Final Cut Pro 7

Apple Color

Apple Motion 4

Camera: Kodak Zx1

Music: “You Make Me Feel” by Archive

All video ©Johannes Siig, All audio © Island Records

Check this video out in 1080p on YouTube.

There are a lot of things wrong with the iPad, mainly the fact that it doesn’t have flash, or a front-facing camera. These are the two main complaints about the iPad that I have heard. The present lack of multitasking is an issue for some, but not for others.

But that’s not the reason the iPad hasn’t been that much of a success. The problem with the iPad, is timing. To launch a completely new type of product during the recession is not the greatest business plan, not even for Apple. People just don’t have the money to buy one. You could argue that $500 or $629 (3G) is cheap for an Apple product, but not really. It lacks basic features of a computer, and it also lacks a phone function, which makes it useless in case of emergency….

It’s not especially good at anything, nor is it very bad at anything either, but still.

Firstly, they changed all user accounts’ all files from being on separate computers to being on servers only. Now it takes 10 minutes to log in if more than 5 people are trying to do it at once. It was bad before with just the account info being on the school’s servers, but now they have moved it all there.

This… isn’t the most annoying thing. To print, you have to put cash on your national ID card, and then you have to pay with it to print. Which is annoying, since it takes a long time and is more trouble than gain.

Also, as of today, they have info-kiosks in the school library and printing room. Which wouldn’t be too bad, except they have so many security holes in them I wanted to scream…
The main problem is, that if you press the “back” button enough times, you may see other students’ grades if they had used it before you. This is a HUGE security flaw in a public info kiosk.

The touchscreens are unresponsive. I mean, you have to be a world-class professional boxer to use it properly.

And then you can only use the school’s site on it. Although, I reckon I could get past it by plugging in a separate keyboard and mouse via a USB hub to the lonely USB port on the side of it and then trying out a couple of things.
They use a special taskbar and a special start menu and a special browser that doesn’t allow it to be exited, ever.

And then they use Vista, although they don’t need to… Surely Linux would be a better choice for such a machine? After all it’s not a resource hog like Vista is. And they don’t even use all of the features of Vista. In fact, they don’t even use ONE! Unless you call limited unsecured web browsing a feature.

IT Department? More like FAIL department.

Have you ever heard of a concept called “free promotion”? Basically, the product you sell gets advertised, without you paying for the advertising… Well, how does it work?

Let’s take an example –  youtube. A user posts a video containing your music. Or a music video by an artist that’s signed under your label.

You think to yourself – “oh my god they are stealing our music.” First of all, why do you assume that they are stealing, and why do you assume it will create a loss in profit?

In fact, common sense tells us that if a song is advertised *anywhere* and people like it, people will probably buy it. But if the song isn’t available on, for example, youtube,  then your song will be unheard, and probably bought a lot less.

I agree on one point, though. If the author of the song isn’t credited or any mention of the song’s name and performer isn’t there, then it should count as copyright infringement. But if the author and/or performer is credited and the song’s title given and (preferably) a link to the song on, let’s say, umm, iTunes is given, then what’s the f**king problem?

Have you heard of these things, called, err, common sense and independent thought?

Because if you had any of either, you’d realise disabling audio on infringing promoting videos is clearly… retarded.

I sometimes listen to pirated music. I (almost daily) watch television shows that I have illegally downloaded. I rarely watch any films and I usually buy them.

Why?
The content JUST ISN’T AVAILABLE.

If you live in the United States or the United Kingdom, or, in some cases, even in Australia, you are most likely fine. But, if you don’t, then there’s ABSOLUTELY no way of getting the content. Well, not instantly, at least.

I’d have to wait a YEAR until the latest episode of House gets here. I’d have to wait TWO THREE YEARS until the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy gets here. I’d have to wait at least 6 months until the latest episode of Top Gear would be here.
And when it gets here, it is spoiled by the narrowscreen (4:3) format and hardcoded subtitles and the annoying red-and-white “3″ logo in the top-right corner. It’s JUST NOT A PLEASURABLE EXPERIENCE.

It’s the same thing with CDs and DVDs. When a CD finally reaches here (and I can’t buy it online since there ISN’T A STORE), it’s always some sort of local re-release with worse audio and ads inside the jewel case. Or sometimes there isn’t a jewel case at all and the disc is in a paper box.
With DVDs there are the ads and, again, the narrowscreen format. I wrote a blog post about DVDs some time ago.

The only legal way for me to obtain music is Spotify. And… oh wait, f**k, I have to be in the UK or some other countries to get the full experience. Oh, f**k. I do use Spotify with a UK proxy. It’s the same way I use the BBC iPlayer.

I don’t use P2P, well, only when it’s the last resort: For example, I downloaded an episode of Grey’s Anatomy via torrent yesterday. I generally don’t like torrenting and prefer HTTP(S) servers and direct downloads.

I would honestly love to buy content, and now, for some time, I can. How? I bought a £15 iTunes Store gift card when I visited the UK. I wish I had bought more than just one though…

A couple of years ago, there was a lot of buzz about this “new” thing called Web 2.0.
Well, actually, the web doesn’t really have version numbers.
Web 1.0 was read-only.
Web 2.0 was “create, edit, discuss.” And really, no-one really calls it Web 2.0 in 2009. It’s now called something else. Not social media, that’s a different thing.

But if we’d go back to the version numbering… Well, what’s 3.0 then and when’s it coming?

It’s already here. It consists of unified content systems. What they are, you ask? Well, the Web is tied together. A lot of sites are linked to other sites.

For example, when we take a look at Youtube, you can log in with your Google account. But you also can log in to virtually any site in the world wide web which supports OpenID with a Google account.
You can log into anywhere.

Let’s take another example: My site and it’s integration with Twitter. You can log in using your twitter credentials. Then, you can add content (virtually any kind). After that, you can publish it to twitter with just two clicks. And if that’s not enough, people can comment on it with their Twitter account. (Or, all of this could be done also with OpenID on my site.)

And another one: OpenID. Tons of sites support it these days and it’s a really cool thing, actually. There’s no central registration server. But it works. It ties the web together. But OpenID also has another advantage: if one OpenID provider stops working, the network doesn’t collapse. It stays working.

Even competing services, like Twitter and Facebook offer integration with each other.

What this all means, is that we are turning the Web into a single service.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing you will have to decide yourself.

I have just done what I was thought to be impossible with a router as bad as mine, but now I have proved that wrong.

Let me explain: I’m having problems with my DSL connection and I have a spare cable connection at home, which I wanted to route to more than just the computers on my wireless network. I needed a router with LAN and WAN ports.

My DSL router was just sitting there and as I googled for an answer, I found out it definitely was impossible.

But today I made what was said to be impossible, possible. I made my DSL router with NO WAN PORTS act as an average WAN router (without a DSL port). I made LAN port 4 act as a WAN port, and have a DHCP server + client (+NAT) running on it.

And I was just messing around with a telnet connection to the router. I have configured the router from CLI before, but never have I done it without a tutorial, nor have I done anything that extreme.

So, my question to you is this:
Have you ever made something happen while experts have said it could never be done?
If you have, what was it? Did you do it “because you can” or did you do it out of necessity?

Have you ever wanted to listen to your favourite songs for free AND do it completely legally? Without paying a cent?

Well, there’s a solution for that – it’s called Spotify.

Spotify is a completely legal music streaming service, which currently only works for in the UK, Sweden, France, Spain and Finland and there’s a paid option available in most EU countries.

The only drawback is that you can not download music. It gives you an option to buy the song elsewhere and download it, but it does not allow you to download from their service.

It’s not (yet) available in the US. But don’t be mad because Hulu doesn’t work here either.

It’s simple, fast and free! It does have some ads from time to time, but they don’t last over 30 seconds.

This is what it looks like in action:

The only thing I don’t like about it is that I can not stream music to my AirPort Express from this app.

Well, not really insider secrets, but just a few easy solutions for a couple of problems.

Everyone who isn’t from the United States or is from there and has travelled abroad with a laptop, knows that Hulu and similar services don’t work outside the US.

Everyone not from the UK or anyone from the UK who has travelled abroad with a laptop, knows that iPlayer and Demand Five don’t work outside the UK.

Everyone not from the US has gotten a copyright message on youtube that this video is not available in your country.

But there’s two solutions to that. Both of them may cost, but they also may not. Both are also legal unless you use them for illegal purposes. And I don’t find watching hulu outside the US illegal.

Solution number 1:

HTTP/HTTPS proxy. Use a UK / US proxy. Or use both, for different needs.
Please note that Web proxies (like hidemyass.com) either don’t work for online video or HTTPS content, which is needed for some services, so use proxy servers.

I, myself use xroxy.com’s premium proxy service for my UK proxy needs. It’s fast enough for BBC iPlayer and it works brilliant. It’s £7/month (or $11/month). It’s absolutely brilliant. It also offers a 3-day trial, so you can try the service out before you actually make the purchase. Paypal account needed for the 3-day trial.

Please note that using this for iPlayer is illegal UNLESS you are a UK citizen abroad and have paid the license fee.

Solution number 2:
VPN service. Use a UK / US VPN service. I have not tried that, but it should be hard to find and even harder to set up. So I’d recommend going with solution number 1.

Please note that hotspot shield, which is a free VPN service, doesn’t work for hulu.

A tutorial on how to enable a proxy server on a Mac:

http://geeks.pirillo.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-enable-a-proxy-on-a-mac

DVDs: They’re bullsh*t.

1. They are so damn expensive. Where I live, they start at $10. That’s the same price as the most expensive ticket in the most expensive cinema. Of course, there are always local stores that also sell crap DVDs for $3 with movies not worth even $0.01 (actors you’ve never heard of, production companies who have not made a single decent film, jokes so cheesy, you think you are in a cheese factory, acting so bad you could do it better yourself with no acting lessons and video quality so horrible, a youtube video from 2006 would look better).

2. They have the anti-piracy ads on them and they are so long and you can’t skip them! What the ****?
That’s what you get for BUYING the movie. I BOUGHT THE DAMN THING AND IT STILL SHOWS ME THE ****ING “DON’T STEAL MOVIES” BULL****! What? A person, who BUYS the film, BUYS it, should not see such a thing. They obviously BUY their films, not download them.

3. They have regular ads on them! I have to sit through a cheap, useless ad about a product I don’t give a flying **** about. And if you try to skip them, they start all over again.
I paid for the damn thing. I PAID for it. Why do I have to sit through a useless bunch of ****, if I paid for the damn thing.

4. Oh, and then there’s the logos in the beginning. You can’t skip them. If you skip them, it’s the same thing as with the Ads. What a bunch of ****. I don’t care who made the film, I just care if the film is good and in decent quality audio and video.

5. Region coding. What the ****? If I bought the DVD when I was on a trip, BOUGHT it there, then why the HELL can’t I watch it home? Because some corporate b****a** says I can’t? **** you. I paid for the damn thing. Why do they have to be such a bunch of ****heads.

6. Translations. I don’t need them, but the translations are always off. The jokes always seem to go missing somehow and I’ve seen things that make sense in English and make a good joke, being literally translated into my language, where people haven’t got the faintest idea of what’s going on.

7. Subtitles. Even though I don’t need them, they are sometimes hardcoded. Oh, they are a real pain in the *** when you have an HDTV. Those damn subtitles are always, ALWAYS somewhere when watched with a widescreen (HD) TV, you either see nothing, the first row, a half of the first row OR a half of the second row, because they are on the wrong part of the video.
Can’t they just put it ON the video OR fully on the black letterbox bar below the video?
This is also a pain in the *** when I am watching local TV channels, which, apart from one and all the HD channels, are narrow-screen (non-widescreen).

8. The fullscreen/widescreen versions of the movie. This really pisses me off. Can anyone name ONE reason the fullscreen one exists? I sure can’t. Unless you are looking for the widescreen one in the store, you will automatically pick the wrong one.
This really pisses me off as I use a widescreen TV, so the fullscreen ones are unbearable to watch. And if you crop it or change the aspect ratio, it will either be zoomed in so much you can’t tell or people will look like ****ing hippos.

9. You can’t import it into your digital movie library. Come on, if it’s doable with CDs, why can’t we do it with DVDs? Because some people rip the DVDs and post them on the internet or make pirated physical copies of them?
Those guys will always find a way, there’s just no point in punishing us, the consumers!
I want to watch it digitally. I don’t want to take a box out of my shelf, take a disc out of it, put the disc in a tray, wait for the damn thing to load, wait some more for the ads and logos, select play from the menu screen, watch a few more logos… That’s horrible! I want to press a few buttons on my remote and play the damn thing from my huge external HDD!

10. The quality sucks. I mean, seriously. The video quality ****ing sucks. I have tens of DVDs, but JUST ONE has a quality that is at least watchable on my TV. And that movie kind of sucks. Youtube HQ (NOT EVEN HD) quality is BETTER than most DVDs have!

And most of it is true also for blu-ray discs, too.

Why am I being punished for BUYING the movie? I did not pirate it, I did not steal it. I paid money for it.