Auto-bracketing with the Nikon D90

Auto-bracketing is great for things like HDR, which I’d really like to get into more.  I don’t necessarily like when it’s “overdone” (although sometimes it turns out pretty neat from an art point of view), but I’m really into capturing more dynamic range to make the photo look more like what the eye can see.  Anyway, the D90 is capable of capturing three auto-bracketed frames at a time, and by default the photographer must press the shutter release once for each of those frames.  If you don’t have a remote this can be bad news as pressing the shutter release can move the camera and make it harder to align in post-processing.  However, I stumbled across a post that describes how to have the auto-bracketing happen with one press of the shutter release.  I’ve reproduced the steps here just in case that forum goes away:

1. Press the BKT button and set the bracketing to 3F by rotating the main command dial. Using the sub-command dial set the exposure increment to whatever you like. I prefer 1 stop intervals.

2. Go to CSM c3 Self-timer. Set the delay time, 5 seconds should be enough to allow the camera and tripod to stabilize. Next, set the number of shots to 3.

3. This step is optional. Go to CSM d6 and set the Continuous Low shooting speed to 4 fps.

4. Press the Release mode button and rotate the main command dial until the self-timer icon appears with the Continuous Low shooting icon above it.

5. Press the shutter release button. After the self-timer delay the camera will perform auto-bracketing with one push of the shutter release button.

Shadows Under Icons and Windows

This is something that really annoys me, and Apple is doing it with the newly announced iPad.  But it’s something that happens pretty much everywhere (windows, mac os, gnome, kde, etc.).  If there were some configuration flag that turned it on or off as needed, then life would be grand.  What is it?

ssh keychain

For the longest time I’ve maintained my own ssh-agent management scripts.  Every time I set up a new box I’ve had to go out and gather the information all over again.  But no more!

Vimperator and Gmail

For a while now I’ve been tired of hitting ctrl-z every time I go to gmail to put vimperator into pass-through mode, and finally decided to see if anyone else had figured out a better way.  I found it.

Prime Time Communications; Oh, Really?

I’m looking for an internet connection faster than my 7mbps/768kbps DSL line.  The upload speed is just way too low (as I do big remote backups and the like).  I’ve looked around at fiber solutions but haven’t been able to find one that comes to my area.

Today I stumbled upon Prime Time Communications and thought I’d contact them about availability in my area.  I filled out their availability form and clicked “submit.”  404 – Object not found.

So I filled out their support form and included my availability request as well as a note about how the availability form didn’t work.  When I clicked “submit” it went to a completely blank (i.e., no source to the page at all) page.  I tried again just in case, and it did the same thing.

“Wow, this is not good.”  Next I tried to call their phone number.  It started ringing after about 15 seconds (strange for a phone), rang about 4 times, and then a recording came on and announced something like, “All lines are unavailable.”

Prime Time Communications really doesn’t want to be bothered apparently.

Carol of the Bells

Lehi Children’s Choir’s 2009 Christmas tour’s performance of Carol of the Bells at the American Fork tabernacle.

Ubuntu 9.10; Arg!

I’m a long-time ubuntu user, starting back in the Hoary Hedgehog (5.04) days.  I have a file server that has been upgraded from 7.04 (or was it 6.10?) without much incidence (besides openldap woes, but that has happened every time so I’ve given up on clean upgrades there).

All that has changed with my latest upgrade to 9.10.

JavaScript and Prototypal Inheritance

It’s beautiful in its simplicity. Objects simply inheriting from other objects. Who needs classes?!

Migrating from Gmail to Google Apps

You’ve probably already seen the POP solution for migrating or importing gmail email to your shiny new google apps email. But then you’ll lose tags and original dates and stuff. Blech. This is a much better solution if you have access to a linux box. This originally came from the thamtech blog along with a couple of really helpful comments. I cleaned it up a bit and made it a step-by-step guide for ubuntu (but it should work elsewhere).

Module “xgi” Does Not Exist after Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10

My Dell SC430 has an integrated card that worked with the Xorg auto-detection in 9.04. But in 9.10 it for some reason tries to load an “xgi” driver that doesn’t exist. After some research I found that xgi chipsets are supported by the sis driver. So I told Xorg to use that in the Section “Device” section:


Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "sis"
EndSection


Now X works again!