planet snewpy
surface transmissions (2020):
Wolverine 8mm Film Scanner
2020-03-14 10:31:01 - I am part of the generation that spanned the digital revolution which means I have dozens of reels full of my parents' Super 8mm film going back to the mid-60s. I have made one previous attempt to convert these old home movies to DVD, with moderate success. The quality of video made by simply recording the image from a movie projector suffers from hot spots, mismatched frame rates, and other artifacts. A much better method is a frame-by-frame transfer using a film scanner. I recently bought the Wolverine MovieMaker Pro from Amazon and have been very pleased with the quality of the MP4 videos that it produces. They are 1440x1080 at 20fps and I would say that the color is very good. It claims to be able to handle up to 9" reels, but I only have 7" reels, so I haven't been able to test that.
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Hubitat Elevation
2020-08-16 15:47:10 - In 2013, I received a SmartThings hub (1st Generation) as a gift for Christmas. Several months later I made the decision to begin the transition from my ancient X10 home automation devices to the "new hotness" of Z-Wave and Zigbee (I still have a tote full of over $1000 of X10 stuff - if you're interested, let me know.)
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reMarkable 2 Tablet
2020-11-25 15:45:00 - It's been almost exactly a year since I bought my original reMarkable tablet used off of eBay. It served me well, but it had a few undesirable quirks that I couldn't get past. Chief among these was its pitiful battery life (usually only a day or two before it had to be charged again, whether you were using it or not), but I also grew to dislike the buttons at the bottom of the bezel because I found myself resting my hand on them by accident and advancing the page while I was writing.
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Synology DiskStation DS920+
2020-12-21 16:10:00 - After six years of storing files on my DS412+, it wasn't even half full, and Synology hasn't yet pulled the trick I now expect from all hardware manufacturers - forced obsolescence through software updates. The old Intel processor is from 2012, but it still runs the latest DSM. We'll see how long that lasts.
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