Dutch KPN Second iPhone carrier?

A page on the website of KPN (the biggest Dutch telecom provider, and former employer) suggests this.

At the moment, the iPhone is exclusively sold by T-Mobile, but for as long as the iPhone has been in the Netherlands, there have been rumors about other carriers.

A prank, a mistake, or somebodies wettest dream? I have no idea. All I know that the page is there (today), and that I saved it to make sure it stays 'there'.

A mirror of the 'analogue' pages can be found here.

Update on Friday, December 4, 2009 at 10:58 by Willem

It seems that KPN purchased a batch of iPhones for special customers (probably high-volume customers who are able to demand things).

At this moment it's just this one batch of iPhones. It is not known if KPN will continue to sell iPhones when this batch is sold.

I just hope that they aren't selling the 'Antwerp iPhones'.

The Holidays are Coming?

Is it just me or is the most expensive month of the year coming soon? It's that or there's a new worm/virus/trojan at work trying to deliver spam on my mailserver.

'Great' deals on SoftwareCurrently, I have over a hundred rejections an hour (normally one or two a day), and the ones that make their way through are either;

• 'great' deals on (replica) Rolex, Viagra, Windows/Adobe Software and other stuff, or
• about making >$3000USD a month with only 2 hours of work a day.

Anyway, I hope that the spam protection in the Snow Leopard mail server is as good as my current MDaemon mail server.

Long Exposure Calculations

We'll be heading out for some night photography next month. Playing with long exposures is one of the thing you can't get around. Especially since I don't have any f/0.2 lenses in my bag.

Most lenses are sharpest (the so-called sweet-spot) around 2 stops from their biggest aperture (mostly around the apertures of f/8 and f/11) , but the problem is that these apertures kill the available light hitting the sensor of your camera. You could turn up the ISO (to 102400 if you have a Nikon D3s), but that gives you noise, and lots of it with most consumer dSLR's.

The only proper thing to do is adjusting the shutterspeed. Leave the aperture on its sweet-spot (f/9 or f/11), and the ISO at ISO100 or ISO200 (for the lowest amount of noise). But if you do that, chances are that you need exposures much longer than the available maximum on your camera, which is 15 or 30 seconds (depending on your camera). Which leaves you with the bulb setting on your camera. But how do you calculate the time needed for an exposure?

Bulb means that the shutter stays open for as long as you press the shutter release button.

Click to read more ...

Nikon Scan 4 and Snow Leopard

My dad switched to an iMac a couple of weeks ago. He came from a Windows environment with lots of periferals (RF Mouse, Bluetooth dongle, HP flatbed Scanner, Espon printer, Nikon CoolScan V, HP PDA, etc.). So the challenge was to migrate as many periferals as possible.

Thankfully, most of them worked. Even the old Nikon CoolScan V film scanner worked with the supplied Nikon Scan 4 software, until last Sunday. For some reason the application crashes with a message that the preferences file can't be read (Is another instance of Nikon Scan 4 running??).

It seemed that the Nikon app wasn't shut down properly on one occasion and a lock file was left in the preferences. Removing the lock file solved the issue.
The lock file is located at the following location:

~/Library/Preferences/Nikon/Nikon Scan 4 Prefs.lock

Sidenote: Weird that relatively old propriatary software like the Nikon Scan 4 software works fine, but that more recent (Nikon) software needs special updates to keep working under Snow Leopard. Was Nikon Scan 4 written by people who understand what they were doing (OS sub-version independent)? Or is this just luck?

Update on Friday, November 20, 2009 at 21:30 by Willem

Eventhough the Nikon Scan software works in Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6), Nikon abandonned the support for Nikon Scan 4 a while back. Alternatively you could use SilverFast from LaserSoft (commercial software).

iPhone Apps That Rule

Normally, I wouldn't write about every app I try (or buy) in the iPhone App Store, but sometimes there's a good reason. In this case two;

• GeoDefense Swarm
• Appie

GeoDefense Swarm is a highly addictive Desktop Tower Defense game. Very good gameplay, great graphics, and addictive as hell. I heard about this game om MacBreak Weekly, and I curse them every time I start the game (for getting me to buy it and getting addicted).

Appie is a Netherlands-only app. It's an application for Albert Heijn (Supermarkt in the Netherlands). It shows what articles are on sale, what you bought in the last three months (based on your Bonuscard number). It also holds recipes, and a lot more. A definite must-have for everyone who owns an iPhone (or iPod Touch), and who shops @ Albert Heijn.

Squarespace.com iPhone App

Squarespace.com released their iPhone App. This App let's you manage your (Squarespace) website(s);

• create content
• upload images
• manage posts
• view statistics
• et all

I used to do all these things by using Safari on the iPhone, but makes it a whole lot easier. A definite 5 star program.

Nikon Learn & Explore iPhone App

Nikon Learn & Explore on the iPhoneNikon (USA) launched their Learn & Explore iPhone app. The application is there for you to learn & explore the magical world of Nikon. Learn about shooting techniques by renowned photographers, see photos taken around the world.

A quote from Nikon USA;

Read an article on getting the most from your travel photography while you’re on vacation. Check information on adjusting depth of field or selecting the right shutter speed when you’re taking photos at your child’s sporting event. Access advice on the right aperture for shooting photos indoors when you’re attending a wedding. It’s all there on the Learn & Explore iPhone app. Photography information at your fingertips.

Nice for those moments when you're not busy at all. Light reading material is always welcome. Especially when you can learn something new. So I want this app.....

BUT unfortunatelly, the app is US only(?????). Why? Don't ask me. I already asked Nikon this, but they haven't answered (yet).

I guess Nikon World starts and ends in the US....

Update on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 18:53 by Willem

And yes!!! We have an answer from Nikon. Albeit an automated responds......

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Learn & Explore iPhone App. We are reviewing consumers' comments for future enhancements. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit the Learn & Explore section of NikonUSA.com (http://www.nikonusa.com/L&E) where you will find all the content available on the iPhone as well as additional features such as Capture Your World articles, Nikon Technology descriptions and information on Nikon-sponsored workshops.

Thank you again for your interest in Nikon and the Learn & Explore iPhone App.

The Editor

I wonder if I'll be getting an answer to my responds to their e-mail. I don't think so, since it was kinda explicit (sort of).

Western Digital My Passport Essential Review

Updated on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 15:02 by Willem

In the post before this one I had some trouble with a Freecom XXS USB drive. I had no way of fixing it, so it went back to the store (and basically back to Freecom). But since that drive is used for offsite backups I needed a replacement unit, because the return of the old drive could take several weeks.

This time the Western Digital My Passport Essentials 500GB (2.5" USB powered) disk was chosen. A nice small device with lot's of storage capacity.

Western Digital Proprietary Connector on the LeftUpon opening the box I noticed immediately that there's something 'wrong' with this drive. The cable / USB connector is proprietary. The connector is some sort of ultra-mini-USB format. No need to say that of all the USB cables I collected over the years will ever fit. So I need to be extremely careful with the one I got with the drive.

Since I lose stuff (hell, everyone does), you could expect a blog post of me swearing 'bloody hell' (and stuff) when I have lost the cable.... but I won't, just read the rest of this review.

Click to read more ...

TrueCrypt Bug, or Hardware Failure

For the last couple of years I've been using an offsite backup method. And today the drive I use for that failed on me. My backup program reported that it could write (or read) data to the drive.

Investigation showed that several directories in the TrueCrypt volume were gone!!!!! Thankfully, the data on my Drobo and server were still pristine condition.

Disk Utility and several other tools reported problems with the drive (or at least the TrueCrypt part/volume). So I erased the drive, and re-initialized it. No reports of trouble while I did that. After that I recreated the TrueCrypt volume and restarted the backup to the drive (which takes forever).

All I can do now is wait for the backup to finish, and pray that the house doesn't catch on fire.....

After that a new case for SpinRite.

Deleting Locked Files in OSX

During the migration of the data on my dad's (*cough*) Windows computer to his new iMac, we ran into lot's of locked files. Usually you get the information on a specific file (⌘ + i) and deselect the 'Locked' option in the 'General' part. It's basically impossible to remove all the locks by hand, so I needed a quicker way to remove these locks.

It seems that there's a command available in Terminal to do this. The following command removed the Locks from all the files in the current directory AND all the sub-directories.

chflags -R nouchg *

More info on the chflags command can be found in the Terminal by typing man chflags, or by visiting this page.

The cause of the locked files in my case was that we copied the data from a read-only network share (to prevent that information might get lost in copy/move actions during the migration). Reading from read-only media results in locked files (or so it seems).