Nikon stops making firearms optics

There has been a lot of talk lately of how Nikon is dying. The recently released financial figures lending power to the rumors. I tend to stay out of such speculation where possible and since I love my Nikon camera I also tend to hope it's not the case.

However, they have just announced that they are ceasing production and exiting from the firearms optics market. Once current stock is sold then that's it, there will be no more riflescopes from Nikon. They will continue to produce other sporting optics such as binoculars, etc.

I can't tell if it's some misguided attempt at showing support for gun control or if it's simply just that they are considering consolidating and that was the one area they were willing to cut. What I do hope though is that the money they were spending on the firearms optics side of things can be re-directed back to the camera side.

They don't seem to be slowing down on the camera side with the recent FF mirrorless releases, a new flagship pro DSLR camera having been announced and rumors of another mirrorless coming up. So let's hope this move is a good thing from Nikon and they will continue to be around for another hundred years or more.

Maybe they will re-direct the funds from the gun optics into making a smart-phone camera in order to get into that market since it seems that gone are the days of using a camera to take photos unless you're a pro or at least an enthusiast. Who needs to carry a camera when your phone takes better photos and allows you to instantly upload so everyone can see it? Ugh. I hope not, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Half-life 1.5 Confirmed - Half-life Alyx

So, the moment we've all been waiting for is here. Valve have announced a new game in the beloved Half-Life franchise. But is it the HL3 we've all been waiting for?

Well, no.

Valve have chose to release what is possibly one of the most anticipated games ever to a limited market of people who can afford high end pc gaming hardware and VR gear. Whilst you can get okay VR headsets these days for a few hundred dollars, it's more the fact that the PC hardware required to make use of that gear is beyond the budgets of a lot of people.

The minimum specs according to the steam page for HL1.5 is...

MINIMUM:
OS: Windows 10
Processor: Core i5-7500 / Ryzen 5 1600
Memory: 12 GB RAM
Graphics: GTX 1060 / RX 580 - 6GB VRAM




That might seem pretty modest to some, especially when you see how good their trailer looks, it's worth noting that these are minimum specs and they are pre-release and could well change. I am going to guess the recommended specs will be considerably higher.


Couple that with the fact that most PC hardware retailers (here in Australia) aren't even selling the 1060 GPU anymore... it's likely that you'll want or need to upgrade to something significantly higher if you're keen to play this game.


You can see the steam page for HL1.5 here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/546560/HalfLife_Alyx/


You can also watch the trailer here.

It's also worth noting that in the trailer it mentions the release date as March 2020... yet the steam page seems to say April 2020. So it's likely that this release date is a "Valve time" type release date. Meaning it is subject to wild variation and changes.

Test Linux distros before downloading and installing

If you're completely new to Linux or if you've been using it a while and considering seeing what other Linux distros might offer compared to your current one then there is a great service called DistroTest.

DistroTest has hundreds of Linux distros that you can boot up and test directly from the website. It allows you to run a VM of the selected Linux distro live from the website. The performance isn't great but it's enough to get an idea of what the default setup of any given distro is like. You can look at the software that is included, experiment and do what you like with any of hundreds of different distros.

So, if you're looking to test before diving in as a new user, or if you're experienced and want to just look at how another distro is configured then give it a look.

https://distrotest.net/

Disto Highlight : MX Linux

MX Linux is a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS communities, using the best tools and talents from each distro. It is a midweight OS designed to combine an elegant and efficient desktop with simple configuration, high stability, solid performance and medium-sized footprint.

MX Linux 19 comes standard with the stuff you want in a clean operating system install. It has Firefox web browser as standard. Libreoffice for office stuff. VLC media player. GIMP.

It also features built in tools that make it simple to install extra codecs as well as the nvidia graphics card drivers which makes it a nice system for those looking for a decent Linux install for gaming.

The user interface is nice with a single left hand side panel and a great default selection of wallpapers to choose from. Aside from that, it isn't winning any awards for the overall theme, but as with most desktop environments it can be customized to suit your style.

I've done a video here running through the install process. It's not going into any advanced partitioning or anything like that, just a basic standard install. Please note that it's been recorded from a virtual machine and for some reason my virtual machines are having performance issues when recording so it's a little slower than I'd like.

Another quick video showing the default system after it is installed and a quick overview of the included tools and applications.

You can see more about MX Linux by visiting the website. Or download the ISO to try it for yourself.

Llama T-Shirts and more

Want llama t-shirts? Of course! Who doesn't!?

Well I've found some worth checking out.

Alpaca-Lypse T-Shirt
by Wells_Design

Wells_Design
by Wells_Design

Darktable 3.0.0 RC0 is available

The Darktable project has made available a release candidate build of their upcoming version 3 release.

Darktable is a free and open source photography toolkit that handles image management and organisation, RAW processing and editing, tethered shooting support and more. It's one of the best open source and free alternatives to Adobe Lightroom and it runs on all the major computer platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows).

Darktables image organization tool : The Lighttable

This RC0 release includes:

A full rework of the GUI. The application can now be themed using CSS styling and comes with a number of themes as standard including some dark and some light variations.

A new timeline view has been introduced in the image catalog.

A new module for handling 3D LUT transformations.

There are many more changes, improvements and bugfixes which you can read about on the release announcement post.

Darktables develop module for doing RAW processing

Please keep in mind that this is a release candidate version and may not be stable. It is meant for testing. If you want something stable then be sure to download the stable version. If you're keen to test out what's coming up for the version 3 release though then you can download the RC0 version from here.

Pictures seen in the screenshots above are from Pixabay.

PHP Snippet : Display Gravatar Image Function

Here is a simple PHP function you could use to display the Gravatar image for a user based on their email address. It allows setting a css class for the image tag as well as specifying the size of the image to display.

function displayGravatarImage($email_address, $class = '', $size = 32) {
 
  if(!filter_var($email_address, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    throw new Exception("Invalid email address");
    return FALSE;
  }
 
  $gravatar_link = 'http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/' . md5($email_address) . '?s='.$size;
 
  echo '<img class="' . $class . '" src="' . $gravatar_link . '" />';
}


As you can see it is pretty simple and straightforward. We validate the email address and then generate the appropriate gravatar image url before outputting.

You could easily extend this function to include extra markup to suit your purpose, or even just to return the link rather than output it.