iOS5’s new features

It’s been about a week since I upgraded to iOS5 on my iPhone 3GS (and performed the untethered jailbreak) and I’ve since been learning my way around some of its new features.

  • Twitter: don’t use it
  • Newsstand: don’t use it (I use MegaReader)
  • iCloud: don’t use it (except for Find My iPhone)
  • WiFi iTunes sync: only works when the device is plugged into power, so I might as well just connect it via the USB cable to my PC
  • Reminders: I was excited to learn that iOS5 finally added support for synchronizing my Tasks in Microsoft Exchange via ActiveSync. However, the lack of categories, no sorting by priority (or any sorting at all!), and no way to easily clear all Completed entries quickly led me to dump Reminders and go back to iMExchange 2. Nice first try Apple, but this still needs work. 🙁
  • iPad multi-tasking gestures: don’t work on my iPad 1

Ok, now for the stuff I actually do use (why did I upgrade again?). 😉

  • iMessage: being able to chat other iOS users without using my AT&T text messaging plan (the no-longer-available 200 messages/month for $5) is nice. It’s even nicer that biteSMS seamlessly takes over the the built-in Messages app and supports iMessage too.
  • Notification Center: it’s not perfect, but it is a huge improvement over the previous notification system. I like that SBSettings can integrate with it since I’m already used to swiping down from the top of the screen. I’m still configuring all of my different app notifications but for the most part I’m happy with this new feature. I do wish it was wider on the iPad when in landscape mode, however.

Unfortunately, I have run into some problems since upgrading. Slow/sluggish performance and poor battery life were the initial indicators. Sometimes the phone is so slow it takes one of my taps as a tap-and-hold, or just ignores the tap altogether so I end up tapping multiple times on the same element. I’ve gone through some of the tips to improve battery life, which did help, but it still seems like my battery drains faster than it did on iOS 4.3.3. I’m going to stick with it, though (I don’t feel like attempting to downgrade back to 4.3.3 and setting up everything again). There may be a new iPhone in my near future anyway …

iOS5 untethered jailbreak arrives, I take the plunge (again)

The iOS jailbreaking community got a nice holiday/new year’s gift the other week from pod2g and the dev-team: the untethered iOS 5.0.1 jailbreak for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and original iPad (iPad 2 and iPhone 4S users might get their own jailbreak soon too). I’d been running iOS 4.3.3 on my iPhone 3GS since last May so I decided to take the plunge to upgrade to Apple’s latest software and then re-apply the jailbreak.

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Canon PowerShot Elph 300HS

Six years after buying me a Canon PowerShot SD600, my wife got me a new Canon PowerShot Elph 300HS for Christmas. I’d been having battery issues with my old camera, and even the cheap replacements I had bought were starting to wear out, causing frustration when I’d miss shots due to “low battery” messages.

The 300HS is a 12.1MP camera with 5x optical zoom, a 2.7″ LCD screen (no viewfinders anymore!), and shoots 1080p HD video. The controls are almost identical to my SD600, so the learning curve was pretty flat and I was almost immediately comfortable with using the camera. It’s slightly thinner and wider than the SD600 and I like the matte black, textured metal casing.

HD video is recorded in MOV (QuickTime) format, which is a pain since I like to keep all of my video in MP4 (but it’s nothing WinFF can’t take care of, just an extra step). My only gripe with video recording is that the microphones are on the top of the case (near the power button) so you tend to hear more audio closer to the camera than what you’re actually pointing at. The video quality, however, is excellent. I don’t see why I would use my mini DV camcorder anymore when I have HD video capabilities in such a small, portable package (and no tapes!).

This is now the third Canon PowerShot model I’ve owned in a row and it seems like every time I get a new one the megapixels have doubled: my A70 was 3.2MP, the SD600 was 6.0MP, and now the 300HS is 12.1MP. I guess that means around 2017 or so I should be getting a new 24.0MP PowerShot. 😉 (Update: actually, at the end of 2015 I ended up with a 20.3MP Canon SX710 HS, close!)

I do need to get a new SD card now, however, because the old 2gb one I had isn’t a Class 6 so it can’t handle the recording of HD video. It’ll do about 45 seconds and then stop as it can’t keep up with the amount of data being thrown at it.

Creating interactive fiction with Inform 7

If you owned a personal computer in the 80s and played computer games, you probably played at least one Infocom text-based adventure game like Zork or (my personal favorite) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Known as interactive fiction, or IF, these games used the most powerful computers on the planet for their processing engines … your imagination. Instead of fancy color graphics and digital sound effects, Infocom games were just white text on a black screen controlled by you typing in commands like “go north” or “examine the small box” and usually involved solving complicated puzzles to win.

I’m actually a little surprised I haven’t written about IF before on this blog considering how fond I was of playing Wishbringer or Moonmist on my Atari 800XL back in the day. Even my daughter had even gotten into playing IF games on my iPad with Frotz. She’s an avid reader and also loves playing games, so IF games are a natural fit for her. Back in late August I decided I wanted to try my hand at writing her a personalized game which eventually evolved into the idea of making the game a scavenger hunt of sorts for her birthday in December. That gave me about four months to plan, design, write, and test the game.

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WIJFR: Catching Fire

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

During our summer road trip we listened to the audiobook version of Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games” and my daughter quickly read the remaining books in the trilogy shortly afterwards. With the upcoming March 2012 release of the movie, I know I’ll probably be taking her to see all of them anyway so I figured I might as well read the rest of the books myself.

“Catching Fire” is the second book in the series and begins about six months after Katniss and Peeta emerged as the dual victors of the 74th annual Hunger Games, as they prepare to go on their Victory Tour of the other Districts. This year’s Hunger Games will be a Quarter Quell, which occurs every 25 years and usually includes some sort of miserable twist to the Games. The surprise for this Quell is that the Tributes will be selected from past victors, which means Katniss and Peeta are going into the Arena … again.

The secondary plotline continues to be the unrest in the Districts towards the Capitol. As the title suggests, Katniss has become the spark that could ignite a revolution and the Capitol will do everything in its power to prevent that. So where the first book focused more on the Games themselves, this story gives us more detail on the other Districts, their relationship with the Capitol, and the current political situation in Panem overall.

Just like the first novel, “Catching Fire” is laid out in three parts of 9 chapters each, and is an easy read (not surprising since it’s really young-adult literature). It seemed to end rather abruptly just and events were really picking up, but having started “Mockingjay” now I know it picks up immediately and keeps going, so it was the logical break point for the book.

Just remember who the Enemy is …

Home automation with Z-Wave

A few weeks ago we upgraded our home security system and added ADT’s Pulse service. In addition to the remote security features (such as being able to monitor, arm, and disarm the system from a browser or an app on my iPhone), Pulse also introduced us to home automation via Z-Wave devices.

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Amazon Kindle Keyboard (WiFi + 3G)

Six months ago I got my daughter a refurbished 2nd generation Amazon Kindle from woot! and she has been inseparable from it. Thus, it was a distressing day for her this past Thanksgiving weekend when she turned it on and found just a series of black lines on the screen. None of the reset methods I tried would restore the screen to its former working state. The USB connection to my laptop still worked, however, so I was able to backup all of her files/books.

woot! had indicated the Kindle had a 1-year warranty from Amazon, so I called up Kindle Support (or rather, they called me once I initiated the request from their support site, which is pretty cool). The support rep (an extremely friendly, American gentleman) told me refurbished devices only have a 90 day warranty, not a year, and the warranty on my particular device expired in July 2011 (a month after I got it, so that must have been tied to the original warranty before the unit was refurbished and then purchased by me).

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WIJFR: Zero Day

A plane over the Atlantic suddenly needs to reboot its computer to stay in the air, and the pilots barely avert disaster. A hospital network mixes up patient information, resulting in the death of several people. A law firm, which has lost all of its clients’ data and can’t get its system running again, turns to Jeff Aiken, a former government analyst and computer expert. He discovers that all of the crashes are insidiously connected, and an even greater disaster is coming.

I just finished reading “Zero Day” by Mark Russinovich, a cyber-thriller on par with Daniel Suarez’s “Daemon” or “FreedomTM.” At its core, “Zero Day” addresses a real-world, incredibly difficult to solve dilemma: with so many unprotected/unpatched computers in the world today, could a well-crafted virus potentially wreak havoc on the global economy?

The plot: an insidious computer virus, masked by different rootkits, multiple variants, and seemingly multiple authors, is secretly infecting computer systems all over the world, with a trigger date of 9/11. The virus is only noticed ahead of time because some of the computers it infected had incorrect system clocks which caused it to trigger a month early, completely crashing them. Jeff Aiken, a computer security expert, and his former colleague Daryl Haugen, the Assistant Director Computer Infrastructure Security Unit at the Department of Homeland Security, are on the trail of the virus, trying to track it back to its source before the zero day strikes. Who is behind the virus? How long has it been propagating? How widespread is it? Can it be stopped? Will anyone believe them?

We’re all familiar with the concept of viruses and malware and the importance of running anti-virus software and firewalls and keeping our computer systems patched. The reality is, however, that there are a lot of machines complete unprotected or unpatched, which opens a lot of vulnerabilities for the bad guys to exploit. Russinovich, a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, is well-versed in the topic at hand, and so I found his novel to be a little more realistic than the Suarez books I referenced above.

The book is fast-paced and a good read even for those of us in the computer industry. For more information about “Zero Day,” check out the book’s website.