when you’re booting up a raspberry pi and have no display/cable/adapter at hand, it can be useful to navigate the start menu blindly using only the keyboard, e.g. to open a terminal and run a short command.
here are screenshots of the raspberry pi’s operating system and start menu, raspbian jessie (v. 16.02.2017, kernel 4.9) that you can use as a guide: [more...]
cuttlefish are amazing creatures! here’s some footage of one of the resident australian giant cuttlefish (sepia apama) at bass point, shellharbour. it changes not just colour, but also forms seaweed-like appendages on its back to blend in with its new environment.
these three screengrabs from the video above show how much it changed in less than 30 seconds: [more...]
here are three photos of uluru (“ayers rock”) and kata tjuta (“the olgas”) at sunset. i have seen many perfect pictures and postcards of uluru before finally visiting the place, but it took nothing away from the sense of marvel and appreciation when we were actually standing in front of these massive rock formations!
on our great Great Ocean Road road trip, we happened to visit the cape otway lighthouse. i was actually not very interested in lighthouses when we visited the area (and much more excited about the almost guaranteed koala sightings along the road to the lighthouse), but the entrance fee was included in our accommodation and we decided to checked it out. good decision!
it’s a fascinating piece of engineering, and worth talking to a visitor guide who will explain its history and functioning!
here’s a 360-degree sunset photo taken at wentworth falls in sydney’s blue mountains, a few days ago:
underwater photography is expensive! underwater housings for digital cameras – point and shoot as well as SLR or mirrorless cameras – often cost much more than the actual cameras, and other components such as underwater strobes or video lights are similarly expensive (starting at 500 USD for the cheapest brand name lights, and >1000 USD for the ones other divers recommend). however, artificial light makes all the difference under water, where light is increasingly limited the deeper you dive.
i’ve been taking pictures with a Sony RX100 and Meikon RX100 housing, and have also shot some underwater video using GoPro cameras (Hero 3 Black and Hero 5 Black), but until now this was mostly with available light rather than an external light source. because i can’t really justify buying these expensive parts with my relatively infrequent diving trips, i’ve been looking for a relatively inexpensive way to get lights that can be used both for video and still photography.
after several nights of online research, i have decided on an Archon dive light which is both very affordable and popular in online forums (and therefore tested by the masses).
here’s my new setup:
when upgrading my phone recently and trying not to lose anything, my shazam library got corrupted. interestingly, i could still tag just fine, but then noticed later that i couldn’t actually look up my previous tags — any time i tried to open the list, the app crashed a second later.
if you’re in the same situation, here’s a step-by-step tutorial to recover shazamed songs from a corrupted library:
open Root Explorer (or a similar root-enabled app) and navigate to /data/data/com.shazam.encore.android (or any directory starting with the name “com.shazam”, depending on your version).
open the /databases subdirectory and copy library.db to your computer (either by copying it to your “normal” internal storage and transferring, or by sharing directly from the app). [more...]
