Hubert Chathi

Hubert Chathi: is trying out digiKam for managing #photos. So far, it looks nice, but eats memory. http://digikam.org/

Pictures from the Moodle Hackfest in the Czech Republic.

Hubert Chathi: has semi-sorted through over a year of #photos

Here are the first of the honeymoon pictures. Amanda and I had some fun taking pictures for panoramic shots at our campsite on Big Crow Lake, and I finally stitched the pictures together yesterday. (It's a good thing to do when you've got a cold and can't think, because it doesn't require much thought.) They're all 360 degree panoramas. We're getting them printed to a big poster to hang up on our wall.

I’ve finally sorted through my BC camping trip pictures from last summer. I’ve also switched the default photo album mode to use AJAX, for the buzzword-compliant. Basically, all this means is that when you click on a thumbnail, it will load the picture into the current page, instead of loading a new page, which should make browsing the pictures easier.

Next up: photos from the Ontario Navigators Fall Retreat. Man, I am so behind...

Last weekend, I went camping at Bon Echo Provintial Park with some Navs friends and friends-of-friends from Ottawa, Kingston, Toronto, and Waterloo, and I’ve put up the pictures from the trip. Hmm. Only 27 pictures for a whole weekend? I took more pictures within 7 hours!

I’ve put up the pictures from last week’s Navs summer program in Nova Scotia. I’ve got 170 of them. Yes, that’s right, 170. I got back from Nova Scotia with a full 512 MB card — 321 photos in total. I had taken over 400, but deleted some.

The Muskoka gallery has over 200 photos, but that includes some pictures from three other people as well (Tallie, Isaac, and Nigel). Of course, 170 pictures isn’t close to the number I got from my Europe trip (370), but it’s the most that I have from any Navigators trips. Well, I guess that’s what happens when you have fun with your camera.

Nikon makes great cameras, but they’re pretty bad with customer issues. When the D70 came out, there were some issues with moire and backfocus, which they never admitted to, but seem to have fixed silently (my D70, which I got about a half-year after initial release, doesn’t have those problems). Now, they’ve decided to encrypt some information in their NEF RAW format produced by D2X and D2Hs cameras (and probably some future models too). (/., DPReview followup, /. followup) The only reason for doing this is to prevent third-party software from using the NEF files without using Nikon’s software, with the threat of being sued under the DMCA for those who try to decode their format.

To Nikon: if I take a picture with my camera, I have a right to do with that picture anything I want. You have no right to prevent me from accessing my data. Until you reverse this decision and provide unrestricted files from your cameras, I will no longer be able to recommend Nikon cameras.

To Adobe, who are making the most noise about this: don’t think we’ve forgotten about Dmitry Sklyarov. You used the DMCA yourselves to try to suppress software for reading your own “encrypted” format (if ROT-13 can be considered encrypted). Don’t expect much sympathy in this case.

Many thanks to people like David Coffin and Bibble Labs for working hard on letting users access their own data. Let’s hope that Nikon decides not to sue these people.

I just finished a new batch of Navs pictures. So I’m all caught up. That is, until the year-end banquet next week.

Pictures from the Navigators Winter retreat are up.

I’ve finally uploaded all the photos I have from Navs events from last term. So I should be all caught up now.

I’ve also uploaded one more funny photo, and old one from Winter Conference in Banff many years back.

Congratulations to Chris and Michele, who are brand new parents as of 5:52 yesterday morning! I can’t wait to meet this new addition to the Hutton household.

By the way, I’ve put up the photos from the Navigators Fall Retreat, finally.