The Wonders of CHDK and My Canon Powershot A630

I've had my Canon Powershot A630 for almost a year now, and while mostly satisfied, there were a couple of minor annoyances: 1. the interface was sub-par in comparison to my previous camera, a Fuji Finepix 2. I could grab the raw graphics and had to trust the camera's conversion to 8-bit JPEG. The resulting JPEG's were mostly good, but there were definitely times where I wished I could do better constructing shots in less than optimal lighting. The ability to take raw graphics and tweak it was pretty enticing, but as a Linux user, I figured I'd just have to deal... until yesterday when I discovered CHDK in this article at linux.com!

Naturally, I had to try it out as soon as I got home, and it was pretty darn simple. The best news is that it won't wreak havoc with your camera if you get something wrong, because it leaves the manufacturer's firmware intact. The downside from that is that you have to load the CHDK firmware every time you turn on the camera - but it's not that hard. Basically, you follow the steps in the linux.com article and the CHDK wiki to load the firmware build onto your camera's SD card. Load the card in your camera, hit "menu" and select "update firmware" at the bottom of the menu list.

My biggest challenge was not having a card reader, but I improvised with my Epson printer. I just loaded the card in the printer, attached it via USB to my Ubuntu-enabled Thinkpad, and voila, I had a card reader. After loading the firmware, it didn't take long to figure out its usefulness. Not only can I capture images in Canon's raw format, but there are all sorts of things that can be scripted via CHDK's BASIC-like script interpreter. For example, there are scripts so that you can change the depth-of-field to put background objects in focus (requires some scripting and mashing up graphics). Another nice feature is the live histogram and the battery statistics. Also, push the shutter button down halfway and get a live reading of current depth-of-field/hyperfocal distance calculations.

After taking the raw photos, I had one slight problem: my version of dcraw, a "raw" image format processing application, was not compatible with my camera's format. But, a few minutes searching led me to the culprit: an older version of dcraw. I had 2 options: either get a newer version or use another piece of software. I chose rawstudio and it worked like a peach.

A note: I couldn't grab the raw files via my camera's standard USB interface. I had to load the card into my "reader" again and transfer files that way. A minor hassle.

Edit: this one's making it ALL OVER the interweb: engadget and wired's gadget lab, among many others.

Hair be Gone!

I did it -

InfoWorld Features Hyperic - part of Month of Enterprise Startups

InfoWorld Senior Editor Paul Roberts gets the skinny on Hyperic, from purchasing the technology for a buck, to landing 250 paying customers and securing OEM deals with MySQL and JBoss. A great read.



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Web Site Dedicated to California AB 1668 - Open XML-based Formats

Here's a new web site that just started up to promote AB 1668 - This bill will mandate that the State of California use open, royalty-free, XML-based document formats. Support open government!



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Nagios network monitoring felled by SNMP false alarms

With more companies finding that they don't have to pay astronomical fees for systems management software, they're turning to Open Source alternatives. In this case, mynewplace.com chose Hyperic HQ over Openview when Nagios failed them.



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live from sf beta

Blogging from sf beta! It's like a frat party for web 2.0 types. Complete with groupies! @ 111 minna

Hyperic Giving Away $5,000 Scholarship

Hyperic is giving away $5,000 in scholarship money to the winner of an essay contest on the subject of "Managing the Next Generation Data Center". Open to all university students and employees (including faculty). If you're an employee, the money goes to your departmental budget. Details at hyperic.com/essaycontest/



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Hey Donatella: Please Shut Up

I realize I'm late to this party, but I couldn't help myself. Hey Donatella, when you get to be a senator or hell can hold any kind of office, perhaps then you can tell Hillary Clinton what to wear. Until then, just STFU. Having just watched "The Devil Wears Prada" it brought this recent episode to mind. Remind me, why do we need people to tell us what's acceptable to wear? Can someone explain that one to me?

gpl3 panel

One panel i'm attending right now is on gpl3. One guy from dla piper, one from sun, and another from softwarefreedom.org - Eben's group. main idea - will have a limited impact... nothing earth-shattering but many attendees aren't very knowledgeable. sun guy mentions solaris - nervous about gpl2 but more comfortable with v3. doesn't say it, but looks like cddl is history in the future.

live from new york...

Blogging with my nokia 800... Ok, it's not really mine, but i'm using it while at linuxworld new york. but now i'm hooked, so i'll probably end up buying one. more on lw ny in a bit. the show has been toned down into a conference. frankly it's better now thaqn when it was an expo. lots of interesting people. more later.

Open Source is Now Boring

As seen on TINOSC: Regardless of what transpires, we don't get any more silly stories about whether Open Source will survive. Well, sometimes we do, but I don't think anyone actually takes them seriously. The market has matured to the point where many finally understand that any one company's failing is not representative of the entire Open Source community



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Kung Fu Monkey

So I'm a little slow, but Kung Fu Monkey is freaking brilliant. In particular, I greatly enjoyed this gem.

Republicans are Pansies... Pass it on

Republicans are living in fear, and they're making policy inspired by this fear. They're dreadfully afraid of terrorists and extremists - so much so that they're willing to drop their freedoms in the hopes of saving their own skin. The Iraq war is a manifestation of this fear. The PATRIOT ACT is an expression of this fear. The willingness to subvert habeas corpus, detain *possible* terrorist group members indefinitely without criminal charges, enact broader search and seizure guidelines, and engage in torture all reflect a basic, inate fear of the enemy. The fear stems from the belief that keeping our freedom intact results in a higher risk of a terrorist strike.

Does this not strike anyone as hypocritical? Aren't republicans in this country fond of saying "freedom isn't free," "our troops are dying for our freedoms," and other similar phrases? If it is true that "freedom isn't free" and that it's worth dying for, then what gives with the cheap sellout of freedom in exchange for our collective safety? In short, shouldn't Republicans be willing to grow a pair and accept the risk that comes with freedom?

I'm tired of what is obvious (republicans' white-knuckle fear of terrorism) being passed over in favor of what is simply untrue - that they hold the roadmap for the most effective anti-terrorism policy. Maybe all Americans need to grow a pair and realize that taking the high road of morality and human rights means facing up to the inherent risk.

Given the choice between dying for our founding principles and living on in a pale imitation of said principles, I know what I'll choose.

If there are evil people in this world who will exploit our laws and governance to strike us, then may God have mercy on their souls. I'm not going to use that as an excuse to drop the very things that made us what we are today, and neither should you. When you vote on Tuesday, bear in mind that exactly one party has overwhelmingly ruled from a position of fear. You know which party that is, and now is the time to send them the message that you won't tolerate this shortchange of principles.

Republicans are pansies. Pass it on.

Google Spam Recipes! Woohoo!

I've discovered an amazing new "feature" of GMail - whenever you go to your spam folder, look near the top of the page where Google normally inserts topic-related links, and you'll mostly likely see one of several recipes that make creative use of spam ©. Note here that I'm talking about the canned spicy ham - not the junk mail that gmail sorts into your "spam" folder. And now, so that you don't have to, I've collected a few of my personal favorites below:

Spam Primavera

Spam Breakfast Burritos

French Fry Spam Casserole

Spam Quiche

Add your favorite spam recipes below!

John Mark's "There is no Open Source Community"

Hi there, dear readers (all 2 of you). I am putting all new posts on open source-releated topics in my new blog, John Mark's "There is no Open Source Community". Enjoy!

Talk Like a Pirate! Arrrr!

In commemoration of Talk Like a Pirate Day, I give you my 2-year-old talking like a pirate.



Pssst - I just found another TLAPD web site!

On Red Hat and Commercial Open Source

I recently had lunch with a friend from RedHat. Suffice it to say, it was rather revelatory. At some point, the conversation drifted to rPath and how they split off because Red Hat "couldn't afford to please the diehards" - they had to make money, and the only way to do this was by ignoring the "diehards". This Red Hatter then went on to talk about how they couldn't just continue to give stuff away, they had to charge for it, yadda yadda - pretty standard stuff we've heard from Red Hat for a while now. It then occurred to me how Red Hat continues to get it wrong in the marketplace - they still think it's about engaging in solid business practices in spite of the resistance of the GNU diehards.

This very premise is simply wrong. They seem to have neatly categorized criticism of its abandonment of the desktop as just noise from the "diehards" wanting Red Hat to serve the free software community and give stuff away for free. This line of thought ceased to be relevant about 6 years ago.

What Red Hat doesn't seem to understand is the effort that will be required to bring parity to the desktop landscape. The reason this is important is that Microsoft is continuing to use the leverage from its large desktop install base to build server-based technologies. While Red Hat is laser-focused on web servers and other back-office sales, Microsoft continues to bundle more services into its offerings, and for the most part, it just works - assuming, of course, that you use Microsoft on both ends of your transactions.

Red Hat does not now, nor has it ever, grasped how much leverage it would have with a ubiquitous, user-friendly desktop. They want so badly for everyone to equate Red Hat with Linux, and they have been very successful at this. However, Red Hat just isn't large enough to outflank, on its own, a company as large as Microsoft, and yet they continue with their market myopia. Witness their absence from LinuxWorld San Francisco. Witness the bad relationship between them and some of the larger commercial entities (there are several). They want to single-handedly drive Linux forward, and they do not have a great track record in terms of working with other companies. It's no secret that they have not been strong advocates of the LSB. One note of hope is their acquisition of JBoss, but there is a distinct lack of solid partnerships between Red Hat and other strong commercial open source players. They continue to strive for a Red Hat-only market, without engaging users on a large-enough scale to create new markets.

Given this view, a lack of engagement with the commercial open source ecosystem, and a bias towards its own technologies, it would seem that Red Hat is doomed - in terms of matching its ambitions to eventual success. Unfortunately, a doomed Red Hat spells a temporarily doomed commercial Linux space, and thus a temporarily doomed commercial open source space. Red Hat does not seem to recognize that a lot is riding on their success or failure - like, say, the entire commercial Linux ecosystem. And since Red Hat/Fedora Linux is the default development platform for open source ISV's, a lot of other software infrastructure would fail with it. Realistically, Red Hat can push out most of its competitors on the server landscape - Sun, Novell, et al. - and lose to Microsoft in the back office and the continuously growing web infrastructure. It would be a classic case of winning battles but losing the war.

The other strike against Red Hat is they seem to discount Microsoft's efforts in the commoditized web infrastructure area. They do this at their peril. Microsoft appears to be learning how to make its software cheap enough to make it compelling. Given their established user base and the fact that many admins feel at home with it, IT buyers are willing to pay more for it. Again, a ubiquitous desktop is largely responsible for this. It certainly doesn't hurt that a large amount of open source software runs really well under Windows. Conceivably, assuming Microsoft doesn't screw up and that open source .NET continues to flourish, one could imagine a day where Windows becomes the de facto open source development platform.

Enter Ubuntu/Canonical. If one takes the view that the desktop is vitally important *and* a market in need of a brash, ambitious upstart, then Ubuntu seems to be a Linux distribution that understands what is needed to clear the major hurdles. That is, many many more users (and eventually developers) are needed to bring the software market to parity and give leverage to the smaller software players. New markets need to be pushed wide open, and they need a compelling reason to use Linux. Yes, this means stuff needs to be given to them. Yes, Ubuntu is bleeding money at the moment. My point is that this is a necessary evil - for now. I don't think it's a coincidence that Red Hat is public and Canonical is not. Of these two companies, despite Red Hat's current market position, it would seem that Canonical/Ubuntu is best positioned to drive commercial open source in the future - only they seem to understand the scale of the task before them. "Community building" is not some touchie-feelie exercise in charity - it is shrewd business development.

Oh but wait, Ubuntu is just a free toy given away by a crazy South African spaceman to please the GNU/Linux diehards, right?

Notes from the UbuCon

The UbuCon was a blast. Read about it on The UbuCon Blog.

The UbuCon: Full Steam Ahead

The UbuCon will indeed happen. The UbuCon will take place on August 18 and 19 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Please RSVP if you plan to attend.

A Star is... *cough* *cough*

Hoo boy... Join us now and share... my choad.