How good is Ilford XP2?
I’m a very amateur photographer – I like the results of taking photos enough to have developed an interest in the process. To this end I still use a 1970s vintage Pentax MX, which has forced me to learn a little something about the interaction of shutter speed, aperture and film choice.
I use Kodak colour slide and print film predominantly, and a couple of years ago I bought an Epson Perfection V700 scanner so I scan directly from the film. My results have been mixed: sometimes I feel the film is just too grainy, and the scanner simply not sharp enough, but I have also been quite pleased with some shots and I am now at least more in control of the post-processing. Tesco will develop a 36 exposure film for only a pound, and the 7dayshop sell film at pretty reasonable prices which makes experimenting a fairly inexpensive pastime.
I have tried Ilford XP2 a couple of times in the past, and been pleased enough with the results, but a recent roll I shot seemed very grainy. On closer inspection, it seems that the film is the most grainy when underexposed. The shots that looked the worst were taken indoors in artificial light, when the aperture was wide open and shutter speed down at about 1/60:
A shot on the same roll of film of my aging Audi in a snow shower, taken in reasonably bright daylight, shows no real grain at all:
So whilst I’m a touch disappointed with the grain on the indoor shots, it would seem that I need to treat the film as a 200 speed indoors in order to make sure it’s fully exposed. Bruce Robbins, on his blog Pentax Photography, discusses the intricacies of scanners and graininess, and as XP2 is a chromogenic film it should be less susceptible to the effects of grain. Other photographers have waxed lyrical on the forgiving nature of XP2 when overexposed. I’m now keen try another roll.
In: Photography · Tagged with: 35mm, black and white, exposure, film, Ilford, Pentax MX, Photography, xp2
No! Please don’t do it!
There are some highly entertaining examples on the net of command line program output, but it’s great when you’re doing some system maintenance in Linux on your own machine and a gem unexpectedly crops up:
:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/dovecot restart
[sudo] password:
* Restarting IMAP/POP3 mail server dovecot
Warning: Last died with error (see error log for more information): Time just moved backwards by 11 seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now. http://wiki.dovecot.org/TimeMovedBackwards
NO! Please, it’s not worth it! 
In: Linux · Tagged with: command line, dovecot, funny
Synaptics touchpad, SHMConfig, xorg.conf and Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10
EDIT – Please note that this post only refers to the 64 bit version of Ubuntu.
Some significant changes have been happening to the X server over the past couple of releases of Ubuntu. One of the most noticeable alterations has been the removal of the xorg.conf file from the default Ubuntu install (edit – it was removed during the development cycle but reappeared in the release version).
It is a great thing that X is now at the stage where it knows devices well enough to configure them with no user input, but occasionally a device may be incorrectly set up, or one may want to customise beyond default settings.
Such is the case with my synaptics touchpad. I really like the fact that in Linux I can configure the touchpad to trigger a middle mouse button event when it is tapped with 3 fingers. Left click – one finger, right click – two fingers, middle click – three fingers. In addition, I want to be able to disable the touchpad while typing.
In: Linux · Tagged with: 8.10, ibex, intrepid, SHMConfig, synaptics, touchpad, ubuntu, xorg.conf
FirstClass. On 64 bit AMD64 Ubuntu.
For my OU course in Web Applications Development, I have to use a piece of software called FirstClass, from OpenText. Thankfully the nice people at OpenText have packaged up a version for Debian and Ubuntu, version 8.315-2 (one major release behind Windows admittedly, but perfectly usable). If you’re using a 32 bit version the install couldn’t be easier.
However, I switched to 64bit Linux some time ago now. After emailing OpenText to see if they will be compiling a 64 bit version and receiving a positive negative, I’ve discovered a quick and simple way to get it working without leaving a mess of libraries.
In: Linux · Tagged with: amd64 64 bit, firstclass, libqtmt, Linux, ubuntu
Amarok, Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10, Bluetooth and Sony MBR-100 Audio Receiver
As we all know Amarok is the best music player in the world, and it’s free. It’s only available on Linux at the moment but the devs are working hard to port it to Windows. Anyway I digress. I wanted to explain how I got Amarok playing on my laptop, accessing my music collection on my media server, through my bluetooth dongle, picked up by my Sony MBR-100 bluetooth audio receiver and finally terminating joyfully in my trusty Sennheisers.
In: Linux · Tagged with: alsa, amarok, bluetooth, gutsy, Linux, mbr-100, sony, ubuntu
RT73 on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex
If you’ve used the Ralink RT73 chipset under Ubuntu for any length of time, you’ll know that the default drivers aren’t yet perfect (some supporting evidence). Some may have had more success, but in my experience they drop out regularly and transfer rates are pretty mediocre. The modules used are the rt2x00usb and rt73usb. These are the next generation of Ralink drivers from Serialmonkey, and to be fair they have improved a great deal over the past couple of years. However, there is a more stable driver, which, although requiring some sacrifice, rewards the user with good injection support, great transfer speeds and no drop-outs.
Step forward the rt73 legacy driver….
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