Archive for January, 2009
Surviving the drop
Jan 31st
This afternoon as I was in the middle of taking this weeks Project 52 photo, my camera had an unexpected meeting with the wood floor beneath it. As I was adjusting the subject of my photo, I stepped back and kicked the tripod with my foot. I didn’t turn around, I just heard the inevitable clatter, knowing what I’d done. After I’d spoken two words, the first being “Oh” and the second beginning with “S” (showing restraint with my chosen expletive) I turned around in what seemed like slow motion, expecting to see my beloved Fuji S5700 in a million pieces on the floor. Instead it was on it’s side in full tact with what appears to be absolutely no physical scars after it’s accident.
Gingerly I switched it on, desperate to hear it’s ‘beep’ which would assure me it was still alive. It beeped. I breathed again. I tried a few of the settings, zoomed in and out and took some photos. All appears to be well. The camera cost me a little over £100 so it’s not like it’s massively expensive to replace, but I have to say I do love this camera and have absolutely no intentions of parting with it. This is the photo I was in the process of taking – this one was taken post-fall.
Many a time I have put the camera on the tripod and been concerned that I would accidentally kick it and knock it to the floor. I didn’t have such a concern today as the tripod wasn’t extended to it’s maximum height, so it seemed reasonably stable.
So, that was an unplanned test of the Fuji Finepix S5700’s robustness and durability on behalf of Fruit Bytes readers. It passed.
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Quick Look: iMovie ‘09
Jan 28th
Probably one of the things I was least excited about in the iLife ‘09 suite was iMovie. I sold my HD camcorder last year which was becoming a dust collector, but mostly it was due to my dissatisfaction with the over-sensitive microphone. So, with no videos to edit I wasn’t too interested in what was new to iMovie.
Late last night I opened it up to have a look around to see the new features. The UI is pretty much the same as ‘08. I think there are a few cosmetic differences mostly on buttons and also the new Project Library pane which is hidden until you click it’s button and it slides out.
When you create a new project you are given the opportunity to have a theme. You can choose from None, Photo Album, Bulletin Board, Comic Book, Scrapbook and Filmstrip. I created a very quick demo video using the Comic Book theme.
Apart from adding a few titles to videos I created last year, I haven’t spent any extensive time in iMovie ‘08 but found that it was quite a basic program. One of the first things I noticed in iMovie ‘09 were the newly added animated titles, aswell as Maps and Backgrounds. These are a lot of fun. I put together a very quick transitions demo video after 2am this morning to show just some of the new features added. The globe blows me away and will be great for holiday/travel videos!
I’m now considering buying a Kodak Zi6 HD Camcorder in the months ahead just to give me a good excuse to waste more time in iMovie ‘09. If you enjoy shooting video then I think you’ll enjoy the improvements in this. A few people have asked me to compare ‘09 to ‘06 and all I can say is I don’t know as I never knew ‘06. I downloaded it free from the Apple site last year, but it never wanted to work for me.
Despite my disappointment over the Flickr integration in iPhoto ‘09 yesterday, I have to say that iMovie ‘09 has restored my faith in the iLife ‘09 suite and if anyone asks I’d say yes, it’s well worth the upgrade.
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Jan 27th
iLife ‘09 arrived around 2 hours ago and after a fairly lengthy installation process my first port of call was iPhoto. As I write this it is currently scanning through all my photos for faces. There’s approximately 40 minutes left on that.
One of the things I was most looking forward to, as were many of Fruit Bytes visitors, was the Flickr upload integration added to iPhoto. For the past 12 months I have used FlickrExport which will upload individual photos from an event or as many as I select within an event. I can also add tags, title and description within the FlickrExport window. This plugin cost £12 from ConnectedFlow.
I thought that the Flickr integration in iPhoto would be similar to that of FlickrExport, however sadly it’s very basic indeed and rather than being able to select individual images from an event, it will only upload the whole event and worse still create a new set within Flickr! I always take more than one photo of everything and rarely (read: hardly ever!) would I upload a whole event to Flickr, much less would I want to create a whole new set out of it!
EDIT: On testing, highlighting one photo in an event will send that individual photo up and not the whole event as originally stated. However, it still creates a new set in Flickr for this one photo. That’s still a little offputting, but at least it will upload individual images which is good.
Following the installation there was an iLife Media Browser Update available in Software Update which would “improve overall stability and address a number of other minor issues”. Once I’d installed that and restarted, the Flickr button in iPhoto was rendered useless. It took a few shut downs of the application before it worked again, but it’s still a bit patchy even now.
Thus far I haven’t had the opportunity to look at Faces and Places in iPhoto, nor any other applications within the iLife ‘09 suite. I’ll admit to being quite disappointed so far, particularly with the Flickr upload integration. I have decided to stick with FlickrExport but do hope that Apple will offer an update in the near future that gives us more control over the photos we upload and not insisting on creating a whole new set each time. Of course the problem with using anything other than the integrated Flickr media button is that even if one marks a photo on the ‘Places’ map in iPhoto, this information will not be uploaded to Flickr.
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Monkey Around with chi.mp
Jan 26th
A few months back I created my Chi.mp domain through private invitation. Chi.mp allows you to bring all of your digital life together to your free domain. You manage your online identity, your content and contacts.
Some of the newest chi.mp features recently introduced are..
Multiple Personas. Personas are your tool for determining who sees what about you on your site. Each Persona can have its own theme, profile information, profile photo/avatar, and content. You can create as many Personas as you like. You can also assign and invite contacts to each Persona.
OpenID. Your visitors can authenticate with their OpenID to see privileged content on your site.
Status Updates. You can now post your status to your site. Let your friends know what you are up to!
MicroID. You may now enable and disable MicroID, which can be used to claim your chi.mp site with other sites that support claiming via MicroID.
Google Analytics. You can now set up a Google Analytics account for your site. Go to Google Analytics and get your Web Property ID, enter it in your .mp site settings and you will be able to track your site traffic with Google Analytics.
And much more!
I have 0 invitations to give away. All you need to do is leave me a comment and I will honour the requests in the order they come. I will send the invitation to the e-mail address you used when commenting unless you state otherwise. GO!
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Mac Memories
Jan 24th
As the Apple Macintosh celebrates it’s 25th Birthday today, it seems many people are reminiscing about their first Apple experience and remembering it affectionately as if it was as important as other “first times” in their lives.
My first Mac was a Mac Mini 1.25GHz Power PC, bought late May 2005. This was my first ever hands-on experience with anything Apple related. I was taking quite a risk buying a machine that I had only ever read about, but read about I had. I remember thinking that I would use the Mac Mini as my secondary machine and that my Toshiba laptop would still be the workhorse. I think that thought probably got erased from my mind on day two.
One of the reasons I went for the Mac Mini and not an iBook or PowerBook was the price. To be fair, if the Mac Mini hadn’t existed and provided the leg-up for us new switchers then there’s a strong possibility that I may not have been writing this post at all. My old Compaq Presario desktop had given up the ghost just months after I bought a 15in Samsung TFT display. All that needed was a machine attached to it along with a keyboard and mouse and I’d be good to go. The Mac Mini was the perfect choice to be that machine.
In April 2007 I bought my second Mac, an Indigo iMac G3 running Mac OS X Tiger, from eBay for around £95. I missed my chance of owning a G3 back in 2000 when I was buying my second PC. Suddenly I saw these bright colourful computers in the store but after using the little puck mouse and looking at the interface I just wasn’t sure and then walked over to pick out my Compaq Presario. So, when I saw the G3’s listed on eBay I just had to have one. The design is still a classic and even when this stops working I’ll never part with it.
Later in 2007 came the Intel iMac 20in Core 2 Duo. My Mac Mini was still going strong but I wanted something that could pack more of a punch. I sold my Mac Mini shortly after for £200. It wasn’t long, though, before another Mac was working it’s way into my affections: a PowerBook G4 Ti running Mac OS X Leopard. I bought that for a little under £300 and for my portable needs it’s absolutely perfect.
I’ve just watched a feature on CNN and an interview with Leander Kahney, author of the wonderful book Cult of Mac amongst others. They discussed the cult-like following Apple has and for me it’s quite hard to explain how I have become such a Mac/Apple enthusiast when, for nearly 7 years, I was simply a PC user and never felt passionate about the machine or operating system I was using. I guess that’s just down to experiencing something that just works and just happens to be inside some very pretty and photogenic casing. Nah, who am I kidding, it’s much more than that. All I can simply do is leave you with these words, from Leander Kahney in the Cult of Mac, which seem to sum it all up for me…
Happy Birthday, Apple Macintosh. Here’s to the next 25 years.
Do you remember your first time?
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Let’s be Frenz
Jan 22nd
Of all the games I have bought in the iTunes App Store for the iPhone, my absolute favourites are the semi-frustrating ones that really challenge you – the ones you can’t put down until you reach your best score or, in the case of platform games like Super Monkey Ball, get to the end of! I’ll write a seperate post on my favourite games another time, but one of them that will almost certainly be making the list is Frenzic.
I remember playing this on my Mac a couple of years ago, then learned recently that it’s now available on the iPhone. After re-downloading the Mac demo a couple of days ago I decided to buy the iPhone app [opens iTunes] for £2.99 following a couple of recommendations.
The idea of the game is to place the coloured pie pieces that appear in the centre circle into the outer circles to earn points. You can only place the pieces into a circle that has a corresponding open slot. When you have filled a circle the pie is cleared from the board, but if a piece isn’t placed before the timer ends a life is lost. To get maximum points, fill the circle with pieces of the same colour as this will also earn you an extra life. It’s not always as easy as it sounds, especially against a clock that increases in speed as the game progresses!
One of the things I like about games such as Frenzic is the ability to upload and share your scores on Frenzic.com once you’ve registered on the site. You can then search for fellow-Frenzic-fanatical-friends and add them so that you can keep an eye on their scores. Interaction like this is a great incentive to keep playing a game so you can get closer to or beat your friends scores. You can even use Location Services to pit your scores against nearby players or those across the globe.
If you’re an iPhone Frenzic user then register or log-in at Frenzic.com and add me as a friend.
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NewsFire
Jan 12th
A year ago almost to the day I switched from NewsFire to NetNewsWire when the latter was released free of charge and came with a killer feature: syncing. I’ve been using NNW exclusively since then but experienced a few niggles that didn’t have me 100% sure this was up to the job.
Syncing across my Macs and iPhone with NNW wasn’t always a perfect art, but the worst was discovering recently that some of my favourite feeds weren’t being delivered, including that of a friends blog that I hadn’t received stories from since the end of last year. So, I blew the cobwebs off NewsFire and tried my friends feed in there. All of his 2009 posts turned up, whereas NNW just still didn’t want to know.
I was prepared to sacrifice syncing if it meant my feeds would be delivered to my main desktop app quickly and reliably, not hours, days or even weeks after they were published. I have now made NewsFire my default reader and have to admit it’s good to be back – I’ve always been impressed by it’s beautiful sleek UI. Syncing, while nice to have there as an option, is a feature I can live without given that I don’t follow any more than around 35 feeds currently.
After reading through the NewsFire developers blog this evening it looks like a little something-something is heading to the iPhone. Since his other iPhone app is so sleek looking I have high hopes for this. If the future NewsFire iPhone app includes syncing then I think I made the switch back just in time for (hopefully) some exciting things ahead.
What’s your chosen RSS reader on your Mac/PC/iPhone…?
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A very Techy Christmas
Jan 1st
Just before Christmas I wrote about having no desire to buy anything else techy for a while thanks to the void that the iPhone fills. But, on Boxing Day it was necessary to buy something out of need rather than want.
After months of being on the blink, our bulky 32in CRT television in the living room finally gave up the ghost, on Christmas Day night. The picture started to roll and I had to bang on the TV every 10 minutes to adjust it. We’d been eyeing up smart HD LCD televisions for a while but since the old TV was working we couldn’t justify the purchase.
The demise of the CRT came just at the right time. I caught an advert for a 32inch, 1080p, Full HD LCD television by LG – and in piano black finish. The price was just £349. On Boxing Day I headed to the PC World website to see if there were any in stock at our local stores and to my surprise there was. I reserved it online and we went to collect it an hour later. Good job we were on the ball as a couple of hours later they’d sold out everywhere locally and nationally it turned out.
It’s the LG 32LG7000 Scarlet Series.
It has built in Bluetooth, Dual XD Engine, 4 x HDMI and USB 2.0 (JPEG / MP3 Playback). You can see the full spec sheet here.
After getting it home and setting it up which was very straightforward, I popped a DVD on to check out the picture quality. Monsters Inc. is a great movie with tons of detail and it showed superbly on the new TV. I then started to look around for HDMI DVD players to enhance our viewing quality even further. Blu-Ray will be nice, one day, but after forking out £350 unexpectedly I think it will be a while before I’m in the market for one of those.
During a weekly shop at Sainsburys I noticed they had a HDMI 1080p upscaling DVD player for just £24.99. It’s Sainsburys own brand, RED, but it was a good price and a lot cheaper than other HDMI players I’d looked at. That coupled with the new TV made for amazing viewing. This time I popped in Shrek 2 and the detail was astounding. I wish I could get a photo of it good enough to display the crispness and sharpness of the picture, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. For something cheap it’s certainly very cheerful.
So, despite all my best laid plans, I did have a very Techy Christmas after all. I hope you did too – and Happy New Year 
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