My Web Presence

Here is a summary of my presence on the Internet, as of Oct 2009.

www.davebartrum.plus.com
My default web space at my PlusNet ISP account.  Nothing here but an almost blank index.html

www.bartrum.me.uk
My domain hosted at PlusNet, with these subsections:
    Bookmarks - PHP to maintain useful links for Dave, Maureen, Tim and Emma.
    PhotoGallery – First attempt at a photo gallery, using XML, XSLT and CSS.  If nothing else, this is pretty neat use of the technology.  Very simple XML data (containing no formatting information) is sent to the Browser, which then retrieves a separate XSLT stylesheet to translate the XML into standard XHTML, which itself references a CSS sytlesheet.
    PhotoMagDatabase - Partial built MySQL database of Digital Photo magazines.
    PhotoBlog – Some useful info about digital photography, in an editable page.
    Photos – More recent attempt at photo gallery using the powerful WordPress Blog software (based on PHP and MySQL).

www.upaheight.com
Website for Joe Embleton’s window cleaning business.  I built it with mostly HTML and some PHP.  It is also hosted at my ISP account on PlusNet.

davebartrum.wordpress.com
My most recent WordPress Blog at WordPress.com.
This contains various techy articles of mine.  You’re looking at it now!

www.davebartrum.co.uk
My most recent domain, hosted at FreeVirtualServers.com.
I plan to try out a Wiki at this site.  Perhaps DocuWiki.

www.flickr.com
Selection of my photos under Dave Bartrum at Flickr.

Full image after Photoshop

Posts To Do

Here are some topics I’d like to cover:

1. My experience of using C# for my photo uploader
2. CoolIris rant
3. My new Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet

DLNA Players for iPad

This is my experience of various music players on iPad, preferably DLNA players which can select music from my PC running Serviio Server program and play them through TV.

MLPlayer lite
Can select music from Serviio running on PC
Will play chosen music file (mp3) on iPad, but not on TV.
No chance to create playlists.
As soon as move away from the file playing, the music stops.

Remote

Links to iTunes account on PC to provide access to all music in the iTunes library.
Selected music plays on the PC. This is a remote control for the PC, so best to have the PC plugged in to a hifi.
Using iTunes Home Share allows a laptop to share the music from the PC. This program can then remote control iTunes on the laptop, including playing music from the PC.
Can create playlists

Fusion Stream
Can navigate through music on Serviio Server on PC, but complains about playing any.
Can add files to play list and edit order etc.
But cannot play!

MediaConnect
Can navigate Serviio Server on PC and select a file to play. It plays on iPad.
Seems to support a “queue” of music to play through a DLNA renderer, but couldn’t get this to do more than one song.

Controller – select DLNA renderer
Lite version only allows access to first 5 files on each album, and only plays first x mins of each track.

When to Sell a Share

The following advice was given on the MoneyTalk podcast from The Motley Fool (fool.co.uk), in Dec 2011.

1. If You Need the Cash

You should invest for 3 years or more.  Any cash you need within that time, should not be invested in stock market.  Plan for longer term, so invest in stock market if you want to invest for your child’s further education, some 18years away.  As that date approaches, you may want to sell some shares to move money into less volatile investments and ultimately into cash.

2. A Better Opportunity

Invest in the best opportunities, given your attitude to risk and investment strategy.  If you find a better opportunity, then it may be worth selling a poorer investment in order to take up the better one.  However, you should avoid trading too frequently, because you will pay too much in transaction costs.  In assessing an opportunity, you shuld be looking at fundamentals, such as the strength and vision of the leadership team, or the revenue prospects etc.  These should be things that are not likely to change rapidly.

3. You Don’t Agree with Company’s Change in Strategy

For example, if company decides to break up its business and sell off some parts to leave a core business.  You may not agree that that is a good decision, or that it leaves you too exposed in one sector.  Similarly, a company may decide to innovate or branch into other markets, which you are not comfortable with.  If you can’t sleep at night, for worrying about an investment, whether it’s company strategy or volatility or whatever, then you shouldn’t be in that investment.

4. Realign/Rebalance Portfolio

Due to any buy/sell activity, or due to changing company strategy, or even just due to growth in one company in your portfolio, then you may find your portfolio becomes unbalanced.  You should regularly evaluate your portfolio, to understand how much it is diversified and if it is uncomfortably unbalanced, you may need to sell one share in favour of another.

5. Evaluation

If you value a business at a certain share price, you may decide to buy the share if it is below this value, and when it reaches that evaluation target, a value investor (who doesn’t care about the compay strategy, leadership team, revenues etc) may decide to sell at this point.  This is not a style that suits everyone, but if it is your style, then this may be your primary reason for selling a share.

Using my iPhone 3GS as Hotspot for my iPad

Turn off wifi on both iPhone and iPad
On iphone, go to Setting->General->Network->Personal Hotspot and set to On.
Turn on Bluetooth on both devices and connect
Now if iPhone has a Edge or 3G connection, you can use it on iPad (via Bluetooth)
I’m writing this post using iPad connected to my phone in this way

I’ve heard there may be restrictions according to your carrier, but this seems to work with my Vodafone account.

Insurance

LG25899730 Policy Terms

Discounts

This is a collection of discounts I can get:

1. VoucherCloud app on iPhone

2. VoucherCodes.co.uk?

3. BA’s Altitude / Merk’s Discount scheme

4. BAClubs discounts

BA Clubs are pleased to announce the following new or recently renewed discounts for all BA Staff, Friends and Families (unless stated otherwise):

Turboventure (www.turboventures.co.uk)

10% discount off all activities (inc 2468 Driving Experience, Clays Shooting, 6×6 Blindfold Driving, Crossbow Shooting/Target Archery and more)

Visit the website

www.turboventures.co.uk

or call 0191 232 5872.

Centre for Life

£1.50 off adult entry and £1 off child entry on presentation of BA staff pass

Newcastle Greyhounds

Saturday 25th September

Free Entry, Free Drink, Free Pie & Pee Supper or Hot Roast Sandwich

Call Newcastle Greyhound Stadium on 0191 2105300 and quote B.A.

Matfen Go Ape

20% off entry price

Use promo code MBA458

Ullswater Steamer (BA Staff Only)

10% off ticket prices on presentation of BA staff pass

Blue Reef Aquarium

15% off entry on presentation of BA staff pass

Further information on all these deals and any future discounts are available on the BA Clubs Website (

www.baclubs.com

- Newcastle, Discounts Section) and the BA Clubs notice board in the canteen.

While these offers are available to all BA Staff, Friends and Families, they have been made possible through BA Clubs. If you are not currently a member please consider joining (it’s only £1.09 a month) to help support these great offers and avoid missing out on future offers which may be BA Clubs members only. Check out the BA Clubs website for information on all existing clubs

www.baclubs.com/Newcastle

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 8 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 59 posts. There were 3 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 341kb.

The busiest day of the year was November 19th with 33 views. The most popular post that day was My C#.NET Photo Upload Project.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were en.search.wordpress.com, blog.thingsdesigner.com, bigextracash.com, google.co.in, and search.conduit.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for canon icc profiles photo pro ip4500, adobe rgb pixma ip5000, wordpress concepts, canon ip4500 icc profile, and cnb92ca0.icm.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

My C#.NET Photo Upload Project November 2008
3 comments

2

Printing with Canon PIXMIA iP4500 February 2009
1 comment

3

Colour Management on my iP4500 January 2010

4

WordPress Concepts October 2008
1 comment

5

Creating WordPress Themes October 2008

Moo Picture

This is a short article on how I got a nice printed output for a picture of a cow I took in Yorkshire, in October 2010.

Here’s the original picture (reduced for web) which was quite good to start with.  I was just lucky with the shot, crouching down to take a quick snap as I saw the cow approaching.

The camera settings were: Canon EOS 450D, Auto (F5.0, 1/30sec), ISO100, sRGB.

I made a few adjustments in Photoshop, cropped and adjusted colours/contrast etc slightly, then sharpened the face.  Here’s what I wanted to print:

Since the image is quite bright, I decided to try and print on Matt paper.  So I used Matt Inkjet Photo Paper (from the Stationary Box, 220gm, 40 sheets for £1.99 in Jan 2007) and my Canon iP4500 inkjet printer loaded with cheap compatible print cartridges, from eBay.

I was impressed with the quality of print, although grass is a little yellow on test print.  Edited image to reduce yellow saturation by -27.  Finally, I printed on A4 with Photoshop settings of:

Color Management – Document
Color Handling: Printer Manages Colors (YES, REALLY! EVEN THOUGH UP TO NOW I’VE MADE PHOTOSHOP MANAGE COLORS)
Rendering Intent: Relative Colorimetric

Page Setup
Media Type: Matte Photo Paper
Print Quality: High
Color/Intensity: Manual
 Matching – Color Correction: None
 
Here’s the final result:

Using Garmin FIT and GPX Data

Problem 1. How can Garmin GPS data be exchanged with others for footpaths, walks, cycle routes, running routes etc.

www.iFootpath.com

Problem 2. What are common formats and how can Garmin’s FIT files be converted into these formats for sharing

Problem 3. How can route information be downloaded and used creatively on an iPhone.

Printing from XP onto Canon ip4500 Connected to Windows 7 PC

The Problem:  I can connect my Windows 7 desktop directly to my Canon IP4500 printer, using a USB, and successfully print to it.  I can connect my XP laptop directly to my Canon IP4500 printer, using a USB, and successfully print to it.  However, I can’t print from my XP laptop over my wireless home network to the printer, while it is connected to my Window 7 desktop.

I had to change my Workgroup of the laptop so it matched the Workgroup on the desktop machine, and this allowed me to see the printer from my XP machine.  However, when I attempted to connect to the printer, it told me the Windows 7 machine does not contain the necessary driver.

I even found the ip4500.inf file and selected it from the install driver prompts, but it complained about this.

The Solution:

I eventually stumbled across the following article, which explained a similar problem on a HP printer.

http://www.sevenforums.com/network-sharing/16540-w7-x64-xp-x86-printer-networking-3.html

I looked in my ip4500.inf file and found a similar problem.  The INF file contained the following lines:

;WindowsXP
[Canon.NTx86.5.1]
"Canon iP4500 series" = CNM_0326XP, LPTENUM\CanoniP4500_series7354, CanoniP4500_series
"Canon iP4500 series" = CNM_0326XP, USBPRINT\CanoniP4500_series7354, CanoniP4500_series

However, the printer name in the Add Printer dialog was “\\W7-DESKTOP\Canon Inkjet iP4500 series”. Notice the word “Inkjet” in the name.  So I modified the .INF file to say this:

;WindowsXP
[Canon.NTx86.5.1]
"Canon Inkjet iP4500 series" = CNM_0326XP, LPTENUM\CanoniP4500_series7354, CanoniP4500_series
"Canon Inkjet iP4500 series" = CNM_0326XP, USBPRINT\CanoniP4500_series7354, CanoniP4500_series

I pointed to this .INF in the Add Printer dialogs, and hey presto, it worked.

Free Image Editing Online

Malcolm Murphy came across this site the other day, Basically, it’s a free, online image editor, with much of the same functionality as Photoshop (and also not blocked on our work network)

www.pixlr.com