The 3D Printer: Toy or Techno-Wonder?

I was lucky enough this week to get my sticky little hands on a 3D printer: the "MakerBot Replicator".  So what's all the fuss about?

First impressions are that this printer has been built using old parts from a flat-bed scanner, and housed in a primitive, makeshift, wooden chassis.

But on closer examination, the chassis is in fact a very sturdy structure, closed at the base and the back, but open on the other four sides.

Recovering Lost Files With Linux

Unfortunately data loss and corruption are common ailments in memory devices such as hard disk drives, solid state memory cards and USB sticks.

It doesn't matter if your faulty device is a memory card from your camera, or a hard drive from an Apple Mac or a Windows PC, all may not be lost if you can connect the device to a computer and use a couple of magical Linux tools.

The other day I was handed an SD card, which should have contained the record of a great holiday in Egypt. There were a few jpeg files listed in file manager, but they would not open, and many seemed to have a file size of 0 bytes.

The outlook was gloomy (as was my well-tanned friend) but in just a few minutes I was able to restore over 200 happy holiday snaps.

Gambas: Improving the PhotoViewer

By making the transition from Gambas 2 to Gambas 3, I've been able to increase the functionality of my Photo Viewer application, and make a few improvements along the way.

 

A new Gambas component has allowed me to add image histograms, rotation and normalisation to my project.

This new component is called gb.image.effect, and although it includes methods to despeckle, emboss, invert, oil-paint and solarize an image, I've only made use of a couple of the available methods.

When The Dishwasher Runs Dry

When your dishwasher stops washing dishes, you better fix it fast, or spend hours up to your arm-pits in soapy water, doing the washing up!

 

Our dishwasher started running "dry", a problem I had seen 3 years ago, so I knew just what to do.

Like most dishwashers, our Bosch LogiXX gets a lot of crap thrown at it. But the two most difficult substances for it to swallow are fruit pips and fat. The pips are usually from oranges and lemons. They whiz around the internal pipe-work until they get stuck in those rotating arms that are supposed to spray water over your crockery.

Gambas is no shrimp

It may mean "prawn" in Spanish, but in the world of computing, Gambas is a visual programming language for Linux.

 

The Gambas application is an integrated development environment (IDE) which not only allows you to create, edit, run and debug your software, but also create executables (programs) and package them for distribution and deployment to other Linux computers.

 

This post does not cover the Gambas language in any detail, its more of an over-view which takes you through the whole process of creating an application, from writing a very simple program to creating a deployment package.

Gambas is more than just a language, it is also a rapid application development system, making it an ideal starting point for those wishing to learn programming or for programmers taking their first steps with Linux...

Giving Your Computer A Voice

I've found it very helpful in a few cases to add audible alarms to monitoring functions. For example, if you work in a network support environment and a server goes down, you need to know about it straight away.......preferably before your phone goes into melt-down!

 

By using text-to-speech, you can monitor several aspects of your working environment without having to continually check display screens.

I recommend eSpeak, which is a compact, cross-platform, open source software, speech synthesiser. Although the sound is not as natural as that produced by a system based upon human recordings, its very small size makes it a good choice for small devices, the Raspberry Pi and for applications producing announcements.

Networking: With Lubuntu, Win7 and the Raspberry Pi

Setting up a home peer-to-peer network can be challenging, and for machines with a variety of operating systems, can be even more tricky.

 

The three examples given may also help with other version of Linux & Windows.

Photography: #1 Exposure Explained

When you make the transition from "point and shoot" to SLR photography, there is one very important subject you really need to get to grips with:-

      ***   Exposure   ***

 

Using an SLR camera in "manual mode" puts you in total control, not only of composition and focus, but also exposure.

When you take a photo, you allow light into your camera. Assuming you are using a "digital" camera, the light reaches a "photo-sensitive sensor" which produces an electrical output, and ultimately this is processed into a picture. If this picture is correctly "exposed" it will not be too dark or too light.

"So what's the problem..." I hear you say,  "...if its too dark or light I can just use the Gimp or PaintShop Pro to adjust the brightness?"

The problem is that you will lose detail if your initial photo is too dark or too light. Adjusting the brightness will not recover that lost detail.

How to diag Windows/computer problems with a LiveCD

You have a problem with your Windows computer and wonder whether its hardware or software. You've tried all the obvious stuff, so what do you do next?

Well before you invest in more RAM, a new hard disk, or take your computer to your local friendly repair man, there is one more thing you can try.

If you boot your computer from another operating system (OS), you effectively get a second opinion. You can do this by downloading a Linux distribution and creating a LiveCD from which you boot your computer.