iPhone Bluetooth Support

Support is really an oxymoron in the case of the iPhone... basically with 3.1 it has virtually nothing. Maybe v4 will bring some more goodies?

iPhone Support:

Hands-Free Profile (HFP)
Headset Profile (HSP)

iPhone Does Not Support:

Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP)
Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP)
Basic Imaging Profile (BIP)
Basic Printing Profile (BPP)
Cordless Telephony Profile (CTP)
Device ID Profile (DID)
Dial-up Networking Profile (DUN)
Fax Profile (FAX)
File Transfer Profile (FTP)
General Audio/Video Distribution Profile (GAVDP)
Generic Access Profile (GAP)
Generic Object Exchange Profile (GOEP)
Human Interface Device Profile (HID)
Intercom Profile (ICP)
Object Push Profile (OPP)
Personal Area Networking Profile (PAN)
Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP)
Serial Port Profile (SPP)
Service Discovery Application Profile (SDAP)
SIM Access Profile (SAP,SIM)
Synchronisation Profile (synch)
Video Distribution Profile (vdp)
Wireless Application Protocol Bearer (WAPB)

Photographing the Milky Way

Last year I was fortunate enough to go to Tenerife where, in the volcano's crater, there is not much light pollution so you can see the milky way. Unfortunately I didn't get very good photographs because I didn't have my tripod, having to rest my camera on some clothing on the roof of the car.

Luckily I am going back, and this time I'll have my tripod. But its just a regular tripod, not motorized or anything.

So now I looked into how to take good photos of the milky way, and I've discovered a few things:

1. If the moon is up, it'll put too much light into the sky. Check timeanddate.com site where you can put in different dates and locations to see when the moon rises and sets.
   
   
2. I didn't really know what settings to use, so I tried ISO 2500, f/2,8, 25 seconds, which got me
   
   

   From (Very) Amateur AstroPhotography

   
   ie quite a bit of light pollution, and, blurred stars.
   
   
3. There is always light pollution , which means that if you increase the exposure by increasing the exposure time, you will actually only brighten the sky. Its unlikely you'll get to capture more stars, planets etc
   
   
   
4. Even relatively dim objects will, at the setting above, cause sensor bloom ie the sensor will go to 255,255,255. This means that you should use the widest aperture you have.
   
   
5. The stars move surprisingly fast. With a 50mm lens on my D300 ie 75mm equivalent, for a 30s exposure I found the stars travelled about 7 or 8 pixels ie the point of light were not points anymore but trails:
   
   
   
   So I set out to find what a better exposure would be, and discovered that with an exposure time of 5s the stars moved 1 or 2 pixels:
   
   
   An alternative would be to use a wider lens. A 25mm lens would produce half the movement relative to pixels ie 30s exposure would give 3 or 4 pixels of movement, 12.5mm would produce maybe 2 pixels. My problem is that my Tokina 12-24 has a maximum aperture of f/4, and my Tamron 17-50 is f/2.8. So at 17mm on the Tamron 30s would give me ~3 pixels of movement.
   

So there's my answer. 5s f/1.8 highest ISO without getting too much noise. When I'm there I'll try both.

Final tip. Use a cable release because any slight movement of the camera will cause the stars to become trails.

Howto: Use resynthesizer for GIMP on OSX

Who needs Content Sensitive Fill on Photoshop CS5? here's how to do it with GIMP for free!

Howto: Use resynthesizer for GIMP on OSX

Resynthesizer is a great plugin that can create textures based on an arbitrary input.

Here's a photo I took, and the angle of the sun meant I got my own shadow in it.


Using resynthesizer I can quickly create some new texture there to replace the shadowed area.


The plugin is included with the OSX version of GIMP from gimp.lisanet.de (thank you!). For windows and linux you need to download it from www.logarithmic.net/pfh/resynthesizer.

Here's what I did.

For me it seems that the plugin doesn't work if you have selected the background.

So I selected an area to be the texture source and pasted that as a new layer, its called clipboard.



Then I selected a part of the background and pasted into a new layer. Its called clipboard#1.




You'll see that GIMP places the copied image right at the top of the picture. So drag it back down to align with the background.


Then with the layer clipboard#1 selected, use the lassoo tool to select the area to be resynthesized.


Then from filters>map select resynthesize



In the dialog, deselect "Make horizontally tileable" and "Make vertically tileable" and in the "Texture source" box make sure you select the layer with the sampled texture. You can check by seeing the thumbnail preview.



Click OK, and the plugin does its work.

And here's the result. I've left the marching ants so you can see the old and the new.


and here's it without the marching ants.


You may need to play around with the exact source texture area, and on the 'Tweaks' tab there are some settings to fine tune what the plugin does.

SSD Roundup April 2010

Intel X25-M G2 (80Gb ($230), 160Gb ($440))

- Max Read: up to 250MB/s
- Sustained Write: up to 250MB/s
- Random Write 4k: 8,600 IOPS

OCZ Vertex 2 (50GB ($260), 100GB ($481), and 200GB ($923))

- Max Read: up to 285MB/s
- Max Write: up to 275MB/s
- Sustained Write: up to 250MB/s
- Random Write 4k: 50,000 IOPS

OCZ Agility 2 (50GB ($247), 100GB ($455), and 200GB ($871))

- Max Read: up to 285MB/s
- Max Write: up to 275MB/s
- Sustained Write: up to 250MB/s
- Random Write 4k: 10,000 IOPS

Crucial RealSSD C300

128Gb ($499)

- Max Read: up to 355MB/s
- Max Write: up to 140MB/s
- Random Write 4k: 50,000 IOPS

256Gb ($799)

- Max Read: up to 355MB/s
- Max Write: up to 215MB/s
- Random Write 4k: 60,000 IOPS

Forget buying the OCZs from Amazon though... expected delivery 1 month to 3 months

iTunes 9.1 Album upgrade problems

Here was a curious problem. Apple Software Update said iTunes 9.1 is available, so I installed it.

Then I connect my iPhone and launch iTunes. It says "updating library". OK no problems, this is a regular occurrence. But, it never completed. Even after 2 hours. iTunes was un responsive so I force quit.

Re-launching iTunes I get "The iTunes Library file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file".

Hmmm googling suggests that this can be fixed by copying / moving the Library file and copying / moving back. Tried that and now I get "the iphone is in use by another user on this computer".


Huh weird. I tried restoring the library by Time Machine, same all over. Tried a new library, but thats empty.

So I called Apple and they had me use the version that gives the 'in use' message. But how to fix this. After quite a while holding, they say, restart your Mac. So I did. Crashed on shutdown, and then on restart, all is OK.

Combining Google Maps and Picasa Web Albums

Here's something thats hard, but should be easy.

You've been on a trip, long or short, and taken some photos. You've used a GPS logger, and applied the GPS data to the photos, so when you upload the photos to Picasaweb, you'd like to see them on a map, with your track. Ummm like this...


Well, no.

Picasaweb gives you the little thumbnail

and clicking on it gives you the photos arranged on a map. But your track? Well if you didn't travel on a road or recognised track, then who knows how you got from place to place?


To make the combined map, the mashup, you need to do the following.

In Picasaweb click "View in Google Earth". This downloads a .kml file, though it doesn't always have the suffix, so you might have to add it. Doubleclick it, or in Google Earth select file>open and open the .kml.

This loads


into Google Earth. Next you need to add the track.

If you use MyTracks on an Android you export the track as a .kml, and then copy it over to your computer.

Next, you need to add the GPS track kml to the photo kml.

Right click the kml (in Temporary Places), and select Add>Network Link


Click 'Browse' and select your track kml.

Straight away Google Earth adds the two


Then you can export the combined track.


and give the .kmz a name.

We now need to have this kmz available online. An easy way is to upload it to Google Sites.

While logged into Google, go to sites.google.com and either create a new Site or use an existing one. Then, create a new page of type "File Cabinet", and on that page upload your kmz.


If you right click on one of the files, you'll see it has a URL like

http://sites.google.com/site/quitetall/kmls/PhoenixTrail.kmz?attredirects=0&d=1

Copy the URL, and delete the bit from the ? to give

http://sites.google.com/site/quitetall/kmls/PhoenixTrail.kmz

Next, go to maps.google.com, and make a combined URL like this

http://maps.google.com/?q=http://sites.google.com/site/quitetall/kmls/PhoenixTrail.kmz&t=m

and , hey presto! we get our combined map

Phew!

Howto Manually Recover Photos from iPhone Backup

Some photos got accidentally deleted from my iPhone. I have them in a backup from the last time I connected my iPhone to my MacBookPro, but I don't want to restore the entire phone just for some photos.

The backups are stored in database files, typically in the following location

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

with one sub folder per backup. In the folder you'll find tons of .mddata and .mdinfo files. Somewhere in there are the deleted photos.

There are scripts around to help you extract what you want, but I found an application called "iPhone / iPod Touch Backup Extractor" and you can get it from supercrazyawesome.com

Launch the program and then click 'Read Backups'


It then reads the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup and gives yu a list of backups you can restore from.


Select one, and it reads the backup. If you want to restore photos, scroll to the bottom and select 'iPhone OS Files'

Then click Extract, and you'll be prompted for a restore location



Let it do its thing. Depending on how much you've got in there it could take a while, and the program doesn't give any indication of progress. Have a coffee or a tea, and relax.

When its done, navigate to where you restored the files, and you'll see the folders



and in there are your photos.


Great!