So the iPhone 4 has been out in Australia for a while but it is totally sold out, meaning you have to get on a waiting list for one. I’d rather just walk into the store and get one. I figured out I’d actually save money getting the new iPhone as I previously used pay-as-you-go with Telstra and was constantly getting caught out with going over my data usage and ending up paying more than it was worth a month for me to use. Basically if I forgot to top-up my data the phone would go through $50 of credit in 2 days. Very annoying and a cash cow for Telstra.
So after 2 years and 4 months of having the very first iPhone I’ve now got the latest one!
iPhone 4 Unboxing
The most overwhelming change with this version is the quality of the screen, it really is amazing, it looks so crystal clear you could easily read from it, like a book, without getting eye strain.
The next coolest feature is FaceTime. Marcus is the only other person I know with the iPhone 4, the best thing of all is its free to use, so we don’t pay Telstra to use it -
Facetime with Hugo (and a duck infront of his Face)
The camera also shoot 1280×720 video, which is fantastic and it takes a much better picture as well. The wifi device within the phone is also a lot more powerful.
What about that deathgrip? Yes I can make it happen, if I grab it really tight the bars go down, but I could do that with my old iPhone as well. If it starts to effect actual calls I’ll post an update but so far so good.
Altogether so far an awesome upgrade! What happened to the old iPhone? Amy has got it and she really likes it.
Surf wise it was going off today so at lunch I biked over to Deadmans, I’ve never seen anyone surf it before. The video makes the waves look smaller than they actually were. It’s on these sort of days where I think a sandwich and a camera are better than a wetsuit and a surfboard. The video doesn’t really do the size of the waves justice.
First up is a guy getting a nice barrel, the second part of the video shows a guy who paddled off the rocks at the wrong moment as the biggest set I saw came through, he luckily made it through all of the waves so close to the rocks it must have been scary (I know I was scared for him). Whilst at the same time another guy who doesn’t quite make the take off gets smashed and then smashed again by the next wave and loses his board!
So it has been over 2 years since the “iPhone Unboxing” that I did. The phone has been absolutely awesome and it is no surprise to me that Apple’s Market Cap has overtaken Microsoft’s. Microsoft have tried very hard to play catch up with Apple and now Google but have failed pretty badly. Their Zune copy of the iPod isn’t that great and two years after purchasing the 1st generation iPhone, walking around the Telstra store a couple of months ago there wasn’t a single phone anywhere near it (two years later). Google appear to be making some inroads with their Android operating system which is very exciting but their hardware partners are still letting them down.
So yesterday we went to Bondi Junction to see a movie and I picked up a 3G iPad, I consider it a fine investment considering I have not put down my iPhone at all since purchasing it.
New iPad and 1st Gen iPhone
The iPad is awesome and will probably replace the iPhone for web browsing and checking email and will be great for trips away. The onscreen keyboard is great and I’ve already started to use multiple fingers at once when typing which is much more productive. The iPad works with all the old iPhone applications, although to be honest they are a bit rubbish as they only appear in a small window which you can resize to 200% but you loose all the quality of the application, although slowly but surely all the apps are starting to be ported over.
Hopefully iPhone/iPad applications will be officially be able to develop on them using Visual Studio (rumoured for the WWDC event next week) and then things will really get exciting!
So after 6 years of watching what is probably my favourite television series of all time, it came to an end tonight. After starting watching the series almost five years ago it has been a long and fun ride. Thinking back over some of the episodes and seeing how slow some of them were compared to how fast the final few episodes played out. I had dreams about the black smoke and wondered what the numbers meant for ages and how to get in the hatch etc… I remember it really opening up when Desmond traveled through time in The Constant and what Lost fan can forget The 23rd Psalm one of the best episodes of them all.
Like everything good it had to come to an end and I’m happy with the final episode. Of course there are loads of unanswered questions but that I think is more fun then answering everything, if there’s not another good TV show to match this one, at least we can spend the rest of time discussing what we think happened on and off the Island.
As for the Lost finale, Justin and Tasleema organised a fantastic finale with props, boarding passes and weapons -
Inflight menu, safety brochure and of course a weapon
And here are some of the Losties, Simone a member of Dharma, Pregnant Roxy as Claire, Justin as Jack Shepherd, Tasleema as Ana Lucia Cortez and Stu as Dharma -
The LOST Final
A great night and sad that LOST is all over!
So the other day I was researching if it was possible to view live feeds of aircraft flying around the world. It turns out it is possible to track aircraft with ADS-B with some fairly expensive equipment called an SBS-1, which costs about $800. However, on researching some of the software that is available for it, other SBS-1 users can share the data they receive and allow other users to view the information! So I registered the software, called Plane Plotter and plane spotting here we come!
Here’s a video of arrivals to Sydney over a 15 minute period which I recorded, note that 50% of aircraft aren’t shown because they do not have the equipment on board for them to be visible.
And to make sure I’ve not been fooled, here’s Air Austral (the plane to the left in the red area – which denotes anything I can actually see by looking out the window) flying over Manly from Noumea on the way to Reunion registration F-OMAY.
So if you’ve ever bored, get Plane Plotter and get spotting!
Today I purchased a creme egg as a treat this evening. I looked at the wrapper and noticed it had a couple of dents in it. Not unusual, but then when I looked at the chocolate I noticed the dents resembled something similar.
Creme Egg with Pegs
The tooth size is probably too big for an animal such as a rat or mouse, my instinct tells me this was the work of a naughty child, who probably picked up the creme egg at the checkout of Coles and tried to take a bite out of it (foil still on) whilst his Mom wasn’t looking!!!
Have you ever seen those adverts that claim to do miracles? Like help you loose weight by just drinking a drink. With so totally convincing pictures of a torso like these ones -
Totally the same person – they have almost the same bra after all!!
In the picture the girl is wearing a different bra and has different colour hair, so a total transformation! I clicked through to see how this website was trying to rip people off. The girl on the website has ginger hair so has been very busy at the hair salon! The website is basically a sales pitch which links through to another website for a South American berry juice and “life cleanse” tablets. If you clicked these links and bought the product this original website would earn referral money.
I’m fairly sure their tactics of showing pictures of unrelated girls of different body proportions to advertise a product is against the law but I guess there’s no way of proving they are unrelated, it may be the same girl who loves getting her hair dyed.
The website had a comment section at the bottom which has comments like this -
“I just happend to click on your page one day. Your story has definitely inspired me, Michelle. I already signed up for my shipment.”
Again these could by true comments, it’s pretty difficult to prove otherwise but then this comment grabbed my attention -
That seems to good to be true, someone in the suburb I live next to ordered some from this site and it took less than a week to get delivered. Using the magic of remote desktop and running a server in the UK I visited the same website -
Same “comment” but with a different geo-location. So the comments are fake and definitely against the FTC Endorsement Guidelines (the site is hosted in the USA).
So I guess the morale of the story is, never click on an advert to buy something or ever think someone who lives down the road just bought the same product!
I just found this video of London from 1927, it’s pretty incredible having lived around the areas where the film first starts it’s amazing to see this in pseudo-colour!
Then and Now
And here’s the full 10 minute video -
The video was made by Claude Friese-Greene who’s father was an early day pioneer of cinematography. The colour was created by one frame being tinted red and the next frame tinted green, when played at full speed the brain makes the images appear as colour. The video above is better than the original as some modern day techniques have been applied. Loads more into at the BFI.
