jinnantonnixx

This caught my eye over the last couple of weeks. An electric scooter that you don't charge, but 're-fuel' by swapping battery packs. I can see this taking off in busy cities in the far east. I wonder if it'll make it over here.... http://www.slashgear.com/four-things-to-know-about-the-gogoro-electric-scooter-09363471/ Why The Gorgeous Gogoro Electric Scooter Can’t Be Plugged In | CleanTechnica

Could you boot Knoppix and make an ISO of your Centos machine with dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/usb[or whatever]/image.iso Then reverse the process with Knoppix on the VM?

I did a few snaps today down at the beach with the el-chapo Pentacon 50mm lens on the NEX3. I quite enjoyed using the manual lens. I found that I could set the exposure to something like 1/250 or 1/125 and adjust the stop ring on the lens; the exposure indicator on the camera giving an immediate update to the exposure info. The lens is a little soft at the edges, but not too bad overall. The coffee and the rucksack were at f1.8 to demonstrate the tiny depth of field. Click on 'view original' to see the high-res versions. Please, no marks for composition, they're just snaps. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uvryw8qtave0i13/AABR5WkwwjnlCw3Pe1nz23DAa?dl=0#/ Don't forget there are plenty of other primes for different systems. You can buy Canon FD and Nikon manual adapters for the NEX. The optics of these manual Canon and Nikon primes are likely to be better than cheap M42 lenses. Just a thought.

* Edit: I've had a look on ebay and notice that the M42 lenses are much more expensive now. I don't know why. My nearest camera shop had a glut of M42 and film cameras (an EOS 1 for £99 !!!!) and the prices were much lower then. I'd mooch round second hand camera shops as ebay seems a bit steep. @fiza Here's a (cameraphone) photo of my NEX3 and the adapter. I've found an M42 50mm f1.8 lens. Operating the NEX camera with a manual lens is dead simple. First, put the camera in manual mode and press the 'display' button so that the exposure info is shown on the screen. Now you're ready to shoot. 1. Set the lens f stop. f5.6 is a good starting point and produces the best image from most lenses. Adjust if you have requirements for depth of field. 2. Turn the control wheel so that the exposure meter reads +/- 0.0 EV for a neutral exposure (or you can get creative) 3. Press the MAF assist button. This switches the screen to a 16x digital zoom so you can focus on a particular part of the image. Focus the lens. Exit the MAF assist. 4. Compose the picture and press the shutter! With a few minutes practice, you can get the exposure and focus done in a few seconds. Useless for action or sports of course, but the adapter opens up a new range of lens options. The lenses are cheap, and if you don't like them you can sell them for what you paid for them. I would steer clear of the zooms, all the M42 zooms I've used have been mediocre at best. I also have an M42 to EOS adapter so I can use M42 lenses on my Canon DSLR, but my old Canon does not have any tools to assist with focus so it's far less useful than the Sony. I'll try and get a few sample shots with the 50mm f1.8 lens (£5) and the 135m Zeiss (£10). Here's the stock Sony lens (which is actually not a bad general purpose lens), the adapter and a Pentacon f1.8 50mm prime. The adapter has no electronics or moving parts, it's a machined aluminium tube. Mine is well machined and well finished. Keen eyed readers will notice that the fstop slider is underneath! I don't know if that's a peculiarity of the adapter or the lens. It's not a problem, though.

Yes, I have the same lens. 135mm is a good telephoto length, and f3.5 is reasonably fast at that length. A cheap zoom would probably drop you to f5.6 at that focal length (and yield a much poorer image). Don't buy stuff just because of our suggestions - think about what you want to do with your photography. Tell you what, I'll dig out my lens and stick in on my NEX 3 and take a few snaps over the weekend so you can see what it looks like.

Any second hand camera shop, charity shops, ebay.... M42 fit is very common in camera emporiums. There's very little demand for M42, so prices are rock bottom. Big names like Zeiss and Pentax all made M42 lenses and if you're lucky you can find some nice primes for peanuts. I have one or two M42 zooms, but they're were never great. In fact, I'd avoid zooms. Primes are the lenses to get. http://blog.epicedits.com/2010/11/03/don%E2%80%99t-forget-about-those-old-m42-lenses-for-your-modern-dslr/

I have a Sony NEX 3 as well as a Canon 20D DSLR. The Sony gets more use than the Canon because of its convenience. The Sony is a fine camera. I bought a NEX to M42 adapter. With this cheap adapter, you can put any 42mm screw lens on the NEX. I bought a fixed 135mm Zeiss lens for something like a tenner. You must of course use manual settings, but the Sony has a trick up its sleeve - manual focus assist. Manual Focus Assist with Sony Cameras | Gary Fong Photography Tutorials

Windows PowerShell Console | PowerShell Pro! :: PowerShell Pro! The menu for the subjects is in an odd place - on the right under 'Powershell Tutorials'

Pat on the back for spotting this. I bet the media will milk this one.

Wierd. In Ubuntu, type lsusb to see what USB devices are plugged in. Does it show up? Check the system messages for anything concerning USB. dmesg | grep -i usb

Well spotted! It's a wonder anybody had any eyes left. A bargain at £7.95 for a pistol. They had some lovely clocks. The Paico "Sunray" hasn't dated at all.

1976 Argos catalogue. I particularly like the "Disco 100" unit.

I know many use VMWare, so this would be an excellent place to start. http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/SQL_Server_on_VMware-Best_Practices_Guide.pdf Pay particular attention to the recommendations concerning CPU and memory. Configure your SQL VM to 'Tier 1' settings. Keep your OS drive, data drive, log drive and tempdb drive on separate LUNs. Putting everything on one disk creates an unnecessary bottleneck. http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere5.5.pdf Take a look at page 36 here (especially "Designate specific virtual machines as highly latency sensitive"). Setting the Latency Sensitivity of your SQL VM to 'High' could bring significant performance improvements. Also, on page 51, read the suggestions about setting minimum reservations for CPU and memory for a VM. Don't get greedy and set the reservations too high, but a reasonable reservation strategy can improve the VM's performance.

The Moto G is pretty good. If I haven't smashed mine after 6 months it must be pretty tough. Probably the best value Android.

Good thread idea. Suggestion (if the fancy takes you) - make a public Google Doc of these deals and paste the link. This way the thread won't be full of out-of-date deals and the doc will contain the current best deals.

FreeNas is nice. Many like to roll their own servers, such as a basic Ubuntu server, and use bit torrent sync technology for high performance syncing which also works well over the internet. Syncthing

I posted in jest, but look! Inside Beijing's airpocalypse – a city made 'almost uninhabitable' by pollution | Cities | The Guardian The subject is pretty grim, though.

Is the Hudl2 still regarded as the best all-rounder in the £100ish area? I saw a couple of Acers which looked OK. I'll probably end up getting the Hudl if nothing amazing pops up before Christmas. The only thing that bothers me is the battery life with the Intel chips. ARM have always been masters of low power consumption. @Johnathan, how do you find the battery life?

A google search for 'most complex flag' will show that some flags are absolute stinkers to draw. Turkmenistan's flag looks like a week's worth of effort.

I'm tempted to flag your post. But I won't.

Are they dusty? You may laugh, but in my old techsup days I found that a clean fan runs a lot quieter than a dusty fan. Of course, if the bearing is shot, it'll need replacement, but don't dismiss cleaning them.

First rule of sensationalist journalism - name the event. 'Beast of the East', Snowmageddon, etc. With that in mind, just a breezemageddon here. There's a chance of a drizzlepocalypse later, but not too bad so far.

Firebug is useful. What is Firebug? : Firebug

Here's an advent colander.

Kickstarter project remaking the Spectrum, preloaded with 1,000 games. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinclair-zx-spectrum-vega