Web Site Technical Details

IBM Aptiva S45

Most PCs just have a mouse but my IBM Aptiva went one better than that.

The web site you are looking at started life on an IBM Aptiva 2142-S45. This Aptiva series was IBM's attempt at turning the personal computer into a household appliance rather than looking like something from the office. It was a stylish black colour with built-in Bose loudspeakers to make CDs sound better. The idea was to have a device that was multimedia friendly and not just used for word processing and spreadsheets.

The S45 had a Pentium 233Mhz processor, 32MB of memory and a 4Gb hard drive. We all laugh now but in five years time we will be laughing at the machine we use now even if it is currently the best available. A higher spec machine, the S46, was available but I didn't think I'd need the DVD drive that came with it or all the extra processing power of a 266Mhz processor.

The S45 was launched around 1996 or 1997 and had a retail price of just under £3,000. I bought mine through the IBM employee purchase plan for about £1,000 and thought it was a bargain. It had been reconditioned but looked brand new. I think it had just been used in a shop as a demonstrator. When I went travelling and let out my house I gave it away to a charitable organisation. Such is the depreciation on technology hardware these days.

IBM ThinkPad 780EL

My first laptop - standard issue to IBM employees circa 1997. It seemed great at the time but after a couple of years I hated the thing. It originally had 16Mb of memory but was upgraded to 40Mb and had a 120Mhz processor. The original HDD was 800Mb but was upgraded to 5Gb. An early version of Lotus Notes was just too much for it and opening e-mails offline could take around 30 seconds as the hard disk went into overdrive.

I used this machine to work on the site when I was working away from home and it served its purpose. It was pathetically slow though and the keyboard was awful - a flimsy affair that could be raised at the back to provide the user with an angled keyboard but the lack of stiffness meant that the keys had to be pressed very hard for them to register. IBM offered it to me when I left the company for about 100 quid. I declined the offer. Even if they had wanted to give it to me I would have said no thanks. It was hopelessly under powered and any PC that doesn't have a USB port these days is worthless.

IBM ThinkPad X21

When I decided to go travelling I wanted the smallest, fully-featured laptop I could find. Other manufacturers make small machines but I firmly believe that IBM hardware is the best and is made to last. I looked for a second-hand 'X' series machine and found one on eBay for not a lot of money.

Wow, is this a fabulous little machine or what? It has a 700Mhz SpeedStep processor. On paper it's about three times as fast as my old Aptiva but it feels 50 times faster. The keys are about 95% full size but the keyboard is fine for my two finger 'typing'. I also like the IBM trackpoint (mouse) device although this is a personal preference.

My machine has a non-standard 20Gb HDD for some reason. The machine does not have serial or parallel ports but I don't have a need for those. It has two USB ports, a built in modem and built in Ethernet port. A docking station is available that provides serial and parallel ports as well as bays for extra batteries or drives.

In all respects the X21 is far superior to the Aptiva. The HDD is five times bigger, it is much, much faster and the screen is higher resolution and better quality. It cost a third of what the Aptiva cost and can be slipped into the side pocket of my camera bag. The Aptiva arrived in a massive cardboard box and was a big, bulky beast. It's amazing what has happened in the world of hardware in just a few short years.

IBM OS/2

I could go on at length here but will try to resist the urge to do so. How on earth did IBM screw up so badly with the Personal Computer market that it created in the first place? OK, I know that IBM wasn't the first company to bring out a personal computer but they were the first to introduce a serious, properly packaged machine for home and business use. The IBM PC set industry standards which are still adhered to today and setting those standards was an important factor in getting the PC industry started.

What IBM achieved back in the early 80's with the IBM PC allowed the industry to take off and become what it is today. So how on earth did two third party companies get hold of the two most important ingredients of the PC and be allowed to develop and sell these components to whoever, in effect to set up the biggest and most profitable franchises the world has ever known?

Basically IBM didn't take the PC market very seriously at first. It was just seen as something hobbyists and nerds would play around with at home but the thinking was that serious business applications would continue running on mainframes.

Intel and Microsoft are only what they are now due to IBM's failure to predict the potential of the PC. The success of these two companies was a bitter blow for Big Blue and IBM did not know how to react. In the early 90's an attempt was made to claw back the ground lost to Intel by developing a processor (PowerPC) and an Operating System to take on Windows. The operating system was called OS/2.

IBM made a serious effort to get OS/2 on to PCs around the world but, as Lou Gerstner realised when he took over running the company, it was a battle that had already been lost. OS/2 was standard issue to IBM employees and those employees were given free copies to put on their home machines and give to friends. This was in the days before CD readers had really taken off and the entire operating system came on floppy diskettes - about 40 of them I seem to remember.

OS/2, in the tradition of IBM, was a solid piece of software. There are still vital IBM machines running OS/2 around the world and they continue to do a good job. The problem was that it came too late and Windows had already cornered too much of the market.

People already knew how to use Windows and learning a completely new OS was not desirable. Every piece of new hardware and software that came out was designed to run on Windows and although OS/2 could emulate Windows it was never that straightforward.

The battle had been lost but traditionalists at the company could not see this and fought on. It wasn't until Lou Gerstner's appearance in 1992, the new CEO and the first 'outsider' to run the company, that the plug was finally pulled on OS/2. Gerstner, coming in from outside, could see the reality and knew that enough was enough.

Technically OS/2 was a sound product but taking on Microsoft after they had captured so much of the market was impossible. There are still some IBM machines out there today controlled by PCs and those PCs use the OS/2 operating system.

The 40 diskettes that my OS/2 copy came on were reformatted and came in useful for making data backups but that was about it. RIP OS/2.

Windows 95

This was Microsoft's first true OS for the masses with an interface that users of today's Microsoft XP will recognise. It worked well enough and ran at a suitable speed on my 233Mhz desktop. Plug-and-play hadn't arrived yet and it was a struggle at times messing around with drivers for new devices.

Windows 98

A new Sony digital camera with a USB connection was the reason for me upgrading to Windows 98. I think that Windows 95 could have handled USB with the right patches but USB support was part of Windows 98. It was supposed to be faster but made my PC crawl.

Getting the camera to connect via USB took about three weeks and caused many headaches. Each time I tried I got a blue screen of death. The problem turned out to be a down level driver for my SCSI attached flat bed scanner. Sony found the problem but I never would have done. Sometimes PCs can be very frustrating.

Windows XP Professional

It has taken Microsoft a while - about 20 years - but they finally seem to have written an Operating System that is truly plug-and-play and that works as it should do most of the time. As I've just mentioned, I had a nightmare trying to use my USB-attached digital camera with a Windows 98 machine. With XP I plugged the camera in without doing a thing beforehand and it worked. The combination of USB and Windows XP is wonderful for all the computer connected devices available today.

The PC age really seems to have arrived with XP. The system restore facility has got me out of trouble a few times when I've accidentally made changes that I haven't been able to undo manually. It's not perfect, it still freezes on me occasionally but compared to previous versions of Windows it is easily the best so far.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0

Other products come and go but the king of them all just goes on and on. As I have got more into digital photography so I have been forced to use Photoshop more and more. One of the fundamental differences between digital and film photography is post processing. With film, the processing (for most people) is all in the hands of the developing lab. With digital, it's in the hands of the photographer.

Because of the way digital photography works, sharpening images is essential and Photoshop is a key tool to do this. Photoshop is one of those applications that I feel I have never mastered. There is so much to it that there will always be new things to learn.

NeatImage - Evaluation Version

NeatImage contains algorithms to remove digital noise. What is digital noise? It is the specks that appear on digital images which are most noticeable on areas of solid colour. I didn't even realise my photos were suffering from digital noise until I processed some images and compared the before and after results.

With my Sony DSC-P1 camera, noise is present at even low ISO settings. NeatImage is quite useful for this camera. With my Canon 10D though, noise is non-existent at low ISOs and NeatImage is only required with high ISO settings.

NeatImage can also sharpen images. The digital noise reduction filters work well but excessive use can result in artificially smooth 'plastic' looking images. Certain versions of the software are available as Photoshop plug-ins so the noise reduction algorithm can be used within Photoshop.

Xara Webstyle

My first copy of Webstyle was a free evaluation version that came with a PC magazine and I was impressed enough to buy a licensed copy. It allows web graphics such as headers and buttons to be made very easily and quickly. Standard templates are available and these can be customised so that the user can change the colour, size, font, etc.

I upgraded to Version 3 which also includes a facility to edit web graphics and a function to create menu bars. The menu bars function uses Javascript and Webstyle creates all of the Javascript. I find it very quick and convenient, if a little limited. There aren't that many templates to start off with and the design of many are so bad I would never consider using them.

Later versions, superceding Version 3, are available and I'm sure they have a lot more templates but I haven't upgraded yet.

Macromedia Fireworks MX

I'm sure this is a very powerful tool but on the occasions I have tried to use it I have never found it very intuitive so I haven't got very far. I have used it to resize graphics and it does a good job. It doesn't seem to reduce quality when making buttons and things smaller as Photoshop does.

TextPad

For a long time now I have only used a text editor to create and edit HTML. The one I like most is TextPad. It's simple yet at the same time has a lot of very useful functions.

I have used 'WYSIWYG' HTML generators but don't feel as if I am in control as they sometimes generate code I don't want. I have found it difficult at times getting what I want when using an HTML editing tool but I can quickly do what I want if working directly with the HTML source.

AOL Press

Some of my first efforts at creating HTML were done using AOL Press. As an AOL user at the time it was available for nothing and had its uses. It is a fairly simple and easy to use 'WYSIWYG' HTML generator and while I was learning HTML it was useful to look at what was being created. As my HTML skills improved I increasing found it preferable to edit the HTML directly using a text editor.

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

Dreamweaver is noted for being one of the better HTML generating and editing tools. It generally does not add a load of superfluous code just for the sake of it. I have a copy but use it very rarely for the reasons noted above.

Occasionally it is useful for creating complicated tables or something where coding the HTML by hand would take a while. One really useful function is the link checking tool. I totally rewrote one large site I am responsible for and added a new directory structure. This created the potential for lots of hyperlink errors but I used the Dreamweaver link checker to locate all of these and fix them.

Canon FD Manual Focus SLR System

My interest in photography started with a gift in 1982 - a Canon A1. Canon launched the hugely successful AE1 in 1976, the first mass-produced SLR with a built-in microprocessor, and it was quite a revolution. The A1 that came later provided full auto or manual exposure control rather than just auto or shutter priority control that came with the AE1.

For almost 20 years I took this camera everywhere and it never let me down, even its little battery seemed to last forever. It came with a standard 50mm/F1.8 lens and I gradually added lenses to the system - 70-200mm/F4; 28mm/F2.8; 135mm/F2; 300mm/F4; 1.4x extender; 500mm/F8 reflex. I added a 199A flash unit, the one dedicated to the A1.

Quite late on I needed a back-up body for a safari trip to South Africa and instead of buying another A1 bought a used Canon T90 in good condition. The T90 was yet another landmark camera from Canon and introduced a basic design that cameras today still use.

The T90 provides the choice of three metering modes (including real spot metering) whereas the A1 had just one. There is also a very nice feature where up to 9 spots can be selected by the user and the camera will automatically average these out to set the exposure. It had everything I wanted but others complained that there was no PC socket for an external flash, neither did it have mirror lock-up.

I thought the T90 was a wonderful camera. Many say it was the best manual-focus 35mm camera ever made and I wouldn't argue. It felt great to hold and use, had all the control I wanted and used ordinary AA batteries that are available everywhere. Different operations on the camera were activated by three separate motors to conserve battery power. I also bought a used 300TL - the dedicated flash for the T90.

Sony DSC-P1 Digital

Another gift from my family (lucky boy) and my first experience with digital photography. Personally I would not have bought a camera made by Sony but, as I said, it was a gift.

The DSC-P1 is a frustrating camera. Frustrating because it wasn't aimed at people who understand anything about photography so everything on the camera is automatic. Sometimes it is capable of good pictures but quite frequently it lets me down. The exposure algorithms are weird. In situations with lots of light it opens up the aperture to its maximum F2.8 and gives me a ridiculously high shutter speed. I get a shutter speed far higher than I need and no depth of field in the shot.

The autofocus system is pretty awful and is my biggest complaint with the camera. When taking pictures I don't have a clue what it's focussing on and, as a result, many potentially good shots have been ruined because they are out of focus. The other annoying thing with the camera (common on all point-and-shoot digital cameras, not just Sony) is the long delay between pressing the shutter button and the camera capturing an image. This was another reason for me missing some good shots.

The camera also had a design or manufacturing fault with its battery charging. The indicator for how much charge is left was always wrong and, after getting a flat battery and trying to recharge, the camera would tell me that the battery was already fully charged.

Apparently lots of other people had the same problem but it took Sony about two years to acknowledge the fault and offer to modify cameras free of charge. By this time the DSC-P1 had already been superceded by two or three new models.

I have the underwater housing for the DSC-P1, the MPK-P1. This is actually a nice piece of kit. It works down to 30m so is good for the majority of recreational scuba diving. There is virtually no maintenance involved apart from putting a little silicon grease on the O-Ring. It provides a cheap and convenient way of taking underwater photos and, being digital, the photos are available immediately after surfacing from a dive. I've kept this system as my dedicated underwater camera.

Canon EOS 10D Digital

It's March 2009 and I have finally gotten around to updating this page. There have been so many digital SLR bodies released since the 10D that the 10D is no more than a museum piece now in the history of digital photography.

That's how technology has been for a while now. You buy the latest and greatest only to find it is obsolete a few months later and a useless relic a few years later.

It was a great camera and the perfect introduction to dSLR photography. The same rules apply as they did to film SLR photography except there are some new ones with digital, mainly because of the narrow exposure latitude with current digital sensor technology.

Canon EOS 40D Digital

No sooner had I bought my 10D when Canon announced the 20D. It was a nice camera with some good improvements over the 10D but I wasn't ready to trade in my almost new 10D.

The 30D was announced but it didn't offer much over the 20D. Canon just seemed to announce it in order to keep up with the competition.

When the 40D was announced I was ready to upgrade and Canon did a great job. Speed was always a problem with the 10D but there are no delays with the 40D. Battery life seems even better, as is the autofocus system.

The 40D is a worthy upgrade from a 10D. When Canon released the 50D they seemed to take a step backwards. The LCD was improved and tere was some better in-camera software but by all accounts image quality took a step backwards.

Lenses

Since moving to digital and throwing away all my manual focus FD lenses I have been slowly building up a collection of EF auto-focus lenses. For some sample images see the links on my Site Map.

Epson GT5500

My first attempts at web page building came before I owned a digital camera and my primary source of photos lay in boxes of colour negative prints. A flat bed scanner was required. It wasn't something I researched very much but the Epson does a good job. It has a SCSI connection which worked for me at the time but nowadays I would only ever consider USB connected devices.

Unfortunately my old photos have been scanned in using image sixes that are too small but I am not in a position now to rescan them. It's never easy figuring out the optimum image size for web pages because there is always a compromise between image quality and download speeds.