I am gushing over my ‘new’ Sony Mavica FD7 camera that I recently got off Facebook Marketplace. It is one of the earlier digital cameras from Sony’s discontinued Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera) line that saves digital images on 3.5” 1.4 MiB 2HD floppy diskettes in DOS FAT12 format. AFAIK, the FD7 was released in 1997 with the FD5 model where the former boasts 10x optical zoom, while the later has a fixed focal length.
The camera produces .JPG images in 640x480 resolution with its 0.38 megapixel 1/4” CCD sensor. In terms of optics, it has a focal length range of 4.2 - 42mm, which is impressive for a camera of its size. The diskettes hold up to 40 .JPG images in its ‘normal’ setting and 20 images in its ‘fine’ setting. Each image takes up to 10 seconds to be recorded on the media and the process is accompanied by the sounds of the diskette’s whirring. Fun and amusing piece of technology.
Rclone is a powerful command-line tool to sync files and directories to and from various cloud storage services (Azure, B2, S3, Google Cloud, etc.). It is also a great solution to download files off from Google Drive, which can be an incredibly frustrating experience when doing it manually through a web browser.
It has been a lifesaver syncing my school’s Google Drive to my local machine for backup. Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are handled pretty well; Google Docs are downloaded as Microsoft Word, Sheets in Microsoft Excel, and Slides in Microsoft Powerpoint, while retaining the document’s original formatting. So far so good. However, it is unable to process items like Google Forms.
Orphans Film Symposium 2024 is around the corner and I had the wonderful opportunity to assist Professor Dan Streible to create a landing site for the symposium.
The initial idea was to create a new page on the existing OFS website, but it would limit us to its current theme. Hence, creating a separate site altogether seemed like a more appropriate option.
NYU uses a customized WordPress ecosystem for its web publishing. It does not have the full suite of WordPress features hence we had to pick from NYU’s offerings of stock themes. While the landing site is suppose to be simple, doing it with stock themes made it more difficult. The ‘Twenty Twenty’ theme was the closest to what we want and with a little CSS magic, we could remove unwanted elements that came with the theme.
During my fall 2023 internship at Cineric, Inc., I learned the intricacies of the company’s comprehensive restoration workflow, gaining knowledge in film scanning, digital imaging technology, and color and data management. Assigned to various departments, I observed and shadowed the dedicated staff involved in restoring cinematic masterpieces like Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1966).
Cineric is a highly specialized lab with the capability to scan and restore obscure formats and severely deteriorated photographic materials. The highlight of my experience was delving into the world of wet-gate scanners, witnessing the seamless fusion of photo-chemical and digital technology. Notably, all scanners are bespoke creations by my internship supervisor, Simon Lund, the Director of Technical Operations. With 30 years of expertise, Cineric has developed its own liquid gate technology, producing custom gates to handle diverse formats. The company’s commitment to innovation is evident in the construction of a dedicated scanner for 35mm paper prints. This internship has been immensely enriching, and I extend my gratitude to Simon and the entire staff for their invaluable guidance and mentorship.
Restic is a free and open source backup program available on Linux, BSD, MacOS, and Windows. It works with many different storage types (Local, Network, Cloud) and is designed to create and manage backups.
