:: Intrepid Spaniel ::

I’m excited for Software Freedom day, the T-shirts are here, the Ubuntu CD’s just got here, but it looks like they had a rough trip.

Please put ISLUG’s SFD event on your calendar, it will be September 13th, (2 days early!) from 7-9 pm. It will be in the Wood River Room at the Pond Students Union Building at ISU. We will have several talks on FOSS programs including FOSS 101: A critical look at Free Software in Education (me), Gaming (zuggy), Programming in a Linux environment (mopey), Free Software on Windows (vog), and getting stuff done (peltkore). I hope to have FretsOnFire running with a Guitar Hero 2 controller that we can play on a projector.

Those who know me know I’ve been a big fan of Canon’s A series digital cameras. They offer a nice mix of size, point and click functionality and they take standard AA batteries so you don’t have to replace the $40 battery pack down the road when you get an new camera and want to give this one to a relative.

For those of you looking to upgrade your aging Canon A series camera for a great price this looks like a good deal. the Canon A560, which has Canon’s new, improved DIGIC III image processor, for $130. The deal might not last, but my recommendation for the camera will until next spring when something better comes along. http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204230694 The A560 would be a great camera if you want to mostly point and click, If you are a more experienced photographer, or want to add more features like optical image stabilization, read on for my recommendations for upgrades. With the prices coming down and and an A570 available for less than $160, I’d recommend the upgrade (Read more…)

Here is a video comparing showing off some of the features of Linux MCE. I really think this is heading in the right direction, but still requires fairly specific hardware according to my research. I’ll try to make a list of hardware that works well to mimic this experience.

This next video is a little like having The Comic Book Guy give the presentation, (Read more…)