James Bayliss — bayliss

Posts Tagged ‘bayliss’

Review: WD PassPort Hard Drive

Posted January 4, 2009 // Tagged as Review // 4 Comments

Another present I received from my parents this holiday, was a new portable hard drive, the WD PassPort. I got the 500GB version, plenty of storage for all my music, movies and work. One of the main reasons I asked for this was that I have run out of space on my 500GB Seagate hard drive which is full of time machine backups, and so on.

After opening the PassPort which was in a stupid heat sealed packaging container, and I cut my self opening – I was impressed at the quality of the product. The design is nice and clean – with rounded corners, it really does make it complete. I received the USB 2.0 version without firewire – I wasn’t unhappy besides If I got a new MacBook, I wouldn’t be able to use it!

First powering it on, I was impressed with the noise. It’s more or less silent! It’s even quieter than my MacBook pro’s hard drive! The transfer speed isn’t bad either copied across a 100mb file in under 30 seconds. It’s USB 2.0, so it’s capable of roughly 480Mbps.

Overall, I’m impressed – apart from one thing. One day, I was sitting at my desk it was just sitting idle – All of a sudden it made a large beep and clicked. Graham Gilbert has said it’s the curse of the WD drives, but mine is still working fine… the data on the drive is backed up in another location just in case..

UPDATE: I’ve posted the Xbench results here;

Overall 7/10.
Tutorial: Shooting a Timelapse

Posted December 17, 2008 // Tagged as Tutorial // 7 Comments

I couple of days ago, I posted a timelapse that I took with my D80. At this current time, the D80 has no intervalometer settings – this means that it cannot pictures every so many seconds, fail? So, we need an alternative to take a timelapse.

How I do it:

I use Nikon’s Camera Control Pro 2 software to control my camera – it’s a hefty press tag for a simple tether application. Download the free trail, it’s for macs & pc’s! Camera Control is availible for not just only the D80, it works on most of the D range! D3, D2Xs, D2X, D2Hs, D700, D300, D200, D100, D80, D70s, D70, D60, D50, D40X, D40!

I tell the application, I want to do a timelapse, and set it to take a picture every 2 seconds until I stop it. [Example Screenshot]

Once you have finished taking your timelapse, we want to snap them together. I use quicktime pro, as it is the only application I know that does this;

It’ll ask for how many frames per second, I set mine to 6; but the choice is yours. I will generate your clip, now you need to save it. File>Save>Self Contained Movie. Now you are free to do what ever you want to with the movie. I add music to mine normally, some nice background music.

Timelapse(s) from James Bayliss on Vimeo.
Attempting a 365

Posted November 29, 2008 // Tagged as Photography // 2 Comments

So this week I have started a 365 – a simple project in which you take a photo everyday and post it to the internet. It can either be of yourself or the task that your doing that day.

I’m aiming to finish this project – and I want to finish this project!

Visit my Flickr stream for Updates, Here
Thoughts: The Sixty One

Posted November 23, 2008 // Tagged as Review, Thoughts // No Comments

This week I discovered a new music service through a friend, Michael Yurechko. It’s called TheSixyOne and It’s an online music streaming and discovery service. Kinda like Last.FM but you don’t scrobble music to them. You bump tracks and favourite them creating a radio station for other users to listen to.

They have some pretty large artists like Kanye West and Kate Perry while having lots of small indie artists and electronic people. The way the SixtyOne was setup is that you can browse the site and have your songs play in the little sidebar player. Last.FM sucks as doing this and you have to open another window, and then browse. I have it open on my littleside laptop playing through the day and it’s great! The music that I find is more suited to me than ever before, Last.FM think’s i’m into hardcore heavy metal – which I’m not, sorry.

Overall – the SixtyOne is a pretty amazing site, I defiantly recommend you check it out! When signing up, use the referral name as: bayliss and then we both get some love.
Why I’m leaving LoveFilm

Posted November 21, 2008 // Tagged as General, Review, Thoughts // 4 Comments

I’ve had a LoveFilm subscription since the beginning of the summer to allow me to watch a films and games during the boring weekdays/ends. I got a cool two month free trial, two months with the offer that I got! It was awesome, so I rented quite a few cool games and movies including; I am Legend, Cloverfield, Wall-E (Game). The service is good, with quick delivery, awesome customer support and a easy to use website. I simply emailed them with an issue I was having and they gave me and extra disc for free.

But recently, I found the service was slowing down, and the films weren’t being delivered as quick as they could. I then discovered that they had been purchased by Tesco (a supermarket in the UK). I simply thought that £14.99 a month for unlimited DVD & Game rental (2 at anytime) is allot of money for the service that they offer.

Does anyone else use LoveFilm and what do you think of it? How do you get your films, and how do you watch them? I’d like to know!
Hannah Jones: PR / Media Stunt

Posted November 17, 2008 // Tagged as Thoughts // 1 Comment

I’ve met Hannah Jones, in fact, she lives two miles away from my house. At a place called Burley Gate if you want to specifically. If you don’t know what i’m talking about, not your fault – i haven’t explained the situation. But first of all, if you are offended by the blog post, sorry. i’m sure – but this is an issue that has touched my heart and I really want everyone to know the truth. My blog is mostly tech, but this is a personal issue.

Have a read of this: Times Online

Hannah is a very opinionated young woman. In 2007, HCPT took her with them to Lourdes, France. HCPT is a charity that take handicapped children to Lourdes, France, for a nice family holiday, free of charge, without their parents – allowing them to have rest time. She had an opinion on everything that we did, we have to take into consideration, that this girl of 13.

What the point of this blog post? Well – this current news that has spread across the media is a PR stunt. Her mother has pointed out that she asked Hannah multiple amount of times that she is sure that she wants to have the operation, and all the time she has said no. I have met Hannah’s mother, she is ALSO a opinionated and someone who likes to take over situations and be the boss. In one meeting, hannah wasn’t allowed to talk and for her mother to do all the talking for herself..

Hannah wanted a dream holiday to Florida? – FARSE! I want a dream holiday, but she wants it for free because she isn’t going to live? Excuse me? You have been offered a heart transplant, yet you denied but you want a FREE holiday? I’m sorry, but this is one stupid little girl. But now she can’t get travel insurance? ARE you surprised?

Now she using her illness (which can be fixed) to get

a) Free Holiday

b) Travel Insurance

c) Donations

_________

I’m am disheartened by this, I know for one – this a PR stunt, she wants a free holiday, and not a decent life. I for one, would want a better life, than a holiday to florida.

I gave up up at this point because I got so annoyed. My dyslexia cut in on this, and I’m sorry for about speech. – I made a recording instead:

Original – MP3
Tutorial: SSH Socks Proxy – Being Secure Online

Posted November 13, 2008 // Tagged as Tutorial // 5 Comments
Occasionally, some services like us to be in the presence of America to use their service, or our internet service is down maybe. Maybe your on a unknown wifi channel and want to give yourself a bit more security.

Eh? A proxy in otherwords?

Yes, that’s essentially really what we are doing – for those are confused by a proxy – it’s the middleman between you and the location that you are trying to reach.

Today, i’m going to show you how to use SOCKS, or a SSH Proxy. Now, you will need a web host for this, and it needs to have SSH support for this. I know MediaTemple & Dreamhost do – check with your host just to make sure.

We’ll be doing on this a mac and using Firefox as our browser

So first we need to open the terminal – for those who don’t know where that is:

Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal

Now we need your username and address of your server.
```
ssh -ND 9999 you@example.com
```
Now, of course you replace this with your credentials which you should. It will then ask you for your password, you should also know this too. For dreamhost – this is the same as your default FTP details.

After you have entered your password, it will not print anything else – it’s job is done and ready.

Setting up FireFox to work with your SSH Proxy.

If everything looks like that, then were good to go! Hit ok, and so if you can load the start of FireFox.

I hope you find this helpful, it’s works for me and I find it useful at WiFi hotspots where sometimes you don’t feel secure. If you have another medthod, please leave a comment or send me an email.
I won RMPC!

Posted November 9, 2008 // Tagged as General, Photography // 4 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I entered the Rupert Maspero Photographer Competition not thinking anything of it really. This week revealed that I was the winner! You can see my entry here

Why Should You Enter?

Show casing your name, your work and your effort – that is the key. You worked hard to get those pictures the way they are, and worked hard to buy the equipment (if your me anyway). There are lost of Photography competitions online, and locally.

Pffttt… I’ll never win anything..

I think I’ve injured my self with disbelief – I didn’t even think anything of it and to my amazement, I won! You don’t have the most biggest and the best camera ever. A local person won a competition here with a disposable camera. Yes, a decent camera can help sometimes but not always.

Just enter, have some fun, and just have a good time. It’s about taking part not winning.
Your Voice: iPhone Apps

Posted November 8, 2008 // Tagged as Apple, Thoughts, iPhone // 5 Comments
Since the end of the June when apple released the iPhone & iPod Touch 2.0 firmware, the market for Apps has gone insane and the amount of apps that are now available for download is ridiculous. Although there are many great free apps, I haven’t really wanted to download them.

If i have more than one page of apps on my first generation iPhone, it becomes incredibly sluggish, and the user experience isn’t a good one. Therefore I’m not a fan of them – i have only 5 or 6 apps.

These are:
- Aim (AOL Instant Messenger)
- Last.Fm
- Twitterfon
- Brightkite
- Fring
Notice how they are all social network sites and communication tools? The iPhone to me is a phone and it will be nothing more. (Apart from a music player too).

I want to know: What do you use on your iPhone? What apps do you use on a regular basis, and what are your opinions!
Review: 1Password

Posted November 7, 2008 // Tagged as Review // 1 Comment

Recently, I watched a ScreenCast on 1Password and found it interesting. It seemed like the perfect solution for me, as I can easily forget passwords, and use sometimes the same password on multiple sites.

1Password is from AgileWebSolutions, and I was luckily enough to snap up 2 Licenses. One for me , One for a lucky reader of mine! (another post about that soon! Subscribe to my blog for updates!)

What is 1Password?

1Password allows you to store and management all your online user name and passwords. It also has a password generator which is excellent for providing strong passwords. Then the app handles all of these, and keeps them safe in your KeyChain.

What’s The Point of 1Password?

A while back, I was using the same password of multiple sites not realising the consequences of someone finding out that password and then abusing all the sites that he could access. After I purchased 1Password, I went to all of those sites, reset the password and used the inbuilt generation to make some seriously strong passwords. I don’t think anyone is going to be cracking into the passwords that I set up on those sites.

So, it’ll only work with Safari?

Ah! No! 1Password works with Safari, Firefox, Camino, Flock, OmniWeb, Fluid and even NetNewsWire! They all have the application setup inside of the browser so you can easily log into your favourite websites.

What about I’m on the move with my iPhone, and need to know a password?

1Password has the ability to sync with both your iPhone and Palm device, this is one of the best features apart from the app it self. It works like a charm! Also, if you own a MobileMe account, you can sync the key chain to multiple computers, allowing 1Password to operate on any computer that you own that is synced with MobileMe.

I hate filling out forms with my details, it takes to long. Is 1Password for me?

1Password has the ability to create identities which fills all the information on web forms for you. Including Name, Address, Email, etc.. Very simple in your in rush!

Overall

It’s one of the best apps I’ve seen in a while from the Mac Community, I give it a 4.7 out of 5.0!