Juha Haataja: Universal Digital Ideas

Digital camera sensor sizes - the bigger the better?

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:43:43 GMT

Digital Photography Review has a nice summary of the sensor sizes in digital cameras. The sensor affects the noisiness (how small pixels), the depth of field, the crop factor, and the focal length multiplier. Here is a short listing of typical sensor sizes (diagonal measurements) in compact digital cameras:

1/2.5 inch = 10 mm
1/2.33 inch = 10.9 mm
1/1.8 inch = 14.1 mm
1/1.7 inch = 14.9 mm
1/1.63 inch = 15.6 mm
2/3 inch = 16.9 mm
4/3 inch = 33.9 mm

Of these the 4/3 inch sensor is already in the digital SLR area, a quite big sensor. As the area is proportial to the square of the diagonal, the noise characteristics improve dramatically with bigger sensors. On the other hand, depth of field and focal length multiplier decreases, so there are drawbacks (if you think this as drawback).

It seems that soon there will be interesting new cameras on the market. Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, annouced yesterday, has a 15.6 mm sensor. And it is speculated that we will soon have also a Nikon P6000 (with a 14.9 mm sensor) and a Canon G10 (14.9 mm). These cameras may generate competition in the more serious compact cameras.

Is the new Panasonic LX3 sign of a megapixel trend reversal?

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 19:03:25 GMT

As it happens, just as I wrote about the increasing megapixel competetion in digital cameras - making them more noisy all the time - Panasonic today announced a new LX 3 camera. The specs include: a ten-megapixel 1/1.63 inch sensor, a wide 24-60 inch lens with 2.0-2.8 max aperture, a new processing engine etc. If this camera works as advertised, it certainly interests me. But Panasonic has a history of noisy cameras, so the claims have to be tested before trusting. In any case, LX3 is a good indication that camera manufacturers may have seen some sense finally.

In the shadow of the megapixel race

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:28:17 GMT

I'm still pondering pros and cons of getting a new camera. It would be an investment not only in money but in time. Do I want to start studying the features of a new camera and learn all kinds of new skills?

I'll probably go and check one one these entry-level DSLRs at some point. I understand that Olympus E-520 is quite small, and with a fixed lens almost pocketable. However, the Olympus lenses are expensive and a bit limited in variety.

One of the negative aspects of a compact is the slow focusing and shooting speed. I take a lot of photos of our children, and it is sometimes almost as difficult as I imagine sports photography to be. Often only one photo in ten is somewhat acceptable.

My Ixus 400 has a 4 megapixel 1/1.8 inch sensor, which is quite nice at ISO 50 or 100, but not so great at 200 and above. I read somewhere that Canon later changed the sensitivity ratings so that the old ISO 50 became ISO 100 and so on, a change in the worse direction. This is one reason why I'm not so keen on getting a new camera. A compact with a 2/3 inch or bigger sensor would be nice, something like in the Fujifilm S100FS has, but in a more compact form.

There are too many photographs

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:38:40 GMT

The Online Photographer ponders the effect of there being available a massive amount of photos. What will happen to the concept of great photography?

Technology is leading to a sudden photographic efflorescence, a thousand points of light if you will. That's cool in some ways - but it means real quality is getting lost among the profusion and the massive increase in supply is cheapening the value.

I'm currently following about 20 blogs about photography, and many of these are posting excellent pictures weekly or even daily. And there is an endless-seeming collection of nice-looking photos at sites such as Flickr and Picasa. But will this mean that the art of photography will disappear behind the massive scale? Will the norm be somebody taking a good photo by accident vs. doing photography by skill and art?

The delights of photo-blogging

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:37:52 GMT

I have been photo-blogging at Light Scrape for a few days, and like it. Perhaps there isn't much flexibility in the Flickr-Blogger solutions, but at least it works easily and realiably. But I admit to having looked at other possibilities as well.

One interesting solution would be to use the MobileMe service from Apple. There are benefits, such as publishing photo galleries directly from iPhoto. And it seems that the web version allows reorganization of photos very easily, even management of galleries. But this is not really what I want. My point is to publish a photo every few days (or a couple of photos daily if I'm in the mood), not whole galleries. Thus, I'll continue - at least for now - to update my photoblog. And perhaps I'll also test our the photo galleries at MobileMe - but this would be a quite different thing, publishing a collection of photos at once.

This is the sexy voice of the talking fish

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 12:36:30 GMT

Apparently, the midshipman fish has a sexy voice. If you are wondering, you can listen what it is like. Interesting to know that there are fish who talk to each other.

No anonymity on the net

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:20:11 GMT

Can it be trusted that Google/Viacom Agree To Preserve User Anonymity In Data Shakedown? I don't really think so. Even though ip addresses or user-ids and such would be anonyminized, tt is quite easy to identify users based on their net activity. Often quite few data points are enough. People look for personal information, data they are familiar with etc. This case shows that big companies like Google can't be trusted with preserving anonymity on the net.

How to write to please

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:01:12 GMT

Dosh Dosh ponders Kurt Vonnegut's Eight Principles on Successful Blogging and Affiliate Marketing, where the principles in question are:

Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
Every sentence must do one of two things --- reveal character or advance the action.
Start as close to the end as possible.
Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them --- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

These are good writing principles, and also for non-fiction as well as fiction. But I don't think these are quite enough. In any case, if writing (or any other art, such as photography) would be easy to distill into a few rules, we would have everyone to be a writer.

The generative internet - is the bell tolling?

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:12:49 GMT

I have been reading an article by Jonathan L. Zittrain on the so-called generative internet, that is the "capacity for unrelated and unaccredited audiences to build and distribute code and content through the Internet to its tens of millions of attached personal computers". The impact has been huge, and the growth and innovation has made it possible to engage in all kinds of new endeavors.

However, there has been a backslash, trying to restrict innovation, the freedom of speech, and building new things on top of existing. I hope the generative capacity of the internet will survive, but it is far from certain.

Much ado about the end of theory

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:18:02 GMT

Backreaction discusses The End Of Theory, a proposition that data management and analysis will make obsolete the model-bases scientific paradigm.

I beg to disagree. Science is currently going to the exactly opposite direction. Huge amounts of data have been gathered in, e.g., biosciences, but still we don't know much about how biological systems work. Trying to find insight from a huge pile of data produces noise - accidental correlations and similar artefacts.

To make progress we need predictive models. What use is it for us to notice - after the fact - that something happened, when we need to model, predict and act.

For example, in finding the right action in a potential worldwide pandemic, or in fighting the climate change, data is just junk by itself if we can't make predictive models.

Firefox - great or ugly?

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:24:39 GMT

Ssp doesn't like Firefox. I think these are natural differences is taste. For example, I like the big back button in the toolbar, which may seem ugly to others.

Today I solved one of the remaining problems: Keychain integration. Some time ago I got a copy of 1Password in the MacHeist bundle of software, and now I started to use it. The functionality is better than the Keychain integration in Omniweb, and at least so far so good. And the Macs I have are synchronized via the .Mac service ("MobileMe"), which means I need to submit the access information only once.

There is one usability issue which I would like to see changed: in Firefox the progress bar is on the bottom of the window. Safari (and Omniweb) show this information in the toolbar area, which is much better.

The biggest good feature of Firefox is keyboard navigation, which is a significant improvement compared to Safari and Omniweb. And the so-called "Awesome bar" is really good, with a quite nice system for managing bookmarks. (Although some rough corners remain there.)

Changing the world

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:30:13 GMT

Chris Guillebeau wrote an interesting (although simplistic) pamphlet on how to set personal objectives and how to change the world. The two key questions are

What do you really want to get out of life?
What can you offer the world that no one else can?

These are interesting questions, and hard to answer. Thinking about the future is hard, and I'm not altogether convinced that it is productive thinking. But I can look instead at today: what kind of things would I like to do if I would be able to do anything.

Here is the thing: I wouldn't change much of the current situation. What I would like to change is the world. Make it better - more collaborative, more fair, more open, less cynical. And of course I would like to live a good life while doing that.

I believe computational science is a key area for solving the complex societal problems we are currently facing. Thus, promoting computational science is the key thing for me. Whether we are talking about climate change, bioscience or nanotechnology, computational science is needed to make progress. Thus, developing the knowledge and recognition of this field is essential for the society.

Currently I'm in a position where I can make changes happen. But it is not easy and fast - it takes time, constant discussions, and repeating the message again and again. I hope I can to a certain degree provide a bridge towards understanding.

I'm not a deep specialist, but I can help on the general level. And there are others who are willing to participate in the change. We can become a spring of insights, and act as stepping stones on the way to change.

Not everything is perfect in Firefox 3

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:45:30 GMT

I discovered one web application which was not compatible with Firefox 3, although it works fine with Safari and Omniweb. It was an accounting system used via a web interface, and for some reason the basic functionality was missing. Probably some differences in interpreting JavaScript.

I have understood that Firefox 3 is in some cases more strict about interpretation than other browsers. These other browsers are of course supporting bad coding style, but that is a compromise that you probably have to make to have a usable browser. How much compromise is done, that separates the browsers from each other.

Censorship in Finland

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:07:01 GMT

Kai Ekholm has written an excellent column on censorship in Finland. Politicians are trying to score easy points by favouring censorship, without understanding (or willing to understand) the big picture. Censorship destroys the society from within. And it makes those who favour it laughable in the long run. Here is a list of such populistic politicians: Marjo Matikainen, Tanja Karpela-Saarela, and Suvi Lindén. I wouldn't vote for them. And this has nothing to do with the political parties they represent.

A futher comment: it is interesting the the three politicians above (and mentioned by Ekholm) are all women. I have voted for female politicians quite often, and only partly to even up the male-dominated political field. (There are excellent female politicians, much more competent than most of the men.)

Perhaps a censorship-supporting role is easy to accept by some female politicians, because it is a natural reaction for those who find it difficult to have their voice heard by others. And when they find themselves in power, they try to suppress other voices. Well, this is just a theory.

World is ending on Saturday next week...

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:13:14 GMT

... but first we need to cover the football games, and make a special report on the latest kiss-and-tell story. --- Yes, information overload has made us stupid. (And the world is not ending as far as I know, not this time.)

Unix is not always a good thing

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:55:49 GMT

Ssp commented my thoughs on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:

I think much of the bloat or bloated appearance of OS X comes from its Unix background. Rather than wrapping everything in a single file, things like applications usually come in thousands of files once they are localised and contain help. You can see an (over-dramatised) effect of this if you time how long it takes to copy your iTunes application: much longer than copying that amount of data should take. It may sound like a heresy, but the good old resource fork was a way around that kind of problem ;)

I agree that there is quite a lot in the Unix environment that can be improved from the desktop/mobile device users' perspective. This applies of course to Linux as well. But things are getting better, for example Nokia using Linux on mobile devices, and Apple now promising to clean up OS X.

Views on computational science

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:10:53 GMT

I got some comments on my opinion piece in Helsingin Sanomat. Because my affiliation was not included in the writer information, some of the messages asked whether I'm the author of the text. There are quite a few people with the same name here in the Helsinki region. I hope they have not been bothered too much.

By the way, it is interesting how few comments (relative to the size of the readership) there usually are from HS pieces, compared to other much smaller publications. Perhaps the big audience hinders commenting. Years and years ago, when I wrote a couple of opinion pieces to Helsingin Sanomat and Yliopisto, my two favorite forums at that time, I did get some nice feedback, and one interesting contact (the correspondence lasted quite a while).

One reader pointed out the writings of Heinz R. Pagels, a completely new name to me. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be new printings of his books available, only used ones. The most interesting book for me is "The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity". The topic of the book is of course discussed by many other authors, but it seems that Pagels has some interesting interpretations. I'm not sure whether I agree. In any case, have to read the book first before any further commenting.

Further thoughts on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:13:16 GMT

Many have commented on the next version of OS X, 10.6 "Snow Leopard". There is lots of discussion on "no new features" (apart from built-in Exchange 2007 support). But after thinking about this a bit, I think Apple may be able to deliver quite an impact with 10.6. The current version, 10.5 Leopard, has layers upon layers, hundreds (?) of thousands of files. Complexity upon complexity. What would "think different" be able to do? As an example, Apple developed the "launchd" software to replace numerous Unix startup programs (cron, init etc.), and making a much better job of it, for example making it possible to startup the Mac much faster than previously. What if similar work would be applied to all of the system, on all layers? It seems that some of the new technology is exactly this. How much speedup would be possible? I think that on systems without separate GPUs the speedup might not be so dramatic, perhaps in the 10-50 percent region. (However, the amount of disk space needed for the operating system may decrease dramatically, resulting in much faster program launch speeds, as an example.) But on systems with separate GPUs and more than two cores the effect may be dramatic, perhaps several times the current speed. And much less overhead than currently (think about Spotlight, Time Machine, Dashboard etc.) How would you feel about using an operating system much faster than any current ones, consuming dramatically less disk space, and being able to use all kinds of external accelerators (no need to limit to GPUs). This OS would scale upwards (to tens of cores and terabytes of RAM), and also downwards (to future mobile devices). Perhaps the best selling argument for the OS will be the devices which are built upon this foundation. Not to speak about new possible applications, and new ways of connecting to the net/cloud.

EU wants openness - sends message to Microsoft

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:06:03 GMT

New York Times reports on the EU comments related to Microsoft business practices vs. openness:

"I know a smart business decision when I see one - choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed," Ms. Kroes told a conference in Brussels. "No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one."

Top choices for digital point and shoot camera

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:04:51 GMT

I'm once again thinking about a new digital camera. My Canon Digital Ixus 400 is still ok, but has occasional mechanical problems. And it has noise issues even at ISO 100. I don't like to get a SLR, because I very much prefer the pocketable format (point and shoot type concept). Of the current cameras, my top three choices are Canon Digital Ixus 860 IS, Fuji Finepix F100fd, and Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5. All of these have potential problems, and are not quite attractive enough. But there are rumours of F120fd, Canon certainly will offer soon something new, and Panasonic hopefully improves the noise issue in the next models. My big wish is a 1/1.6 inch or bigger sensor, 5x or better optical zoom, and a real wide angle lense (at least 28 mm).

What will happen with OOXML?

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:27:51 GMT

ISO put OOXML document formats on hold. This was expected, and not only because of the complaints from the member countries. Now the ISO organization has a possibility to fix its reputation. This was a sordid mess. No wonder Micrsoft announced support for ODF, the competing format, in MS Office.

Listening to SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists music

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:04:34 GMT

I have been listening to the SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artists collection, 764 tracks of it. There are a lot of interesting new musicians in the collection I had never heard of. I suggest downloading the SXSW 2008 torrent if you are interested in music which is a bit different than the mainstream.

Update: my Last.fm profile shows what I have been recently listening. The total number of tracks played is 65,530 - but I think that quite a lot are missing. And because all members of the family have been playing music, there are all kinds of styles included in the statistics.

Becoming a science fiction author

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:49:45 GMT

The local library was selling old magazines cheaply, and I picked up five issues of Portti, which is a Finnish science fiction magazine (and I guess a bit of a fanzine as well). I haven't had time to read Portti for several years, but now (during the so-called skiing holiday here in Finland) I managed to do a bit of reading. It was a surprise to find my short story in the issue 4/2006. (Story title "Kala jolla oli polkupyörä", Fish with a bicycle.) I took part in the Portti short story writing competition in 2006, but never realized that they would print my piece. (I got a honorary mention.) Well, there it was. Perhaps I can now state that I'm a science fiction author (with one published short story). But this may well be the last one as well - I don't have currently any craving to write fiction. Too much writing nonfiction at work I guess.

Leopard - 10 days, 9 hours, 39 minutes

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:30:33 GMT

Leopard has been running for well over 10 days on my iMac, since the first boot after installing 10.5.2 upgrade. (I switched from Tiger at the same time.) There have been minor nuisances, and some stupid things I did myself. For example, I shut down the external Time Machine backup disk without unmounting it first. Fortunately no data seems to have been lost or corrupted. Two days ago I started doing Time Machine backups of my iBook over the wireless connection to the same external disk on the iMac. The first backup (over 35 GB of data) took about 10 hours, the next one less than one hour. A bit too long for my liking. One reason may be the slow wlan connection on the iBook, the 802.11g-version instead of the newer 802.11n. But there may be also some software bottlenecks involved. In any case, doing the backups is quite simple, even if it takes a long time. I have the firewall enabled, and just a few allowed software packages, which should limit the risks of over the network backups. I have to once again say that Leopard is one smooth beast. Running simultaneously a lot of programs on many different accounts on the iMac has hardly ever slowed it down. Perhaps once or twice there have been slight pauses in watching EyeTV, when I have been recording programs, doing Time Machine backups (both from iMac and iBook), and downloading software and music from the net (SXSW 2008 Showcasing Artist torrent, for example). It now seems that 10.5.2 is one of the most stable Mac OS X releases ever. At least I hope so. One of the great new things of Leopard is the ability to make Dashboard widgets from web pages with Safari. I have made a couple of good ones, of weather services for example. The Leopard Dashboard seems to be a valueable tool, compared to Tiger where it was more like a toy.

Leopard - 6 days, 5 hours, 27 minutes

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:06:45 GMT

I have now been using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.2) for over six days on my iMac. There have been no problems, and I have even remembered to switch on the external disk for Time Machine backups every once in a while. I was anticipating some problems, but it seems that there are few if any. In fact this may be the smoothest Mac OS X upgrade ever, and I have been using all versions since 10.0. Most 10.X version changes have caused some problems, but this didn't, at least so far. Impressive. On the other hand, I usually jumped in quite early, sometimes even with 10.X.0 version, or 10.X.1 version, so perhaps waiting a bit explains the good feeling.

Leopard works well on iBook G4 and aluminium iMac

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:59:34 GMT

I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard a few days ago, and there have been suprisingly few problems. (Almost none in fact.) The biggest surprise was that the parental restrictions defined in Tiger were immeadetely functional in Leopard without any tweaking. Thus, the children are allowed to use certain software, and only those. Also, I was afraid that certain older games would not work in Leopard, but all seem to work so far. I had two games which didn't fit into parental restrictions under Tiger. For some reason you had to use a normal account for them. I haven't yet checked whether Leopard is better in this regard.

Upgraded my iBook G4 to Leopard

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:19:09 GMT

After a few days worth of positive experiences of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.2) on my iMac, I upgraded my iBook to Leopard as well. I have the last version of iBook G4 --- a 12 inch model at 1.33 GHz. There is 80 GB of disk, and I recently upgraded the memory to 1.5 GB.

I made an "Archive and install" type upgrade, which went flawlessly, although it took quite a while. At the same time I took the opportunity to remove some old software and documents from the iBook. There was even some Mac OS 9 software still there. After the cleanup I have 22 GB of free disk space instead of 12 GB.

I tested screen sharing between the iBook and iMac, and it worked suprisingly well. Browsing iTunes music and iPhoto pictures on the iMac works also nicely from the iBook.

So far I haven't really run into any inconveniences with Leopard. Sometimes Stacks behave a bit suprisingly, but that may be just a question of newness. I'm quite happy with the speed both on the iBook and especially in the iMac. For some reason Leopard seems snappier even on the iBook, which is unexpected.

The only incompatibility so far is Cisco VPN on the iBook. It starts up properly, and tries to connect, but doesn't manage to do it, and never reports an errror. On the iMac I haven't had any difficulties in using Cisco VPN.

Good Leopard - or bad?

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:43:54 GMT

I have been corresponding with SSP on Leopard user experiences. He has had negative experiences with EyeTV and iTunes: "multitasking in X.5 is rotten and things skip a lot". However, for me things are different.

EyeTV seems to work in Leopard even smoother than in Tiger. For example when pausing a recording and then continuing, there is no that small "hiccup" in the beginning of playback as there was with 10.4.11. And this is while multitasking - usually I have 4-5 users logged in to the iMac, and some of these accounts are doing things in background, such as reading dvds or cds or downloading things (such as software updates) from the net. Usually I have 5-10 different programs running on these accounts (no need to shut them down, is there?).

But I do have the new iMac (2.4 GHz, 4 GB of memory, 750 GB disk), which is a quite nice machine in terms of performance.

Yesterday I watched a recorded movie with EyeTV (version 3), while simulaneously recording two programs (I have the Diversity model). And at the background I was ripping a dvd with Handbrake using all available cpu capacity. In addition, on different accounts I had an e-mail program, Last.fm etc. software running. Everything was as smooth as can be.

Today I switched on Time Machine, and the first backup is currently in progress. So far I haven't had any trouble (listening to iTunes, watching tv, listening to Last.fm).

Perhaps I'm just fortunate? I do hope this feeling of satisfaction with Leopard continues.

Now I'm learning to use Spaces. Several years ago (in 2001 perhaps) or so I was using a similar system in Gnome and KDE (running under Mac os X), but those virtual desktops were worse implemented. And Quick Look is definetely helpful in checking what a file contains.

Made finally the leap from Tiger to Leopard

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:25:08 GMT

The second update to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5.2) was released yesterday. I today upgraded my iMac from Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4). I bought a copy of Leopard last year, but postponed the upgrade due to worries about incompatibility.

I made a default upgrade, and there were no problems although the iMac had lots of additional software installed (including system utilities etc.). Everything is running as smoothly as can be wished.

I read a lot of complaints about the details of Leopard from the net discussions. A bunch of nitpicking ninnies! Although Leopard is markedly different, I think the new features (transparent dock and stacks) are real improvements, not just eye candy.

I haven't yet tested Time Machine, but will do this in a few days. I'm currently doing the backups with Carbon Copy Cloner, this is sufficient for now.

The value of the new features remains to be seen. Quick Look, Spaces etc. seem reasonable improvements, although not revolutionary. I already got used to Quick Look, and probably will miss it on those Macs running Tiger. Also, some of the current software requires Leopard to work properly, for example EyeTV and Cover Sutra. Thus it was time to make the leap to Leopard.

10,000 music tracks, over half unheard

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:00:46 GMT

Since moving my iTunes music from iBook to iMac I have been growing the collection. I used to have a lot more classical music on the iBook, but disk space constraints forced to remove some of the music. But now I have read a lot of the music back from the cds. And I have also bought quite a few albums from the iTunes Store, and eMusic as well.

Currently I have a bit over 10,000 music tracks in iTunes. There are several dozen tracks which have been listened to over 150 times. But there are also tracks which have not been listened at all. I made a smart playlist with these tracks, and it had initially over 5,400 tracks. Thus over half of the music had been unused in iTunes. Now I'm playing this playlist in random order and decreasing the count little by little. A lot of positive suprises there.

Using EyeTV 3

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:08:08 GMT

I upgraded the EyeTV software to version 3 on my iMac. There were some new useful features, such as smart lists for automation of recordings. A robust but not a revolutionary upgrade. I have recorded a lot of programs from digital tv using EyeTV and the dual usb stick, which makes it possible to watch or record two channels simultaneously. Extremely nice way of viewing digital television. However, it seems that now I'm getting more and more repeats - there is not so much novelty in the available programs as in the beginning. I really hope that net-based movies and television takes off soon.

Radiohead is doing great

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:43:44 GMT

Apparently Radiohead is successful with their customer-determined pricing model of the new album "In Rainbows". The Last.fm global tracks top 10 is all Radiohead - from this album. Quite a phenomenon.

I have listened a few times through the album, and it is good. Especially considering that I have never been a Radiohead fan.

Children and the iMac

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:45:00 GMT

Have been studying the parental controls on Mac OS X. I made an account for the daughters to use, making it possible to use various programs, such as painting, writing, games, astronomy etc. Although giving restricted rights to program and web works fine usually, there are some rough corners, for example with non-bundle applications. But I have managed to get almost everything working fine. And the daughters really enjoy using the iMac.

West has failed to tackle Islam

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:08:06 GMT

I just read a thoughtful interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her deep analysis made me think differently about Islam. This is an example of what she had to say:

I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they're the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, "This is a warning. We won't accept this anymore." There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Listening to Radiohead

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:22:16 GMT

I'm now listening the new Radiohead album "In Rainbows" which I bought on the net. I'm not a great fan of the band, but I liked the concept of customer-specified price without DRM. When I downloaded the album and started listening, it sounds quite nice, better than expected. I paid three pounds for it, which perhaps was a bit low. However, the mp3 is only 160 kbps, and there was no cover art included. Also, the download process was implemented a bit sloppily, although it worked ok.

Apple says new iMacs have a problem

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:15:51 GMT

Apple recently acknowledged that the new iMacs have a freezing problem. I wrote about my experiences about a month ago, when I had had 3-4 freezes in two weeks. But since installing iMac update 1.1, I have had only one freeze. Currently the iMac has been in use for over a week without any problems.

Backing up to dvd's vs. hard disks

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:29:33 GMT

It seems that hard disk prices will drop dramatically this autumn. Perhaps by half. I'm planning to get a 500 GB or a 750 GB external hard disk for iMac backups, but not yet. A Firewire 800 version would be nice, and I think a 750 GB disk may cost less that 200 euros later this year. Meanwhile, I bought a couple DVD+RW disks for backing up my photos and music bought from iTMS.

On the other hand, I believe the built-in backup software (Time Machine) in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will increase the demand for disks, so perhaps the drop in prices will not be so great after all.

Reading space opera

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:07:45 GMT

Some time ago I read "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, now I'm reading "The Ghost Brigades". These book are space-opera type science fiction, but they also have a serious weakness: Scalzi's alien characters are not alien at all, but all too human. In fact, many of the human characters in the Vorkosigan books by Bujold are more alien that Scalzi's aliens. But on the other hand, Scalzi has built a nice technological universe with new twists on the usual sf ideas.

EyeTV updated to version 2.5

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:37:49 GMT

I installed a new version of EyeTV on my iMac, version 2.5. This version uses a dual-tuner setup more intelligently, starting a scheduled recording on the unused tuner. Also, EyeTV can now record from the live buffer to file, a nice improvement. EyeTV was already a great program, and now even greater. (I also noticed that I had not been using the "best" settings for picture quality, even though I have a fast iMac - however, I didn't notice much improvement to the previous settings.)

Media, home, and iMac - is there a perfect solution?

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:39:36 GMT

Trying out new software for iMac. I downloaded yFlicks and some new games. Have to see how these work. There are several software packages trying to solve the same problem: media center for home. Needed features are downloading, converting, organizing and using videos and other formats at home. But no solution so far is quite ok. I like EyeTV, Miro, and Front Row, which are all partial solutions. Remote Buddy is a nice application for operating the iMac remotely, but perhaps not quite what I need. Have to study the available solutions in more detail.

Joost vs. Miro - closed vs. open

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 12:18:08 GMT

I have been testing the Miro program on my iMac - to watch videos and tv programs. A nice interface, although the Finnish localization sucks, and the system seems to work quite reliably despite being version 0.9.9.1. Miro is an early example of next generation internet - peer-to-peer technologies for various media formats, especially video.

I hope openness wins. I have also tried Joost, which is in early beta, but I don't like the concept of DRM-infested world.

There is no memory in research

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 04:52:09 GMT

Yes, IRs are broken. Let’s talk about it.: "Institutional repositories as a class are in serious trouble. They are not producing the outcomes they promised—or, indeed, much of any outcome in many cases. [...] Fundamentally, the value proposition on which IRs were sold to libraries was in error. Voluntary self-archiving in institutional repositories simply does not happen in the absence of deposit mandates. From a library perspective, this changes the picture from the original “build it, step back, and they will come” to “make a tremendous ongoing investment in marketing and library-mediated deposit services that may never pay off if other libraries at other institutions don’t do likewise.” It’s only sensible that many libraries back away from the latter commitment." [Caveat Lector]

This is something I have been thinking about for some time. Much of the produced research data (and metadata) is never preserved, but there currently doesn't seem to be ways to fix this, even though decisionmakers in Finland and elsewhere have a lot of good will to make it happen.

As things are, the society does not get as much value from investing in research as it should. Measurements are done again and again, data is seldom reused, and things have to be discovered again and again from scratch. Not good for the society, and not good for the researchers.

Getting to know Nokia E90 Communicator

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 07:38:37 GMT

Yesterday I got a Nokia E90, to replace an aging (a year old!?) Nokia 9300i which has been in repairs repeatedly this year.

Starting to use the E90 went mostly fine. I downloaded the iSync plugin for E90 from Nokia, installed it on my Powerbook (no restart needed), and synced the phone over Bluetooth. Contacts and calendar were up-to-date in half an hour from getting the phone. And getting my IMAP (over SSL) e-mail working too just a few minutes.

At home I tested my wlan connection (WPA encryption), and browsing the web went fine. The Safari-based browser is fast and accurate, much better than on 9300i.

However, as I noted here previously, there are usability problems with the E90. The four-way direction keys don't work too well, for example. Also, I had to read to manual to find out how to make a photo with the camera. The function of some of the keys is not apparent - once again, had to read the manual.

I took a couple of photos and videos to test the camera. Picture quality is nice, if there is enough light available. Otherwise, not so good. The VGA-level videos were quite ok, it is nice to have this possibility on a phone.

So, the E90 has been a bit of a mixed experience so far. Syncing with the Mac went fine, email works fine, but there are certain nagging problems with keys and other usability factors. Have to see how well I cope with this thing.

At least the mechanical design seems to be much better than with the 9300i - I hope this Nokia phone lasts longer than a year.

Getting an iMac

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 08:40:05 GMT

On wednesday I ordered a 24" iMac from Apple Store, customized with 2 GB of memory and 750 GB of disk. The iMac will be used by everyone in the family, for photos, videos, movies, music, and tv (I also ordered EyeTV and a usb digital tv stick).

In October 2004 I had a 20-inch iMac G5 for testing at home, and it was quite a nice experience. The price of the 20-inch iMac G5 was about 2000 euros, with a much slower processor, only 256 MB memory as standard, and disk space starting at 80 gigabytes. In the end I decided to pass and did not buy an iMac. (The iBook G4 was sufficient at that point.)

The current iMac pricing is competitive, and I'm waiting eagerly to get my hands on the new machine. But I expect that we'll run out of disk space at some point, and the memory needs to be upgraded to 4 GB to make the machine last longer. But for now the new iMac will suit our family nicely.

Update: The estimated delivery date is August 28-29. A long wait ahead.

Bookcrossing vs. second-hand book dealers

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 09:20:33 GMT

Every once in a while there are articles about bookcrossing in Finnish newspapers. I have never got interested in this, although I have bought and sold hundreds of books in second-hand book dealers. Sometimes I wonder what has happened to the books I have sold, but on the other hand this does not interest me quite so much. Each book has its own life, and I have to let it go.

Where is the quality of electronics industry?

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:38:11 GMT

Nokia is not the only company having problems with quality. Sony has once again problems, now with digital cameras, resulting in Sony recalling Cyber-Shot DSC-T5: "Sony has issued a recall on its Cyber-Shot DSC-T5 digital camera after identifying a manufacturing fault. Affecting just over 400,000 cameras worldwide with serial numbers between 3500001 and 3574100, the fault relates to the metal skin covering the base of the camera."

What are "acceptable" problems with quality and what are not? My experiences with Nokia phones are not encouraging, but I guess they are typical of the product quality for most electronics companies.

My first mobile phone, a Nokia 8110i - the so-called banana model, shown in the first Matrix movie - was great, and I had no problems with it, only switching to a Nokia 3210 when I got fed up with the relatively short battery life. But then I have had a series of problems with Nokia phones: Nokia 6800, 9500, and 9300i, each of these running into mechanical and software problems.

Yet another design problem with Nokia E90

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:18:43 GMT

I had a second look on a Nokia E90 today. My Nokia 9300 is once again being repaired, this time the backlighting of the cover display is broken. The phone is a year old, and has been in repairs for over five weeks, on three different occasions, for multiple different reasons (corrupting memory cards, broken hinge, broken backlighting etc.). But anyway - the power on/off button on a Nokia E90 is easy to press by mistake, a colleague said, thus shutting the phone without meaning to. Perhaps there will be a Nokia E90i, fixing some of the problems.

Unmasking Fake Steve Jobs

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:11:56 GMT

"Thanks for all the fish" - the keeper of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs was revealed by a reporter from The New York Times. I'm a bit sad to see this happen, the mystery is no more. It was nice to speculate on the blog entries, now you know that an editor at Forbes is writing the blog, and his position and opinions are apparent.

The writing of FSJ was like the writing of a 14-year old boy - that is, not so nice, even rude sometimes, and suprising in many way. You don't see that kind of writing often nowadays, done properly, that is targeted to the bigger issues of today. What are the CEOs of big companies really thinking? I think most of us try to repress the 14-year old inside us, and thus we don't have what the youngster has to offer: creativity. We are dead inside.

If not e-mail, then what?

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 06:08:05 GMT

Yesterday I wrote a note about how badly e-mail is suited for collaboration. But are there better alternatives? Or is e-mail a similar solution as democracy - which is a bad political system but better than alternatives.

I have seen examples where wiki-systems have worked efficiently making collaboration productive. Also, often e-mail is used in situation where it causes grief instead of helping things further. In many cases discussions by phone or in person help to avoid unnecessary e-mails (and also help to avoid misunderstandings which often arise when using e-mail).

Nokia 9300i still broken - design problem with E90

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 06:04:27 GMT

Yesterday I got the 9300i back from repairs, where it was for a month. Today morning I noticed an interesting new problem: in the cover part of the phone the backlighting of the display does not work. Instead the backlighting of the keys is switched on. This does not help to see what is on the display. There are crossed wires or bits somewhere. To repairs, once again?

On Wednesday I got my hands on the new Nokia E90 Communicator. Felt quite sturdy, and my colleague said that the battery lasts longer than on previous communicators. However, there is a significant design problem. The "red button" inside the phone is situated so that when you open the phone you often press the button by mistake, thus closing applications etc. I think this could be a big nuisance.