I just love gadgets. That’s why it’s nice to find that I bought a Garmin eTrex a long time ago. Haven’t used it in years, but then when Apple released the latest version of iLife 09 with the map function in iPhoto I realized that it is very cool to have all the images geo tagged. So I found a program called GPSPhotoLinker, a program that downloads GPS data and pictures and by the date/time on the pictures manages to add longitude and latitude information in the picture info. When you import pictures with this information iPhoto can use that to show it on maps and make it searchable. And when you upload pictures to Flickr, it also uses the location information place your picture on a map. Very cool.
The software is free to download here. If you have an old GPS receiver like me, you need a serial cable (I made my own because of the very high prices for ready made cables), just check eBay. You also need a USB to serial converter, like the “Keyspan High Speed USB Serial Adapter.
To start tagging, just power on your GPS receiver when you start (I just put it in my shirt pocket) and then photo away). Set the clock in your camera (check the GPS clock, it’s VERY exact ) because this is information that is used to sync position information.
Download all your pictures in a folder, connect the GPS, start GPSPhotoLinker and download data from the GPS, and then select the folder with pictures you took. Press “batch” and your done!
iPhoto 09 map showing my short walk today
Map with my pictures in flickr
As soon as it was possible to remove those annoying messages with drinks, cuddly bears requests and shaved midget tossing games, facebook is getting fun to use.
I’m also starting to like Twitter. I bought this little program called EventBox to replace Twirl because I’m always on a laptop so anything that use up to many cycles on the cpu goes to the dustbin. The program looks nice but takes a bit to get used to. The only gripe I have is that it doesn’t show replies on Facebook status changes. But it’s still beta and only costs $15 during the beta period. And kids, you have to support independent developers!
I’m more and more impressed with EMU. They released the EMU 0404 USB driver code for Macintosh. This is a smart move. I once called them about a problem I had with the input pots being to sensitive. The tech support guy told me they actually had to use cheaper parts to be able to use better sounding parts. My god! Honesty! You don’t get that too often when calling a company about their products.
When I’m depressed I have this thing of dreaming violent dreams and acting them out in reality. The other night I dreamt that I was at the liquor store and got in to a fight with two men. I woke up with a bang when I kicked my laptop of the table beside my bed, seeing it banging to the floor. The hard drive worked for about a day, and then gave up. So I had a good reason to test TimeMachine, and it has worked perfectly! So now I’m up and running again with more free space on my computer than the old total disk space. It even seems a bit faster because this disk i 7200 RPM. 320 mb in a 2.5″. <OLD BASTARD TAG>I remember the first hard drive I used. It was a Corvus 5 megabyte drive for the Apple II in the size of a small refrigerator. I think it’s swedish price was something like $8000. Yet a big upgrade from my first “real” storage device (not counting cassette player) wich was a dual 5 1/4 floppy at a wopping 140kb per disk (yes kids, that’s 140 KILOBYTES!) And those where real floppys, because, well, they where physically floppy.</OLD BASTARD TAG>
After using Spotify for a couple of days, I must say that they almost nailed it. And I have never seen as much entusiasm about a new service among people of so different age groups. The Mac client is really nice (and fast!) This is something the music business should have come up with a long time ago. I think I bought about five songs on iTunes total. I like the idea of “owning” my music, or at least own the piece of plastic it comes on. But the chear joy of being able to just search and ad a shitload of music and start listening is exhilarating. But I have a couple of gripes…
Hopefully they will increase the bitrate. There is a market for people that want the highest possible quality and are prepared to pay for it. Here’s a possibility to actually get better quality than CD without having to resort to half-assed attempts like SACD. Yeah, I know you need a lot of bandwidth, but I live in Sweden and have had 100mbit connection for years.
In Sweden Telia is the selected peddler of the iPhone. With just one provider selling the iPhone there’s no reason to have a good deal on it. So I will not get an iPhone until Apple stops the nonsense of only having one provider. I think Apples strategy is so f…ing stupid. They always manage to do something to not becoming the standard platform.Â
Everytime (well, last night actually) when I need to do something with Applescript I shudder with horror. The syntax is actually something you forget all the time. There must be better alternatives for Apple to use as a scripting language. I agree with this article, but Python or Ruby would be a better alternative I think.
I just read an article on why Apple can’t do to video what it did to music. Interesting article, but using the iPod as an example is probably not a good idea. What all there guys seems to forget is that the iPod will never be a popular device to watch video on. And it has nothing to do with not being able to get content. I have downloaded a lot of films on mine. It’s not even the small screen size that’s the problem. It’s the fact that watching video isn’t something that people want to do on the go. You can listen to music and drive a car, but try to watch video while driving.
After trying to start VPN Tracker 4 and failing after upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 I could no longer contact any servers at the same domain as the network I tried to connect to. To fix this, look inside the /etc/resolver directory, if there is a couple of files called vpn-resolver-#### you have to remove these files to get everything to work again.
There’s a new version 5 of VPN Tracker that supposedly fixes problems with Leopard, but you have to buy an upgrade. I just wish that Apple could make a front end to Racoon. It’s very irritating to have to pay Equinux $80 to get functionality that’s essentially built in the operating system. And I have always hated their way of locking the program to one specific machine serial number.
This looks promising. For some reason Apple forgot one of the reasons iPod got successful. The ability to play a commonly used format, mp3. They crippled the Apple TV so that it only plays h264 encoded videos. But now the hacking community are fixing this. And it’s not the first time. I used to have an Xbox with Xbox Media Center that really did everything you need to play DivX and other formats. You needed a hacked Xbox to be able to run XBMC, and it was developed by a group of hackers around the world.
Now look at the mess you get with Xbox 360. You need a Windows machine to view movies. And it’s in Windows Media Format. There are some hacks that transcodes the video, but that’s just lame. This makes the Xbox 360 completely useless as a movie/media player.
This is the problem when you start to sell both hardware and content. Just look at Sony. The conflict of interest between trying to do the best hardware product possible, and the desire to cripple it to protect content. And now Apple has fallen into it.
So go hackers! Looking like I’m going to buy an Apple TV after all…
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