Get better with Flickr

Capturing the water drops has always been a to-do thing for me since I caught a glimpse of it in some magazine a decade ago. Never really bothered since I had no good camera to do that.But once I got to lay my hands over the S5 IS(thanks to my friends!!!) I though I should do it ASAP. There were a million snaps of them by then over the internet, but I was still wondering how this could be done. All I knew was I had to click a million and one to get it the way I wanted.That is when I came across this small yet wonderful thing called the EXIF details !!

Flickr says - Almost all new digital cameras save JPEG (jpg) files with EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) data. Camera settings and scene information are recorded by the camera into the image file. Examples of stored information are shutter speed, date and time, focal length, exposure compensation, metering pattern and if a flash was used.

All you need to do is fish for a good photo that makes you think, how the hell did u get this one in Flickr. If luck favours you the Additional Information section of that photo might have the "More Properties" enabled. If that is the case you can get to see details like shutter speed, aperture settings, exposure settings etc. Not a big deal for the pros. but for people who are just getting started like myself, this is a good start :) At least it reduces the need just a million :P.

Check out the ones I took.

IPod Home Theatre

ipod touch receives what i broadcast on my PC!!!

Struck me when I saw this really cool Panasonic home theatre system in Kou's place. You should check that out, its amazing ! The radio receiver which had a range of 10 mts. caught my attention. Have been meddling with my Ipod touch (thanks to my friends) and thought i should make use of the Wi-Fi capability to stream the songs and video.

The idea is simple enough, play any movie on your PC. Find out a way to split the audio into 4 channels, 2 front ones that would come out of the speakers connected to your pc and 2 rear ones that would be connected to your Ipod Touch placed aesthetically.

Hardware:
PC, ethernet card, wifi router, iphone/ipod touch(jail broken) and the speakers!

Applications needed :

Winamp (I got the latest one v5.541) + Shoutcast DSP plugins both the server and the winamp plug-in. These would go into your PC.

You would need the MNPlight radio app on ur iphone/ipod touch. Visit MNPlight website and follow the instructions there to get it installed on your Ipod.

Setup:

1. Install Winamp and the Shout Cast plug-in.
2. Install the Shoutcast server.
3. Open "Edit SHOUTcast DNAS configuration" from start menu.
4. Set the password to null.By default it was "changeme", I just removed this string alone.Save your changes. Once done start the server by clicking SHOUTcast DNAS (GUI) from start menu.
5. Open Winamp and go to preferences and open SHOUTCAST plug-in and go to the output tab.
6. Set Connection Properties by pressing the Connection Button. Set Address to your PC IP. Port number is 8000 by default. Clear the password column(since we set it to null). Leave the Automatic Reconnection property checked.
7. Click the Yellowpages button.Leave the Make Service public option checked. Give some description and type the URL as your PC IP preceded by 2 back slashes(eg: \\192.168.x.x). Clear the ICQ and IRC fields.

8. Now Press the connect button and start playing some media on your Winamp. The connection says how much of transfer happens.But the listener is still 0.
9. Now open the MNPlight app from your iphone/ipodtouch. Go to Radios.Choose the Manually add option and add the PC IP along with the port number(eg: 192.168.x.x:8000).Press "Done" button and then save.

10. The station appears below. Choose the play button, Safari opens the quick time player for streaming in audio. Press the play button and connect your rear speakers.
Your server would say 1 active listener.

There is a bit of lag in the audio (as expected). There a few plug-ins for Winamp to reduce this.

Sit back and enjoy the 3D music !!!