Roland Tanglao's Weblog

The Fuji X-Pro 1 sounds fantastic. Big sensor. Some great looking prime lenses and a great EVF. The rumoured $1700 for the body plus $600 for lenses sounds a bit too rich for me so if an Olympus or Panasonic with a great built-in EVF and updated sensor becomes available I still might end up with Micro Four Thirds. Now if only there was a built-in GPS and WiFi option in a MFT 4/3 or Fuji camera then I would have the perfect social camera. Much as I love the current crop of cameras and the cameras I have, it's very annoying that none of them has built-in Internet sharing and integration and an app platform (except the iPhone but except for Slow Shutter I quickly tire of its limited camera; when compared to the N8 and my Fuji X-10 the iPhone 4 camera still seems like a toy)

(Via Chuq, Lightroom 4 is out on the eve of the 6th anniversary of Lightroom beta 1 back in 2006!!) I have been using Lightroom since Beta 1 six years ago (and I love Lightroom but really don't like any other Adobe software!)! Time to up my game. Re-learn Lightroom 4 (it seems to be have lots of great radical changes in the develop module so my Develop Module workflow which is almost automatic so much so that I don't consciously think about it is now obsolete!) AND shoot more JPEGs (or at least tweak my Fuji X10 settngs to get the most out of RAW + JPEG and just post the JPEGs if they are good enough)

that's all I want in 2012 from eye.fi :-) ! Seems a bit ridiculous :-) for the top of the line Pro X2 eye.fi card  to be stuck at Class 6, 8 GB. I and presumably lots of others need faster cards with more storage! I need a card that works with my Fuji X10. Apparently the Pro X2 doesn't work with my X10!

In 2012, what other crazy words and phrases should we strive to replace with action that moves things forward for good?

mongohq  + GS API +  mongoPoll.rb on my VPS + emailReport2.rb + cron = awesome twice daily Thunderbird support report with trending tags, topics, anti-virus, ISPs and mail providers on posterous and in my inbox. Code is open source. Pull requests welcome!

Bugs

1. posting to posterous via email or the API results in truncated posts (I guess that's what happens when you have 2500 line long posts :-)! )

features that i intend to add:

1. trending Thunderbird add-ons
2. trending nouns that aren't: ISPs, Mail Providers, anti-virus, tags or add-ons
3. remove polling, use Web Hooks instead

So I am looking for a camera w/built-in Fuji X100-like hybrid viewfinder + interchangeable lenses. Anybody know of one :-) ? Perhaps Fuji will make one such camera in 2012? Pretty please? Oh and it would be so awesome if it had a GPS and WiFi connectivity built-in too so we can finally have a social camera that's not also a phone !

Lovin' the brand new Fuji X10 so far especially the super (1 cm) macro mode.

Check out C Chaan pic below:

Kalv, since you and Boris refuse to charge me for RSS Hero :-), I would like to buy you lunch anywhere in Gastown, Yaletown or downtown Vancouver before Christmas or in Mid January 2012. Text me  at 6oh47297924 or email me roland AT rolandtanglao.com

don't know why time machine restore didn't fully restore my Mac OS X Lion ruby install but who cares :-) ! And don't know how I figured this out. Other than looking at  the yakshaving to get ruby working with mongodb on my VPS.

What is the best Bluetooth headset to buy for recording podcasts while bicycling? My guess is something with great noise reduction like the Jawbone Era.  What say you? (I am not interested in listening to music so A2DP not required, just want to record my off the cuff thoughts while bicycling using an app like Cinchast)

The Zagg Folio keyboard case for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is great for editing (e.g. Google Sites or blogging on your Drupal or Wordpres site with WYSIWYG editor turned off). A fun, light way to blog on the road without having to carry a laptop. Better than a bottom of the line MacBook Air? No but a lighter and viable and slightly cheaper alternative. Recommended!

Hstore as expained in Ecstortive:The key value store everyone ignored (Postgresql) is an interesting non NO SQL way to store key value pairs. I wonder if it's faster than doing the same thing in Redis or MongoDB. My uninformed guess is yes :-) !

Takes me back to 2004 (or was it 2005?) when I used to manage Bryght Light servers using SSH running on my Nokia 7610 with a bluetooth wireless keyboard. The WYSIWYG editor doesn't work of course :-) ! WYSIWYG didn't work in 2004 either BTW!

I'd like to edit text (no formatting required except maybe Markdown or simple HTML) using my Android phone and my Android tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard.

What are the best text editors or text editor webapps for Android phones and Tablets?

Boris wrote:

QUOTE

For me, these falls into the theme of curation. Small groups that have high signal to share with each other on a peer level are much more interesting than much larger gatherings where there is a high disparity in interest/skill/expertise between participants.

I miss the 100 person Northern Voice days.

And at the same time, I hate the bullshit “curation” (because it isn’t) of TEDxVancouver. I don’t know that you can curate more than about a 100 people.

END QUOTE

My two cents :-) 

1. Yes, small groups that can meet together in real life around common interests, skills and expertise are powerful
2. The tension is that you don't want to "over-curate" the people which is what Foo Camps and TED do but you also don't want to have a random group of people without any common threads or cohesion or even an overly large group of people which is what Northern Voice has become (unless you you have the network to meet up with cool people at Northern Voice and also meet new people at Northern Voice and make them part of your network to learn from and do stuff with; something that I always try to do and usually succeed only partially!)

I am currently leaning towards the not yet shipping Panasonic GX1. Thoughts? I want something that will fit in a sports jacket pocket and that can shoot decent ISO 1600. And assuming I am happy, I will then get rid of all my DSLR gear in a year or two.

For the two of you besides Boris and Richard who subscribed to my Google Reader Shared items, I have switched to RSS Hero (made by Kalv with vision by Boris, thanks guys! Where I do pay? I don't want ads, I want to pay now). WARNING: RSS Hero is alpha software for thrill seekers only :-) but the ride has been smooth so far and is going to be great!

My Shared item feed is here:

http://www.rsshero.com/users/roland/shared_items.atom

Speakout Wireless no catches, unlimited but slow 3G data for $10/month, no voice plan required is my conclusion after a month. Slow means under a 1Megabit sometimes  64 kilobits! But more than good enough to run GPS and do maps and geotag photos. Recommended if you are cheap :-) and want pay as you go data! Or just want a second phone with data and don't require voice! Only tested with a Nokia N8 with Nokia Maps and Pixelpipe but other folks have got it working on Android and iPhone. (see my previous speakout post for setup details).

(should work with Android too if you are technical enough to map Symbian to Android; this post describes how to do it for the iPhone)

tl;dr: N8 auto config sets up a WAP access point. All you have to is copy the WAP Access Point to your Internet Network Destinations group and setup the Positioning Server to be that WAP access point and you are done.

Detailed Steps:

1. Settings
   
2. Connectivity
   
3. Settings (yes Settings | Connectivity | Settings i.e. a 2 level settings menu is something only Symbian has :-) !)
   
4. Internet
   
5. Create a WAP Access point under Internet configured as (or if you are lazy just copy the WAP access point from WAP Services to Internet)
   
6. I was lazy and copied the N8 autoconfigured one called "GoRoger"s so Symbian called the copy "GoRogers(01)"
   
7. Databearer: Packet Data, Access point name:goam.com, Username:wapuser1, Prompt pasword No, Password:wap, Authentication:normal, Homepage none
   
8. Advanced Settings: IPV4, Phone IP address:Automatic, Proxy Server address:010.128.001.069, Proxy port number:80
   
9. Next configure the GPS Position Server under Settings|Application Settings|Positioning
   
10. Positioning Methods
    
11. Check: Assisted GPS, Integrated GPS, Wi-Fi/Network, Network based
    
12. Settings|Application Settings|Positioning server|Server settings
13. Tap on supl.nokia.com
    
14. Change Access point to: GoRogers(01) or whatever you created the access point in step 5
    

[UPDATE: detailed internet settings for Nokia N8 on Speakout Wireless]

Speakout Wireless pay as you go unlimited data for $10/month works for A-GPS & uploading photos to flickr on my N8 via WAP and it works beautifully. Full N8 setup details forthcoming! Setup Summary for the impatient: Nokia N8 auto configuration for WAP works; just copy the WAP access point to the Internet group and setup Application settings | Positioning to use the WAP access point for the positioning server. Haven't tested email and any other apps but I don't care :-)

There may be gotchas but it doesn't appear to require a voice value plan or any voice plan! I'll also post in a month or two to confirm whether there is any fine print to trip up on! But for now appears to be a cheap and cheerful pay as you go unlimited data plan!