Gordon's Tech & Hobby Blog

Lightroom 2.x Enhanced Keyboard Shortcuts

Quick access to Develop and Library module adjustments via your keyboard number pad (Windows only). You'll need AutoHotKey and this script to enhance your productivity.

The library presets shotcut (Ctrl+NumpadX) are custom to your environment. Please open the script in a text editor and change my preset names for your own.

Left/Right    - Prev or Next photo
Up/Down       - Brightness
ALT Up/Down   - Exposure
NumPad 5      - Toggle Dev/Lib Module [new]
ALT NumPad 5  - Crop Tool [new]
+/-           - Fill Light
Page Up/Dn    - Contrast
ALT PgUp/PgDn - Black Clipping
Home/End      - Color Temperature
ALT Home/End  - Recovery
Div/Mult      - Color Tint
Enter         - Paste Previous
ALT Enter     - Sync Settings [new]
Del           - Auto Tone
ALT Del       - Auto White Balance [new]
F5            - Library: Render Standard Previews [new]
Ctrl NumpadX  - Library: Execute a preset [new]

NumLock must be engaged (light on).
External USB number pads for laptops may not work and there's no workaround other than using a full external keyboard.
Lightroom's title bar needs to say "Develop" or "Library". When launching Lightroom it displays neither. You'll need to toggle modules to get the title bar indicating the correct information.

Improve your math and programming skills with Project Euler

Project Euler can be an addictive site for people who are passionate about mathematics and programming. You don’t need to be an expert in either of these two disciplines to participate in it’s challenges, but any such skills you may already possess will be an asset.

The author of the site, describes the project as follows:

Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.

When you first register, you will be presented with 252 problems available to be solved. This number changes frequently, however, as new problems are routinely created and added to the list. The solutions to some problems veer towards the obvious, while others require advanced mathematics to tackle. Likewise, a few can be solved with paper and pencil and a good dose of insight. Most however, will require the aid of a computer program written in the language of your choice.

My Firefox Addons

Here's a list of my current Firefox add-ons! Updated for FF3

External Ballistics

I've been playing around with some mathematics involving external ballistics in Maxima. Here's some resources you may find handy if you're interested in a projectile's flight, drop, and wind deflection.

External Ballistics @ Wikipedia, click here

22 Long Rifle, External Ballistics, click here

External Ballistics Database, click here for Excel

Calculate External Ballistic Tables, download

$200 Laptops Break a Business Model

A thought provoking article by the NY Times, click here for original text

“We’ve reached one of those moments in tech history when there are low-priced and free alternatives that are both user-friendly and reliable enough to make the switch,”

The dot-com bust earlier in the decade dragged down high-fliers like Sun Microsystems and America Online but set the stage for a new generation of Web powerhouses like Google.

Hoping to save money, a start-up based in Menlo Park, Calif., has much of its internal technology processes online, or “in the cloud.” Instead of buying its own hardware and software systems it opted for e-mail and online document services from Google and online sales and manufacturing software from Netsuite. It is spending a fifth of what it would be for traditional technology.

The makers of open-source software also continue to benefit from the growing appeal of their often cheap, if not free, products. Sun Microsystems distributes 65,000 downloads a day of its MySQL database, which has turned into the favored business software of new companies. The job search engine Indeed.com shows a thriving job market for MySQL and Linux developers.

Free Math Programs

Here's a quick round up of some free math programs on the internet. For more details please read the blog post "3 awesome free Math programs" by Antonio Cangiano.

Maxima (picture right)
Scilab
R
Simfit
Mathomatic (command line app)

SyncBackSE - Free Backup Utility

The title says it all, this is a great piece of free software:

http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware

Unattended Printing with Firefox

Do you need Firefox to print something without human intervention? Type about:config in your address bar add a new Boolean, as follows. Now you can have your web application send data to a printer automatically.

print.always_print_silent

true

Better Firefox Performance

Here's a couple of simple network tweaks for improved performance in Firefox. Type about:config in your address bar and change the following values. The other values left at their default are perfect.

network.http.pipelining	true
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server	4

Please note, these two values interact with each other, and reducing the second number from the default of 6 to 4 actually improves performance.

PPI for your monitor...

Calculate your Monitor's Pixels Per Inch (ppi) in Mathomatic.

ppi=((width_px^2+height_px^2)^0.5)/diag_inches