Archive for September, 2007
« Previous Entries Next Entries »A triptych of iPhone wallpapers
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007
I did a little work on some old photos tonight to work them up as Apple iPhone wallpapers. I ended up selecting two of them as my favorites, and am posting them here as a triptych with sunlit frond which I posted about two weeks ago. They were all selected for their central composition, and color pallets to go with the frosted grey and blue popups that appear on the homescreen. All three of them have been resized to 320×480 pixels from the original version and I adjusted the colors to look their best on the iPhone screen.
To set one of these as your iPhone’s wallpaper click the thumbnail above, then save the origional version from the pop-up to your hard drive. Save it to the location your iPhone syncs photos from (the folder of your choice on Windows or a Mac, or into iPhoto on Macs) and sync it to your iPhone. Once it’s there you can select it by clicking on Settings then Wallpaper to get to your photo library then selecting the photo of your choice.
“Chain link iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Sunlit frond iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
“Contrail to God iPhone wallpaper” by sparktography
Vibe Duo: defective but easily fixed
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007I’ve barely had my V-Moda Vibe Duos four days and I’m already starting to develop a bit of a love/hate relationship with them. As stated in my mini-review of the Vibe Duos I love how great sounding and comfortable they are when paired with my iPhone, but what I don’t like is a manufacturing flaw that I’ve encountered on a pair of otherwise fabulously constructed headphones: faulty glue on part of the cable.
After buying my Vibe Duos on Friday I enjoyed them through the weekend until they broke Monday morning while at work. The faulty glue (or perhaps a faulty glue job in the factory) caused the the sheath protecting the connection between the headphone jack and the cable leading to the earbuds to come undone and travel freely up the cable.
I immediately took them back to the Apple store who apologized for the problem and promptly replaced them without even asking to see my receipt. I was willing to chalk it up to a single faulty pair of earbuds until the replacement pair suffered the same fate the very next day. Either the Apple store in the University Village had a bad batch, or the Vibe Duos suffer a design or manufacturing flaw leading to this unfortunate condition. If the Vibe Duos were a bit cheaper I wouldn’t mind having to DIY repair them myself, but at $100 a pop and considering how high the build quality is otherwise I’m a little disappointed with V-Moda.
Luckily there is an easy fix for this problem. This evening at home after quickly whittling away some of the old adhesive with an exacto knife I re-glued it myself with seemly better results. A few drops of super-glue spread evenly over the plug with a synthetic Q-tip (the cotton ones would have left fibers) and quickly dropping the sheath back into place have locked it into place quite tightly.
Any other Vibe Duo owners out there suffering from this problem?
The end of an era: my 12 step dental program is complete
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007This morning marked the end of my ongoing dental saga. With the application of two final crowns I have completed my 10 months of an appointment a month to fix all the lingering problems with my teeth. After applying the crown the dentist found one tiny new cavity (and fixed it gratis!) and then applied a fluoride varnish to help seal my teeth and hopefully keep me away aside from the normal annual cleaning.
The fluoride varnish is a weird experience. It has a consistency of tree sap and was painted on with a brush. It makes my mouth feel dirty and like I haven’t brushed in days, but will hopefully let the fluoride soak in and harden up my teeth a bit. Sadly I can’t brush my teeth for 24 hours while it works its magic so I’m stuck with a fuzzy mouth for the day.
Fixing 14 cavities, 7 root canals, 2 extractions, and 4 crowns: ~$15,500
Getting 14 cavities, 7 root canals, 2 extractions, and 4 crowns: 30 hours in the grinding chair
Having a pain-free mouth again: priceless!
links for 2007-09-18
Tuesday, September 18th, 2007-
Some of the business and technical guidelines that Amazon.com follows - it’s a great recipe of sucsess and looks to empower their employees to improve their platform and innovate.
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Download Squad does a deep dive on The big G’s house - it really is a modern wonder of engineering and luxury. Remind me to buy a house like that some day.
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Now this is cool - Sodium Acetate hypersaturated in water condensing in real time to form cool shapes.
links for 2007-09-17
Monday, September 17th, 2007-
Less than three months - not too bad. I can’t help but wonder if the next iPhone firmware will reverse this hack. With Apple potentially taking a hit in revenue by not getting paid by AT&T it would make sense.
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Art, creepy style
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Uncomfortable as it might be this chairs graceful swooping curves look cool. If it were not for the ~$2m pricetag I’d be tempted to get one for Le Cinema Sparks.
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Different ways to capture thoughts via voice. Cool ways to keep those fleeting thoughts at hand!
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Well that didn’t take long - not weeks after Apple released new iPods featuring security hashes to prevent non-iTunes syncing and some clever lads have cracked the code and unlocked syncing on Linux and other platforms
Many things are happening
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
Further experimentation with my 20mm lens. This lens makes it much easier to work with reflections than the lensbaby did. I’m going to have to try this shot again at a higher fstop to make both the primary subject and the reflection be in sharp focus, but for now I’m really happy with the hypnotic effect. Image inspired by Myla Kent.
The long weekend is at an end - I wish I could take tomorrow off as well, but when work calls I unfortunately must answer. Hopefully I’ll be able to take another long weekend soon enough.
“Many things are happening” by sparktography
links for 2007-09-16
Saturday, September 15th, 2007-
These look pretty slick - The extra buttons and scroll wheel could be useful. I might have to replace my Graphire 3!
Xbox 360 Chatpad
Saturday, September 15th, 2007
My Xbox 630 Chatpad arrived today in the mail - nifty little device. Barely feels like it will fit on the controller, but with a little force it pops on and feels very much a part of the controller. The key travel is nice, but they are spaced more widely than i usually like. Its lighter than I thought it would be, but does change the balance and feel of the controller quite a bit.
It makes both using the 360 implementation of Windows Live Messenger and the Xbox Live messaging service much easier to use. I wonder how long it will take before shooters and RPG’s start taking advantage of the extra buttons to make weapon switching and action selection easier - I suspect the day of the 360 MMO is drawing near now that both text and voice communication are so easy with the Xbox 360.
“Xbox 360 Chatpad” by sparktography
links for 2007-09-15
Friday, September 14th, 2007-
Cool - Google Earth is adding new countries. I just popped it open and am having a blast exploring around the Middle East.