Teknovis

I have a small (or perhaps average) collection of DVDs. Some are old, some are new, and there are many that I have not yet watched. There are also some that I have seen several times. They are a mix of films and series.

The way that people consume media has changed dramatically over recent years, and I am no exception to this phenomenon! So it has been a while since I last looked at a DVD. There are probably two significant reasons for this:

• I no longer have a laptop with a DVD player
• I use my phone for accessing online content

However, I would like to watch some of my DVDs. So I decided that it was time I learned how to rip them!

Unfortunately the process turned-out to be slightly more cumbersome to get started than I expected. I was told by colleagues to use HandBrake. It is a neat application, and it is easy to get it running. However, the videos that it produced were stuttering and pixelated. I spent a while playing with settings, and browsing the web site to no avail :(

I then came across this very useful and up-to-date article: How to Rip a DVD to Your Computer. It transpired that my problems were being caused by not having libdvdcss installed! So I installed the latest 64bit version (rather than the version linked to in the article), and everything worked smoothly!

The “normal” preset plays back perfectly on both my computer (using VLC media player) and my mobile phone!

Tags: Handbrake, VLC Media Player

I came across this nice infographic today (click to see larger version):

LensVid Exclusive: What Happened to the Photography Industry in 2014? (Copyright LensVid)

The original inforgraphic and accompanying article can be found in LensVid Exclusive: What Happened to the Photography Industry in 2014?.

I watched this interesting video about the past and future of Adobe‘s Photoshop – Thomas Knoll: The Story of Photoshop.

The discussion on Adobe’s move to subscription based pricing is particularly interesting. I must admit that I would not buy software under that licensing model!

Tags: Adobe, Photoshop

The maker of the Raspberry Pi has released an add-on digital camera, according to Creators of Raspberry Pi computer announce $25 camera module.

I bet this will be popular!

Tags: Raspberry Pi

Yes – you read the title correctly! A team of researchers from Duke University has built a gigapixel camera for the US Department of Defence. The approach it has taken is to create a curved sensor (probably best understood from the drawing below). I think that is very interesting!

Gigapixel Sensor (Copyright Digital Photography Review)

You can read about it, and see a sample photo, in One-shot gigapixel camera offers a future beyond flat sensors and Megapixel Camera? Try Gigapixel.

There was an interesting story in the news today about a man who was sentenced to a two year jail term for possession of child pornography images. See Father jailed over child pornography for further details.

In particular, the article states:

Defence counsel said the case was unusual as 24 of the 27 images were virtual images – no actual children were used to create the images.

I wonder if all 27 images had been “virtual images”, would he still have received a prison sentence? Indeed, would it even be a crime to posses such images?

I am going to be controversial here, but in my opinion the possession of virtual images definitely should not be a crime.

I must admit that I am also uncomfortable with the idea that the possession (or distribution) of any types of images is a crime. It seems illogical to me to say that if you arrange your 1s and 0s in this order it is a crime, but it is perfectly legal to rearrange them in a different order (to produce a different image).

For the sake of clarity, I believe that it definitely should be illegal to produce such images.

Tags: Ireland, Pornography

I read an interesting article today describing how Yahoo basically killed Flickr since taking it over! The article is How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet.

I never liked Flickr due to its old-fashioned interfaces, and its lack of usability. Also, I associate it more with low quality and high volume photo sharing. Everybody whom I know that is serious about photography uses other newer photos sharing web sites!

Tags: Flickr, Yahoo

Interesting article about the world’s fastest camera in terms of the number of frames per second – MIT’s trillion frames per second light-tracking camera.

I found some very interesting graphs from Flickr this week showing the most popular digital cameras with which its users take photos. See Flickr Camera Finder.

Perhaps the most amazing statistic has been the stellar rise of the Apple iPhone 4 to become the most popular digital camera!

Tags: Apple, Flickr

Today I heard about Lytro, and the new camera that the company is developing based upon capturing something called the light field. For more information see Lytro, the Astonishing Camera Start-Up, Celebrates Its Splashy Debut (Video) and Meet the Stealthy Start-Up That Aims to Sharpen Focus of Entire Camera Industry (the clickable images in the later article are fascinating).

It is interesting that Lytro has decided to build the cameras rather than sell the technology. I wonder are the current leading camera manufacturers worried!

Tags: Lytro