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Showing posts from June, 2010

Apple masters of technology, not of subtly...

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery, suppose the second is to do what you should have done in the first place... got someone who knows what their talking about: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/30/apple-hiring-iphone-antenna-engineers-for-some-reason/

Ooh Bono...

Proof that just because you have the attention of thousands of people, it doesn't mean that they are listening: http://verydemotivational.com/2010/06/27/demotivational-posters-bono/

iPhone 4 - Major feature... drops calls!

That's right, seems Apple's new ring antena on the iPhone 4 doesn't like to be touched, seeing hundreds of articles on this, no word from apple yet, can't wait to hear their response! Where is that e-mail from Steve when you need it! http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/some-iphone-4-models-see-signals-drop-to-0-when-held-left-handed/ http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/video-massive-iphone-4-flaw-revealed-698653?src=rss&attr=all UPDATE: Steve has now replied, and guess what? After years of people owning and using phones, Steve Jobs reckons it's being held the wrong way...  http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/ Come on Mr Jobs, just like how the iPad is being advertised, "there is no wrong way"

Ancient Gadgets...

The iPad is not that magical, it has nothing on moving pictures in colour, now that was magical! Of course well before my time, but still interesting to understand the leaps made. http://www.techvert.com/hottest-gadgets-of-the-1970s

The Devuvuzelator... no it's not a gun!

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Or a flamethrower or any of the other crazy self-defence gadgets that are legal in South Africa, it's a piece of software to remove the sound of a thousand bee's from live broadcasts (internet only): http://www.stardock.com/labs/devuvuzelator/ Watching England getting kicked out the World Cup just got more pleasurable :-)

Effects of a drinking Coke (the drink)

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Amazing article on the effects of a drink of coke, Coke Zero people! http://blisstree.com/feel/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you-drink-a-coke-right-now/    

Live Map of London Underground... Awesome!

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It was going to happen sooner or later, must admit, this is pretty cool: http://traintimes.org.uk:81/map/tube/

Futuristic Sci-Fi Art

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The vintage stuff I posted earlier is amazing, but was created back when computing power for rendering and drawing wasn't yet being fully utilised. Here is some of the amazing stuff now being done, no doubt, from people's computers at home :-) http://www.infernodevelopment.com/45-incredible-futuristic-scifi-3d-city-illustrations

Technology: Visualizing 25,000 Barrels of Oil... using the Unreal 3 engine :-)

Check this out, pretty impressive: http://gamingbolt.com/2010/06/18/bp-oil-fiasco-rendered-using-unreal-engine/

Personal: Vintage Sci-FI Art

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I love vintage Sci-Fi art, so unrestricted and inspiring. Modern Sci-Fi I find tends to be quite functional and glossy, not as exciting say for example the art below, check it out: http://coolvibe.com/2010/inspiring-vintage-science-fiction-art/

To blog or not to blog....? Offline Software

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In an effort to try and streamline the blogging process I checked out some blogging software for the Mac. I came across two of the mains ones which seemed to fit the bill but all with there pro’s and con’s. MacJournal Very easy to use and simple native interface will all the bells & whistles you’d expect. It acts more like a standalone journal first though and a blog management tool second. It can download previous posts but doesn’t seem to have two way synchronisation (at least with blogger the only blog I tested) e.g. I noticed some of my posts were missing tags, thought it would be good to add them now, not happening as it turns out. All in all nice journal editor for offline editing but lack of two way synchronisation disappoints. And it's not free. I wouldn't recommend MacJournal. http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=85 Mars Edit Very impressed with the range of features and quickly became my favourite. Some of the features included are flickr

Music: Discovering Garageband

Garageband the awesome software from Apple has yet to disappointment me. After playing around with it for over a month and understanding most of the features I thought it was about time to try and publish something on the blog and see how easy/difficult it would be. What was the result? Well depends on how you look at it. Firstly there doesn't appear to be a straight up option for exporting to Youtube, but in all honesty this isn't surprising as it's not a popular form of music distribution. My method was to export my work in Garageband and import it into iMovie . This allowed me to add the image (which I took myself and edited in Aperture ) and combine it with a 30 second preview of the track that i'm working on. All in all, it was a pretty painless process as iMovie also allows straight up exporting to Youtube. Took me around 10 minutes including encoding time (both Garageband & iMovie) and uploading time to complete this, which isn't that bad :-) Abou

Technology: Microsoft Kinect aka Project Natal

Wow, so can't wait for this to come out, have been waiting for ages. Remember seeing footage ages ago on this and thinking that it was just vaporware, but looks like this is one of Microsoft's better purchase's . Not really concerned about the size even though it looks like the size of the xbox power supply. Great coverage on it here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/17/kinect-guide-a-preview-and-explanation-of-microsofts-new-full/ And yet again, Microsoft have developed a new dashboard and yes it's completely different from the last two... from the company who brought you the start bar they really loose consistency on there non-desktop platforms: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/15/kinect-optimized-xbox-360-dashboard-preview/

Photography: Nikon D5000 - The new hotness

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After years of faithful service to me, my old and now gone FujiFilm s6500fd has been replaced with the new hotness, the Nikon D5000: http://www.nikonusa.com/Find-Your-Nikon/Product/Digital-SLR/25452/D5000.html I opted for this camera because i’m not quite ready for the full on experience of the mid-range SLR’s and also because after reading endless amounts of reviews from people who actually know what there talking about it seemed good value for the money they were asking for. Being quite new to taking photography serious, it seemed sensible to opt for this. The alternatives to this camera in the same range were of course the Canon Rebel T1i(500D) and the Olympus E-620, which even though have larger sensor sizes, around 15MP compared to the D5000’s 12MP, the actual quality of photo’s i’m told look better.... go figure! http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Canon_EOS_500D_Digital_Rebel_T1i/verdict.shtml What’s my experience been with it so far? Well i’ve had the camera now for wel