The first time I saw some night vision equipment, I was working in a TV sales and repairs shop. One of the bosses friends had some hardware he attached to the front of a camcorder, with which he apparently monitored the local car parks, for the stated reason of car security. I always suspected he was on the look out for a different type of activity, but there you go.
There are two main types of night sights that I have encountered, which basically boil down to passive and active. Passive equipment will attempt to magnify the light levels in a picture via circuitry, whereas an active device will use an infra-red light source (thereby avoiding visible lightwaves, which would alert the wildlife/suspicious persons/sleeping neighbours) and then convert that illumination back into an image that our human eyes can make sense of. If you want a really basic example of how that sort of thing works, pick up a digital camera (even your phone’s camera will do), and point a remote control (TV/HiFi/DVD player etc.) at it. Press one of the buttons, and watch the LEDs illuminate on your camera’s display! A good way to check if remote controls are working btw…
Anyway, check the link for a whole host of night sight equipment, as well as a lot of other optical equipment.

The rules are pretty simple - register with Overstock’s competition by the 7th December, and you could win a prize from their site. How could it be better? How about five of your friends winning a prize at the same time (up to a total value of $1000)? If you are really lucky and win the grand draw prize, then you and your five best friends (they will soon be your best buddies even if they weren’t before ) get a $5000 pot to spend on your prizes!
So, click the link for the “All I want for Christmas Giveaway“, watch the flash presentation and start thinking which of your friends would most appreciate the gift if you win. You can enter once per day, and your friends can also enter in their own right. (Please see the rules section for exact details).

Personally, I would go for some classy diamond earrings for Irina, and maybe a new digital camera for us. Anyway, ChrisD, AlexC, Oleg, NickM and Seb (who could share with Con :)) would be my 5 nominated friends, if we all lived over in America, rather than Europe. Taking a moment to look at overstock’s inventory, I feel I would probably have difficulty in keeping to the 1K or 5K total, but then again its Christmas, so I suppose I could always dip into the bank account to top up the total budget…

I just wanted to show my readers a demonstration of my next toy It is called a HTC TyTn II and will be replacing some of my current equipment…

My current phone (an Orange C550 (a rebadged HTC Hurricane) which crashes and some buttons no longer work all the time.
My current PDA (a HP iPAQ 2210) with a non-functioning directional pad, faulty USB socket, a snapped battery cover and it also crashes.
GPS unit - my current one no longer gets a fix on satellites.
The TyTn II also has a built-in camera, which should be an improvement over my current phone’s. Though without a flash, I don’t think it will be completely replacing our current digital camera.
Anyway, have a play with the demo below, you can spin the model around, slide open the keyboard and tilt the screen.
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As you may have noticed from the Pictures category on this blog, I often upload resized images taken on our digital camera. It came from Irina’s mum, much like the current DV camcorder we use. The camera we had previous to this one was OK, especially as it took better quality images than the webcam I had originally. However, it ate AA batteries like there was no tomorrow. Our current camera also manages to chomp through the special battery as well, but lasts a lot longer, plus we have a spare fully charged up in the camera case normally.

From personal experience, I know the emotions you feel when your hard drive gives up and starts losing files. Obviously, this is not a problem, because everybody backups their important files daily. Oh, you don’t?
Well, just in case you forgot to do so, (I really should start sometime soon), there is still hope! File Recovery is a company that offers a range of applications, whose main aim is to, well, the name sort of gives it away - they concentrate on file recovery software.
If you accidentally delete a file, and do not notice in time, you can easily find it no longer exists in your recycle bin. However, all is not lost - unless the area(s) on the hard drive have already been re-used for a different file, the software is able to recover the file to its original glory. The reason for this is that deleted files simply have their reference removed from the equivalent of the index for your drive.
Similarly, if a virus has infected your machine, and your anti virus software removes the virus, but is unable to recover the lost data, the program can help you get back the much needed data.

Depending on which package you buy, you can also use their partition recovery tool. This is very useful if you have used a utility to change the layout and sizes of your hard drive’s partitions, only to find you did not have a backup of the data lost when you did so. (Yes, I’ve done that as well, though I learnt not to use FDISK after being up for more than 20 hours…)

Have you ever received the dreaded “NTLDR is missing” message? If you have been trying out a new Operating System on a 2nd or 3rd hard drive, you can very easily misconfigure your MBR info, and end up with one or even all your OSs failing to boot. As long as you burn the ISO image included in this software, you have a tool that can easily recover the mistake, and therefore save you from having to completely reinstall Windows, with all the stress and time lost this can cause, not to mention the subsequent application re-installation and configuration.

Finally, if you use memory cards with your digital camera, and have either deleted the files, or even formatted the card itself, there is also a specialized tool designed purely to recover the pictures - a real life saver if you had found the perfect shot, which is not always repeatable…

So, make a small investment to save a large amount of stress in your future - the site is simply laid out, with all bases covered re. questions you might have regarding the software itself, and the process of buying it. The software is dead easy to use, with no unnecessary techno-babble used to confound you.

Whilst there are a plethora of online, community based video sites on the web already, if you are looking for a certain niche, it can be difficult to find what you need with services such as YouTube and Google Video.
For example, if Bollywood or Indian Videos are something that interest you, it can take a while to sort the dross from the crème de la crème.

Aapka Video is a fairly new video sharing site, setup specifically for those with an interest in Indian media.
Although you will find clips from English shows, that feature Bollywood stars, such as the now infamous scenes between the Goody family and Shilpa Shetty in the UK edition of Celebrity Big Brother (see below for one such clip)

You can also find all sorts of other videos based around the Indian sub-culture, with important moments in recent cricket matches, trailers for upcoming Bollywood movies, and a lot of user generated output. If you have something to say about life in India today, it is really simple to upload your video! If you lack the equipment (such as a webcam or digital camera with a movie mode), you can simply shoot a short clip on your mobile phone, and upload it DIRECTLY to the site. No needs to worry about finding USB leads, or waiting a long time for Bluetooth uploads to your PC.

If you have any questions regarding the service, Aapka Video offer a comprehensive FAQ list.

When describing technical issues, I’m often called upon to supply the specifications of my IT equipment.
This post has been put together so I can easily refer people to the pertinent information…

System Specifications - PC

Intel D945 PVS Motherboard with 10/01/07 BIOS
Intel P4 660 3.6 GHz CPU
2 Gb RAM (2 X 1Gb 667MHz DDR2)
Asus 7900GT – PCIe x16 256Mb Grfx card - on Forceware 97.73
BenQ FP91V 19″ , Subini S-6811T 8″ & Sony KDL 40W2000 40″

NoName 550 Watt Twin Fan PSU
APC ES 525 Uninterruptable Power Supply - battery knackered
other UPS must update details here
Innovision EIO AP1680 PCI ATA133 RAID Controller (ITE IT8211 based)
Seagate Barracuda ST3320620AS 320Gb 7200rpm 16Mb Cache SATAII
Seagate Barracuda ST3160023A 160Gb 7200 rpm 8Mb Cache PATA-100
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus8 40 Gb PATA-133
Buffalo External 80Gb PATA/USB
WD External 250Gb PATA/USB
2 x Lite-On SHW-16H5S DVD-RR
EIO USB2 & Firewire PCI card

NetGear router - UPDATE
SafeCom IC+ 56K Ext. Modem (SEMT-5600)
TDK Bluetooth v1.2 Adapter (TRBLU03)

Logitech USB Cordless Trackman Trackball
Genius Keyboard - KKB-2050HS
XFX Executioner Dual Impact USB Gamepad (PSX-like force feedback controller)
Logitech Formula Force GP Force Feedback Steering Wheel & Pedals

Sony Ericssion K700i (used as a Bluetooth Remote Control/Phone for UK SIM card)
PC Line PC-100 TV Card - TV tuner/RCA/S-Video/InfraRed input (Based on Phillips 7134 chipset)
Genius VideoCAM Look WebCam
Canon DC080W (3Mp Digital Camera)
Microsoft Fingerprint Reader (Model 1033)
HP 1513 MFD
Various USB Thumbdrives

Redundant Spares
SafeCom SWAMR-54108 ADSL Modem/Router/AP - Now with Mother-in-law
D-Link 604T ADSL Modem/Router/AP - Now with Mum
Origo ASU-8000 USB ADSL modem
D-Link DWL-G122 USB2 Wi-Fi 802.11g Dongle
D-Link DGE-528T 1GBps PCI LAN Card
SafeCom USB 11Mbps WLAN Dongle - Now with brother
Nisis DV Cam 2 (Rev.1) - Photo, Video & Webcam

Software & Services Used :
Win XP Pro SP2 - All updates applied
No-Ip (Dynamic IP pointing)
TightVNC/WinVNC
ShoutCast
WebCamXP

System Specifications - PDA/PPC

iPaq 2210
240×320 Display
Intel PXA255 CPU
64Mb RAM
OS - Windows 2003 Mobile Edition (WinCE 4.20)
1Gb SD Card
11Mbps CF Wireless Card
GPS - 16 Sat
Bluetooth
Broken D-Pad - 4 hardware buttons re-assigned to navigational duties

System Specifications - SmartPhone

Orange SPV C550 (HTC Hurricane rebadged by Orange UK)
OS - Windows Mobile 2003 for Smartphones (2nd Edition)
GSM & GPRS, triband 900/1800/1900 MHz
2.2 inch screen 240×320 pixels TFT transflective LCD, 64k colours
Camera 1.3 Mp
TI OMAP 750 Processor
64Mb ROM, 32Mb RAM
2 Gb Mini-SD Card
GPS - 16 Satellite
TomTom Mobile5, Battery Monitor, CellTrack, TCPMP, SmartVNC, GPRS Traffic Monitor, Smurf, Doom, GNUBoy, PicoDrive, NES Emulator, Worms World Party