Category Archives: Photography

No more dead forests

iPad, Photographs

Magazines on the iPad.

Much as I enjoy my monthly fix of fashion and gossip, not to mention some of the best photography on planet earth, which arrives in the mail in the guise of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Vanity Fair, I always think when I recycle these what a stunning waste of resources they represent. Forests and nasty chemicals to make, fuel to deliver, fuel to recycle, and so on. Now while I’m not some nutty global warming crazy, it just seems wrong that we should be destroying the world’s resources in search of the latest in clothing and fashions.

Zinio to the rescue! They have just released an iPad app, and while it’s a work in progress it looks very promising. Some magazines don’t get it yet – meaning that links to articles, advertisers, related web sources, etc. should be clickable (Duh!) but it’s a start. You pay, download the magazine and can take it with you to read at any location with the caveat that any links that are present dictate the need for a wifi connection if they are to work.

National Geographic doesn’t get links, yet, (I sometimes wonder if they get anything judging by their poorly engineered archive DVDs) and the issue takes a minute to load, but that’s not long to wait for some of the world’s greatest photography. I’m reproducing what follows at full iPad screen size so you can get a sense of the quality:

National Geographic downloads ….

Here’s a typical photo display:

A photo in full screen display:

And another – an absolute show stopper from Gerd Ludwig:

Here’s the subscription screen for Harper’s with a lovely Demi Moore on the cover:

I forget what I pay for the print subscription but suspect it’s more than the $8 asked for the iPad one.

Macworld most certainly does get clickable links, and they have a very nice implementation, ads and all. No issue with the latter as they add value to any user interested in what’s out there.

I learned of the availability of Macworld on the iPad by accident and shame on the publishers for doing such a poor job of advertising it. It’s excellent and as my print sub just expired, I’ll be renewing for the electronic version which is far easier to read than their free web site in Safari.

There are a few British magazines and many Chinese (!) ones available. The British ones are simply clueless on pricing – an annual subscription typically being twelve times the cost of one issue. Double Duh!

Otherwise, what’s not to like?

Disclosure: Long AAPL common, now appreciated 68.7 32gB iPads at the time of writing. You do the math. Short AAPL covered call options at the time of writing.

iPad wifi speeds

iPad

Something fishy is going on.

One of the first complaints heard about the iPad was that it was failing to connect, or to maintain a connection, to wifi.

Apple acknowledged there is an issue, mainly blaming dual band routers:

My router is the older style single band Airport Extreme which I run at 802.11b/g shared mode at 2.4gHz. I cannot run it at 5gHz ‘n’ only as I then lose wifi on my 3G iPhone, which only works with ‘g’. The latest dual band AEX simultaneously broadcasts both ‘g’ at 2.4gHz and ‘n’ at 5gHz to work around this issue and provide the highest speed broadband to ‘n’ capable devices without disconnecting slower ‘g’ machines.

As I mentioned recently, seated at the same location as my desktop, where I consistently get speeds around 10-11 mb/s, the iPad delivered a very credible 4.3 mb/s and whatever that measurement means, the reality is that web surfing speed feels almost as fast as on my massive and immensely capable desktop. I have never had the iPad fail to establish a wifi connection whether at home or at any number of neighborhood locales, the latter consistently delivering far faster surfing speeds than on my iPhone. So I’m not complaining.

Still, curiosity being what it is, I have run Speetest on the iPad a few times in the past few days and the results are all over the place, as the following shows:

The oldest result above is the one featured in the link. The highest speeds seem to occur very late or very early, yet even that is not always the case if you scan the above table. Further, if I place the iPad within 5 feet of my router the speed drops to the 3,600 mb/s rate, whereas in my office, two walls and thirty feet away, it rises to anywhere from 4,000mb/s to 11,000+ mb/s. Meanwhile, the desktop machine fluctuates in a narrow range between 9,500 mb/s and 10,500 mb/s. The strangest data pair here are the readings on 4/14/10 at 20:39 and 20:40, respectively, where the download speed jumped from 6,732 mb/s to 9,676 mb/s in the space of one minute.

So clearly something funky is going on here. While I remain a happy camper, there is an issue, and I look forward to hearing more from Apple about what is going on here.

Of trolls and losers

Hall of Shame

Kindly take a leak elsewhere.

In addition to containing some of the best writing on the planet on all aspects of Photography, this site is totally commercial free and enjoys high and growing readership.

That’s a win-win for both the readers and this author. You enjoy, or not, what I write and I get the satisfaction of sharing my views with anyone who cares to check in. And if you don’t enjoy it, well, why are you coming here? Go elsewhere.

Further, the software running this site provides an extraordinary level of protection against comment spam wherein some crook tries to question your manhood and sell you pharmaceutical products guaranteed to cure all that ails you. Yet to leave a comment you don’t even have to complete arithmetical questions or enter cryptic codes. It’s as simple as can be, all the protection mechanisms invisible to the user.

None of that, however, protects me from the occasional Comment written by a real live person who falls straight into the category of Troll or Loser. Distinguishing facts about this miserable class member include, but are not limited to:

  • Often still lives with his parents in the basement
  • Has no job and blames the government
  • Walks around with a vacant stare, arm outstretched, palm up, looking for a handout
  • Has never done a single constructive or original thing in his miserable life
  • Bathes infrequently and blames the world for shunning him
  • And, yeah, it’s always a guy. They’re the ones with too much time on their hands.

So when I get a comment as asinine as the one below – I mean here we really have a guy who just does not get it – I check the above list and, sure enough, it’s from a guy, his thinking stinks, (he may also, but I’m not about to find out), he’s probably on the dole and you can be assured he has never had an original or constructive thought in his life.

Typical troll Comment, received today.

So, trolls and losers, if you expect to get away with this sort of leg lifting on my site, you should know that your comments WILL be published, right here for all to see.

But I was not brought up to take abuse and keep mum about it. You piss on my site and I’ll be pleased to reply in kind. Unknown to the grammatically challenged Anders Holt, I actually managed to get a picture of him – at least I’m pretty sure it’s him – and I publish it here for the first time as a service to my readers. Should you see this wretch do the right thing – hold your nose and cross the street.

On Market Street, San Francisco. G1 @ 17mm, 1/2000, f/4.5, ISO 320. Smell not included.

Meanwhile, off he goes to the global spam list, never to be heard from again.

A better cable for the iPad

iPad

The stock one stinks.

The power cable which comes with the iPod could hardly be more chintzy. It has a hard to grasp connector at the iPod end and the little ears you press to disconnect it are …. missing. No more captive connectors from Apple, it seems.

To add insult to injury, the cable is a miserable 3 feet long. Hey, Apple, I understand profit margins as well as the next guy, but I also do not particularly enjoy a kick in the crotch after blowing $650 on one of your products.

Anyway, the answer is both simple and inexpensive:

It comes from Cables-to-Go via Amazon, is five feet long, uses far sturdier cable, has a properly designed captive connector which works and the other end can be plugged into your computer or into the iPad’s power transformer, which is the fastest way to recharge it. Finally, the ‘up’ side is ribbed so you don’t have to search for that microscopic logo Apple imprints on the poor stock design. It works as well with the iPhone as with the iPad. And at $9, what’s not to like?

Disclosure: AAPL long stock position has appreciated 27.5 32gB iPads since iPad Day, 4/3/2010, of which I have blown 2.0

Pogo stylus for iPad

iPad

A useful drawing tool.

The Pogo Stylus for the iPhone and iPod Touch works just fine with the iPad. In the picture it’s shown attached with the provided clip to my 3G iPhone, where it adds value if you have difficulty pecking away at the minuscule keyboard. But with the iPad it really comes to life.

I have been experimenting with an iPad drawing app named ArtStudio which lays low those unthinking statements from ‘experts’ that would have it that the iPad is an information recovery tool only. It’s a creative tool which will only move to strength over the next few quarters.

One thing I have wanted to do for a while is to create an app logo for this blog, PPP, which can be added to your desktop/laptop/iPhone/iPad home screen by simply clicking the ‘+’ sign in the Safari Menu Bar. Thereafter, when you need a fix and desire to read the best, commercial free writing on photography on the planet, with pithy asides at no additional cost, you simply invoke the desktop and click the logo. So that was my first creation using ArtStudio on the iPad and after a few swooshes with the Pogo stylus the thing was done:

Icon design for PPP

Yeah, so I like ballet, couture and art, but I also like my meat rare and my motions up and to the right. And I hope to jump on my old motorbike and run over some elderly ladies later today, in case you have any doubts about my orientation. So thrusting up and to the right it is.

Now I have to figure out the arcana of php or whatever the hell that code language is to plug this thing into PPP and make it clickable.

ArtStudio totally rocks – get it, along with a $12 Pogo stylus. You can set the stylus to draw lines offset from its point of contact, by the way, so that you can see what you are drawing.

Logo update:

I figured out how to do this for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Load this site in Safari, hit the ‘+’ on the MenuBar and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’ – renaming the logo PPP. You will see this on your mobile device:

Click on the icon and your favorite photography site now displays in iPhone-friendly format, thus:

Touch the down arrow and you will see these choices – including a link to send me an email:

Finally, touch Categories on this screen and you will see:

Still working on getting this right for the iPad. Grrr!