When I found out I could use my Canon A2000is point and shoot to create a time lapse, i was floored. I owe it all to the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK). With this nifty piece of software, your Canon camera can boot a whole new feature set from an SD card. Most importantly, run Ultra Intervalometer script.

One gotcha with CHDK is that it will only boot from a FAT16 partition. So if you have a 4gig+ SD card, you will need to jump through some hoops to create a bootable FAT16 (32mb will do) and a larger FAT32 partition for storage. MacOS and Linux read the partitions no problem, if you are using Windows… SDM Installer will help you create and switch between partitions.

The next thing you need is power, after all your wimpy lithium-ion or in my case NiMH’s won’t last all day. This is where an AC Adapter comes in. Mine didn’t come with one, so I found a HQRP AC Replacement Adapter for my camera. Get the one with the transformer in the middle, it has a longer cord.

Once you get all your images together, you need to make the video. For this I used Quicktime 7 Pro. It was super easy and imported directly to iMovie for transitions, audio and text. When creating the video, I used the default 15fps photo sequence.

It’s hard to believe that my sub $200 Canon A2000IS camera is capable of such amazing things. Many more to follow, stay tuned.

Just remember… time is relative.

Pros:

• Tags along with something I already carry and keep track of, my keys… never leave home without them.
• Plenty of space to include a live CD and all of the diagnostic utilities you could ever need.
• Reasonably Priced for such a unique flash drive.
• So far the construction and materials seems very durable.

Cons:

• Not the fastest flash drive at 26 mb/s Read and 16 mb/s Write
• Doesn’t have hardware level encryption (wishful thinking), but nothing TrueCrypt can’t take care of.

Conclusion:

I would highly recommend this to anyone that wants to have a flash drive with them all the time. I have been carrying the drive for about two weeks now and it’s been great. I have actually found that I am using flash storage more because it is so convenient. Stay tuned for what I loaded it up with…

This was the first time I used the GPS on my iPhone for tracking and marking waypoints. I stuffed it in a pocket on the top of my backpack and I must say it worked quite well. I used the iPhone app Trails to record the hike. The battery life was great, it only used about a third of the battery for the 3 hours it was tracking. One nice feature was the use of the light sensor (near the ear piece). When it was covered, the screen automatically shut off to help save the battery. The accuracy seemed quite good as well, there are even posts saying the phone/app bests a $200 Garmin.

Here are some pictures from our hike on the Merryman Trail at the Loch Raven Reservoir in Timonium, Maryland. We parked on Warren Rd. and had easy access to the trail. We got side tracked at the feeder stream waterfalls and took the fire road up to a neighborhood and decided to turn back (as you can see from the maps). Overall it was a nice hike and beautiful spring day. You can view more details on our Hike In and Hike Out @ EveryTrail.com.

More information about the trail can be found here.

Just as the news that the Microsoft Xbox 360 external HD DVD drive was declared extinct, I found a use for it: load up my new Asus Eee with Windows XP. It is hopefully the last OS that has to be loaded from an optical drive and lets not forget about the F6 floppy driver loading routine (thankfully not needed for the Eee).

I was going to use a Bytecc IDE to USB with an old drive I had laying around. But why not let this already defunct technology marvel go out with a bang. It worked great.

Anyway, I loaded up the Eee with an nlite-ed version of XP for a mere 480mb footprint. I followed this great tutorial over at i64X.com, thanks Jason!

My first impressions of the Asus Eee are very good. I am finding all sorts of uses for it. I already voided the Newegg warranty by installing a gig of Geil RAM, we’ll see about voiding the Asus warranty and installing some hardware hacks (maybe GPS, bluetooth and 3G?). I promise, this isn’t going to turn into a Eee blog, but I will have more on it soon. This thing is amazing!