. It was not only a question of having been there and done that, but also one of preparing the spoils for showing afterwards. Therefore it was sobering on many occasions to see how close I came to Wallace’s tragedy. Continue reading
Thanks to old friends Tom Bishop and Rayna Ramsay for organising some functions for me in Auckland; Hamish Spencer for getting the ball rolling in Dunedin and to new friends Shinichi Nakagawa, Jenny Rock, Katie Brockie for organising the three lectures in Dunedin (for Zoology, Skeptics in the Pub called the Church, and Science Communication) and to Michael Edmonds for organising the talk in Christchurch (Skeptics in the Pub, but their pub has fallen down, so it was Skeptics at CPIT, with the pub for pizza and beer afterwards). To all those who attended my talks and demonstrated that they could think: congratulations. Continue reading
Was out of the house by about ten to stroll around town. A couple of people stopped me with requests for various directions and I did as best I could. Went right around Moray Place, then back along George St. Decided I wanted to look for “Boy the Movie”. Had a look at Whitcoull’s and their staff tracked down two copies in Christchurch & one in Nelson. Then tried a record store in the Golden Middle shopping centre, which is right out the front of my lodgings. They, too, gave me a pass. Continue reading
This was a day for a latish start after all of the action yesterday, but I did want to drive down the Otago Peninsula & see if I could do some walks, but first there were a couple of computer matters to deal with.
Developing the pictures from Milford Day 1 virtually filled up the hard drive, so a solution had to be found to avoid gridlock. Looked around a bit and saw that Dick Smith had a 2 TB hard drive for $149 and that will have to do as a backup device for the moment. Tried for ages to get the other 32 GB card to become bootable for the SX 120, but if it were bootable at all it couldn’t find the necessary modules to load for grids, etc. Continue reading
Today was the day for odds & ends. Found some washing powder, washed what I could and hung it up on the line to dry. In addition to my own seven washing pegs, I used another seven that I found on the clothesline. Think that a total of around twenty should suffice in future. Then washed the boots and put them up as well. Continue reading
Monarch on Feijoa
Slept a good eight hours until the cars were removed from the garages; then waited until the bathroom was free (and everyone out of the house) to make myself some breakfast (coffee, muesli, toast).
Then I decided I needed a couple of extra slides for tonight, so I got those done & practised the presentation once. Now the blog had to be updated, as there had been no publication last Friday. First that gap was filled, and then the blog for tomorrow was scheduled. Continue reading
After the serendipity of finding CHDK, I set to work on my projects. This is how they turned out.
Grid overlay. Easy, almost trivial to implement, but it’s a great help just having a couple of lines on the screen to check that your horizontal is what you think it is. Continue reading
Back: two solar filters, one lens cap. Front: UV/pol filter
With the camera now functioning like it cost ten times the price thanks to the possibilities of CHDK, it was time to look at a couple of hardware issues.
Filters. A polarisation filter is a major game-changer, as anyone wearing polarised sunglasses can tell, because it cuts down reflection from water and glassy surfaces and thus also the haze in the air that washes out detail at large distances. With a pol filter the sky is bluer, the grass is greener, and the hills are closer. Continue reading
CHDK logo by cosmograph
CHDK is a set of tools allowing the user full control over the operation of a large number of the cheaper Canon point&shoot cameras. After all, a camera nowadays is more that a box with a hole in it; everything is, of course, controlled by a microprocessor. With suitable access to the processor, the camera becomes like any other universal machine and can be programmed to do what you like with it. I can vividly remember my disappointment when I thought that I could use the time delay function for a sort of limited time lapse, and all the camera did was wait for the set time and take the ten shots in quick succession. If the camera can count to 30 once, why not continue the process. Continue reading
Fox Glacier. Bracket of 7 images from +1 to -1 EV in 1/3 steps.
Before it got all complicated, let’s just go back to the beginning: I wanted a camera that would automatically take exposure series (brackets) so that I could paste them together and achieve a result as good as or better than the eye can see. Without an automatic mechanism, I’d be stuck with taking one shot after another and having to wait for the camera to settle down between each shot. Continue reading
