Tech

I’m a believer now: with an iPhone (4S) and a nice cool application such as Snapseed, you can really get good shots. I hesitate to call them ‘artistic’ even if other people may do so. That’s not art to replicate the look of a heavily pushed Kodak Tri-X, but they are cool nonetheless.

I should write something more about Snapseed, how this approach to photo editing is perfect for an iPhone. I was one of those nerds who like to endlessly play with Curves, so my philosophy has always been that you need to work hard to improve a shot, and the idea of applying an automatic adjuster-thingy was never considered.

I moved my tumblr log to calepin.

The reasons for doing it ? I like the idea of having finally all my posts under control and not having to resort to a web interface. It’s faster and cleaner. I might do the same with my other blog, aadm.wordpress.com, where I keep longer and more articulated posts.

I also like the interface, simple and pure; you can’t mess with so little nor you have the tentation to do so. You are kind of forced to stick to words and photos. What I don’t like: that all Calepin blogs look the same (but hey, also books look the same, all black words on white paper); that there’s no possibility to put photos into the abstracts; that there’s no next/previous buttons to navigate between posts.

Randall is one of my favourite authors. This comic here sums up perfectly my current feelings about tech bloggers (also read this rant that I wrote some time ago).

What I was looking for: an app to store my passwords

I stuck with Lockbox Lite for a long time on my iPhone. Then I got fed up about not being able to have the same data available also on my two Macs (not to mention the stupid ads). So I started looking for something that had these features:

• quick 4-digits general password to access all the rest
• sync between iPhone and mac

About the first point, I know that it’s a weak point and raises the question “why using AES 256-bit encryption if you rely on a 4-digit number to secure all your confidential data”. Well, I’m not overly paranoid about this stuff – and then the alternative is to keep my passwords in a text file somewhere on my computer.

The Russians Used a Pencil: Idea to Market in 5 Months: Making the Glif

I wish I had an iPhone 4 just to have a glif.

On July 11th, 2010, Tom Gerhardt and I had an idea for an iPhone accessory: a tripod mount that doubled as a stand. Five months later, customers began to receive our product, the Glif, in the mail. This turnaround, from idea to market in five months by two guys with no retail or manufacturing…

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Using everytrail for iphone: the app shows for this particular trip 33km in 1 hour and 19 minutes with a resulting average speed of 25km/h.

The same trip displayed on everytrail.com is 1 hour and 46 minutes long, however, which makes for an average speed of 18.6 km/h.

I have paused the tracking after having arrived at destination, then resumed for the return trip. I think that everytrail.com does not understand the timecodes in the gpx file.

I am wondering about the next iPad. What is available now is certainly enticing and must be a joy for light computing / intense internet reading. I do have limited budget, however, and think that probably the iPhone 4 is a better way to spend my money. But I look at the iPad and keep thinking that it could be a photographer’s ideal machine; if only it had a straight usb port to connect a camera (if I travel light, I certainly do care about bringing yet another little piece of plastic).

An interesting piece was published a few days ago on the official google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/future-of-search.html

Let me quote two passages:

It would be much nicer if we had a device with great connectivity that could do searches without interruption. One far-fetched idea: how about a wearable device that does searches in the background based on the words it picks up from conversations, and then flashes relevant facts?

So what’s our straightforward definition of the ideal search engine? Your best friend with instant access to all the world’s facts and a photographic memory of everything you’ve seen and know.

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Some time ago I stumbled upon this thing, the Getting Things Done thing, aka GTD. How do you wanna call it ? A geekish obsession ? A lifestyle idea for nerds ?

Anyway, the Hipster PDA post was pretty cool (and fun to read). I have experienced myself the pleasure of having a toy like a palm (used to have the transparent Palm IIIe, upgraded with a IIIx motherboard, then switched to a Sony Clie), only to realize it was a useless and timewasting piece of equipment, and switched back to post-it notes and my trusty old mobile (6310i) to keep the phone numbers and passwords.