Archive for April, 2010
Internet Turf Wars – HTML5, Flash & the browsers
Posted by gavomatic57 in Internet, iOS on April 30, 2010
What a complicated mess the internet has become. It used to be so simple – you either used Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, but even then you had a choice of searching for content using any number of search engines – Lycos, Yahoo, Infoseek, Altavista…Ahh the good old days when the internet was young and naive. Now, at least we are down to two main ones. Google has almost replaced the word “search” in general conversation and Microsoft, still seemingly thinking the internet is just a flash in the pan – has rebranded MSN search and called it “Bing”.
Apple iWork 09
Posted by gavomatic57 in iWork, Mac OSX on April 28, 2010
I’m currently hunting for a non-MS office suite to handle all of my word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation needs. I currently use OpenOffice and I’m quite happy with it, although the formatting of MS Word documents can leave a little to be desired. This is getting better however.
PiTiVi
Posted by gavomatic57 in Ubuntu on April 25, 2010
PiTiVi is something I had never heard of before Ubuntu 10.04, but I’ve been aching for a half-decent video editor for Linux for some time. There has always been that faint glimmer of hope that an editor that comes close to matching iMovie will appear on Linux. You may scoff at iMovie, especially if you are used to Apple’s higher-end Final Cut applications, but I must be honest, I’ve used many consumer video editors in Windows and nothing comes close to the ease of use and the speed it can handle a high definition video.
Ubuntu 10.04 First Impressions
Posted by gavomatic57 in Ubuntu on April 24, 2010
Well, I finally managed to get this installed and I’m currently exploring the changes.
Installation was a breeze, after unplugging my other hard drives that is. A previous blog mentions a GRUB issue that ended up causing boot problems, but with only one drive to work with it can’t mess up too badly. The installation screens are polished, professional-looking and importantly – brief. You can get from empty drive to fully installed in a very short time. Once installed the system zips along at a pace you’d expect from a linux distribution. Very impressed.
Steam for Linux
Posted by gavomatic57 in Games, Kubuntu, Ubuntu on April 23, 2010
I recently blogged about the Mac as a potential gaming platform and I mentioned that whilst it is an exciting proposition, the limited range and power of GPU’s found in the current Mac range may be a stumbling block.
Phoronix recently posted a few articles that made me giddy with excitement. The Mac Steam beta has uncovered a few interesting items of code that suggest that as well as a Steam client for OSX, one for Linux is also on the way. First there is this
Apple’s Time Machine (Caution! – gushing praise ahead)
Posted by gavomatic57 in Mac OSX on April 22, 2010
As a vocal “hater” of Apple products, it took a lot for me to make a u-turn and jump ship – well, to tell you the truth it was Windows 7. Windows 7 could give no clearer example of a company that has run out of ideas. Vista with an OSX-esque dock and shorter system sounds so it sounds like it is going faster. Buy Vista again, no thanks. I liked Vista, I was probably one of the few, but I already have it. I’m certainly not spending another £150-£200 on software I already have.
Screen Grabbing in OSX
Posted by gavomatic57 in Mac OSX on April 18, 2010
This is as much for me as anyone else – I keep forgetting what the shortcuts are, so this is somewhere handy to put it..
If you want to take a screenshot of your desktop, whether it be your whole desktop or an active window, or even just a small element of it, you can do it with three keys from anywhere in OSX.
Opera Mini a security risk?
Posted by gavomatic57 in iOS on April 15, 2010
Whilst having my almost daily Youtube session, one of my subscriptions – Soldierknowsbest – posted a video regarding the Opera Mini iPhone app. Apparently an article on Yahoo here suggests that due to the way Opera servers sit between your phone and the internet you have a potential weakness in the chain. Opera mini gets its speed from decrypting, compressing and converting your browsing to Opera’s own markup language before finally re-encrypting and passing it on to its final destination.
Farmville
Posted by gavomatic57 in Odds & Ends on April 14, 2010
This video amused the hell out of me and I just had to post it to my blog.
Ubuntu 10.04 GRUB problem
Posted by gavomatic57 in Kubuntu, Ubuntu on April 14, 2010
Well, my upgrade to the forthcoming Ubuntu 10.04 (currently in Beta) did not go well at all. After running the update manager with the -d flag, it all went swimmingly until a message popped up asking where I wanted to install GRUB. Naturally I chose the drive the rest of it is installed on. The installation carried on and the machine restarted “in order to complete the installation”.
MobileMe – First impressions
Posted by gavomatic57 in iOS, Mac OSX, Ubuntu, Windows on April 13, 2010
MobileMe was a rocky launch for Apple. After discontinuing “.Mac” around the launch of the iphone 3G and introducing MobileMe the infrastructure went into meltdown and there were no end of syncing problems and other issues. Apple responded by sending out apologetic emails and extending the free trial by a month as a peace offering. Things seem to have settled down somewhat and following the arrival of my new iPhone I decided to take the two month free trial.
GTA4 – PC – 1.0.6.0.
Posted by gavomatic57 in Games, Windows on April 13, 2010
In readyness for the downloadable content, patch 1.0.6.0 has been pushed out for the PC. Features are listed as follows.
Orchids
Posted by gavomatic57 in Photography on April 12, 2010
These orchids were at a place called Loro Parque in Tenerife. It’s a large zoo in Puerto De La Cruz and quite a spectacular day out. I’ve been there twice now with two different camera’s. The first time was with my shiny new D40 with a standard 18-55mm lens. My shots of these orchids were terrible – under exposed, large depth of field and poorly composed.
Redlaser
Posted by gavomatic57 in iOS on April 12, 2010
Right, time to wax lyrical about an app I saw on TV. Redlaser is the ultimate app for those in the process of emptying their wallets. The app turns your iphone camera into a barcode scanner that is amazingly quick and reliable. I use Delicious Library on the Mac, which uses the built-in iSight camera to read barcodes and you can be there for hours trying to get the product at the right angle to read the barcode. This however manages it in no time at all and returns the product name very quickly too.
iPhone OS 4.0
Posted by gavomatic57 in iOS on April 8, 2010
So, a new iPhone operating system is on the way. Apparently there are 7 major new features and 100 minor features – according to Appleinsider
Chernobyl images downs Phoronix website
Posted by gavomatic57 in Photography on April 8, 2010
The popular open-source focussed website was struck down by excessive demand after they were posted to Slashdot.
As a departure for Phoronix, whose articles are primarily about PC hardware with a particular focus on Linux & UNIX support for them they posted a 130 images of the Chernobyl exclusion zone on their website. Their photos can now be found at www.chernobyl2010.com – when the server recovers of course.
Tubby ornament
Posted by gavomatic57 in Photography on April 5, 2010
A bit of a departure here – the post-processing is far less subtle than my usual efforts. I had a white ornament and a white windowsill but something wasn’t right. I decided to invert the colour only to find that it turned to a strange dark blue/grey effect. I quite like it.
Met Office iPhone App
Posted by gavomatic57 in iOS, Photography on April 4, 2010
This at first seems like an unlikely thing to feature on a the photography section of my blog, but bare with me.
If, like me, you spend a lot of time shooting outdoors the weather is going to be a big factor and who better to provide up-to-the-minute (well, with caveats) weather information to people in the UK than the MetOffice. Fortunately, they have released an iPhone app and it is free.
The walkthrough video above should show what it does and how it does it, but how does it help you and your photography?
iPhone app – Gorillacam
Posted by gavomatic57 in iOS, Photography on April 3, 2010
Apologies if I’m a bit slow on the uptake here, but I’ve just discovered the Gorillacam app. Brought to you from the people who make the Gorillapod – Joby, Gorillacam adds a few missing and very useful features to your iPhone’s camera.
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