Sunday, 28 June, 2009. Tagged with: apple, iphone
Last week, I posted some few initial observations of the iPhone 3.0 OS and my new iPhone 3GS. I kept additional notes during the week of my subsequent impressions. Here they are:
- MobileSafari gets tripped-up when there are eight pages open and another application tries to open a new page. The oldest page gets replaced.
- I upgraded from a first generation iPhone and the volume level on the phone is much louder during calls.
- The landscape keyboard makes two thumb typing far more realistic, but my thumbs need to build some muscle memory in doing so.
- Marker Felt in Notes is still suboptimal. It feels like writing a nice resume in Comic Sans.
- I’m still not looking at the phone as a serious writing environment. Anything more than a paragraph or so and I’m going to use my laptop.
- I know the Palm Pre supports multitasking. Apart from Pandora, I’m OK with the iPhone being a single-tasking environment. I will deliberately use my iPhone to not have multiple apps competing for partial attention.1
- More than with my initial iPhone, I see the iPhone as a context shifting device. Using my laptop may mean work or at least numerous different tasks while the iPhone means a solid block of reading.
- Instapaper is an excellent way to read articles offline. My own habit is to open links galore from Twitter during the day, send them to Instapaper and read later. The newly-updated Instapaper Pro iPhone app (App Store link) is faster and updates continuously when there’s a network, which makes keeping in sync much easier.
- I’m very pleased with the camera. It’s not an SLR, but I’m far more likely to it with me than my D300. It’s good enough where I don’t care to carry a separate point-and-shoot.
- While the camera has the touch to focus and set exposure, the iPhone still tends to over-expose highlights. However, bringing the photos into Aperture, I can recover some of the highlights for a useful image.
- I have a small, but growing set of photos from the iPhone on Flickr.
- Flickr can accept video emailed directly from the iPhone, but there is a known bug with video shot in portrait orientation.
- iPhone gaming is very good. I purchased iFighter (App Store link) Saturday and spent a couple of hours playing. It reminds me strongly of 1943, and can be used strictly via accelerometer. An easy way to alleviate a sense of not wanting to read, code or edit photos. I certainly got more entertainment value out of that $1 than might have trying 1943 at an arcade.
Saturday, 20 June, 2009. Tagged with: apple, iphone
- It’s rather nice to open pages in MobileSafari and not have a page rebuild when closing another page.
- The Compass will occasionally get confused. I’ve noticed it with both the compass and Maps in Compass mode. Obvious things like waving the compass near a speaker will cause confusion, but it came up other times without an obvious interference source. Next time I’m out, I’ll need to keep an eye for power lines when the Compass complains.
- While tethering is an iPhone 3.0 OS feature, it is not available on the first generation iPhone, which is EDGE only. I tried. My understanding is it’s something to do with with available chipsets in the original iPhone, not bandwidth.
- Tethering is pretty easy to set-up with the iPhone 3G S. I got it working with Bluetooth and a USB connection. I’m unsure which method I’d prefer. USB offers the advantage of charging the phone while using the connection, but Bluetooth would allow me to keep the phone in my pocket.
- While I like the concept of tethering, it’s probably not something I’ll typically use. I’ll probably use it when I’m at a venue with tollboothed or inconsistent Wi-Fi. Alternate use: if I need to do something more than simple commands via a shell client to perform emergency server maintenance.
- Until such time as I need it, I’ve shut tethering back off.
- The iPhone 3G S video uploads nicely to Flickr via email. Unfortunately, Flickr’s smart phone site doesn’t support video viewing. However, Fraser Speir’s Darkslide app does allow video viewing. The ability to upload video to Flickr via Darkslide is on the way.
- Force quitting apps in iPhone 3.0 requires a new shortcut.
- Using NetNewsWire is much nicer. Switching between sources is far more fluid, the app crashes less with lots of unread feeds and selecting a feed item brings up the entry text almost instantaneously.
- Overall, everything about interacting with apps feel crisper.
- The oil-resistant screen is nice, and sure enough, a few swipes against a shirt is enough to make it new. The back of the phone still grabs smudges and holds them tightly.
Monday, 15 June, 2009. Tagged with: photography, music
I have photos from the concert up on Flickr. So far, I have 12 from Nine Inch Nail’s portion. In the next couple of days, I’ll have a few from Jane’s Addiction. There are quite a few photos from other Flickr users, too.
Some observations and thoughts on the concert:
- Nine Inch Nails performed as a four piece. Robin Finck was the only support player I’d previously seen with NIN in-concert. But, nothing seemed lacking by having one less person on stage.
- NIN had better sound than Jane’s Addiction. Vocals and instrumentation were very well balanced.
- Back in Section 13, Dave Navarro and Eric Avery’s work seemed too much for Farrell to sing over. Part of this is I’m not incredibly familiar with Jane’s Addiction’s material, so without knowing what all of the songs where, I had a harder time keeping up. @lkmi wondered if it was just the nature of Perry Farrell’s voice.
- Jane’s Addiction had a more thorough light show. They also had the benefit of going onstage after twilight.
- Compared to the Lights in the Sky and With Teeth tours, NIN’s lighting and presentation was greatly simplified. What there was was well done.
- NIN covered a wide variety of material, including a couple of more obscure tracks from The Downward Spiral. I don’t recall anything from Ghosts I-IV. Songs I was surprised (but not disappointed) not to hear: “Closer”. “Starfuckers” was also not in the set. We did get “Metal,” “Burn,” and “I’m Afraid of Americans,” however.
- Street Sweeper Social Club was already on stage when we arrived. We caught the last three songs of their set. They rocked and I wish we’d been there a bit sooner to see Boots Riley and Tom Morello do their thing.
- Overall, this was the most on-time show I’ve seen at a large venue. No issue of “Rock Standard Time” here. Set changes were efficient.
- I’m pretty sure it was Rob Sheridan I saw photographing side-stage in the later stages of NIN’s set, after the fans were moved off-stage. Then, during “Head Like a Hole,” he was onstage filming video. I hope this makes it into the growing list of High Definition videos from the stage Sheridan’s been posting.
- This was my third NIN show in as many states. Past shows were: Sacramento, Calif. in June, 2000 (Fragility 2.0) and Richmond, Virginia, in March 2006 (Live: With Teeth)
Sunday, 14 June, 2009. Tagged with: development, mac-os-x
One aspect of starting a new development gig is setting up a new development environment and checking out new-to-me code.
At the new shop, I ran into an issue trying to check-out the main Subversion repository on my Mac. Subversion erred out in an images directory half-way through the checkout. The reason is, there are two files with the same name, save for the case in that directory. One is named like foo-bar.jpg, the other is Foo-Bar.jpg.
By default, Mac OS X filesystems are case-retentive, so capitalization within a filename is preserved. However, the default filesystem (HFS+, Journaled) is case-insensitive, so the operating system complains when there are overlapping names like FOO.txt, foo.txt or fOO.TXT
Mac OS X supports case-sensitive filesystems, UFS and HFS+ (Case-sensitive, Journaled)1. A while back, I tried creating a Mac OS X boot volume as HFS+ (Case-sensitive, Journaled). Unfortunately, the installer for Adobe CS3 refused to operate with the case-sensitive filesystem.
So, I’m stuck using the default filesystem. I don’t think having two filenames unique in case only is good practice, but, as previously stated, I sometimes encounter filename overlap in source repositories.
Since I use Leopard, my initial idea was to resize my default partition and create a new, case-sensitive disk partition. The Leopard Disk Utility can resize partitions. This, however, did not solve my problem. While I could create a new partition, I could not change its format.
Idea number two, however, worked. I used Disk Utility to create a 500 megabyte, case-sensitive disk image and saved it to a location in my home directory. Double-clicking on the image mounts it to /Volumes. In Terminal.app, the mounted disk image looks like part of the regular filesystem, allowing me to cd into it and do my Subversion checkout there. Now, I can have overlapping filenames. Moreover, changes to the disk image are saved automatically, so I only need to worry about remounting the disk image after restarts.
Instructions
These instructions are for Mac OS X Leopard (10.5)
- Open Disk Utility.app. It’s located under /Applications/Utilities
- Click New Image from the menu bar.
- A dialog sheet will appear.
- Save As will be the name of the file the disk image will be saved as. Navigate to a location you won’t mind having the disk image live.
- Pick a Volume Name. This will what the disk image appears as in a Finder sidebar when mounted. It will also be the name the disk image appears at underneath /Volumes. I stay away from spaces, odd punctuation or anything that would interfere with easy tab-completion from the shell.
- Pick a Volume Size. The starting size is 100 megabytes and goes up 8 gigabytes. Custom sizing is also available.
- Pick the Volume Format. The option I selected was “Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)”
- Select whether or not you want the image encrypted.
- I didn’t do anything special with Partitions for the disk image.
- Image Format Pick read/write disk image.
- If the dialog sheet doesn’t present these options, cancel the operation and make sure you don’t have an existing volume selected.
Sunday, 24 May, 2009. Tagged with: movies, money
I posted briefly earlier today about using our movie season pass, and while many of my contacts know, a few may not, so I’m providing further details here.
My friend Steve Burnett introduced me to the Ambassador Entertainment annual pass a few years ago. He’s long subscribed and kept track of his pass movie going. Inspired by his example, and a desire to save some money, 5x5 and I bought the 2008 annual pass and renewed in 2009.
The concept works like this:
- Any movie at the Colony or the Rialto (apart from a monthly art series or special revivals) is free with the pass.
- Any new release film at Mission Valley Cinema is free after two weeks of release.
- The pass is good for two adult admissions.
- Passes are available annually in December and are good for the following calendar year.
For 2009, the cost for all three theaters was $220. We budget for it and it’s a bit nicer than deciding at a screening if we want to cough up $15. Instead, the decision is largely based on, “do I want to spend my time watching this?” For two people, the break-even point is 15 films, or one about every three weeks. In 2008, the break-even was 14 films, but we saw 27. What would have ordinarily cost us $405 instead ran $200.
This year, we’re on a slower pace. As of last night, we’ve seen eight films:
| 1. | Gran Torino | 2/7/09 |
| 2. | Taken | 2/15/09 |
| 3. | Watchmen | 3/20/09 |
| 4. | The Reader | 3/31/09 |
| 5. | Sunshine Cleaning | 4/14/09 |
| 6. | Fast and Furious | 4/17/09 |
| 7. | Star Trek | 5/22/09 |
| 8. | The Soloist | 5/23/09 |
I haven’t yet dug into reviewing each film, as Steve does, but every film except Fast and Furious1 was worth our time.
The pass does take planning to use, particularly with general audience films. Some caveats:
- There is no guarantee a film we want to see will be at Mission Valley for two weeks before we can use the pass. That means ignoring some blog posts and water-cooler discussion from big opening weekend releases and generally, we’re not seeing “event” films with friends.
- Not every independent film will make the Rialto or Colony. The films that do are not guaranteed to have a run that’s convenient for us. Some only run a week, or less.
Those caveats are OK with us and I like that we’re supporting a local cinema group. I’ll grant the infrequent bad experience and the fact that these theaters are older than Raleighwood, North Hills or the Cary 20 2. But, we’re not battling large crowds and there’s none of the 20 to 30 minute ad and preview nonsense at any of those other theaters. This year, all the movies we’ve seen have had three trailers or less. No ads.
Set a to-do for December to drop by any of the three theaters and ask for a season pass application.
