The Mumbling Fernando

Google’s new web browser ‘Chrome’ has been released for Windows (Mac, Linux to be released in time) and thus far I’ve been damn impressed. In terms of speed, I’ve found it to be considerably quicker than Firefox 3 especially at handling large numbers of tabs (>20) and the speed of Gmail is just extraordinary. The ‘Omnibox’ aka Firefox’s ‘Awesomebox’ seems to work extremely well although I haven’t yet mastered using multiple search engines via the single box. 

Short verdict: superb, definitely worth a try especially if you consider yourself a power user. I’d keep an eye out for security vulnerabilities, although I suspect google will be quick to respond with automatic updates. 

A quick post to blatently advertise http://zencat.co.uk which is a new strangely pleasing (nearly) daily webcomic centred around a small mystic cat and his surroundings. It even includes a feline character that is in love with a fish. It’s that good!

A quick post to confirm that the latest iPhone version 2 beta firmware (5a240d) does work with the Oxford University Wireless LAN (OWL). This means that in June when the firmware is publicly released iPhones and iPod Touch devices which are upgraded to the latest firmware should be able to get full internet access using iPhone’s built in VPN client.

If you’ve been brave and are already running the beta firmware, you can use the following settings to connect:

Hit

Settings->
General->
Network->
VPN->
‘Add VPN Configuration’

Select ‘IPSec’
Server: vpn.ox.ac.uk
Account: your university username
Password: your ‘remote access’ password (go to web registration if you’ve forgotten it)**
Group Name: oxford
Secret: can be found on this settings page (it will ask for your oxford SSO login)

Once you’ve entered all that, a VPN Option will appear in your main settings page next to your WiFi selection.

Turn the VPN Switch ‘ON’ and you’re good to go!

** I recommend you leave this blank, it will prompt you for your password each time you login

That’s right folks, adobe has released its first beta of the upcoming Lightroom 2 software! With Apple recently releasing Aperture 2.1 some of us in the Adobe camp have been itching for a batch of new features like brush based retouching and plugins. Although Lightroom 2 beta contains brush retouching (e.g. dodging, burning) it’s yet to show and support for third party plugins such as Noise Ninja (soon to be released for Aperture).

What do I need to know before using it?

As it is a beta, adobe and myself will warn you not to use it in a production environment and should purely be treated as a toy at this stage. There are a couple of major problems which stop you using it on a production machine:

• BAD - Lightroom 1.x catalogs will not import (although the final release will convert them)
• BAD - Catalogs created by this beta may not work with the final release
• BAD - Some develop settings and brush retouching (”localised corrections”) are not guaranteed to work with the final release
• BAD - Although there’s much better photoshop integration, your metadata may not transfer between the two perfectly
• GOOD - This beta will not touch your existing Lightroom 1.3.1/1.4 release (you can run them concurrently)
• GOOD - During the few hours I’ve used it, I’ve imported two thousand pictures and it has yet to throw an error or crash on me

Ok, so what’s new?

There’s a whole load of stuff that doesn’t work perfectly yet (check the release notes), but here are the juicy highlights:

• Dual Monitor Support!
• Better photoshop integration - files are no longer saved as TIFF/PSDs and are instead opened as ‘Smart objects’ keeping a pure non-destructive editing process even when switching to photoshop
• 10,000 pixel per side limit raised to 30,000 pixels - perfect for those large panoramas
• Direct integration with photoshop to create automated HDR/Panoramas without having to manually export
• Load several files into photoshop as layers in a single document
• Smart collections automatically created based on meta criteria
• Ability to save collections for specific modules, e.g. save one set for web, one for print

Develop Module

• Localised corrections - Big one!
  Allows you to make specific adjustments (e.g. brightness/tint) to particular parts of your photograph, rather than the whole image. This is based on brush strokes and masking.
• Vignetting tool has been expanded to provide a frame to adjust location of vignette
• More keyboard controls: try + - , . to increase/decrease and switch between various panel controls

Print Module

• Ability to arrange several sizes of a single (hopefully they’ll change this to multiple soon) photograph on a page to print at once
• Print to JPG - means you can now natively export your pictures with watermarks! Also means you can embed ICC profiles more easily.
• Print sharpening that actually appears to work!

So that’s about it, even though this is the first beta it does appear to beat Apple’s Aperture 2 in many ways such as having a totally non-destructive editing approach even with external photoshop editing. Although until we see plugin support Lightroom won’t have that ultimate expandibility that’s now available with Aperture 2.1.

“HAL” was the name of the ship’s computer in Sir Arthur C Clarke’s novel “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Many said that this was word play on “IBM” (with each letter being one removed along the alphabet). Today I was reading one of a series of articles as tributes to Sir Arthur which mentioned the name of the ship in his novel “2010: The year we make contact” as Leonov.

Lenovo is of course the company which bought out IBM’s comsumer PC business a few years ago, so is their name simply wordplay on Sir Arthur’s ship’s name?

Wikipedia says this about Lenovo’s name:

“Lenovo” is a portmanteau of “Le-” (from Legend) and “novo”, pseudo-Latin for “new”.

A quick google didn’t seem to reveal much information. Drop a comment if you know anything more!

While browsing flickr yesterday I noticed a couple of things on the Bristol Group, firstly that more elderly gentlemen may be stopped and searched by the police purely for the reason of having gray hair. Secondly that there is a petition open on the 10 Downing Street website asking for clarification of photographers’ rights in public spaces. We keep hearing more and more stories of photographers all over the country being stopped and sometimes illegally searched and even forcefully having photographs deleted from their cameras all in the name of national security. In most cases the police have little or no right to search you although complying with their wishes is arguably the safest thing to do despite the infringement on rights.

Useful links:

Photographers’ Rights Booklet (A4 PDF useful for keeping in your kit bag)
Petition to clarify laws surrounding photography in public places

During a visit to New Orleans in June 2006, I wandered around parts of the city to see first hand the kind of damage that was inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. To my shock, the trail of destruction far exceeded my expectations and indeed was arguably worse than what I had seen on the isle of Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the South East asian Tsunami of 2004.

The following link leads you to a short set of photographs detailing an afternoon of random meandering in the city

http://flickr.com/photos/timfernando/sets/72157604188361802/show/

Watching this evening’s Apple ‘Special Event’, I find myself initially impressed and then bemused. The new iPod Christmas (holiday season) lineup includes most iPods available in RED, which with every purchase (along with various other manufacturers’ products), gives a certain donation towards the RED appeal to help alleviate AIDS in Africa.

We also have the new iPod Nano which, for once, looks accurate to various artists’ impressions and rumours which have been flying around the net in recent weeks. It’s very strangely proportioned yet absolutely tiny and sports video playback and Apple’s fabled ‘Cover Flow’, although the latter is reported to be a rather choppy implementation of what is seen on the iPhone.

The iPod has now been renamed the iPod classic and is aimed at those who have huge music collections (now up to 160gb hard disc based). I’m sure Mr Jobs will claim it will make you cooler/sexier/more succesful, but in reality the only new features seem to be choppy ‘Cover Flow’, and more disc space for your goodies.

Oh, you can now put custom ringtones on your iPhone, albeit by having to pay again for the track which you wish to use, with 500,000 tracks available to do so initially. Gee, doesn’t that make you want to buy that music you already own again?
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No, I’m not talking about the film company, I’m talking about the large piece of equipment I’ve been carrying with me for sometime now (no, not that either). My phone, known by many names including the HTC Universal, O2 XDA Exec, Orange SPV M5000, Vodafone v1640, T-Mobile MDA Pro, QTek 9000 and my favourite which sounds a bit like a cross between an Apple branded condom and a jamjar is the “iMate JasJar”. This device is based on the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform and one of those that claims to be able to do everything from making your coffee to… making phone calls.

Is it a truck, is it a brick…? No! It’s a phone…ish

That’s right, it’s not exactly a phone but a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) Phone. Which among many thing means that it’s BIG, the plus side is that it does a lot for how much it pulls down your jeans. I’ve been using mine for satellite navigation, ‘push’ email, VoIP (Skype), a replacement for my ageing iPod, MSN/Live Messenger, Web Browsing, writing the odd letter or article, a couple of spreadsheets, handling my calendar and even making some phone calls :-O.

So it can do a lot, but is it really that useful?

When I bought this phone about a year ago, I had grand ideas of having almost a fully functioning PC in my pocket and to some extent that has proven true. The high resolution touch screen is perfect other than for the fact a widescreen would have fitted in the package more neatly, same kudos goes to the ‘thumbboard’ which gives particularly fast typing speed and fast access to all those nasty characters like £s and /s that are pretty difficult to get to on regular phones.
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TomTom’s new satellite navigation software for Windows Pocket PC Mobile devices has been released. Many of the issues TomTom 5 users had, appear to have been bugfixed including a much improved installer that works on both PC and Mac (hoorah!). Previously TomTom was packaged seperately as ‘Mobile’ for Smartphones and ‘Navigator’ for PDAs, in version 6 they have emalgamated these into a single package which will certainly save the confusion of some users deciding if their device was a phone or PDA e.g. HTC Universal.
New features include a ‘buddy finding’ system, which appears to be a rather curiously useful way of finding another TomTom user. Both users require TomTom and Internet access on their device and this allows them to exchange location data as well as text messages. I’d imagine this would be useful when trying to get to an unknown place someone else is already at.

Most of the other new features appear to be refinements including better call and text message handling from within the TomTom software.

Check out www.tomtom.com or this press release