Category Archives: Technology

The iPhone Screens

Posted by on November 22, 2011 No comments

Now that my wife is back from a couple of days away I ended up comparing some bits between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S, particularly download speed wise (with the SpeedTest app) and I noticed that the screen on the 4S was yellower/murkier than the iPhone 4 I used before.

Part of this evening I’ve been comparing the two screens and I struggle a bit over which I prefer, some colours look better on the yellower screen, at the cost of some detail in photos as its a bit more washed out, and others look better on a bluer screen, for instance I looked at the same photo on both a iPhone 4 and 4S screen and a purple/pink was much more striking on the bluer iPhone 4 screen than the 4S. However the grey and greens looked more natural on the yellower 4S. The other cost with the yellower screen is that the text of the App Icons isn’t quite as clear

I kind of forget the difference when I don’t look at the iPhone 4 but there is a part of me that is bugged knowing that some of the detail in pictures is lost / washed out and icon text is a bit harder to read.

Its not an unknown issue and also occurred when the iPhone 4 was released. Its quite varied, some like the yellower tint, some the bluer tint and the chances of getting exactly the one you want is slim unless you somehow convince Apple to let you swap lots of times.

Have a look at this photo by Jason Yeaman in the AppAdvice thread, which shows the variation in the iPhone 4 screens.

When I got my original 3GS I loved its screen to death (I honestly think it was on the yellow side of neutral), but the casing (dock connector area) cracked and I ended up taking it to the Apple Store and they kindly replaced the phone. Then began a nightmare of 6-7 replacement phones which had varying degrees of problems (dead pixels, vibration unit and so on) including quite different degrees of screen colours; none though had as good a colour as my original 3GS had and I ended up with one that was quite blue, too blue even and so I gladly upgraded to the iPhone 4 when I could.

When I got the iPhone 4, the first one was quickly replaced because the phone had a strong green aura when taking photo’s of white surfaces and I had struggled with it compared to the 3GS; while camera shots were great outdoors I couldn’t trust the camera indoors; I still don’t. The replacement 4 was yellower than the original 4 but I went with it with the intention that I could change it down the line if I didn’t get on with it. Since then I’ve gotten used to the yellower look of the screen, but had to constantly ignore the fact that the top part of the screen (status area) was dimmer than the rest of the display (most noticeable on white pages in Safari, particularly if rotated horizontally). In the end I didn’t exchange it again as I didn’t want to go through what I went through with the 3GS.

And now we come to the iPhone 4S which is yellower again than the iPhone 4. At the moment it stands like this there is a:
2G which is reddish
3GS quite blue(red)
4 most neutral (to my eyes)
4S yellow

Excuse the photography, it is an iPad 2, but it shows the difference in the screen colours well enough in both this first side on shot. The dimist, on the left, is the original iPhone, then the 3GS, 4 and then finally the 4S.

Side on shot of our iPhone family. It shows the difference is the display panels.

Then we have a face on shot of the phones, again 2G, 3GS, 4 and 4S and it again shows the variation in the screens.

Face on shot of the iPhones, all on full brightness and auto Brightness off.

I’m not entirely sure how i will leave it, whether I will waste my time and Apple’s and try and change out the phone, part of me definitely wants to as I find the screen that little bit more yellow than the 4 and it makes the text a bit harder to read. On the other had, its not a big issue and I should learn to live with it how it is; particularly as I have no idea what the replacement will be like, it could be yellower or bluer. Its a lot of money, even subsided, and it irks when its not “right”.

There is the note that was said when the iPhone 4 came out, the part of the yellowing was actually the glue which hadn’t dried yet and that basically you just need to use the phone for a week, ideally at full brightness to help it finish the drying process. I will try that out but really that was suggested more for people who had yellow splotches on their screen, rather than their screen being yellower overall compared to another iPhone. (As some have noted in this thread)

iPhone 4S thoughts

Posted by on November 21, 2011 No comments

This was the results of my dictating part of this entry.

Just a quick couple of observations about the iPhone for S and quite impressed with itself on the camera is much improved as ROP upload speeds dancebeats on 3G network about three times Fastmap banners but three times faster than on the iPhone for Siri is amazing though struggles with my accent somewhat and OsmoPrep you raspy voice for instance

Which should, of course, have been (without the correct punctuation as I forgot to tell Siri to add any.

Just a quick couple of observations about the iPhone 4S. I am quite impressed with it so far the camera is much improved as are upload speeds and download speeds on the 3G network about three times faster than on the iPhone four Siri is amazing though struggles with my accent somewhat and also my raspy voice for instance

I’ll add more to this later.

(had one instance were diction failed, showed purple dots and then just stopped)

Siri doesn’t like how I say cold, he (UK English) tends to think I mean call or called, as you can see in the pic.

20111121-001914.jpg

Also my attempt at

Tea Earl Grey Hot

didnt really work out.

20111121-002016.jpg

There is definitely something amiss with battery life. Phone just sitting there and not being used is dropping % quite quickly. It was down about 3% in 20 minutes.

Thermomix Cooking

Posted by on January 19, 2011 No comments

thermo_press
Photo is “thermo_press” by abby_luque, on Flickr

Last year Bob get herself a new toy for the kitchen called the Thermomix (DE site). To quote the UK site the device

Thermomix is a super fast food blender and processor that also weighs, cooks, simmers and steams!

It really does replace a bunch of devices in the kitchen, though in our case more only a Magic Mix food processor. You can cook a full in the Thermomix as it has a simmering basket (which can be useful for steaming rice) and whats called a Varoma which is used for steaming vegetables / meat / pasta. It so versatile you can make bread dough, soups, sauces, drinks, desserts and main meals.

Whats odd about the machine, is that you can’t simply go to a store and buy one. They are basically sold via demonstrators, who come to your house and for a couple of hours they come and show you what the machine can do and cook various dishes for you (for instance when Bob had a couple of demos the demonstrator made Wholemeal bread rolls, soup, a dip of some kind and I believe a jam).

You might think its a little dodgy that you can only get the machine this way but it honestly isn’t. Its an expensive machine and they don’t want you to simply discount it because of the price and they want you to truly see what the machine can do which if it sat on a shop shelf you never would (nor would you see how damn easy it is too clean).

You have to convert your recipes a bit to use it, something I do not feel comfortable trying to do yet but thats fine as there are tons of recipes on blogs on the Internet and in the rather busy and very friendly Australian Thermomix forums.

Given I’ve started to use it more, I’m going to (try) and blog the recipes we use with photo’s of what the final dish looked like. I suspect it will be a long time though before you manage to extract and original recipe from me (if ever!) :)

Dspam debuging Voodoo required

Posted by on September 19, 2010 No comments

I have setup, I think, using a group in dspam.

I have a file in /opt/var/dspam called group with the following content

group1:inoculation:user1,user2,user3 (where user1-3 are real email addresses)

I wanted to confirm that the group was actually working so I figured no problems I’d turn on debug but that doesn’t seem to work.

So far I have OPTS “–debug” uncommented in /etc/default/dspam

I have added the following to /opt/etc/dspam.conf

Debug *
DebugOpt process spam fp inoculation

I tried restarting dspam, and postifx for good measure) but that had no effect. There is no dspam.debug in /tmp or in /var/log or in /var/log/dspam/

I then added –debug to the calls in Postfix’s master.cf

dspam unix - n n - 10 pipe
flags=Ru user=dspam argv=/opt/bin/dspam
--debug
--deliver=innocent,spam
--user ${recipient}
--mail-from=${sender}

&

# honeypot
hspam unix - n n - 10 pipe
flags=Ru user=dspam argv=/opt/bin/dspam --debug --class=spam --source=inoculation --user honeypot --deliver=innocent

Again restarting dspam & postfix had no effect.

My dspam binary is compiled with debug support enabled. Right now I’m at a bit of a loss.


root@daffy:/etc/default# dspam --version

DSPAM Anti-Spam Suite 3.9.0 (agent/library)

Copyright (c) 2002-2009 DSPAM Project

http://dspam.sourceforge.net.

DSPAM may be copied only under the terms of the GNU General Public License,
a copy of which can be found with the DSPAM distribution kit.

Configuration parameters: '--enable-domain-scale' '--with-storage-driver=mysql_drv,hash_drv' '--prefix=/opt' '--enable-daemon' '--enable-virtual-users' '--enable-preferences-extension' '--enable-clamav' '--with-mysql-libraries=/usr/lib/mysql/' '--with-mysql-includes=/usr/include/mysql/' '--with-dspam_owner=dspam' '--with-dspam_group=dspam' '--enable-debug'

Drobo Censorship

Posted by on August 19, 2009 No comments

This is a quick post from a forum post I just made. Mostly so it lives on, incase Data Robotics once again censors its new forum.

The context here is that Data Robotics (makers of Drobo) has taken over handling of the forum. Previously it was handled Capable Networks but was suddenly stopped. The first a number of us knew about this was this email from the 17th of August

Dear DroboSpace Member,

Earlier this month, the DroboSpace Community and Forum went offline as Data Robotics, the primary sponsor of the site, ended its long-time community partnership with Capable Networks (our company). DRI has since launched a closed, company-managed support forum on its own corporate site under the DroboSpace name.

We here at Capable are exploring our options for continuing to support an open, independently-owned and operated Drobo online community like those we run at SlingCommunity.com, TiVoCommunity.com, and MyOpenRouter.com.

That’s where you come in. Over the past two years, you helped us create a thriving Drobo community built around valuable content that became the most popular destination for lively discussions around Drobo-related products. It would be a shame to see all the information and conversations vanish, but that depends on your involvement and support.

If you would or would not like to see an independent and open community return, please send us an e-mail with your thoughts or feedback to drobospace@capablenet.com. We look forward to hearing from you and will certainly respond to the community when we have finalized our decision.

Thank you for all your help and support.

So something happened and apparently they fell out, thats fair enough, it happens in business all the time (*cough* Apple / Microsoft … well Microsoft / the world).

Going to the url, I found the new forums and in the General discussion forum there was a discussion by a few Drobo users who were a little upset at the handling of the transition (myself included) and questions regarding the old forum data that was apparently lost in the transition. The next day that 8 post thread was deleted.

In its place was a post by a rep for Data Robotics rep stating the new goals of the forum

About the New and Improved DroboSpace
Hello all,

Thank you all for participating in the new and improved DroboSpace! Now that we’ve got the site re-launched, we thought this might be a good time to share with you some of the thinking behind the decision to make the changes to the site.

Considering the myriad of social media conversations occurring online daily and the numerous sources of peer-based feedback available on the web, we found ourselves in need of a way to quickly and directly share information with our customers — and to let them share their thoughts and concerns with us (and each other). The prior incarnation of DroboSpace was run by a 3rd party, and this made it difficult to provide direct information in a timely fashion. DroboSpace is now operated by the Drobo experts in the Data Robotics Support organization, with the new goal of responding to questions, providing useful feedback, and otherwise supporting the Drobo user base.

Some of the advantages of the new and improved DroboSpace include:
• Quickly respond to hot topics with our in-house response team
• Provide direct information to our community without third-party lag time
• Create and customize as many membership groups as needed
• Provide an ad-free zone dedicated to Drobo user support and developer discussions
• Cross-link information from our social media network of followers at Twitter and the Drobo blog

These new and more useful self-help and support-based forums will eventually be expanded internationally, providing all of our customers foreign and domestic the ability to exchange information with each other.

We’re looking forward to connecting with you on the new DroboSpace, and will be working diligently to maintain, update, and improve the site in the days, months, and years to come.

Best regards,

The Data Robotics Support Team

That was great (though slightly late), but a few of us took issue with a few of the points in that post. Particularly the mention “Provide direct information to our community without third-party lag time” which as it was an open forum (well you had to have a Drobo serial number to signup but thats a separate issue) and had no moderation queue was a little strange. So we questioned that and found this morning that our posts have been removed and the topic closed. (yes I suggested closing the topic but only after they post a followup, didn’t suggest they closedelete it)

So now there is a new post titled Censorship, questioning what is allowed on the forum. Time will tell if that too will be removed, sadly I think the answer is probably.

This last little bit is my addition to that thread. I hope they listen, I really do.

Indeed particularly as this is supposed to be a general discussion forum.

Please Data Robotics, building a community by removing posts you don’t like is not the way to go. You will always get praise & complaints and, as I said on Twitter, our complaints here are about how this transition was handled. They are not technical issues, hence not posted in the more Technical forums, but they are still valid issues.

Some complaints can be silly (I’d want my HD lights to be Indigo for instance) and some will be real. Good customer service & relations is to take it all, ignore those that you feel are invalid (or post to them & lock them BUT don’t delete them) and respond and encourage those that are valid (like complaints about connectivity options, like lack of Firewire connection on the DroboShare) with discussion.

We like / love our Drobo’s, thats why we are here. Personally I hope that Data Robotics continues to do well, yes I’ve had a few problems with my Drobo & slowness of support at times but in the end the issues where sorted out satisfactorily. I simply have issues with how this transition was handled and what seems like apparent misrepresentation of the facts (3rd party lag time)

I honestly hope you will take the time to read this and not simply delete it. I see from email Jennifer that you did reply yesterday to the other thread but all the messages are now gone