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iPhone 4 : Apple's Bumper cases

2010-06-25T14:14:27Z

Today, I had a delivery:

Yes, the new iPhone 4. (yes, you can click on all the pictures to close-up on them)

A pretty nice device..

And in the evening, me and my wife went to Apple Store here in Nagoya. The plan was to buy my wife a case for her iPhone 3GS (which I passed to her after getting iPhone 4). Myself, I don't like cases much - they are usually intrusive, huge, and don't really serve any purpose. The only "case" I ever had on my iPhone was Invisible Shield by Zagg.

So there - I don't like cases. And watching one by Apple (in their keynote) - which they called "Bumper" - didn't really impress me. It looked like just a rubber thingy around the phone. I thought - hah, only stupid folks would buy this one. Well.. I was wrong :)

When I was at the checkout, holding my wife's case (already paid for) - I have noticed a store staff's iPhone, wearing the Bumper. What really caught my eye was that the case was looking really nice, clean and not huge at all. It wasn't screaming "I'm a case! Here look at me!". Well.. anyways, I have asked the staff to show it to me. The guy was kind enough to let me wear the case onto my phone.

And wow.. I was really surprised - I actually liked the feeling! It felt like a very well made case, NOT 100% rubber at all.

Actually, the Bumper is made of a mix of black plastic and rubber. It ALSO has sleep/wake and volume buttons BUILT into the case. Has openings for everything, even the second mic on top of the phone. And feels real nice, not cheap at all, and actually the price ($30) feels pretty good for such a product (and if you have a look at other cases for the same price at Apple Store).

These buttons are a very good idea. What should be accessible, should be accessible (read more for what actually become inaccessible :)

The frame itself is like 50/50% plastic/rubber.

Fits the phone pretty good.

And actually, the Bumper is the right name for this case. It really feels like the thing should help with drops of the phone. Covers sides (plastic frame there) and also front and back (since it extends over the glass - and its rubber there, which is a good idea)

And the case is pretty clean and doesn't make iPhone much bigger or adds any noticeable weight.

There's one thing though. Well, two things actually, which are not-so-good about Bumpers.

The mute button is buried deep under the frame, so it's not trivial or easy to switch the phone between silent and ring modes (have to use finger nails)

Another thing - it seems like my iPhone 4 dock was a waste of money, if I decide to continue using the Bumper. The phone just won't fit there anymore (well it kinda-sorta fits, but with a noticable danger of breaking the dock connector)

So there.. a little review of iPhone Bumper "cases" (better call the frames or something..).

I just had the case for like a few hours now, but I already like it pretty much (even with the aforementioned problems). So.. even if you don't like cases, Bumpers are the ones which deserve your 30 seconds of time. Build quality is good, and the price is - well, of course we all want everything for 5 bucks, but.. - right.

Prototype 1.6.1 on IE8 on Windows XP..

2010-02-26T05:55:07Z

Discovered a weird problem today.

Seems like in a particular configuration, the currently latest version of Prototype library gives problems to users who are using Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP.

Error message states that Web page has a problem and Internet Explorer had to close its tab.

When running the same page under IE8 on Windows 7, the page loads fine, but with error message which states:

Switching IE8 to IE7 compatibility mode fixes the problem on Windows XP and Windows 7 platforms.

In order to do that, just add the following code right under the tag:

This will automatically switch IE8 to IE7 rendering mode, and unless your site breaks under IE7, you should be fine with this solution.

Still alive yeah…

2010-01-31T02:09:04Z

OK I know this has been a long time since last update! Bu I have that "BLOG!!" in red marker on my white board, so eventually I'll blog! Kinda lazy/busy combination is in effect…

In the meanwhile, I'm also on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/macdigger

A few notes on iPhoto print service

2009-03-30T00:49:22Z

Last week - and after getting a pretty good calendar but using iPhoto's print service last year - I found out that my printer's printhead needs some repairs (and it seemed that getting a new printer would probably be the best option, or probably even cheaper). However, I had a few photos I needed to be printed to be handled to my friends. So sure, as a Mac user, and lazy person, I decided to go with an option which would require the least amount of any actions of my side - the iPhoto print service.

Took about 4 days for my prints to arrive (which is fine, except that 3 days of that time photos were in transit, which is a loooong time here in Japan as everything usually arrives in 2 days AT MOST). But oh well, I could wait :)

However, once I opened the envelope, I was shocked! The colors were all off, skies were blown up, details were lost.. These were not the photos I took - the ones I got were automatically-balanced.

And it usually works for most people who shoot their stuff with crappy compacts (face right in the middle, skies blown up to hell, everything is average and boring). However, I was taking a different kind of picture. I was using external flash to make some "dramatic" feeling to my photo - skies underexposed and blue to the point of being dark-blue, and the person on the picture was lit with a cross-light of my external flash unit and the sun, making him pop-out.

Here's the original (click to see in full size):

And check out just what I got from iPhoto's photo service:

(iPhoto photo service: left; original, printed on my dying printer: right)

Now, everybody has different sense of what a good photo should look like, and iPhoto (FujiFilm) print service definitely works for, like, 99% or cases. Just don't ever think of getting your artistic/conceptual/anything-out-of-average photos printed. They'll "fix" the hell out of them and then some - to make them just an average stuff which comes out of any crappy point-and-shoot camera around.

Called Apple's support today and I'll be getting my refund. It is just a couple of bucks and won't change anything, but at least it'll make me happy to stick it to their asses, even though they don't really care ;) (oh.. they'll pay the postage, so cost to myself is zero)

Now I wonder which print services don't "fix" stuff for you…..

The price of "%"

2009-03-22T03:17:08Z

Was working on a remote machine today…

Thankfully the machine was smart enough to reboot itself :)

Getting rid of those files

2009-03-19T08:25:43Z

I've been doing some maintenance of my server, and wanted to do some spring clearning, deleting all spam files inside users' directories. These files are automatically created by spamassassin software. Also, wanted to get rid of Rails production.log files.

Doing everything manually is no fun, and I have to admit, I completely suck at shell scripting.. But if you never try - you'll never learn, so that's what I came up with.

Calculating their size

First, I wanted to find out how much space exactly files called spam inside all directories inside the /home directory take. That's the command which I came up with ( of course, I first had to cd /home ):

[root@me-ja home]# find * -name spam -type f -exec echo {} \; | xargs du -ks | awk '{total += $1} END {print total}'

2952880

A little explanation. I use 3 commands each piping its output to the next one (and the last outputs everything to standard output which is the screen.

First command - find * -name spam -exec echo {} \; - finds all files ( -type f part ) inside current directory which have name spam ( -name spam part ), and prints their relative paths out with echo command ( -exec echo {} \; part). However, of course, since the output is piped into another command, nothing gets printed on the screen.

Second command - xargs du -ks - gets list of files from the find command and lists their size in bytes (1st column) and name (2nd column), and outputs it to standard output (which again, piped into the next command.

Third command - awk '{total += $1} END {print total}' - is a little awk script, which takes first column of the output (file sizes in kilobytes), sums them up into the total variable, and then prints that variable out.

The output is in kilobytes, of course.

So, we have what? Like almost 3Gigs of spam? This is uncool. Time to get rid of it!

Getting rid of them

Actually, I don't want to totally get rid of those files, because if I just remove them, they will be (not likely in this case, but possibly) recreated with different permissions, as well as if there are programs which keep these files opened , will be unpleasantly surprised by their sudden disappearance :)

So what I wanted to do is to truncate these files to zero size, keeping their owner/group/permissions as is.

Here's the command I came up with:

find * -name spam -type f -exec sh -c 'echo "truncating $0"; cat /dev/null > $0' {} \;

Basically, it is mostly the same as the previous command, with exception of parameters passed to -exec. One could think about just writing something like that (and I tried it myself as well) :

find * -name spam -type f -exec cat /dev/null > {} \; (THIS WON'T WORK!!)

However, this approach won't work. Check out here why exactly :)

And so, basically I just went with executing a shell script, which printed out "truncating " and then trimmed the file to zero size with command - cat /dev/null > /file/path.

So now all my users' spam-holding files are back to zero, life is good and I have 3Gigs less of stuff to backup.

There might be better, more hardcore approaches to the problem, so if you are a god of shell scripting, do sound off in comments :) As for other folks, hopefully somebody learned something useful here.. I definitely did while producing these hardly readable lines of code :)

Canon 430EX II Flash, experiences and sample photos

2009-02-14T15:05:53Z

I'm really getting into photography lately, and finally got myself another accessory, which many people consider one of a must-have things - an external flash.

The one I got is Canon Speedlite 430EX II, and I have also got an Off-camera Shoe Cord (OC-3E) for situations when having flash mounted on top of the camera is not very good (think outside photos where you don't have any walls to bounce off, and still want to have some non-flat-looking images).

So that's how flash module looks mounted on the camera. The camera suddenly became pretty heavy :) But yeah, that's the price you have to pay.. Near the camera is the off-camera shoe cord.

Having knowing near nothing about flashes, how they work and how once is supposed to shoot with them, I found a very good article describing how speedlites actually work. You should definitely give it a try at this link.

And as it was said in one of flash training videos I have (one from Blue Crane studio - google it up) - I moved out to make my first set batteries go dead over some flash testing. I share some of my findings below. So even if you don't have an external flash, these images will probably help you in making decision of wether you should get one :)

External flashes are basically your portable suns, you can point them at target directly, you can make the light bounce of walls and ceilings, you can fight with very bright backgrounds and still take great photos with shallow depth of field, by using hi-speed sync, and much more! I go into bouncing and hi-speed think with this blog entry. So let have a look at sample photos, with some short comments where applicable.

Light direction.

Basically, there are several options for using flash with your camera - you can either use built-in flash or don't use it, and you can use external flash, pointing it do various directions - making light go straight to you target or bounce from one or multiple surfaces.

(all images taken in Aperture priority mode, with f/4 and iso 400 - other parameters were controlled by camera)

Of course you can click on a thumbnail to have a look at a bigger picture!

That's how everything looks without using any flash at all.

Same with built-in flash. Looking pretty flat, doesn't it?

With 430EX II speedlite mounted on camera, pointed directly at the car. Flat-looking image.

This one is taken with 430EX II mounted, but I have bounced the light from the white wall about 1.5 meters to the right from me. We're getting better textures now, I'd say. Also, controlling where our artifical "sun" shines from :)

This one is taken with 430EX II again, but the light was bounced from the wall about 2.5 meters to the left from me.

For some reason, I have decided that the light on the previous picture was too strong, so I have lowered the power of speedlite one step ( to minus 1 ) and re-took the shot.

And this one is taken with 430EX II mounted on the camera, pointed directly at the car, but with the "WIDE" thingy pulled out. Looks like brightness went way up. Don't really know where this wide thingy is supposed to be used though :)

Now, to hi-speed sync feature!

Hi-speed sync

What's that? Well, the thing is - when you try to take a picture against the sun, you are supposed to light up your subject with filling light, so that it won't become dark. And you usually are supposed to do metering against the background (so all these beautiful skies and mountains are visible, for example). In case of very bright backgrounds, your camera will need to use pretty high shutter speeds - in 1/2000 to 1/4000 seconds range, even with ISO set to 100. However, there's a problem - when you use built-in flash as a filling flash, your minimum shutter speed will be fixed at 1/200 second. So with very bright backgrounds, you will get over-exposed pictures, because camera just won't be able to cut off the excessive light with this relatively long shutter speed.

You can lower the required shutter speed by using bigger aperture values - say, f/20 or something like that (so that opening in your lens will become smaller, letting less light thru). But when you use apertures like f/20 or something big like that, you effectively making your depth of field very deep. What if you don't want that to happen? Say, you want to take a portrait photo on the beach, having background stuff a little (or pretty much) blurred?

Well, that's the case when only external flash unit will help you. When using external flash, you are not limited to fixed 1/200 shutter speeds, and can use any values which your camera allows. So you can get those shallow depth, bright background photos! The feature is called Hi-speed sync. Just turn it on on your flash unit, and you're off to some better beach photos!

So, here are some samples (everything taken with ISO100).

Baseline photo. Exposure metering set by the (very bright) outside background behind my window. f/4, 1/4000 sec, no flash. Nothing to write home about.

This one taken with built-in flash, exposure metered by outside. Check out the total lack of details on the carpet. That's because camera wasn't unable to cut off the light at the fixed 1/200 sec shutter. ( f/4, 1/200sec, built-in flash on)

So, as I wrote above, I have decided to try and play with aperture a little - making it higher, limiting amount of light which enters the camera. I set aperture to f/20 in the following shot:

This sure looks much better, but check out the background - it is not blurred at all! That's not what I'm after. (f/20, 1/200 sec, built-in flash fired)

And now, I have attached the EX430 II Speedlite, set it to hi-speed sync mode, and tried to take with f/4 again, metering by bright background and using hi-speed flash sync (which allows very fast shutter speeds, at I wrote above). Check this one out!

So now we are almost there! Carpet got its texture back, background is blurred, no hot spots at all, according to my camera. (f/4, 1/2000, 430EX II Speedline in hi-speed sync mode fired directly at the car)

But.. may be just a little bright? So here's how it looks with even faster shutter speed (1/3200 sec)

(f/4, 1/3200, 430EX II Speedlite hi-speed sync mode)

So, there.. I'm by no means can consider myself a pro or something. Just learning stuff. But hopefully, this blog entry will help somebody to understand external flashes a tiny bit better :)

Mute and unmute FLVPlayback in ActionScript 3

2009-02-12T03:05:13Z

I've been working rather alot with ActionScript lately (both my main job, and also some side projects), learning ins and outs of ActionScript 3, which is great, but differs a great deal from ActionScript 2.. Still alot of ground to cover in order to get fluent with all the quirks (or, may be, features) of the language.

One problem I faced was that I had a need to mute and un-mute a video played inside the FLVPlayback container, programmatically from ActionScript 3.0.

I spent like may be half an hour searching for answers on google and in Flash debugger (man.. will they ever add variables watch there?..). Anyways, the solution to mute and unmute is pretty straightforward. You just have to send the FLVPLayback's mute button a mouse click event. No need to juggle with setting volume to zero and stuff like that..

I also keep the state of mute/unmute in a variable (it was faster to do it this way, rather than research one more topic ;). So here's how you mute (in case your FLVPlayback instance is called flvbox):

Define isMuted var somewhere in the code:

var isMuted:Boolean = false;

And now the real thing:

if (!isMuted) {
MovieClip(flvbox.muteButton).on_mc.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(MouseEvent.CLICK));
isMuted = true;
}

and here's how you unmute:

if (isMuted) {
MovieClip(flvbox.muteButton).off_mc.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent(MouseEvent.CLICK));
isMuted = false;
}

That's it! I guess one can get status of a video being on mute or not, but I'll leave it to you :)

PS: You can have a look at this code in action (well.. sorta..) at one of our company's homepages (the middle-top video thingy): http://www.mj-dvd.jp (warning! Japanese content :)

Rails session cookies not saved in IE 6/7 ?

2009-01-15T02:01:46Z

I spent half an hour surfing the net for an answer and luckily found this page: Problems with IE7 Sessions Not Saved in Rails or PHP

So basically if session cookies (or any cookies for that matter) work just fine on Safari/Firefox, but just get silently ignored on Internet Explorer - please check if there are any underscores in sub-domain you are accessing.

For example, I was using domain called 'amtes_shop.local' for my Rails application, and I could never "shop" for anything because cart was using sessions, and sessions were silently ignored by IE 6/7 (so I was in the latest stage of development when one tests everything on broken browsers ;) Renamed amtes_shop.local to amtesshop.local - and everything magically fixed itself! Bingo!

Circular Polarizing filter

2009-01-05T14:28:01Z

I am got pretty much into photography lately. Even though I got my DSRL (Canon 450D/Kiss X2) almost a year ago, it is just now that I finally started getting taste of "the real photography".

And a few days ago, I got myself one very little addition called Circular Polarizing filter:

Basically, this is the most recommended-to-get filter for beginner photographers. Basically, it works great in the following scenarios:

when you need to get rid of reflections (or, "look-thru") a glass or water
and when you want to take "clearer", richer shots of the skies and greens

It does so by filtering out reflecting sun rays (more technically, it filters out specific light waves, or something like that..)

I took a few test shots with filter on and off, so you can compare how it works in reality.

Shooting thru the windscreen of my car, no filter

A few moments later, with filter attached

Thru the window of my house. Guess which one is with filter on :)

Now, how about the skies? Didn't work as good for my test shots, but well.. these were my first shots with filter!

Left: no filter; Right: filter on (a slightly bluer and richer skies)

Now, into the field!

Yeah I know I suck because I have deleted the image where I took the same fountain without filter, but believe me - you won't have chance in hell to take a shot thru the water like this one during a sunny day, with your bare-naked lens.

And in closing… more of an experiment than a really good shot, but still.. This one was taken with filter on, on a very sunny day, with sun at about 90 degrees to my right. Turned out to be a pretty interesting shot though..

There are more (and guess, better) comparison photos on Wikipedia, but still, first-hand experience is much more priceless :)

Shoot on! The price of my (mid-range priced) filter was 3600yen (which is little less than $40 USD). A very nice price for such an interesting toy, I'd say.

Oh and by the way, I have some of my more interesting photos (or rather photo experiments) on my sister-site at this link.

PS: Holy fucking shit do I hate the new wordpress' visual editor!! Can't center the goddamn fucking images…