So, that new iPhone I got. It’s a great phone. It’s shiny, it’s fast, and it does video, MMS, and 3G. Overall, it’s excellent.
Until you go to transfer numbers…
Continue reading ‘To 3G or not to 3G?’
A couple of weeks ago, at Apple’s WWDC event in San Francisco, Apple announced the new iPhone 3GS. Doubtless if you’re reading this, you know what that is, and all the info about it, so I’ll spare you the details.
On Friday last week, it was released. Up until then, I only had one of the original 2G (EDGE) iPhones, and having skipped the upgrade to the iPhone 3G, I decided to upgrade now to the 3GS. So, I sold my old iPhone to Matt Mecham (one of the lead developers of IP.Board 
), and used the money from that sale to go towards the new 3GS. However, after visiting the O2 store in Stafford, they said they were out of stock. So, I went and asked Carphone Warehouse if they had any, and they too were out of stock! O2 said they were getting some more units in the next day (which was yesterday – Tuesday), however after I phoned them up yesterday to check, they said no, it would most likely be next week. So, I thought screw it, went to the Birmingham Apple Store, and 20 minutes later, I had an iPhone 3GS (16GB, black) in my hand.
Again, I won’t go into detail about the OS, because there are a billion other sites you can visit about that, however, I will mention the speed and the 3GS-specific features, and one other thing which applies to the 3G as well: compared to the iPhone 2G, the 3G and 3GS is a lot nicer to hold. It feels less slippery, and you can get a good grip on it. However, it attracts fingerprints in the same way as Korea’s nuclear tests attract trouble.
First off, the speed. Apple say that applications like the Messages app open so much faster then before. But, really? In a way, yes. The Messages app does open faster, and you will notice it. But it’s not all that much different from the older ones. It’s basically half a second faster. You’re not really going to need it much on other apps, like Facebook, TV Forecast, 1Password, etc. What you will notice is that games (and other 3D apps), for instance, are a lot smoother. On my iPhone 2G, I often noticed a less-then-perfect framerate on one of the games I play, however on the 3GS, it’s dead smooth. I’ve not had a single framerate issue at all so far in any game, which is fantastic. Overall, in terms of speed, I would rate the 3GS as 10/10. Also, fun fact: the CPU in the 3GS is an 833MHz model, underclocked to 600MHz. My dad’s old laptop, which he still owns, is also 800MHz. 
Onto the camera. The camera in the 2G (and the 3G) was a very “meh” thing. It could take okay photos during the day, but any kind of darkness, closeups, or anything other then a daytime landscape made you want to pull out a digital camera, even for casual snaps. Not so with the 3GS. The camera is great. Autofocus works pretty well (aside from it taking a second or two to focus), the picture quality, for a phone, is pretty awesome during the day (and fairly good in a dark room too, but not great). Now, the video is where the 3GS really excels. Again, it’s not the best quality in a darker location, but if you’re outside during the day…wow. The video really is pretty amazing, for a phone. Here’s a sample clip that I took last night out of my bedroom window, at about 9:30pm: iPhone 3GS Video Test (Quicktime movie, 7.7MB). The video is completely unedited too, so that’s what you’ll get yourself if you record a video.
Finally, the compass. At first, I thought this was a pretty big gimmick. And it is. The standalone Compass app on the phone has absolutely no use to me. I reckon the only time I’ll ever use it is for showing off. However, I will say one thing. The way it’s used within the Maps application is genius. If you click the “Find me” button in Maps, it’ll find your location using both the cell towers, and GPS. However, it’ll still have North at the top of the phone. If you tap the Find me button again, it’ll rotate the map to the direction you’re heading, which is a pretty useful feature if you’re walking around a city like London and are somewhat lost. For that alone, I think the compass is worth it.
So, the iPhone 3GS. If you have an iPhone 2G, the upgrade is very much worth it, as you’ll gain a whole host of new features. If you have an iPhone 3G, the upgrade really isn’t that much, but if you’re very much into gaming, it could be a good upgrade. Finally, if you’re using another phone, check out the 3GS. It really is a delight to use.
So, today (and last night), three of the things I use often got upgrades. Yay! 
First of all, Linkinus v2 was released last night. This is the Mac IRC client that I use in place of mIRC. I really do miss mIRC from when I was using Windows, however Linkinus is a decent replacement and v2 is fairly nice. It brings a nice new stylesheet (actually, several) for the IRC display, and loads of other new features. After struggling to get it to play nice with my BNC, it does now, and it’s all working nicely. The only issue that I have now is the somewhat excessive RAM usage. It was using 250MB earlier, after being open overnight, and having just restarted it now, it’s now using a still somewhat excessive 140MB, which I think it quite a lot. However, overall, v2 is a decent upgrade.
Anyway, next up, WordPress (which is what my blog runs on). v2.8 was released today, and I’ve upgraded to it already. Except, again, it’s now introduced an issue. The “New Post” page, where I write new blog posts, has a WYSIWYG interface – basically, like in Microsoft Word, you can change the font, bold, italics, insert URLs, and so on, all with a small toolbar at the top of the page. However, it’s not working. It’s just disappeared. I tried re-running the upgrade script…nothing. So, I downloaded it from the WordPress site and uploaded it that way…nothing. It’s just disappeared. So I hope they can fix that soon. 
Finally, Delicious Library 2. This is a Mac-only application that is very useful, as it keeps track of books, DVDs, games, and so on. I use it to keep an index of my Blu-ray discs and PS3 games, and it works very well. In the past day or so, it, too, has had an update, which adds support for a native iPhone application that they’ve just released. Overall, it works well, and the iPhone app is pretty nice. Luckily, I’ve not had any issues with it, which is good, so it’s all working fine, along with Linkinus.
But WordPress isn’t. And I hope it’s fixed, and soon. 
Update – 16:40: Edited the bit about Linkinus, since it was my fault. I was doing it all wrong. 
I don’t seem to have much luck with silence. The PC that I built back in 2006 was incredibly loud, due to both the power supply and graphics card fans being very noisy ones. Then, when I switched to an iMac last year (and, after, my MacBook), my room was suddenly very quiet – both machines are absolutely silent, and I rarely hear my MacBook’s fan unless the CPU is at 50% load (or more) for a while. However, when I decided to build an HTPC earlier this year, I chose to build it into a Shuttle SFF case. Bad idea. The CPU fan on the Shuttle wasn’t too bad, but the power supply was noisy as hell, which is not what you want when you’re building a PC designed for watching movies on.
So, a few weeks ago, I decided to do an upgrade. Simply put, I sold the Shuttle case on eBay (annoyingly, for only £120), and instead purchased an Antec 300 case, a Corsair HX520 modular PSU, a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4550 silent GPU (all new), and a Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 from Fr3d (used). The motherboard finally arrived today (after a week in the post, stupid Royal Mail), and I built the machine this afternoon. Finally, I booted it up to install Windows 7 and…wow. What a difference. You can hear it, but it’s pretty much silent compared to the horrible Shuttle. Finally, some peace and quiet again. I might just leave it on 24/7 like I was going to do with the Shuttle. 
I’ve come across a few problems though – nothing major, but they’re a bit annoying. Firstly, because I have five HDDs (160GB for the OS, 3×1TB drives for storage, and a 500GB drive for overflow), the case is, well, a mess. I like to keep it as tidy as possible, but when you install 5 HDDs, the mass of SATA and power cables is a bit much. Without the HDDs, it’s a lot tidier, but as it is, it’s messy. However, I’ve tucked as much of the cables away as I can, so the airflow is pretty good and there’s plenty of room inside.
Next, because Antec insist on putting the space for the PSU at the bottom of all their cases, the 8 pin ATX power supply cable is too short to be neatly tucked away, so next time I purchase something from or visit OcUK, I’m going to pick up an extension cable for it.
Finally, I ran out of SATA cables and SATA power cables, so I’ve ordered some extras off eBay. Corsair, in future, please include more SATA power connectors. 4 is not enough!
So, overall, I’m very happy with the improvements, and I’ve got a pretty decent HTPC built now. In fact, later this year when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is released, I might actually get an LCD, powerful GPU, and use it as a gaming machine too.
(Oh, and finally, the photo at the top was taken before I put the CPU cooler, SATA cables, and SATA power cables in. )
Best album I’ve heard so far this year. 9.5/10 I’d say. He’s back!
I quite like this photo. I was actually going to use it on a rant about bandwidth caps but then I gave up, and thought I’d just post this instead.
A while back, I mentioned how I was amazed at the quality of one of Sony’s high-end home cinema projectors. Well, a few months later, and I decided to consider getting a projector, albeit a cheaper “low-end” 720p model. I did some research, had a look around, and decided to settle on the Optoma HD65. It seems to be the “must have” projector in the sub-£1000 market, and from what I’ve read, it’s a popular model. So, the price. It’s actually pretty good – it’s on sale for £500-700 or so, depending on where you look, and, despite loads of places being out of stock, I found 4 of them available at “LambdaTek” for £560. So, I bought one.
It arrived today, so I brought the box upstairs to my room, opened it, and I was pleasantly suprised. It’s quite small. The overall footprint is a little smaller then the MacBook. Like I said in that other post, I had previously borrowed a few different SD projectors from my dad’s work back in 2000, and from what I can remember, they were considerably larger. The HD65, however, is nice and small. And it’s mostly white, too, which is nice if you want it to be less noticable in a room.
As for placement – most “permanent” installs are mounted on the roof. However, this poses two problems for me. One of which is that our house is rented, so we’re not allowed to drill holes in the roof, and second, the light on the roof in my bedroom hangs down quite far, so if I was to mount it on the roof, the light would block the picture. That said, I found a pretty good spot for it. My windowsill. It’s just big enough to accommodate it, and it’s a good height too – I didn’t even need to prop up the leg on the front of the projector. It also fills the projection wall perfectly, with only about 10-15cm left on each side of the picture.
So, as it got dark (The one downside about projectors is they need a dark room. Oh, and it’s summer time, and my curtains don’t block out any light. Fun. ) I hooked it up to my HTPC, turned it on, set it up (I really didn’t need to change any settings other then the zoom and focus), and put Back to the Future Part I (in 720p) on. And, wow, the picture really is good, even with an old film like BTTF. Okay, so it’s a projector, and it’s never going to beat a high end LCD TV at this price, and you need a dark room and a huge blank wall, but, honestly, it’s worth losing a wee bit of quality for the sake of having a 90″+ screen. The whole movie was so immersive, after 10 minutes, I didn’t notice anything other then the movie. It’s fantastic!
The picture itself is pretty damn good. Between the projector and my TV, there’s not that much of a difference. The TV works better during the day, obviously, but I think the picture quality on both is roughly the same at night, with one exception – the projector, with daytime scenes on movies, looks slightly more washed out, but it’s not that noticable – a minor issue. The other problem is that if you sit too close to the screen (or in my case, the wall), you can notice the individual pixels. However, if I sit more then about two meters from the screen, I can’t see them, and with this size screen…you’ll want to sit more then two meters away. Of course, this is probably less of an issue on the more expensive 1080p projectors, but for a small-average sized room, it’s fine.
Finally, two more complaints. Firstly, and it’s a bit irritating, is the fan noise. It’s fairly noisy when it’s on, but if you’re watching a good movie with the sound turned up, it should be drowned out. Sadly, this is a problem with most projectors as they need to get rid of the large amounts of heat that the bulb generates. Last, the grille on the front of the projector (as you can see in the photo above) gets REALLY hot during use, so much so that I couldn’t touch it for more then about a second without it burning my finger. This is, again, normal for projectors, but it means that they need plenty of ventilation to keep cool during use, and the HD65 is no exception. 
Overall, I’m very happy with it so far, and the picture quality is suprisingly good. If you’re in the market for a budget projector (or even a mid-range one), take a look at the HD65. With a small footprint, good looks, great picture quality, and being easy to use too, it’s a great choice and I highly recommend it if you’re a movie buff.
Now, the only thing I have to do is get my dad to like it. He’s very anti-projector, mainly because he’s used to the horrible quality ones they use in pubs / offices and thinks they’re all like that, among other things. I hope I can prove him wrong.
I just thought I’d share a quick tip for anyone who subscribes to too many email newsletters, like I do. If you want to add a filter to *all* newsletters, what’s the easiest way to do it? Make it find “newsletter” somewhere in the subject or body? Maybe, but what if the email doesn’t even contain that?
Well, here’s a tip. Make a filter that looks through the body of the email, and finds the word “unsubscribe”. Pretty much every newsletter contains that word, and if you want to take it a bit further, “remove me” is another phrase that’s often used. Sure, you might get a few false positives, and it might miss a few (for example, the “new follower” email from Twitter doesn’t say “unsubscribe”, it says something else), but most of the time, it works, and it works well.
Easy, and pretty obvious too.
Back in early 2006, I heard about a brand new TV series called “Prison Break”. Long story short, I started watching it, and was hooked after the first episode. The first season of Prison Break was really ground breaking, and I enjoyed it immensely.
However, three years later, and Prison Break is currently in it’s fourth season. Which is three seasons too many. See, I think Fox have gone and made seasons two, three, and four simply because they know that by doing so, they can make a profit. Season one of Prison Break was superb, the rest…not so much. It’s not just Prison Break, either. I greatly enjoyed the first season of Heroes, but I’ve since given up watching it. It just became boring and rubbish. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is an even bigger mistake – sure, it’s an enjoyable show, but if you ask me, it shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Terminator should have been kept to the four movies, and that’s it. If they make a third season, I’ll probably just skip it. I was bored for much of the second season, and chances are, the third, if made, will suck even more.
My point is, TV shows, and in many cases movies too, simply go on too long and become boring or stupid. And yet the movie and television studios keep on making them because they know they can make money off them. And I just wish they wouldn’t, or if they did, I wish they would actually make them not suck. Case in point: 24. Despite now being on it’s seventh season, it’s still awesome.
Oh, and in case you’ve not yet seen Prison Break, but want to, watch the first season and then stop. DON’T watch the other seasons. But do watch the first.
DNS. It’s that ultra-confusing thing that you use every single day, but you may or may not know it. Simply put, DNS is what helps the internet run. It’s the service that turns a domain name, such as google.com, into an IP address, such as 208.69.34.231. Whenever you visit Google, your DNS server(s) point you in the direction of the server you’re looking for.
Now, most of the time, DNS is pretty hidden. You won’t notice it, it won’t bother you, and it’s generally ignored by most people. However, due to the way it works, you can do some pretty nifty stuff with it. Almost always, your ISP will provide you with two or more DNS servers which you can use. They’re usually run by your ISP, and most of the time, they work fine. However, a lot of ISPs don’t have the most reliable DNS servers around (my ISP included!), and they can sometimes be slow during peak times, and even go down completely. 
The good news is, you don’t have to use your ISP’s DNS servers. There are alternatives around, one of which is OpenDNS. Continue reading ‘OpenDNS’
