iPad becomes photo and video backup device for travelling

John Mason — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:34:57 +0000

Photography and videography make up a large part of my trips around the world with a typical week long trip generating 100-200GB of files. I would normally choose between my netbook or MacBookPro based on the amount of luggage and airline limitations. The netbook provides a very basic mechanism to back up the files – it’s not even capable of playing back footage from my 7D. The MacBookPro can do both – but pretty much wipes out my carry on allowance or goes for a life threatening ride in my checked luggage.

So, with the impending launch of the iPad I was interested in it’s capability to provide a preview and back up capability. Obviously the 64GB of onboard storage would never be enough, so the article by Maxwell C Shay raised more than an eyebrow. However, one key issue with the process to access an external drive is to logically mount the drive so that it can be accessed through iFile. The demonstration shows this being achieved by using SSH from a laptop – which rather defeats the purpose of a reasonably self contained solution.

So, I tried to write a simple app that could be run from SpringBoard which would either mount or unmount a connected drive (as per Maxwell’s instructions). Unfortunately, that was a no go – no matter how I tried to execute the shell commands nothing would mount. ~~Now, given that I would have my iPhone in close proximity the simple answer was to use a SSH client from the iPhone to execute the commands remotely – while on the same wifi network.~~ All you have to do is install something like TouchTerm (MobileTerm is not yet compatible with the iPad) and create a connection for Home (i.e. 127.0.0.1 with the usual root credentials).

~~As I chose to purchase the MiFi instead of the 3G iPad, I have an extremely compact wifi router (doesn’t need a 3G signal to create the network)~~ So I simply connect the external drive to my iPad, issue the command from my ~~iPhone~~iPad and then browse, move and organise my files without the need of the bulky MacBookPro or under powered netbook.

So far I’ve had this working fine with SDHC cards from my Kodak Zi8, Sony Bloggie and Canon 7D. Even though iPhoto seems to download the files (if there’s a DCIM folder somewhere on the card) it doesn’t play well with the HD video footage.

Freezing fog in docklands

John Mason — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 23:31:51 +0000

Eyes on you everywhere

John Mason — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:26:50 +0000

Photo from Gotham

John Mason — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 10:56:49 +0000

Follow the flickr link to see the rest of the photos from New York. Some quite good shots….

Camera crisis!

John Mason — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:40:54 +0000

Just returned from the races and discovered huge great dirty smears across most of the shots from the day. Most apparent through the Tamron 11-18mm, the photos are pretty much rubbish. What to do? Luckily I found a company called fixation hidden away in a downstairs warehouse near Vauxhall. For £25 (plus vat) you get a full sensor clean.

The question is – how did the sensor get so dirty in the first place?

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Surftime

John Mason — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:09:44 +0000