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Pasture and nature between Haarzuilens and Vleuten

Tjeerd — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:29:27 +0000

Today I filmed in the grasslands between Vleuten and Haarzuilens with my Canon 550D-camera. It was nice weather with sun and clouds. This is actually the third or fourth time that I put some effort in filming and you can notice that in the experimental way it is done. Also I still need to find my tripod, because it is sometimes too shakey. But the image stabilizer of the Canon telelens does a good job to reduce the shaking.

Bollywood movies

Tjeerd — Sat, 15 May 2010 08:29:33 +0000

Will hollywood do a re-make of the following movie called Alluda Majaka with the actor Chiranjeevi? Never heard about both the movie and the actor, but a movie with ingredients like a flying tractor must be hilarious.

Photographing grasslands in Vleuten and Haarzuilens

Tjeerd — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:09:45 +0000

This week I finally made some time to take photographs of the grasslands between Vleuten and Haarzuilens. I had luck with the weather and I was just in time because when I came home, they mowed all dandelions. This is my first walk here with my new camera and it all seems to work fine.

You can see the pictures here .

New photocamera, Canon 550d

Tjeerd — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:24:13 +0000

A few weeks ago I heard about the new Canon 550D camera which was going to hit the market. This photocamera allows you to record movies in full HD resolution using your normal photography lenses. After seeing some recordings with this camera I was completely astonished by the filming quality. It looks so professional. I immediately ordered the camera and within a few days I received it. Unfortunately I don’t have that much time yet to experiment with it, but I managed to record from behind glass (at home) some hares in the pasture. But it is at 500 mm without a tripod, so it proves that it can record, but the quality is not representative.

Another issue is that my computer cannot manage to play the HD files, so I also need to buy a faster computer. Which probably will be required if I want to really start editing movies, my laptop is not fast enough.

Busy in our new house

Tjeerd — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:04:32 +0000

Not that I’m not writing anything at all at the moment, but since we got the keys of our new house two weeks ago, we are constantly busy with our new house. You can read updates about the work we are doing in our new house at our special website. If you want access to that site, please let me know.

2001: A Space Oddysey

Tjeerd — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:23:05 +0000

For years the movie 2001: A Space Oddysey was on my todo list, I watched it this evening. I’ve seen A Clockwork Orange – also from Kubrick - which was already vague, but this movie also has a sort of storyline which is really making it ‘complex’ actually. The focus is really on graphics and sound and some sort of story which is probably something for the viewer to think about.

What I dislike about modern day movies is that there is so much continuous action, overloaded with special effects, a lot of talking and not that much to think about. Then A Space Oddysey is a big contrast with that. Not bad to have seen it now finally.

Victim Support

Tjeerd — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:59:14 +0000

This week my bike was stolen. I walked out the frontdoor and I only saw Nina’s bike, but not mine. I could make a hassle of it, but gone means gone. The first thing I did is look on Marktplaats for second hand Kronans and luckily I found a black one for sale and not that far away from where we are living. I called the seller and two hours later I had a ‘new’ bike to ride on.

In the evening I sent a complaint to the police online. I could specify all details of my stolen bike. I knew that in Utrecht it is quite useless with so many bikes, but perhaps my complaint could be used in the statistics.

Today I got an e-mail where they said my case was not detailed enough to go any further. Although they understood that it can be a thorough experience. They offered me victim support for emotional support. I liked my stolen bike a lot, but there were also quite some problems with it. My new bike compensates everything for the stolen one, so thanks for the victim support, but no.

Speaking piano and singing robot

Tjeerd — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:55:32 +0000

I saw this one last week somewhere on I think digg, it is about a piano that is mechanically engineered in such a way that it can reproduce speech.

And what about the following robot woman called HRP-4C (see her in movement action here) which uses an advanced Yamaha voice chip to sing. We are getting close and closer to the uncanny valley moment.

8-bit Haddaway – What is love remix

Tjeerd — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:08:08 +0000

Just stumbled on an 8-bit remix of the song What is love by Haddaway, a song from the early nineties. The three guys you see in the car is from a scene in the movie Night at the Roxbury.

CH3SNAS, Mediatomb, Samsung LED TV: header issue

Tjeerd — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:52:50 +0000

This was a hard one to figure out, but I managed to get my Conceptronic CH3SNAS up and running with Mediatomb (DLNA-server) and my Samsung UE32B7000 LED television. The problem was that my television didn’t want to recognize my media files and came up with a message like “unknown format”. To setup the NAS as a DLNA-server – be sure to disable the built-in DLNA server via the admin panel – first install funplug, a good tutorial I used can be found here. The latest funplug has Mediatomb already integrated, so no worries about that.

Now comes the important thing, find your Mediatomb config.xml file. In my case it was located at /ffp/var/mediatomb/config.xml. To edit the file, open it with vi:

In the config file search for the variable named protocolInfo and change it from no to yes:

Enable the custom-http-headers section by removing the tags and enter the following lines, which are essential for the Samsung television to recognize your media files:

Change the mapping in the extensions section:

Somehow the Samsung LED tv will only play files if they are mapped as .MPEG files, even though they can be divx/mpeg/whatever. Not sure why/how, but it seems to be the solution.

Restart Mediatomb, click here for information about daemons. Be sure to clear your Mediatomb database and reindex all media files, this can be done via the Mediatomb web interface which is by default accessible via the IP of your NAS-device, port 49152. When you’ve finished all the steps, your Samsung LED television should play most of your media files flawlessly from your CH3SNAS via DLNA.