I came across this question in the blurb forum, which i had to perform myself for one of the albums i was working on.

forums.blurb.com/forums/4/topics/3868

In general How can i update the photos in booksmart to use the latest updated photos that i have edited in photoshop/gimp?

You can delete the files in C:\Documents and Settings\{USER_NAME}\My Documents\BookSmartData\{BOOK_NAME}library.

In booksmart, do an export( File->Backup/Export book… ), all the images will then be reimported from the original directory which you have imported from. You will get an error message. Your images have not finishing loading yet. Please wait….. Just click okay.

You should see the library directory starting to fill up now.

Just to be on the safe side, please do a rename of rather than a delete of the library directory.

If it is only a specific jpeg file that you wish to update. You can  open up the book file found in

C:\Documents and Settings\{USER_NAME}\My Documents\BookSmartData\{BOOK_NAME}\{BOOK_NAME}.book

Search for the jpeg/png/pdf file name in that file.

you should see a imagefile id like this below

<ImageFile id=”f1f0309b-30b5-420d-99ca-2c2843837290″ title=”file:/Z:/photos/wedding/20071229%20-%20Actual%20Day/Day/M181.291207.JerSulAD0164.jpg” file=”f1f0309b-30b5-420d-99ca-2c2843837290″ sourceURI=”file:/Z:/photos/wedding/20071229%20-%20Actual%20Day/Day/M181.291207.JerSulAD0164.jpg” dateTaken=”20080119125129+0800″/>

look for  f1f0309b-30b5-420d-99ca-2c2843837290.original, f1f0309b-30b5-420d-99ca-2c2843837290.thumb, f1f0309b-30b5-420d-99ca-2c2843837290.* in the library directory as well, and delete these files, rename to be on the safe side. Do an export again to regenerate these file.
For those unused photos, it seems that they don’t get generated again. So what you can do is to just drop all of them into a page which has tons of slots for photos in them. They should get generated or at least get refreshed in booksmart.

Booksmart is a great application that does the job. Certainly there are things to be improved, but it’s easy to use and gets the job done, until another competitor comes along

Usually i don’t talk about fashion.

But this is tech fashion

technabob.com/blog/2009/02/03/my-document-folder-laptop-case/

Seeing this reminds me of the laptop casing for Mac Air

People making use of what Steve Jobs used in the keynote as an actual laptop holder

www.applelinks.com/index.php/more/airmail_manila_folder_notebook_sleeve_for_macbook_air/
This is what i call “The Obvious”. But it’s a nice touch.

As i as was making the previous post on keyboard, i started to put lots of picture that was not from my flickr account. It was to be just on the blog. I started hotlinking to those sites that host the pictures, i was thinking…

Hmmmm. i think i better not do that, the webmaster might be unhappy with it with the “large” number of hits they are going to recieve from my post. I better download them first and upload them to my blog.

I continued to download one jpg, two jpg, and felt tired. This is so wrong. It is just so slow! Not efficient at all! How can i make things go faster? Then i recalled this technique i tried in some other program. How about during the insert image, instead of selecting a file from My Computer, how about i just paste the url to that image? I tried and waited….

BINGO! It works. Basically windows file dialog accepts http connection. How sweet. So with this i continued with my blog post.

Hope this tips helps someone out there.

Just tried this with photoshop. It worked too. Just that it’s slower than what i had hoped for. But it bascially streamlines the process of downloading saving it somewhere first etc. This is especially true for the above task of downloading and uploading images, now it’s streamlined to just one process of uploading.

And yes, i need to fix the layout in this blog.. It sucks.

Do you have a keyboard that you always loved?

Keyboards for blondes? Something new to me

Interesting feature
1. Color!

The usual suspect

DAS keyboard :

Das Ultimate Keyboard

Interesting features are

1. It’s blank!
2. Forces you to touch type.

Pro motion keyboard :

Pro motion keyboard

Interesting features are

….Pro-Motion keyboard that slowly adapts and adjusts to your typing style. Smartfish’s proprietary Dynamic Positioning Controller actually studies your usage pattern, and makes periodic, yet imperceptible adjustments to the height, angle and radial position of the device….

Optimus Maximus

Optimus Maximum

Interesting features are
1. OLED display at every key.

www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/demo/

Logitech DiNovo Edge

Other keyboards/inputs

G13 Game board

Specialized board for gaming

Space Explorer 3D

3D input to navigate in a 3D world. It gives 6 DOF to allow navigation in the 3D world. By using these controls
Moving foward by pushing forward
Moving backwards by pushing backwards.
Moving left by pushing left
Moving right by pushing right
Moving up by pulling up out of the input device
Moving down by pushing down into the input device
Turning left by rotating left
Turning right by rotating right.
*Hopefully i did’nt miss anything, only used it for like 5 mins?

From my experience on this and seeing people using it. It does get some practise to properly use this.

Some links on keyboards and such

www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2337583,00.asp

most-expensive.net/10-computer-keyboards

Like what i mentioned on how to use yubikey on multiple sites? SN 178 supported that idea as well, bascially becoming a poor man’s two factor authentication.

So do remember to use this instead of the plain jane yubikey static password. You won’t want to have people access to your physical key right? For more security, consider hashing your password before entering into any website.

Wanna run booksmart on a linux box?

Check out

clecuret.blogspot.com/2008/04/booksmart-sur-linux-cest-de-nouveau.html

A patch has been made until blurb decided to support this officially.

I’m also in the midst of creating an editor for the template for the booksmart. Anyone interested in using it?

DNS323 has been kinda of unstable for me after my replacement on the power supply and the unit. There was frequent disconnect on the mapped drive, and pink/amber colour for the front panel LEDs, it was only stable when i plug in only 1 hdd. I recall when i first recieved my replacement, it was running on a beta firmware so i flashed it to the 0.5 firmware.

Now with the latest firmware which was released on 7th Jan 2009, it’s much more stable now, no mapped drive dropping and the LEDs are consistently blue

dlink.com.sg/support/support_detail.asp?idproduct=147

Do try flashing your firmware if you are having problems like mine, remember to reset the settings to factory default as well. This seems to work for some people on the dlink forums.

Also turn on your jumbo frames to 9000 if you are on a gigabit network, performance have improved dramatically. Some performance testing done by others on dns323 modding forum.
forum.dsmg600.info/t3773-DNS-323-with-with-Jumbo-enabled-%28know-happy-camper%29.html
I have yet to do any emperical test on this.

I was listening to Security Now podcast, and kept hearing uberkey uberkey on i think it was episode 175. The concept of ubery key was pretty interesting, a usb device that can generate a long static password without you entering it. This can be in entering WEP or WPA keys, your normal login password etc.

I then tried to google uberkey, then realised that it was actually spelted as yubikey instead of uberkey.

Yubikey is a usb keyboard that generates a 12 character yubi ID, and a 44 character OTP or 44 static characters long password on pressing the button found on the token. The concept was interesting, especially we don’t need to rememeber long cryptographically strong password anymore. The price pitch was rather attractive @ 25USD for a single unit, and @ 20 USD when the MOQ is 10.The yubikey support openID login through it’s yubiID and OTP authentication. However this like any other OTP systems, it requires an internet connection to verify the authenticity of the id and OTP. There are several API and source code available for the development of the yubi key.

I was thinking of how can i use the yubikey for multiple sites w/o compromising the key, one possible solution on using this on multiple website or login, could be to prepend the password with a password that you normally use and subsequently use the static password generated by the yubikey. Some issues i normally face while doing such things is that the website only allows password of length which are like 12 characters or so. What is wrong with these sites? Coming to this point, i usually do a md5 on my password(which depends on which site i visit), for example my google account password could be googPASSSWORD and yahoo could be yahoPASSWORD. [Psss i use vimperator to do a md5 hash on my password, by pressing "o md5 googPASSWORD". ] This is then entered as the password for my login, and some of them refused it as they only allow 12 characters. Sites that only allow 12 characters worry me, i have visited site and registered with site that stores my password in plaintext! First i assumed it is in plaintext, because when i request for a forget password, they return me the same password that i have entered. What is wrong with these sites, they should have a reset password function during “Forget password”. It is also unlikely that they have encrypted the password with a public key and subsequently decrypted it with their private key, this is way too much work compared to the reset password feature! So how do you remember all your password. Another way to avoid all these problem of password for websites, is to make use of www.bugmenot.com, they have pre-registered accounts that just works. This is very useful for sites that require log in before downloading, searching in forum, etc.

SSL certificates as talked about in Security Now 177, has been kinda of compromised. Only for md5 signed certs though. It seems that a group of researchers made use of 200 PS3[Yeah powerful PS3 SPU at it's best?]  to brute force a fake root CA certificate that is valid. This would then allow them subsequently create SSL certificates for any site! The podcast talks about how to fix this locally on your PC, by removing all the CA certs that are md5 signed. Do check the podcast out for more details on how to drop these certs from your OS.

Been busy these days, going to post more later on.

While clearing up my backlog of videocast, revision 3 system ep 083 was talking about camera os.

chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK

Do check this above link if you are a canon powershot use.
Extracted from the site

* RAW – CHDK can record raw files, giving you access to every bit of data the sensor saw, without compression or processing. Raw files can be manipulated on the camera, or processed on your PC. CHDK also has experimental support for the open DNG raw standard.
* Override Camera parameters – Exposures from 64s to 1/60.000s with flash sync. Full manual or priority control over exposure, aperture, ISO and focus.
* Bracketing – Bracketing is supported for exposure, aperture, ISO, and even focus.
* Video Overrides – Control the quality or bitrate of video, or change it on the fly.
* Scripting – Control CHDK and camera features using ubasic and Lua scripts. Enables time lapse, motion detection, advanced bracketing, and much more. Many user-written scripts are available on the forum and wiki.
* Motion detection – Trigger exposure in response to motion, fast enough to catch lightning.
* Edge overlay – Detect the edges in a scene, and display them later. Ideal for timelapses, stop-motion, stereography and much more.
* Live Histogram – CHDK includes a customizable, live histogram display, like those typically found on more expensive cameras.
* Zebra-Mode – Displays under and overexposure areas live on the screen.
* GRIDS – Create custom grids and display whichever one suits your shooting conditions.
* Multi-Lingual Interface – CHDK supports about 13 languages, and adding more languages is simple.
* DOF Calculator – Display detailed DOF information on the screen.
* Customizable OSD – Improved display of battery status, free space, camera parameters, and much more. Fully customizable with an on-screen editor.
* Filebrowser – Manage files without a PC.
* Textreader – Display text files on your camera.
* Games – Play Reversi, Sokoban or 4-in-a-Row on your camera.
* USB remote – Simple DIY remote allows you to control your camera remotely.
* Benchmark – Compare the performance of your SD cards.
* User Menu – Edit your own customizable User-Menu for fast access to often used features.
* there is even more → read the Manual & explore this wiki.

Sounds pretty exciting, do check this out if you own a powershot. Makes me tempted to get a powershot myself.

My first screencast, took about 1 day plus of fiddling and trying out different software.
1. In the end i used wink for the screen capture and annotation
www.debugmode.com/wink/
2. Camstudio use to capture the output from the swf
camstudio.org/
3. Audicity for trimming and fade out of MP3
audacity.sourceforge.net/
4. Virtualdub for encoding and putting the mp3 together
www.virtualdub.org/

Hope everyone enjoys it, though the upload quality is really bad.

Some links on using vimperator as well
1. www.linux.com/feature/114419
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimperator