January 2018 – Technology Stuff

24 January 2018

Snapeeding

One of my favourite iOS apps that I use on a regular basis is Snapseed. There are certain effects and image adjustments that I use to make images brighter or more dramatic.

The user interface, which I initially found challenging, I now find really simple and easy. I like how it takes advantage of the touch interface of iOS. You can swipe left and right to change the intensity of the filters and up and down to change aspects of those filters.

The one filter I use quite a bit is the HDR filter to add drama.

This is the original image

This is the processed image that has been through Snapseed.

I realise that the HDR effect is somewhat subjective, but for me the key question, is do I like it, if so then I will keep it. There are images I work on that don’t work for me and these don’t get saved or uploaded to social media.

So which tools are you using?

22 January 2018

No, it’s still not working as it should!

In a previous blog post I talked about how I had reset my iPad Pro to see if that made a different to the problems I’ve been having with the Smart Keyboard.

Every so often the iPad seems to think that this Apple Smart Keyboard. isn’t a proper accessory and “isn’t supported”.

Well initially I thought resetting had made a difference, but the reality is that I am still having issues.

I think time to visit the Apple Store.

10 January 2018

Better than it was…

In a previous blog post I talked about the issues I was having with my iPad Pro smart keyboard. It got to the point where it rarely would work and I would get a consistent stream of messages saying that “this accessory is not supported”. I knew that if I went to the Apple Store that I would get a “have you reset the iPad” question, so pre-empting that I did a partial reset.

In the reset menu in settings you can reset the iPad completely or you can just reset the settings. I went with the reset of the settings.

This though somewhat a pain, as your iPad forgets your Apple ID, forgets all your wifi settings, amongst many things, it did initially appear to have the result I wanted. The smart keyboard does now work most of the time. I still have the odd “this accessory is not supported” error, but this is usually rectified by disconnecting and reconnecting the iPad to the keyboard.

I am hoping that in the future this stays like this, otherwise it will be a full hard reset of the iPad.

3 January 2018

Tech Stuff: Top Ten Blog Posts of 2017

Over the last twelve months I have published 26 posts, many of these were about my return to fibre. So it is nice to see that the tenth most popular post on the blog this year was from nearly a year ago. We will have fibre in “12 months”! I said back then that according to BT Openreach we would have fibre within twelve months, I was slightly sceptical, but nine months after publishing that post I did get fibre.

The ninth post was about when my iMac Fusion Drive Failed and had to have it replaced.

The post at number eight was another post about my fibre journey, Still checking… was when the cabinet was activated, but alas wasn’t accepting orders.

The seventh post was from 2012 when my HP Photosmart printer died. My printer is dead! was a sorry tale about how replacing the ink cartridges on the HP B110a resulted it in destroying the print head.

The post at six was about Dusting off the Pogo my old Polaroid Bluetooth pocket printer. Still going strong.

The fifth post was how I don’t like BT FON which was originally published in 2011.

The post at number four was wondering Where are my Comic Life Styles? I found them.

The third most popular post was about the free wifi (or lack of) on my holiday, Haven no wifi

The post at number two was Comic Book Fonts which was about the amazing comic book fonts from Comic Book Fonts.

So the most popular post on the blog was my post about QR codes on chocolate bars, Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling was published in 2015 and was one of many posts I published on the use of QR codes back then.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

2 January 2018

Well that’s a surprise!

Back in 2010 or thereabouts when buying movies, I would generally go for the what the trade called triple play movies, these sets contain a copy of the film on Blu-Ray, a copy on DVD and a digital copy for your mobile device.

With most of the films I bought the digital copy was in an iTunes format. This was fine with me as I already used the iTunes ecosystem for music and video. Since December 2011, I noticed that the trend was to use Ultraviolet DRM.

I blogged about the challenges I had with this back in 2013. Eventually I did manage to get the login processes sorted out with Ultraviolet and Flixter. Over the years I have built up a collection of films on Flixter. However compared to the user experience in iTunes it was never a smooth journey.

I had major challenges with my version of Edge of Tomorrow, resulting in being unable to play the downloaded film on my iPad. This was sorted out after numerous e-mails to Flixter support.

Another annoyance for me was that the Flixter app wouldn’t remember where I had got to in a film, if I had not finished watching. I would then need to work out where I was.

I also found it frustrating that I couldn’t play my Flixter films through an HDMI cable (via an adapter) to my TV or use Airplay. I suppose they thought if you wanted to watch on the big screen you would use the Blu-Ray disc.

The end result was that, I generally stopped specifically buying versions with a digital copy so would buy the Blu-Ray only. Also many studios appeared to stop selling the triple play format. I often found it easier to buy films from iTunes direct or more recently using Amazon Video after a good experience with Amazon Prime Video.

For Christmas this year I got War for the Planet of the Apes, which came with a Blu-Ray and a Digital Copy. It reminded me I had Dawn of the Planet of the Apes also on Blu-Ray with a digital copy. Now this had been a Christmas present in 2014 and hadn’t worked on my Blu-Ray player.

I had gone out and bought the DVD version of the film and had stored the Blu-Ray version of the film aiming to sell it at some point. However feeling guilty that the Blu-Ray disc may be “corrupted” I had never actually done this, I didn’t want to sell a dud disc to anyone, so was wanting to check that it wasn’t a dud disc by using someone else’s Blu-Ray player. This I never got round to. This Christmas though, the family present was the XBox One S which can play Blu-Ray discs. Receiving the new Planet of the Apes film reminded me that I had Dawn of the Planet of the Apes so tried it out and it worked. I then decided now I had both discs out to redeem the digital codes.

So I started Flixter on the iPad, followed the instructions, which meant searching for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in the Flixter library and entering the redemption code (a much simpler process than it was back in 2013). I then checked the code for War for the Planet of the Apes. I followed the same instructions I had done for Dawn, but I couldn’t find War for the Planet of the Apes. Okay lets read the instructions… it said to go foxredeem.com and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could download War for the Planet of the Apes in an iTunes format (which I did).

Now I am not sure when 20th Century Fox stopped using Ultraviolet, but though still DRM, the iTunes format has worked much better for me than Ultraviolet.

So what about War for the Planet of the Apes, well I’ve not watched it yet…