How to process CR2 files from Canon 40D with Photoshop CS2

Well, both CS2 and Lightroom 1.0 can not read new CR2 format intorduced by 40D (firmare ver. )
There are 3 options to keep workig with raw workflow:
1) convert CR2 to DNG using Adobe (free) converter DNG 4.3 (note, only 4.3 can do that; 4.2- can not!): http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/photoshop/cameraraw/win/4.x/DNG_Camera_Raw_4_3.zip

2) upgrade to CS3/CS4 or Lightroom 1.3/2.0

3) use Canon's DPP tool to convert to TIFF or JPG or whatever. But TIFF or JPG workflow is far of workflow flexibility with raw data (CR2).

Personally, I ended up with upgrading to Lightroom 1.3. It took me some time to adopt to LR workflow, but now I almost do not open Photoshop anymore for the photo editing.

CURL configuratiion on WinXP and XAMPP

In order to configure CURL on Win/XAMPP it is enough to uncomment just one line in php.ini which points to curl dll. It is also recommended to verify the extension path.
There are multiple php.ini with XAMPP1
Run phpinfo() to see which one is loaded. In my case it was "C:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini" - there the change should be done.

Restart Apache when you have saved the php.ini changes. In some cases you might need to reboot to get Apache running again.

Installing Apache/XAMPP on a Win XP (Home Edition) machine

I installed XAMPP and Apache did not start, saying that port 80 is used by some other application. I went to /apache/conf/httppd.conf and changed there 80 to 8080, then Apache showed me the same error message for the port 443 (SSL). I changed 443 to 4433 and Apache started OK now, with http:8080 and HTTPS: 4433. It worked but is was quite inconvenient.

Also, I was not sure how easy it will be to configure other applications using these ports, e.g. Eclipse. Even XAMPP management UI did not show Apache configuration while Apache runs on 8080 (definitely it is configurable somewhere in XAMPP too...)

I run 'netstat' in a cmd window, but it showed me nothing - according to 'netstat' nobody uses 80 and 443 on my machine. So after some Internet search I found that actually Skype uses these two ports as an alternative way to receive messages Look in Skype at Tools->Options->Advanced Settings->Connections. There is a check button "Use ports 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections". If checked (default), Skype will use 80 and 443 ports!

I unchecked the button and changed back ports in Apache .conf files and Apache runs OK now.

Configuring CVS in Eclipse with CVSNT on local host

Here is CVSNT configuration screens:
















Other changes in CVSNT, following Eclipse CVSNT FAQ
(http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/CVS_FAQ#How_do_I_configure_CVSNT_to_work_with_Eclipse.3F):















New repository addition in Eclipse CVS Repositories View:

mySQL 2026 error (SSL connection) on Fedora Core4

In some cases we have got the following error trying to access mySQL DB:

[root@localhost]#mysql
ERROR 2026 (HY000): SSL connection error

This was caused by SeLinux which run on that machine. The simpliest receipt is to switch SeLinux off.

To do that, go to /etc/selinux/config and change the line as follow:
SELINUX=disabled
Than save the file and reboot the system.

Creating Java Installation package on MAC OS X

1. Go to Finder->Applications->Utilities->jar Bundler


2. Define your application similar to the screens below:


Notes:
Main Class: Select here the JAR where your class with the main function is located.







Notes: Add your properties file and any other resource file if you have any
Add all the others JARs your application is dependant on.
I tried to add "icons" directory here with all the graphics, but the application did not find the icons. The right solution was to open the application package after it's creation and add the 'icons" directory withh all its content inside the package.



Notes: select "Set Working Directory to inside Application Package" if you want that your java code will find relative paths like "icons/button.gif"
Set minimum and maximum heap size

3. Upgrading: the Java package on Mac OSX is represented by a directory "ApplicationName.app" containing all the resources for this application. The posiible upgrade can be a tar (tar.gz) file including the jar/resource file that need to be upgraded. If "tar -xvf upgrade_filename.tar" is manually run in the "ApplicationName.app" directory all the files in the package will be replaced by the new files from tar archive.