Poor man's HDR for PSP 9

I found this interesting technique for creating a sort of HDR image on DGrin, but it was written for Photoshop. So, I had to find a way to convert it to Paintshop Pro (it should work with any version, but since Corel took the product over, some of the short cut keys have changed). I still like using PSP v9, which was the last version made by JASC.

In order to use this technique, you should have taken your image in your camera's RAW format (or two shots from a tripod with a shot exposed for the highlights and a shot exposed for the darker areas in the image). What I found works best is a shot taken for the darker areas (highlights overexposed), as the RAW recovery produces less digital noise when the image is darkened.

Here is the as-shot image, with areas of the sky, totally overexposed:


Here is the same image underexposed by about 1½ stops in the RAW converter:

Open the images in PSP, and copy the dark image as a new layer on the light image (ctrl-C on the dark image to copy, ctrl-L on the light image to paste as a new layer). You now need to move the dark layer below the light layer, but before you can do that, you have to change the light layer from a background layer to a raster layer. Open the layer palette and right click on the background layer. Select "Promote Background Layer" from the context menu:

(click on image for larger view)

You can now drag the lighter layer above the darker one (or drag the darker one below the lighter one):

Make sure the lighter layer (in this case Raster 2) is selected.

Now add a layer mask to the lighter layer, by right clicking on the layer then selecting "New Mask Layer" then "From Image". In the dialog that pops up, select the file name of the darker image (in this case IMG_6556D.TIF), "Source luminance" and "Invert mask data":


The image already looks appreciably better:


For the next step, we first need to duplicate the dark layer (which is at the bottom of the layer stack). Right click on it and select "Duplicate Layer".


Now drag this new layer to the top of the layer stack:


Add a new mask layer from image as outlined above, but this time do not select "Invert mask data":


After the second mask, some slight changes to the contrast:


Now, for the final editing, you need to make copy of all the blended layers. Select the top layer in the stack and press ctrl-shift-C. This will take a bit of time, especially if your camera has a large sensor. When the processing is finished, press ctrl-L to paste a new layer on the top of the layer stack (you could also merge all layers, but I prefer keeping all the layers in case I want to play around with them in the future).

You can now carry out whatever editing you normally do to a photo (contrast, saturation and sharpening in my case). The final product:

Errors after upgrading Firefox in Kubuntu

If you have changed from the default (repository) version of Firefox, to the newest version from Mozilla using Ubuntuzilla, you have to run the following command in order to activate the "Check for updates..." under the help menu:

sudo firefox

After updating, when you try to run firefox as a non-root user, you get the following error:

The bookmarks and history system will not be functional because one of Firefox's files is in use by another application. Some security software can cause this problem.

with a link to this page as a possible fix.

The information given does not fix the problem at all, but removes all your history and leaves the bookmarks inaccessible. The following will fix the problem:

cd /home/USER/.mozilla/firefox/
ls

In this listing will be a directory with the name XYZ.default, where XYZ is some random collection of letters and numbers.

cd XYZ.default
sudo chown USER *

will fix the problem (where USER is your login name).

This problem has only occurred since upgrading to v3.5 and subsequent releases.

Investec Online Registration: unsecure

Investec Asset Management is pushing for investors to register for on-line access to their investment portfolio. However, the registration page is via unsecure http (not https), which means data transmitted is not encrypted. This might not sound like a problem, but they require information such as ID number, street address and full banking details with account numbers. Be aware that it's exactly this kind of information that identity thieves are after.

Here is a screen dump showing some of the info they are looking for, with the unsecure http.

I have tried to contact Investec concerning this matter, but they are singularly disinterested in doing anything about it. The irony is that once you are registered, logging in to their site is via secure http...

Pilanesberg 2009 - enjoyable photo wise

I managed to get some really nice pics on my annual pilgrimage to Bakubung and Pilanesberg.

Lilacbreasted Roller listening to the sound of the camera's shutter:


Nesting Whitebreasted Cormorants:


Marabou Stork admiring its image:


Crocodile waiting for breakfast:


Hippo having fun:


Mr & Mrs Golden Orb Web Spider:


Threebanded Plover:


Dassie (note the fly on its nose):


Vervet Monkey family:


Blackshouldered Kite with prey:


A couple of visitors to Bakubung resort:

Upgrading to Kubuntu Jaunty

Recently finished upgrading my home and work PCs to Jaunty. I must admit I'm pretty impressed with the changes I've seen so far. The upgrade wasn't without hassles though. I used the alternate CD to upgrade (to save on bandwidth) and tested it out on my work PC first. The install script died when it couldn't install a CA-certificate for some or other app. I managed to finish the upgrade by going through a recovery boot from grub, but I had no X. It kept dying when trying to load the nvidia drivers. I tried installing them through apt-get, but that didn't work either, so I left it and went home.

Before I did the home upgrade (I wanted to do it yesterday to use my leftover bandwidth), I first spent time on Google trying to find out about upgrade problems and possible fixes (including how to load and run Envy from the command line). However, the upgrade went through with no hassles. The CA-certificate problem also popped up, but it didn't kill the upgrade script. I had to do two reboots before it worked properly, first time the screen resolution was wrong, with no option to fix it and kded4 was hogging the processor. Rebooting fixed both of those. The second time was to boot into the correct kernel. Then I spent time updating a whole bunch of apps that I use regularly.

I also found that I was running the open source nv driver. At this stage, it's working fine, much better than the nvidia driver that I was using in Intrepid. The fix for my work PC was as simple as changing the driver to nv in xorg.conf.

It really does look much more polished than KDE 4.1. Little things like having the start up tune play through does make me feel happier that someone paid attention to this kind of detail. One thing I really like is that the fonts and the font renderer is so much better.

When I feel up to it, I'll try and get the nvidia drivers to work so I can check out the eye candy.

The upgrade is definitely recommended.

Beer prices in Pretoria pubs

Recently, the South African Minister of Finance added more tax to cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. Usually pub owners misuse this as an excuse to push up the price of their drinks. I am compiling a list of the current price of Windhoek Lager at pubs and restaurants I visit (and will use the info from others as they pass it on to me). Currently (28 Feb 09), Windhoek Lager bottles are on special at R109 for 24 (R4.50 per bottle) at Makro. The normal price is about R125 for 24 (R5.21 per bottle).

Pub	Location	Price	Date
Col'Cacchio	Brooklyn	R16.00	18/01/10
Crystal	Hatfield	R16.00	29/03/10
Geet	Brooklyn	R16.00	25/08/09
Ogalito's	Brooklyn	R16.00	09/03/09
Pachas	Hazelwood	R15.50	23/11/09
Burgandy's	Brooklyn	R15.00	21/01/10
Greek Easy	Brooklyn	R15.00	28/09/09
Kream	Brooklyn	R15.00	26/10/09
Piccola Italia	Monument Park	R15.00	04/03/09
Herr Günther's	Hatfield	R14.50	24/06/09
Oxford English Pub	Hatfield	R14.50	11/12/09
Trademarx	Loftus	R14.50	10/07/09
Adega	Brooklyn	R14.00	01/03/10
BOERgeoisie	Menlo Park	R14.00	27/07/09
Burgandy's	Tukkies	R14.00	26/06/09
Livingstone's	Hatfield	R14.00	27/02/09
Oppieplaas	Waverley	R14.00	18/09/09
Fringes	CSIR	R13.50	07/04/10
Springbok Bar	Hatfield	R13.50	24/06/09
The Corner Cafe	Monument Park	R13.50	10/07/09
Aandklas	Hatfield	R13.00	24/06/09
Achilles	Tukkies	R13.00	25/11/09
Coco Bistro	Erasmuskloof	R13.00	07/03/09
McLarin's	Kilner Park	R13.00	09/03/10
Brooklyn Bowling Club	Brooklyn	R12.00	15/06/10
Pikkies	Prinshof	R12.00	14/09/09
Queen's Cafe	Queenswood	R12.00	22/07/09
Roman's Pizza	Hatfield	R11.95	02/02/10
Cactus Creek	Hazelwood (closed)	R11.90	26/02/09
La Pat	Tukkies (closed)	R11.90	30/06/09
Coffee Buzz	Tukkies	R11.00	25/06/09
Hunter's Grill	Silverton	R11.00	25/11/09
Harlequins	Groenkloof	R10.50	18/06/10
Oom Gert se Plek	Tukkies	R10.50	04/02/10
Picasso's	Villeria	R10.50	12/01/10
Toutrekpark	Villeria	R8.50	07/05/10

Current Makro price (15/05/10): R114.95/24 (R4.79 per bottle).

Herr Günther's was not allowed to sell Windhoek Lager when we visited the pub. SAB is their major sponsor, and for the duration of the soccer FedCup in South Africa, they were only allowed to sell SAB beers. The barman was kind enough to give me their price on Windhoek Lager though.

Trademarx has become the first to increase prices (R13.50 to R14.50), citing the recession as a source. However, the price of Windhoek Lager at Makro has not changed, so the price increase has probably more to do with them having to shut down during the soccer FedCup.

Blacklisted

• Hunter's Grill: live music (venue too small for amplified music)
• Livingstone's: disagreement with management (obnoxious) about loud music
  
• Pikkies: loading the bill

UPDATE
Establishments in red in the table have recently increased their prices. These will now be updated in a new blog.

I hate flash

This goes back a long way, when one used to hit a flash site and it hogged the download, even if you didn't have the flash player installed. But, what seems to be happening more and more these days is that Web developers are building flash-only sites: ie, sites which rely on flash for everything, including the navigation, with no html alternative. This irritates me even more than the flash script hogging the whole download. I still refuse to install flash, and have even installed the Firefox flashblock extension. For the past ten years, I regularly get told, "you're behind the times, just install flash". However, that only makes me more adamant that I don't need it.

What I'm pleased to find is that I am not alone out there. Googling the phrase "I hate flash" comes back with almost 20k hits (153k: 12/9/09), the most eloquent being this one.

This is a collection of flash-only sites that I have found:

Telkom SA's do broadband (lost a potential customer for adsl)
Sinotech SA (not that I'd buy any of their products, just wanted to look at what's available)
Wyckedd Foods (I like their products, and have a printed list, so don't need their site)
MNA Brewing (Text based, but uses flash navigation only)
Spengler Medical Equipment
Amalgamated Appliances (see my Russell Hobbs rant)
Subaru SA
Legacy Hotels
Scribd documents, for instance Linux starter pack
Wodim (I was looking for info on the wodim cd burning app when I came across this site).
Ekuthuleni Lodge
Crumpler camera bags
Kuswag Hoërskool

I have deliberately not included photography sites - there are a myriad of those too.

I recently purchased a Samsung NC10 netbook, and was horrified to find that the online user manual (the only manual available) was a flash app. Fortunately, I could figure my way around fairly easily as I dumped windows in favour of Ubuntu, and there's plenty of help for that out there!

Another reason for avoiding flash from PC Pro Magazine
"Mozilla is kicking off with reminders to upgrade Adobe Flash Player, which has been held responsible for a series of malware attacks."

Russell Hobbs rant

I recently bought a Russell Hobbs Pet Cyclonic 1800 vacuum cleaner (model 13944).



It worked really well for a while, but then one day it started making a really awful racket. Being me, I had to find out what was causing the racket, so I stripped the machine (mistake I know - I should have just taken it back). I traced the problem to the roller brush, so I stripped that too. This was a bit more tricky, as the bearing shaft had melted into one of the end plates of the roller brush. However, a bit of coaxing, and I was eventually able to get the endplates off. What had happened was that hair (probably mine) had gotten inside the roller brush and wrapped itself around the shaft and the endplate. Eventually, there must have been so much of this hair that it caused the shaft to heat up to such an extent that

• the hair melted into the plastic of the endplate;
• the shaft melted into the end plate; and
• the bearing no longer fitted in its housing in the roller brush.

It was the bearing rattling inside the roller brush which was causing the racket.

Hair melted into the endplate:






Where the shaft had melted into the endplate (this is the outside end of the endplate):




The bearing, showing clearly that it no longer fits in its housing (note the gap above the bearing):



Ok, so now I'd stripped it, so the warranty is no longer valid, so I thought I'd just buy a new roller brush. This was just the start of my nightmare.

First of all, trying to find the local agent was a mission all on it's own. The South African importer/distributor is Amalgamated Appliances and they do have a Website, the only problem is it's 100% flash driven so useless to me (I hate flash and refuse to install it). Through a service agent for another product, I managed to find the agent in my home town. He said he'd try to get it for me and let me know. Two weeks went by with no word, so I phoned again, and he said Amalgamated Appliances still had not come back to him. After another week, I phoned again, and he told me Amalgamated Appliances carried NO spares for this particular vacuum cleaner.

I thought, the Internet is your friend, so maybe I could source it from overseas. I spent virtually one whole day trying trace the roller brush for this particular machine, without any success. So I decided to try to ask Russell Hobbs UK directly.

Through a process lasting several weeks, I eventually got them to send me the roller brush. It arrived about two weeks ago. This is what I was wanting:



but what I got was the item on the box:



the turbo brush for the same vacuum cleaner.

Now what do I do? Of course I emailed them immediately, and a few days later, I received this reply:

Dear Sir



Thank you for your e-mail.



We note your comments and advise that unfortunately, the roller brush for this model is not available as a spare part. However, you may return the incorrect brush to our Service Department in Manchester where a refund will be processed.



We would also ask you to please contact the following regarding your vacuum cleaner:-


Amalgamated Appliances
P O Box 39186
Booysens 2016
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: 0027 (11) 626 3415
Fax: 0027 (11) 626 1782
Website: www.amap.co.za



Please note that this company is not a Service Agent for Salton but they do sell and repair products so they may be able to assist you further with your enquiry.

This really bugs me, as I cannot understand why the roller brush is not a spare part. The brushes do most of the work for the vacuum cleaner, and they must wear out with time.

Also, I have to return the turbo brush to the UK for a refund, but the postage from South Africa to the UK costs more than the turbo brush, and will I get refunded for that??

From the local agent's comments on Amalgamated Appliances, as well as the negative comments about them on hellopeter.com, I'm not sure that it's worth me wasting my breath and chasing my blood pressure up further by trying to contact them.

All in all, a rather expensive lesson...

[update]
I started a thread on a local forum, to test the opinions of others. Much to my surprise, a member of that forum offered to see if he could fix the roller brush. I took him up on his offer, and fix it he did, within a couple of hours too! He made a shim for the bearing, and then rebored the roller brush to take the shimmed bearing. What's more, the very kind gentleman refused to accept payment for his services. It's wonderful that such people still exist.

[update 2]
On the way to fetch the roller brush, someone drove into the back of my car at a traffic light.

This has become a very expensive vacuum cleaner...

[update 3]
One month after the roller brush was repaired (used four times), I decided to open the roller brush to see what it looked like. As I expected there was a build up of hair again.

Hair on the damaged endplate:


Hair around the shaft at the undamaged endplate:


The hair removed from the roller brush: left from the undamaged end and right from the damaged end


This vacuum cleaner is clearly a very high maintenance item...

VirtualBox, USB & Kubuntu Intrepid

First of all, USB will not work with VirtualBox OSE found in the Ubuntu repositories. You have to download the compiled binary files from Sun. There are many, many Internet references to getting the USB system to work in VirtualBox, but very few make this very important point. You can get your VirtualBox system up and running using the OSE version, in order to make sure that everything works according to the book. After that, you can install the binaries from Sun, which will pick up your virtual machine and its settings with no problem, including the VirtualBox Guest Additions, if they are installed (which should be as far as I'm concerned, but getting those additions installed has issues of its own).

First off, you must add yourself to the group vboxusers (System>KUser Manager). Select the Groups tab and look for vboxusers (#121 on my system). Click on it and you will get the "Group Properties" dialog. Find your username in the right hand box, select yourself and add it to the group. Close the User Manager.

Now comes the magic bits. You now have to do some editing.

Edit mountdevsubfs.sh:

sudo kate /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

Near the beginning of the file, you will see the following:

do_start () {
#
# Mount a tmpfs on /dev/shm
#
SHM_OPT=
[ "${SHM_SIZE:=$TMPFS_SIZE}" ] && SHM_OPT=",size=$SHM_SIZE"
domount tmpfs shmfs /dev/shm tmpfs -onosuid,nodev$SHM_OPT

#
# Mount /dev/pts. Master ptmx node is already created by udev.
#
domount devpts "" /dev/pts devpts -onoexec,nosuid,gid=$TTYGRP,mode=$TTYMODE
}

Add the following lines before the final brace (}) (copy and paste them to avoid errors such as unwanted line breaks):

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Save mountdevsubfs.sh

Now run mountdevsubfs.sh:

sudo /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh start

You now need to edit two rules files:

sudo kate /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

Add the following lines at the end:

# USB devices (usbfs replacement)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0664", GROUP="vboxusers"

Now edit the basic-permissions rules file:

sudo kate /etc/udev/rules.d/40-basic-permissions.rules

Modify the first two active lines so that they look like this:

# USB devices (usbfs replacement)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", MODE="0664", GROUP="vboxusers"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0664", GROUP="vboxusers"

(What you should essentially have had to do was add [, GROUP="vboxusers"] to the end of both lines.)

Now restart the udev service:

sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

If everything went according to plan, your USB devices should now be selectable from the VirtualBox. You can now install the drivers for the devices under the guest operating system.

Note1: you may have to reinstall the Guest Additions after installing Sun's non-OSE VirtualBox.

Note2: active devices used by the VirtualBox will not be accessible to the host system while VirtualBox is running. For devices such as flash disks, I prefer to mount them through the host OS, then access them from the guest OS via the /media directory (which I have as a shared folder under VirtualBox). This means both OSes can access those devices.

Note3: if you want to run a tablet under your guest OS, make sure it is working in the host OS and make sure it is active in the VirtualBox's USB filtes before you install the guest OS drivers. You may have to disable mouse integration in the Guest Additions to get it to work in the guest OS (guest OS main window menu>Machine>"Disable Mouse Integration"). My Genius WizardPen 5x4 (UC Logic Tablet WP5540U) works, but the response is a little slow when drawing. Judging from the way it draws, I think it's a combination of both the VirtualBox video driver and the way that the tablet's event manager is shared between the two operating systems. It is usable though.

Very useful links:
VirtualBox FAQ
Ubuntu VirtualBox Community Document

There were many others that I looked at, but these contained most of what was necessary to get my scanner running under XP in a VirtualBox