Category: technology

kpn sucks

internet technology

The dutch are very nice people. They telco “kpn” however sucks. Sucks. As, to be precise. They have hotspots. That would be cool. They ride on this craze that you have to pay money for wifi. OK. That usually is a bad idea, as long as companies want this privilige exclusively. The KPN login screen is the most obscure login form I have encountered. Keys are being remapped. Worst of all: In Firefox on OS X you are prompted with a blank screen when you credit card info is supposed to go through. Nothing happened. For minutes. I then tried Safari, which was pretending to work. Of course new windows popped up and all that other javascript nonsense was still there. After fifteen minutes KPN then charged the firefox trans action it seemed, even though the firfox window never showed a page. So now I spend twice as much for a crappy connection.

I hope that we get quickly to the phase where there will be competitng systems for wifi access everywhere. That would take care of a cheap and stupid hack like KPNs wifi access within weeks.

Update:
A little bit later I at least could use the KPN hot spot extra minutes that they shoved down my throat and took my money for while waiting for the 747 to get ready. I thought I keep some minutes for later. But they managed for they pop up that allows you to logout not to show up when you use the wifi at the airport. Worked in the hotel. Once you have a bunch of looser code something it really all starts to suck. What a poor showing. I simple have to use up the extra KPN minutes now. It’s only a couple of Euros. But still a rip off. It’s a rip by stupidity, not even intended. KPN is clueless about what they are offering. They fell for a moron coder, and they have no way of telling, since they never use their own product and ignore customer feedback.

fourty five years ago

history technology

World receiver from 1962

media misc technology

Nielsen about movies and interaction design

DI workflow for the departet

confessions of a pixel pusher technology

The ASC has an interesting article about the DI workflow used on “The departed”. It is interesting, yet not surprising, that Michael Ballhaus watches HD dailies and is happy with them. Only a few short years ago it seemed a sacrileg to abandon film dailies.
Interestingly there has not been any technological breakthrough since then. HD is still 1920×1080. But people probably know now better how to do these things, and creatives are more comfortable with a digital aspect, since their final product will be created digitally anyway in the DI suite.

As for the rest of the “Departed” workflow it might have made sense at the time to procede as described at each step. But after a cursory read I am left with the feeling that the movie bounceds in and out of lots of formats in the process. I have not seen it, but it looked good from what I heard. Ballhaus’ movies usually do.

broken things

Apple technology

The screen goes dark on an iBook G3 that my wife used to use. Turns out that this is a very common problem with iBooks G3 machines. Google does do a good job in showing related results. But imagine it could do a better job! How if computer makers would give their models google-able individual ‘names’. Those could be anything, as long their use is easy and encouraged by their nature. Bugs could be tracked. There could be a whole new industry around this: I rather write some new code then to battle 50 tiny screws on that iBook. But somebody else might have fixed a few of those iBooks already. Putting a bigger harddrive in while the machine is open. It’s old, but still a very neat machine. Who cares about the Mhz? The white iBook is a great little computer. One worth fixing. One capable ‘enough’.

cellphone hearts blowdryer

technology

A while back a friend gave me his Nokia 3210. Five weeks ago it got soaked with water and stopped working. Just a single horizontal black line on the display flashed up when the phone was powered up. Or the entire screen when it was connected to the power adapter. Removing battery and SIM card and holding a blow dryer into to for a minute fixed this issue. I could not believe that humidity was able to hide for so long in the phone and a decent ‘bake’ from the blow dryer was able to fix it. Should I set a robot an buy everything @ ebay that reads ‘water damage’ and is cheaper than 10 US$ ?
Maybe the miracle can be repeated. Maybe this is the way to get rich? Forget about coding. Value up seemingly broken electronics.

do features matter, after all?

technology

Joel makes a point that things do well when they features. For INTERDUBS I spent allot of time lately think about the number of features, and ‘iPodness’ of the user interaction. Interesting to read a voice that goes against the current trend of simple, simple and simple.

sony: you are toast

media Sony technology

Just saw an unoppened PS3 go for 560 US$. It was the 20GB model that retails for 499 US$. Sixty one dollars for having spend the night in front of a video game store? Not so good in my book. The prices @ ebay for PS3 have been coming down over the last weeks. Which is not a good sign for Sony. If hardcore games would want this machine badly, the prices would be higher. Now if the geeks don’t want it that bad, how about the general public? The plan was that the PS3 would push bluray ahead of HD-DVD. Now it looks as if Bluray has to save the face of the PS3. It’s a cheap player compared to other next gen DVD options. But compared to standard def players it still is expensive: 230 US dollars get you a decent player that will make all you existing movies look really good.

Speaking of: I started buying DVDs. Opportunistically: There are so many movies I have not seen, might want to see again. If the DVD is cheap enough then I just pick it up. After a few weeks of this strategy I ended up with lots of DVDs sitting in my room. IF there is time to watch something there is something to look at. And I like it, that I know I can easily go back to what I have seen. The quality could be better here or there. But it is not worth the money to go back and spend all that money: I get a ps3 from ebay, then a screen that is worth using and I have spent 1500 US$. Then I buy all the movies there are and have 30 mediocre to ok movies for 2,000 US$. When I buy DVDs cheaply and watch them on my laptop I could have 250 movies to watch for the same amount of money. HD is not NOT worth ten times the money. Not even twice. With the Oppo player you actually get an amazing picture out of a standard DVD. Out of most of them. It’s impossible to beat. People will realize this, sooner or later.

Panavision as seen by the LA Times

confessions of a pixel pusher media technology

Panavision in an Article of the LA Times

According the LA Times Panavision does well. They are planning to make twenty more Genesis this years. Sounds like allot, but their own subsidary “Plus-8” has added that many of the competing Viper cameras to their rental inventory last September.

looks like I will go to Macworld

confessions of a pixel pusher technology

Just forty days left to overcome the fear to speak in front of crowds.

HD for Indies did a roundup of articles around Zodiac.