iPhone panoramic photo prints – £5.99!

OK, so you’ve taken an awesome panorama with your iPhone but where do you print it? OddPrints offers printing at 18"x4" which is the perfect ratio for iPhone photos. Better still it’s only £5.99 !

November 28, 2012 · (Updated November 28, 2012) · 1 min · matt

Connecting to EC2 from Chrome’s Secure Shell using only a PEM file

Gee, what a title. I know this post is going to be popular. First, you need to generate your public key from your private key like this: ssh-keygen -y -f yourkey.pem > yourkey.pub Then, in Secure Shell, select the “Import…” link to bring up a file picker. You must import two files for each identity. A private key and a public key. For example, you would select both “yourkey.pem” and “yourkey....

November 15, 2012 · (Updated November 15, 2012) · 1 min · matt

Importing photos from a Canon EOS camera with Ubuntu 12.10

For some reason, when I try to connect my Canon EOS 7D in Linux I get this error: Unable to mount Canon Digital Camera Error initialising camera: -1: Unspecified error I get no love from lsusb: matt@beast:~$ lsusb Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2....

November 10, 2012 · (Updated November 10, 2012) · 1 min · matt

Allow worldwide shipping with Google Checkout/Wallet java SDK

Google’s java SDK for interacting with the checkout API is not a fun experience. It’s generated from the WSDL using JAXB which has a unique ability to generate client interfaces that no human could ever “design”. It’s not actually that hard to write code with, you just have to think like a deranged machine. By default, the only allowed shipping destination will be your country. If you wish to allow worldwide shipping, you have to do something like this:...

October 6, 2012 · (Updated October 6, 2012) · 1 min · matt

How to add zero-padding to a folder full of numbered files

Have you got a folder of files that look like this? file_1.png file_2.png file_3.png file_10.png file_11.png file_12.png file_100.png But what you really want this: file_001.png file_002.png file_003.png file_010.png file_011.png file_012.png file_100.png Then, my linux-loving friend, run this: rename 's/\d+/sprintf("%03d",$&)/e' *.png

September 27, 2012 · (Updated September 27, 2012) · 1 min · matt

Fun and games with the new PayPal java SDK

Up until now I’ve handled my payments for stolencamerafinder and OddPrints with Google Wallet. It’s not fantastic api (I’ve even had to fix it) but it’s pretty straight forward. There’s good documentation and the SDK saves you from writing all that boilerplate for talking to a web service. I’ve had quite a few requests for allowing PayPal so I’ve spent the last couple of days flicking through their documentation and was quickly shown that:...

August 17, 2012 · (Updated August 17, 2012) · 5 min · matt

The Bristol Two Towers Running Challenge

Fancy a running challenge around Bristol that’ll test your legs and your navigation? All you have to do is touch both Cabot Tower and Troopers Hill Tower (er, chimney) and finish where you started. Troopers Hill Tower Cabot Tower The rules are pretty simple: You have to touch both Cabot Tower and Troopers Hill Tower. Any order. You must start and finish at the same place (of your choice). No pausing of your watch (for traffic etc....

July 30, 2012 · (Updated July 30, 2012) · 1 min · matt

How to install Google Voice

Oh jeez, really? A blog post about doing something so easy? Well, yes because it took me about an hour of messing around and so if this helps save one person from the pain, then it’s worth writing. If you’re in a rush or already bored, jump to the short answer. If you use gmail, you may see the option in the Chat widget to “Call phone”: Great. Sounds fun, let’s try it:...

July 12, 2012 · (Updated July 12, 2012) · 2 min · matt

Passing your credentials in order to deploy to Google App Engine with Ant

If you use the example ant script provided by Google you’ll face the following error: Your authentication credentials can't be found and may have expired. Please run appcfg directly from the command line to re-establish your credentials. Sure, you can run appcfg.sh from the console, and login and all will be fine next time. Well, for 24 hours before your credentials are booted from the cache. Here’s my ant target that does the same thing but takes the credentials interactively using the input task....

July 11, 2012 · (Updated July 11, 2012) · 1 min · matt

Do you know Sarah who just turned 21? (Windsor, UK)

This is an appeal to anyone who may know a 21 year old Sarah (born April 6th, 1991) in Windsor, UK. Her camera and other precious items have been found and we want to get them back to her. Sarah a celebrated her 21st birthday on friday 6th april. she got picked up by a taxi in windsor on sat morning. a bag containing a pink floral photo album celebrating her life upto her 21st birthday, camera, scarf and other things were left....

April 11, 2012 · (Updated April 11, 2012) · 1 min · matt