It must be a day for computer upgrades to try their best to frustrate me… Ubuntu Feisty has had its try, now the new Vista laptop has a go as Jo tries to download photos from the old Canon Digital IXUS 300 — surprise, it seems that no matter what we do we simply cannot convince the laptop to read the photos from the camera. It can see the camera, but it can’t read anything off them.
“Where’s my camera? Is it repaired? How much will it cost?” I asked yesterday. Today I receive a voice mail message stating that they will endeavour to repair it next week. That is all. I call back to ask how much and get told that the help line can’t help me — the help line has to email the technical support line who might be able to help me. She did tell me that I would be quoted the price of the repair prior to the repair being performed.
Four weeks and no word from Canon. Where’s my camera? Is it repaired? How much will it cost? I rang the help line, the help line can’t help, the help line has to email the technical support who might be able to help. Sounds familiar…
I’m not sure how I’ll survive but I’m now camera-less for four to five weeks, maybe less if Canon can fix my camera sooner. This morning I made my way up and down the hills of Blackburn road into the wilds of Burwood and visited the Canon service centre — expecting a short visit and maybe even for it to be fixed on the spot. Merely filling out the online form to book it in for a repair took at least half an hour, then only after I parted company with it did they tell me that they typically quote four to five weeks, because all parts have to be ordered in from overseas!
<img src="/2004/09/11/t_208-0808_mvi.jpg" class=“left-floating” width=“160” height=“120” alt=”[*]"> Amazing! I’ve had my Canon IXUS 300 for nearly three years, its all but falling apart after me falling on it from a bike stack, and in all that time I’ve never tried to use the movie function! Getting all nostalgic this morning about leaving Westbank terrace, I stood in the middle of the lounge room and spun round, taking my first ever video. Soon as I get it recompressed to slightly less than 3MB for 17 seconds, then I’ll consider putting it here.
Tried to get KDE to recognize my camera. Select Canon IXUS 300 on USB through the control centre, no luck, it can’t see the camera. Tried to follow some of the documentation from the gphoto site, but to no avail.
I’ve got my new toy to play with, I’m happy now. Canon Digital IXUS 300 It’s a millimetre or two thicker than the Ixus APS camera, but the same size in the other dimensions. All I’ve got to do now is learn to use it properly!
Vanity site? Technology experiment? Learning tool? Blog? Journal? Diary? Photo album? I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…
I experiment. I play. I write and I take pictures. Some of the site is organised around topics, other parts are organized by date, then there’s always the cross-references between them.
Its all been here a fairly long time. Like the papers on my desk, or the books on the bedside table, the pile just grew… and it all grew without much plan or structure. I try not to break URLs, so historical oddities abound.
Long ago it started as a learning experiment with a few static HTML pages, then I added a bit of server-side includes and some very ugly PHP. A hand-built journal/blog on top of that PHP, then a few experiments in moving to various static publishing systems. I’ve never wanted a database-based blogging engine, so over the years I’ve tried PHP, nanoblogger, emacs-muse, silkpage and docbook before settling on Emacs Org mode for writing and jekyll for publishing. But the itch remained… I never really liked jekyll and the ruby underneath always seemed so much black magic. So now the latest incarnation is Org mode and hugo.
