Using Ink

Panasonic GF1 Experience, Briefly

2010-01-24T11:56:46Z

I’ve been using Panasonic GF1 camera for almost a month now.

What I like about this camera:

compact size,
slim and speedy 20mm lens,
long video files (up to 30″ for the European market),
lens are interchangable;
quick autofocus (compared to other contrast-type autofocusing systems);
face recognition (speeds up autofocusing in video mode),
a responsive high-resolution display.

What’s not so pleasant:

noise (it’s higher than in a three-year old Canon 400D),
shutter lag (half a second after having autofocused),
camera body is slippery,
some menu controls are inconvenient (e.g. when deleting multiple photos, one can easily deselect photos instead of deleting them or moving on with selection);
digital viewfinder has a very low-res display: for 180 € you get 0.4 Mpx, something like 640×480, not even 800×600 px;
no in-body accelerometer, that means that you’ll have to rotate your photos by 90° manually if you use lens with no stabilization.

Logitech Mice Drivers

2010-01-11T09:27:32Z

Having bought VX Nano mouse I didn’t want to use a CD to install Logitech software. It took a while to find out that Mac software is called ‘Control Center’, Windows driver is called ‘Set Point’.

A Questionable Thing

2009-12-26T13:23:43Z

Rackspace Cloud Files CDN will redownload your file from the US storage every time you put something new after the question mark:

http://[container].cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/object,
http://[container].cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/object?something,
http://[container].cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/object?something-new.

You’ll end up having a low download speed for those URLs even though they point to one file.

So, the front side of Rackspace CDN thinks these are different objects. And the source Rackspace server sees no difference between the URLs.

This behaviour is a traffic waste.

Rackspace Cloud iPhone Client

2009-12-26T13:31:32Z

There’s an official iPhone application to manage your Rackspace Cloud account. As of today, it’s not very useful. I’d like to mention some functions which the app v. 1.1 currently lacks.

You can neither stop nor destroy Cloud Servers.
No price list for server instances.
No usage stats.
For Cloud Files there is no option to view a public URL of a file or to see a CDN container identity. You can do it only with an ‘Email Link to File’ option.
No ‘refresh’ button in ‘Servers’ menu, which means you can’t quickly see when a server was created. And, strangely, even after reopening of the app, you will see your new server only in a couple of minutes. There is no such lap in Rackspace Cloud management panel.

What this app allows you to do is basically create new server instances. But ongoing development promises that the app will be more flexible.

iPhone Twitter Clients

2009-12-26T13:30:36Z

Since writing about Twitterrific and TwitterFon, I see myself using Tweetie.

Now, Tweetie 2 for iPhone is released and it’s definately my primary Twitter client. For geeky functions there’s Twittelator Pro. But its definately not an everyday app.

BeejiveIM GTalk Push

2009-12-04T14:53:16Z

Push Notifications for Google Talk accounts in BeejiveIM are available for one hour since Beejive was quit.
But you can change this timeout in the iPhone Preferences for Beejive.

‘Deep Green’: The Chess

2009-05-17T21:03:51Z

I’m not a chess amateur. Never was fond of chess. Having read in ‘Daring Fireball’ about ‘Deep Green’ chess, I didn’t rush into buying the app.

Several months later I found myself in for playing a twilight chess on iPhone. A look at free chess apps: nothing interesting. So I bought ‘the best chess app’, as I remembered it from ‘Daring Fireball’. $7.99, not cheap.

I admire this app. It’s beautifully made and well thought-out. ‘Deep Green’ is smart: both in interface and in play—for me, at least.

Don’t hesitate.

Tweetie, Twitterrific 2.0

2009-05-17T21:03:51Z

Earlier I mentioned that I’ll still be using TwitterFon as a primary twitterer, but it appears now that Tweetie for iPhone is the one I use at most.

Today Twitterrific 2 was released. This looks like a very interesting update. ‘Premium’ edition is $3.99, not $9.99.

There is a lot of improvement in the new Twitterrific but it still hasn’t a ‘black on white’ interface. As Gedeon Maheux kindly pointed out, one can switch to a white background and a dark text.

Last night, after I came home from the Victory Day celebration, I’ve been examining the new Twitterrific. Briefly speaking, it’s a good program (pardon me, Americans: I don’t use the words ‘great’, ‘love’, etc. often).

The Features

Firstly, Twitterrific supports multiple accounts. Today, this is a necessity; a popular Tweetie already has that feature. But Twitterrific 2.0 has it even better because T. 2.0 allows you to use not only Twitter; Identi.ca, Present.ly are supported out of the box. And with a ‘Base URL‘ option you can use any service that supports Twitter API.

Secondly, there are ‘Searches’: the recently-added feature of Twitter which allows you to see what other people are saying on some topic. Give T. 2.0 a list of terms to watch, filter tweets by author if you wish—or by addressee; narrow your search by geo distance. Your could be looking for ‘discount, gadget, Amazon’; maybe for ‘band, club’ in the radius of one mile.

Thirdly, Twitterrific shows conversations. It lets you know what question each person is answering. Twittie shows conversations as well but not on one screen.

And a ‘Public Timeline’ is there in Twitterrific 2.0 while TwitterFon and Tweetie have none.

Not So Obvious Parts of the Interface

It’s strange, why a ‘Font Settings’ button is in the right top corner. Both TwitterFon and Tweetie have a ‘New Post’ there.

Newly loaded tweets, ‘updates’, are marked only with a different colour of their dates. Very Tufty. I didn’t see the updates were marked until I was told they were.

The updates have a different background in TwitterFon; in Tweetie you’re being scrolled to the first newly arrived tweet.

Features Currently Not There

Twitterrific 2.0 today doesn’t show you the list of followers or the ‘following’ list. This is due to be fixed.

You can’t load more than a 100 tweets in any timeline.

I didn’t find an easy way to search for Twitter users by their login.

So What?

Definitely it’s worth installing at least a free Twitterrific 2.0.

If you haven’t any paid Twitter clients for iPhone, I’d recommend buying a Premium version without thinking. It’s much cheaper now than it was, and it’ll be easier to use the client without ads. Those who have a favourable client will decide on their own after playing with a free version. I was glad to see this update even though I bought Tweetie recently.

TwitterFon vs Tweetie

2009-05-17T21:03:51Z

Today I bought Tweetie app for iPhone, for $2.99. I still prefer TwitterFon over Tweetie after having played with a new app for some time.

TwitterFon highlights new messages and places a badge when updates arrive.
Smaller font of TwitterFon allows to read more.
TF displays dates in a easily readable form (e.g. ‘5 min ago’).

Though, TwitterFon isn’t quite as good as Tweetie sometimes:

Worse link management: it’s hart to tap on a small blue circle.
Manages the only account.
Can’t find users by name, so it’s hard to follow new users.
Doesn’t have an option to make a web link to your current geolocation.

Starting Over

2009-05-11T20:11:31Z

With all the extentions, Radiant CSM promises to take quite a time to configure the way I want. Instead of changing plugins how I think they should work, pushing them to GitHub, awaiting for each plugin author’s response, I switched to WordPress.