I’ll be writing more about the camera itself soon; but for now this is just to see how spherical images from the Ricoh Theta S display in Wordpress as embedded images.
Post from RICOH THETA. – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
Category: Gadgets
These are posts about gadgets and any kind of tech.
Over the weekend, I’ve been playing with scoring some of my songs. It’s been on my to-do list for a very long time; although most of my songs exist as lyric or chord-sheets (more recently in chordpro format), very few of my songs have notes on paper. This is not a problem for me, as I remember my tunes better than I recall my lyrics, but it makes it difficult to share original songs.
I’ve been encouraged to look at a few large packages, including Notion and the more affordable Progression. I do intend to examine those, but for the moment, I have been using the free and open source MuseScore. This has been a revelation; although I expect it has less functionality than the more commercial packages, I’ve managed to hit the road running and produce a decent bit of sheet music.
Since upgrading to an EOS 1100D, 2 years ago, my old Canon EOS 350D (Rebel XT) has been on the shelf. Pretty decent camera, but not worth enough to sell it.
However, the price of specialist conversions have been coming down recently, and for 80 quid I could have the internal filters removed to turn it into a full spectrum camera. This would let me use it, with appropriate external filters, both as an infra-red camera, and for astro-photography with better response in the Hydrogen Alpha band.
In other news, I have also managed to pick up a nearly new Roland GR-S V-Guitar Space, at a bargain price. More toys for this boy.
I’ve had a GR-33 Guitar Synth for some years, which I use with my Godin Synth Access guitars. The GR-S has nothing like the features of the GR-33 – it essentially has 4 sound/affects: Crystal, which is a bell-like synth sound; Rich Modulation – an enhanced chorus effect; Slow Pad, a warm synth, with octave control; Brilliant Clean adds additional octaved strings (above and/or below) for a 12 or even 18 string effect. There is also a brilliant freeze function, which allows you to hold a pad on the synth, while continue to play on the guitar.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve been shopping again for toys.
I’m going through a fairly creative time at the moment, and have both been writing some new material and arranging other folk’s material. I’ve recently bought some new instruments that are challenging me (in a good way), and have been doing some music with others, in particular, my friend Annie.
For a few years, now, I have used a cheap FON wifi access point to provide limited (internet only) access for any visitors, separate from my own wifi access.
By default, a FON device offers two networks – one private and one public. In my case the private network is POSHGAMES, which my friends use; the public FON network is one that *anybody* can log into if they have FON credentials. The good part is that by hosting FON access, you yourself gain free access to any other FON point in Europe, which also includes many BT access points.
When I first got my original (shop-bought) YouView box, I thought it was pretty brilliant, but the there was the inevitable complaints how it didn’t have stuff like YouTube, NetFlix and LoveFilm. YouView’s answer to this was that they were open to new content partners, but at the end of the day, writing the app was down to the content provider, not them. This didn’t seem unreasonable to me, but didn’t stop the bickering.
Since then, a number of new content partners have appeared, most of which I’m not particularly interested in – Sky, NowTV (which I think is another permutation of Sky), UKTV, Dave etc. But this month, NetFlix has made a welcome appearance. The app is slick, and miles better (in appearance and perfomance) than the app I have been using on my BluRay; so I’ll be watching it on the YouView box from now on.
The weekend before last, I noticed something strange about my Nexus 10 tablet. The centre of the screen looked grubby. I’d actually noticed this a little a few weeks before, but had assumed it was the light, or some fingermarks on the surface.
But no, the centre part of the screen, in an irregular blot about 3 inches wide, was actually slightly green, and not as sharp as the rest of the screen. Opening a blank page of white, this could be seen quite clearly; and it was nothing on the surface, this was in the screen itself.
I’ve had a Tenori-On for a couple of years, now: the cheap “Orange” one, made of plastic; not the metal framed “White” version.
After an initial period when I couldn’t put it down, I soon found myself disappointed that the volume of the device was too low for any kind of performance without additional amplification. There was also the fact that the Orange version could only be powered from a mains adapter, lacking the White’s battery compartment. (I believe this was purely to justify the price difference between the White and Orange – aside from the cosmetics and the lack of battery power, the two are identical in function and sound).
I wrote in September about getting Multicast working, this being required for TV over IP channels.
Having proved it worked, I then forgot about it, as the only such channel I can currently get is Sky, which I am not interested in. I just wanted to ensure my kit could handle it should other channels come along in the future.
Here and here I spoke about Multicast, and needing a new router to make it work.
The new router arrived in July, but initial attempt to get VPN working to my office with a suitable encryption failed. All I had to do was tinker with it, but I didn’t have time, and couldn’t afford for my work VPN to be down.
Last weekend, my old Hotpoint washing machine broke down. As I have had it for a good few years, and as it seemed to be eating more money, I decided to spring for a new machine. After a bit of research I settled on an AEG Washer/Dryer – with a condenser-dryer, so no need for venting.
As noted elsewhere, I had a few issues with the installation. I won’t go into details here, but it caused me to be fairly negative about the whole experience. However, that got in the way of the really important question, which is – what is the machine like?