Hacking Your Digital Camera

Not all hacking is bad.  Sometimes hacking can be used to enhance the features of a product, instead of perform malicious actions.

One of my hobbies is photography.  Today I downloaded the "Canon Hack Development Kit" (CHDK) for my Canon Powershot S2 IS.

After a couple wrong versions, I finally downloaded the correct version for my camera, and was up and running.

The way the CHDK works is pretty ingenious.  The CHDK software is loaded into your camera's RAM by tricking your camera into thinking it's loading a firmware update.  However, instead of loading a firmware update, CHDK is temporarily loaded into memory much like running an application on your computer or phone - it's not loaded into memory the next time you turn off and turn back on your camera.

The features enabled with CHDK are pretty amazing.  My "point and shoot" camera now has some features which aren't available on my wife's professional camera, such as motion detection or extended time-lapse photography of up to 64 seconds (some cameras allow up to 30 minute time lapse!).

If you have a supported camera I highly encourage you to check it out.

My Letter to a Spammer

I decided to take the time to notify one of the businesses which has been spamming my blog with comments that I'm just not going to take it anymore.  Here is the letter in full.  Note that the company name is being withheld because I don't want them to get any more web traffic from my blog.

Hello,

This is to notify you that an unsolicited advertisement for your business was recently posted on my blog, Caffeine Security.

Please note that as a computer professional, I take spam seriously and it will not be tolerated.

Due to a recent increase in spam on my blog, I have implemented a new Terms of Use which I encourage you to review.  In short, any future unsolicited advertisements for your business will be subject to a $500 comment processing fee for each link posted.  Because your unsolicited advertisement was posted before this Terms of Use was in effect, any pre-existing advertisements are not subject to this processing fee.  However, all future unsolicited advertisements will be subject to this processing fee.  Third party advertising services and automated applications posting these comments on your behalf are considered your "agent", and accept these terms on your behalf.  If you do not wish to be subject to this fee in the future, I highly advise you discontinue unsolicited comment advertisements on blogs immediately.  If these advertisements are being posted by a 3rd party advertisement service, the recommended course of action is to notify this advertisement service immediately to discontinue unsolicited advertisements.

Thanks,

Ken
Caffeine Security

New Terms of Use - $500 Processing Fee for Comment Spam

Due to an increase in spam, I've had to add a Terms of Use page.

In summary, the Terms of Use for this site explicitly state that any unsolicited advertisements within comments agree to a $500 comment processing fee for each link within the comment.  Comments which are not unsolicited advertisements are exempt from this processing fee.