Bad iPhone Photo

The camera on the iPhone isn't much to write home about. (I'm actually writing this from home). But then again I'm spoiled with my high-end Canon gear. The iPhone has fixed focus, no optical zoom, no flash, poor low-light performance, and is difficult to hold. But on the plus side, the entire 3.5 inch screen is used to preview the photo.

Here's a small sample from my rather dark living room. Pretty noisy, with lots of flare from the tree lights.

Jim on 12.22.07 @ 09:09 PM ET [link]

Stupid iphone trick

Wow. I actually can post to this blog from my iPhone. Right now I'm typing this on my phone while it's playing Mahler. Aren't ya jealous?

Jim on 12.22.07 @ 06:06 PM ET [link]

Jigsaw

Normally I don't go in for music videos, but this one, by the band Radiohead, is quite cool. The song is "Jigsaw" from the In Rainbows album that I described below.
Jim on 12.20.07 @ 10:45 AM ET [link]

One Lone Linux PC

We finally set up a single Linux PC at the Charles River Internet Center, where I'm volunteering for a few hours a week. It sits amongst a sea of Windows XP machines, and has a happy little sign saying "Hi! I'm a Linux PC!".

It's an oldish Compaq computer, about 500MHz, and I scrounged 256MB of RAM. Any less than that was pretty painful to use with Ubuntu, or even Xubuntu, though it did work.

So far I have seen only one person using this PC, but he comes in most every day and so the machine does at least get a decent amount of use.

I accordance with the Internet Center's policy I set up the Linux machine to wipe out and reconstruct the home directory after every reboot or login. This insures that the machine is clean and free from pornography and other undesirable content every morning.

This change simply involved modifying the /etc/gdm/PostLogin/Default script to wipe out the /home/public directory and replace it with a clean archived copy. I also added a new script called 'freeze' to update the archived home directory if any changes need to be captured by the administrator (me).

All the Windows XP machines run a commercial program called "Deep Freeze" which does a similar thing. It's more difficult with the Windows machines since public users are actually given an Administrator account! That's simply the way Windows works. It's difficult to do anything in Windows XP unless you have Administrator privileges.

Jim on 12.13.07 @ 08:56 AM ET [link]

iThink therefore I am

Like many a gadget freak I couldn't resist the siren's call. I bought an iPhone. ("There is no God but Apple and Steve is its messenger").

It's a supremely well-designed device, both in hardware and software. My only criticisms at this point are that it has more fingerprints than a crime lab, and that it's a little slippery and hard to hold. But it makes the Palm devices that I've been using for years seem klunky and amateurish by comparison.

Since this phone was bought recently it has the latest firmware, 1.1.2. Unfortunately this firmware version is a little tricky to hack into. For this reason and because there are rumors of an impending 1.1.3 release, I've chosen not to move over to the dark side and hack it. Actually the only application I'd like that isn't included is an ssh client, which is available to hacked phones.

AT&T couldn't seem to figure out how to transfer my existing pre-paid cell phone number to a new subscription account, so I gave up and got a new number. I don't find AT&T to be any better or worse than any of the other carriers, so the 2 year contract didn't bother me. EDGE data speeds are acceptable when there's no wifi around.

I just wish it weren't so damn trendy.


Jim on 12.07.07 @ 07:53 PM ET [link]