I have moved to Greymatter. This Blog will remain where it's at for the time being while I work out how to preserve all my useless posts in the new log archives or something. I've also got the new look applied to everything except my "code" page, which I should get done with RSN.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 13:24

I have not finished redoing my site yet :( Did a bunch of other stuff instead, like finally going to our friends' "new" restaurant, seeing "Freddie Got Fingered" and buying an intuos™ tablet. I did get some stuff for the new site finished though, and hopefully it'll be GTG sometime thsis week.

Dharma's: Some pretty darn tasty stuff there. It's a unique kind of Indian-influenced cuisine with lots of complex flavors. I tried to take a picture of the very artistic dessert platings, but the atmospheric lighting did not cooperate with me.

Freddie Got Fingered: Supposedly, people are walking out of this movie, but nobody did when we saw it. I certainly was not expecting Shakespeare in the first place, but I really don't think that this movie sucked. In fact, I enjoyed most of it. The most disgusting thing in the whole movie was Rip Torn's teleprompter-fed line delivery.

intuos: Only after purchasing this did I discover that while supposedly supported in Linux and xFree86 4.x, nobody has bothered to put any current detailed documentation online in one concise piece yet. There's a lot of stuff about xF86 3.x and serial tablets. It don't matter much, since I mainly got it for the Wife to use with Windows, just mildly annoying.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 15:23

I intend to spend home-computing time I have over the next few days revamping the site a little. I'm also planning to jump ship from Blogger and do this weblog thing with Greymatter from now on.

Of course, the ISOs of Mandrake 8.0 are tempting me, I may just upgrade my system into temporary inoperablility instead.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 15:35

ADC65:
Drumroll please...
I'm "finished"! the ADC-65s gPhoto driver works. See for yourself:

Me using the Windows driver:

Me using my Linux driver:

The colors could use a little adjustment, (In the Gimp, I tweaked it a nudge toward the Cyan and a bit toward the Green in the "Color Balance" tool and it was way better than this as-is version.) but I'm very happy to find out that the camera itself is not responsible for all the washed-out hot spots on my photos, it's the Windows driver's fault. I will work on getting an improved color balance done and then that should just about be it for this driver.

This was a fun project, I really recommend this sort of thing to anyone with some programming skills and the motivation to do some analysis and research. I started out knowing almost nothing about digital cameras or color theory and I've learned a lot of neat things.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 14:59

ADC65:
It's been a while. There were a couple of silly mistakes holding me back with this thing. Fiddling around with some Python code gave me a fresh perspective and I think I might have it all worked out. Now I've got to wait for daylight to get some test snaps...
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 03:16

Chronic Candy. I have to wonder what exactly this would taste like. They were giving this stuff out as "what were the last five titles and artists we played in order?" prizes on the local hip-hop/etc station today. When they said it, all the heads at work swivelled rapidly toward the radio, quizzical expressions forming while in transit.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 01:10

Its good to see that Blogger has got some cash flow for the time being.
Its bad to see that Joey Ramone is dead.

I've been having weird DNS problems all weekend. Suddenly all is well though.
/me caresses the monitor lovingly 'Oh, my precious internet...'
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 10:36

H&R Block e-solutions TaxCut2000:

1) The software flat out doesn't work.
a) It will not fully download the updates they provide, neither do they provide links to download the files using a work http/ftp client. I had to track down the files myself to download them.
b) I could not file my CA and Federal returns together, and in the end, have never been able to file my California return electronically because the program claims that I've changed my tax return since qualifying for federal e-filing. (Um, yeah, right.)
c) So I try to print out my california 540 to file by mail. It claims my federal gross adjusted income is $0. I'm not quite that poor. Guess what, I've got to do my California return by hand. My Federal return looks alright, I still hope I don't get audited for this year, given the track record I'm having with this program.

2) The company bites ass.
a) They do not provide any tech support online other than a "FAQ" which is all "questions" that result in answers like "Is your computer plugged in?"
b) They do not give their tech support phone number unless you first call the "customer service" number.
c) They refuse to give tech support if you don't give them your phone number, name and address.
d) If you ask to speak to the tech support guy's supervisor, he says "you're going to the back of the line" and puts you hold.

I'm a little suspicious that this whole thing is a scam to send people running to their local H&R Block office next tax season.
Fuck that.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 16:16

ADC65:
I put some more raw data and analysis up on the code page. Hopefully a kind soul with color theory background can help me out.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 17:47

ADC-65 update:

I am now able to download data from my Easy Shot digit using gPhoto. Using netpbm I turned the raw bytes into a pgm file and there sat my car plain as day.

Now to figure out the color encoding.
posted by SmokeSerpent . at 13:35