Download xen-tools, install rpmstrap and install xen-tools. If there's a newever version of xen-tools available substitute that filename

yum install -y rpmstrap 
wget http://xen-tools.org/software/xen-tools/xen-tools-3.9.tar.gz
tar -xzvpf xen-tools-3.9.tar.gz
cd xen-tools-3.9/
make install

I've not using xen-tools that much but I wanted to put together a tutorial anyway. Let me know how it goes.

Comment (0)

It's become very irritating to me that we need to have a "membership" card to buy anything anymore. When I got my Albertsons card (who swore they'd never have one) I requested it to be anonymous. QFC required a card unless you wanted to pay double already high prices for everything. Safeway was one of the first stores to require the card and I originally got one with my name on it which became very annoying because even though Safeway employees are forced to act like they care they really don't. Whenever I'd check out they'd say "Thanks for shopping at Safeway Mr Williams" which goes to show they didn't spend two seconds actually reading the name on the receipt. I decided to test this theory a couple of years ago and got an additional card, this time with the name Haywood Jabloomy. I didn't want it to be too obvious so I added an extra o to my last name - it should be Haywood Jablomy. If you haven't caught on by now just say it out loud. Anyway I could be coming home from an absoutely exhuasting day at work and stop off at Safeway to pick up something for dinner and walk out barely able to contain myself when they call me Mr Jabloomy. So far nobody has caught on to what it really is but one guy got close and asked me what kind of name it was - I very seriously responded "It's Polish". My very tongue in cheek (perhaps the tongue in cheek reference is recursive?) reference to the Polish sausage industry.

Anyway I'd not been to Safeway in a while until last night when I stopped off to buy gasoline. I swiped my Safeway Club card and the gas pump welcomed me with this message. I laughed so hard I had to stop pumping gas, put my card in again and take a picture of the message which I share here with you, my faithful viewers.

Comment (0)

Ever since I've been reading about Asia I've been interested in visiting the Miao people (thank you Justine Shapiro). The Miao are also referred to as the Hmong people and are a minority race in SE Asia and China. I went to the Hmong Lunar New Year in Seattle today and took many pictures and videos. Unfortunately being the bone-head that I am I bumped my menu button and accidentally set the photo resolution to .3 MP instead of 10 MP so the photos are all really bad.

Anyway my impression of these people is that they're very friendly and absolutely gorgeous. I couldn't stop staring at them and their costumes.

I put up a small gallery of photos that I took there. Hmong Lunar New Year Gallery

Comment (0)

I was watching Tekzilla today on Miro (Oooh Veronica Belmont, if she won the elections she'd be Baberiham Lincoln - shwing) and they mentioned the Invisible Shield from Zagg for the ipod. As a brutally active user of the Nokia n800 I need a new screen protector because it's getting hard to see through my old one because of all the scratches. I went to the Zagg site and they do indeed have a screen protector for the n800 and it's priced at $12.95 so I have one on the way. You can check out the Invisible Shield Video to see how tough it is. According to the video you can attach your ipod (with Invisible Shield) to the leading edge of a helicopter blade and it won't get damaged. Perhaps that's not what they said but it's supposed to be tough. As soon as I get mine I'm going to beat up on it and we'll see how tough it is. Also I use a silicon case for the n800 which adds bulk but makes it easier to hold on to. If I could find a way to make it less slippery I'd get rid of that too.

Zagg has way more invisible shields that I would have ever thought. Here's the URL for the Nokia n800 version.

Comment (0)

So my daughter is doing a Cooking Video as a school project so I set up multiple video cameras (all tiny ones of course) around the kitchen to get more than one angle. I didn't have a tripod so I started looking around for something that would suffice and I have to say that this worked fine. At about 60lbs I don't think I'll be taking it in my carry-on luggage but still how many tripods do you know that provide backfill lighting?

 

 

Comment (0)

It will take you about 5 minutes to run out of space on the internal 256 MB of flash provided on the Nokia n800 so moving your Operating System to a flash card is a good idea. It's our goal is to install the latest Diablo firmware, install the bootmenu and then move the OS to flash.

 

Install Diablo firmware

1. Download the flasher for Linux and tablet model from Nokia's Tablet Dev site
2. In the same directory download the latest firmware image
   • for N810
   • for N800
3. Make sure the battery of your tablet is fully charged.
4. Unplug charger and switch off the tablet.
5. Connect the tablet to your computer via USB without turning it on.

Execute as root and replace <FIASCO image> with the firmware image you downloaded from Nokia:

For the N800 and N810:

./flasher-3.0 -F <FIASCO image> -f -R

You should now see Suitable USB device not found, waiting, switch on your tablet while holding the Home-button (N800) or swap button (N810), and watch the messages on your console as the FIASCO image is flashed, after which it will reboot automatically—you're done!

Now we need to install a couple of files to get us our boot menu and then to move the OS to flash.

Move Diablo to flash and install boot menu

Before we get too carried away adding buggy software to Diablo (you know you will) we'll move it to flash and we can add the buggy software. This way when it stops working and we need to fix it but don't have time we can just reboot in the stock Diablo firmware.

This tutorial will delete all information on your SD memory card! Install only one SD card into the system, if there are two it won't work.

1. Using the web browser on the Tablet browse to http://penguinbait.com/
2. Click on Install Tools and select Save Target As.. and save it to Documents
3. Open Application Manager, Select Install from File menu and select the Install Tools file
4. After it's done installing the reboot and choose Boot from Flash from the boot menu
   

You now have Diablo running off of Flash

 

Comment (0)

I was watching category5.tv on Miro and they mentioned a really cool device. I bought a digital camera that's waterproof up to 6 feet so I could snorkel in Thailand. Six feet doesn't get you too far but it would be fine for snorkeling near the surface. The one problem I'd have with it is I may be busy doing other things with my hands and not want to hold it (fighting off sharks perhaps!). The device that category5 reviewed is the LEI Underwater Digital Camera Mask which comes in 3mp and 5mp versions.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h25f0eAjSg 350 283] I realize this is a special purpose device and that you're not going to wear it to your kids choir concert but still it's pretty cool. Expecting it to be expensive for the same reason I went googled it and found it selling for about $100. So what about this device? This is from the LEI website.

Comment (0) Read More...

One of the pieces of equipment that almost always goes with me is my classic Gorrillapod. The times it doesn't go with me usually end in a ARGHH!!. Sometimes I think that I won't need it and it behind and then I'll find myself eating at a new restaurant wanting to take photos of my food and I'll have no tripod. I have to then resort to using a flash that blows out the photos and makes everyone in the joint blink frantically for about 5 minutes while trying to get their eyes to discerne contrast. The classic Gorillapod weighs only 2 oz so you barely notice you have it and will hold most point and shoot cameras (the Canon G7 is a bit overweight but it still works). For larger cameras Joby has come out with larger Gorillapods. The Gorillapod SLR holds 1.75 lbs, the SLR Zoom is larger still and holds up to 6.6lbs!

If however, the SLR zoom doesn't do what you want it to do and your aim is to have your tripod double as a jackstand in the garage they've released the new Gorillapod Focus. First of all they fail miserably with the name. The others make sense, SLR (bigger than point and shoot), SLR Zoom (for large lenses, bigger still) but the Focus does nothing for me. I immediately think of Ford Focus which is a small car. I think a naming scheme along the lines of small, medium, large and giant would have worked better. Anyway the Focus can hold up to 11lbs and the legs are made of metal segments and only weighs 1.1 lbs. This I think is a pretty cool thing considering you get a foot tall tripod that can be set up on uneven surfaces and it's still fairly lightweight. It has a mount for 1/4 camera as well as an adapter screw for 3/8" tripod heads so you could put a panorama head (or any other for that matter) on it easily enough.

I hope they sell extra adapter screws because I know I'd lose them in a heartbeat.

 

Along the same lines they've added a few other things since I've checked on them. They offer spike feet for the Gorillapod SLR to stick into soft soil (or giant marshmallows I suppose) and the Gorillapod Go-Go which unfortunately has very little if anything to do with girls dancing around a pole. The Go-Go has suction or sticky mounts so it can stick to anything giving you the convenience of mounting your PSP or GPS device using a Gorillapod.

 

Comment (0)

Grantmcwilliams.com com was down for the last day because of a Gb-E network switch that decided to stop passing any traffic without any warning at all. It was probably find because someone hacked my Joomla template and inserted a greeting card submit form at the top of every page. An update to the latest Joomla 1.5.7 resolved that and taking the switch out of commision solved the other part.

Anyway, things are back to normal now.

Comment (0)

If you are like me and rely on DPreview to decide on which camera to purchase then it's imperative that they review cameras that I'd want to purchase. I'm sure that it's not exciting for the reviewers to review yet another camera that doesn't do anything put take pictures when you push the "shutter" button but some of us use those cameras and rely on DPreviews. The reason I'm writing this post is because it appears that although there have been quite a few really big Point and Shoot releases (Nikon P6000, Panasonic LX-03 and Canon G10 most recently) there haven't been any reviews in 6 months. As a matter of fact there are been very few non DSLR reviews for the 2008 year. To the right I've grabbed an image of all the cameras reviewed by DPreviews in chronological order so you can see for yourself.

Like I said maybe reviewing Point and Shoot cameras are the photography equivalent to being the muffler guy at the Indy 500 or the water boy for the leading NFL team but still it's an important service that is appreciated by the long time fans of DPreview.

Another problem might be that companies like to release new Point and Shoot cameras with exactly the same specs as the last model. My new Canon SD870 has the same resolution, almost identical case and nearly the same lens as my old SD500 but I'd still like to see how it fares as compared to the competition. I've noticed some barrel distortion in the lens that sometimes seems excessive and it would be nice to have a professional opinion on it. Maybe there was a better choice in the compact wide angle category that I should have bought instead.

 

 

Comment (0)