Aquila Online

Snap happy with the Toshiba Tekbright photo fame

// July 27th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Tech

As some of you may know (and I think I mentioned this a few times) I recently got married and as with all weddings and honeymoons one tends to accumulate a bus-load of pictures.

With almost 4000 honeymoon pictures (between the two of us) and another 3000 or so from the wedding (professional and friends) it gets a bit tricky to show them off to friends, family or the cats without someone going numb from hours in front of the laptop. Obviously we cannot print out all of the pics and keeping them stored on DVD and hard-drives don’t do them justice at all.

So what does one do? For starters, invest in a digital photo frame and more spesifically the Toshiba Tekbright Photo Frame.

Kudos to Dror, our wedding photographer pictured in this image.

I got one a while ago and it’s been quite a providential addition to our snap-happy lives. Not only do they allow us to quickly and easily show off our favourite pictures but it also means that we can now display quite a large number of pictures on rotation, instead of just one in a single photo frame.

The black frame shows off the pictures rather nicely and what more can one ask for than touch-sensitive buttons (with blue LEDs no less). One thing I like about the photo frame is the stand that allows you to show off vertically-oriented pictures (as well as landscape ones), although this does not happen automatically. You’d need to manually rotate your images before loading them on to the photo frame.

The interface is rather easy to work with and lets you effortlessly swap between photo, music or calendar mode with the light tap of a button. Other options include adjustments of the volume of the speaker, the brightness of the screen and the transition effect between images, while context menus let you flip through images and music with ease.

More importantly though, the LCD screen is bright enough to give you a pretty decent viewing distance at most angles. Overall, the Toshiba Tekbright photo frame is a happy addition to our snap happy lives.

Some technical details:

• 64MB of internal memory
• a host of memory card slots – SD, SDHC, MMC, MS, xD, CF
• USB 2.0 interface
• MP3 playback with 1 x 1W speaker
• 7″ LCD touchscreen display
• Active esolution of 720 x 480 pixels
• 6:4 aspect ratio
• integrated calendar/clock
• Jpeg and BMP image support

Update: At the time of writing this, I also received news of Toshiba’s Gigaframe Q8 digital photo frame, which has an 8-inch touch screen, 128MB of pre-installed memory and two stereo speakers.

Loftus 4 Jesus

// July 20th, 2008 // 13 Comments » // News, Photos

Pretoria – The biggest crowd ever recorded at the well-known Loftus Versfeld stadium in Pretoria, gathered on Saturday to listen to farmer and preacher Angus Buchan. There were an estimated 70 000 people.

What a sight to see over 70 000 people lift their hands up for God and shout “hallelujah” and “amen”. I would definitely recommend it to everyone to try get tickets for the various other prayer meets around the country. The Lord’s blessing was very evident and powerful.

Acts 1:8 says:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witness, telling people about me everywhere”

Together with the 70 000 on Loftus, I’m publicly proclaiming that God is my salvation and my strength.

The set of pictures can be viewed on my flickr stream or alternatively click on the individual pictures below.

Honey, something’s burning

// July 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // General

What was supposed to be the annual “controlled” veld fire, turned a bit hairy when the fire got a tad out of hand and burnt our electric fence to a crisp.

It didn’t take the security company very long to replace the wires a few hours later.

I’m just wondering if the fire department is going to pick up the bill for this one. I remember when we got it initially, all the owners had to fork out quite a bit for it.

Maybe we can all sleep safe again.

Also check out “Surveying the damage” here.

Rex the Satirist

// July 6th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Funnies

Looks like there’s a fair bit of poking going on at the moment. Check out the video clips of Rex the Lion taking the mickey out of the online locals. Who knows, perhaps we’ll see a catfight soon.

Impressed by Google Sketchup

// July 1st, 2008 // No Comments » // Tech

I’ve been looking around for a no-frills 3D CAD-like design program that’s fairly easy to use and preferably free. Yes, I have worked with the likes of Visio, IntelliCAD, etc, etc before, but they normally chow system resources and designing anything in it can take up quite some time (read complexity).

Enter Google’s Sketchup offering.

Google SketchUp is software that you can use to create, modify and share 3D models. We designed SketchUp’s simplified toolset, guided drawing system and clean look-and-feel to help you concentrate on two things: getting your work done as efficiently as possible, and having fun while you’re doing it.

That’s particularly true – I’m having great fun, and it works. You’re up and running within 5 minutes (they include a 15 step tutorial) and off designing your next home, kitchen renovation plans or office building.

There’s also a wealth of resources, tutorials and ready-made objects available from the Google 3D Warehouse an updates via the blog. Also worthwhile downloading the Bonus Packs – pre-drawn SketchUp models of useful objects like furniture, cars and trees. You can use them in your own models to add detail much more quickly than if you had to build them yourself.

Worth checking out if you’re interested in that sort of thing.