KitchenPi: adding a watchdog

Although KitchenPi has been running well for over two and a half years, I do get the occasional blip.

A recent issue caused the system to fall silent.

But this turned into an opportunity to do a couple of simple software modifications.

Fixing my Pentax K-30 exposure problem: #4 more details on solenoid

I spent a jolly day thinking about the exposure solenoid and doing a few checks.

Everyone has a theory about why the green solenoid is problematic.

I've tried to work out how it operates...

Fixing my Pentax K-30 exposure problem: #3 one problem leads to another!

Having reassembled my K-30 with the replacement solenoid, it was time to test it.

Unfortunately it failed the test, with all photos underexposed.

I think my problem was due to a truly stupid mistake.

Fixing my Pentax K-30 exposure problem: #2 let's do it!

My new JIS screw drivers arrived from China a few days ago.

Following on from an earlier post, I needed these to fit the tiny JCIS screws on my camera.

So its time to strip down both my K110D and K-30 Pentax cameras to see if I can repair my K-30.

Fixing my Pentax K-30 exposure problem: #1 prep

The exposure problem on my Pentax camera has been gradually getting worse.

It is now more likely to produce underexposed images than correctly exposed ones.

So its time to open it up and have a go at fixing it.

Hedgehogs don't like slugs!

Its very easy to plant ideas into peoples minds, but very difficult to remove them when they are wrong.

And the internet only makes matters worse due to the ease of content "copy & paste" operations on already incorrect information. 

Thunderbird "Download the rest of the message" is not working

Another feature of Thunderbird that I suspect has just been broken in version 60.x is the "Fetch headers only" option.

For as long as I can remember, this has been my setting of choice, but now its broke!

Has Thunderbird lost its Calendar?

A recent Thunderbird update on Debian/Ubuntu systems has resulted in the loss of the Calendar.

As it is the only calendar that I use, I'd be lost without it.

So what's the fix?

DSLR optical path: where is that spec of dust?

After a recent trip to Hurst Castle we noticed dirt spots on the photos from 2 cameras.

While giving them a clean, it occurred to me that there are quite a few places where dust and dirt can be a problem.