Well MAX is over. It was a good four days to Adobe tech, products, and surprises. The best and biggest news by far was Flash CS5 compliing to the iPhone. There still is no Flash player but having the ability to create games in Flash CS5 and deploy on the iPhone is a big enough bone for me.
I saw several apps running on iPhone in demos this week. It is opening up a lot more game developers to create their masterpieces in Flash CS5 and Actionscript 3. I am sure it is going to open up the flood gates on bad games but I am sure there will be some stellar ones as well.
I for one am pretty excited! Chroma Circuit, Trading Stuff, Fickleblox, Just Letters, South Park, The Roach Game, and Red Hood are all available in the App Store right now. So go out and pick one of these up and give it a test.
The question now is could the browser plugin be far behind? From what I have hear the API is just not there yet. But I really don’t think Apple is in a hurry either.
I have been looking for a few new iPhone photography apps to add to my collection for a trip out to CA soon. I came across Photo Sketch and immediately love the effects I was able to add to my photos.
The app is really easy. Just select your photo and tap on a few settings. See the following screen shot. It is the only settings you need to worry about. Very straight forward.
Here are a series of example photo. You will find both the original and the result. Each have different setting from the Photo Sketch.
Overall this is a great app. I really like the ability to select the photo size. I use the lower setting to test the options out. Then bump that up to full resolution for the final result. The app has performed well for me and has never crashed. Well worth the $1.99 price tag. There is a lite version as well if you want to try before you buy.
This one was my favorite of photos that I tested for this post.
The Flip UltraHD doesn’t have built in stabilization which is disappointing. So my only option is using the stabilization feature in iMovie 09. I have never used it before so I thought I would create a quick test to see if it really worked. I had my doubts.
Before you can use the image stabilization iMovie needs to process the video. This is easy to do but take time to complete. On my Mack Book Pro it took about one minute for every fifteen seconds of video. In iMovie you can access the stabilization feature by right clicking on your video clip in the project window and selecting Analize for Stabilization. Here is a screen shot showing the option.
After your video is done with the analizing part you need bring up the clip options and check the stabilization box and set the amount. See the screen shot below.
The test clip I am using is from my backyard that I shot just for this test. The video below show the clip with no stabilization, then cuts to stabilized, then show both clips together using iMovie 09’s picture in picture feature. Have a look.
So the question is did it make an difference? After giving it a few rounds of comparison it does make a pretty big difference. If you missed it watch the last picture in picture part again and pay attention to the roof top and the fence. The stabilized clip on the right has little or no shake like the unstabilized version. I was impressed.
iMovie 09’s stabilization feature should help compensate where the Flip UltraHD falls short.
Snow Leopard is only $29.99 but for me it cost about 230 bones. Not a good today Saturday. For starters Arsenal lost on a fluke own goal. Don’t get me start on it. I felt sick after the match.
But back to Snow Leopard. I picked up the copy I pre-ordered from FedEx on Saturday. After I got home I watched the Arsenal match and started my upgrade on my Mac Book Pro. Two voices sang out in my head. The first was, “Go back up everything before you start.” The second one said, “What can go wrong? Just upgrade and take a nap until it is done.”
I should have backed up. I woke after a nap to find the following screen.
No need to read the details since the title says it all. I am pretty sure it failed due to not having enough HD space. So I backed out but found that I couldn’t boot back to my hard drive. I couldn’t eject the disc either. I could only retry the install. So I did just that. But it failed again. This time I jumped out to the start up disc and I tried to boot to my hard drive. No luck. I was fucked. Damn you Arsenal.
No way to boot to my hard drive or eject the Snow Leopard disc I did not know what to do. So I decided to go buy a new hard drive and a SATA external case. I would put in the new hard drive, install a fresh copy of Snow Leopard on it, put the old drive in an external SATA enclosure and pull all my graphics, movies, and files off it to the new system.
But the question was did I just lose everything on my HD and not have a back up? I did have a back up from June 1st but all my vacation videos could be lost.
For the second time Saturday I felt sick to my stomach thinking about it. Damn you Arsenal. Damn you Snow Leopard! Why didn’t I just do a quick back up? Why did Diaby score an own goal?
The cost of a new 500GB HD and external SATA case was going to hit me up for about $200. All I could think about was Terra is not going to be happy with me. But I have been needing a new HD in the laptop for a while. With only 160GB and processing all this HD video I was strapped for space. So I did not feel too bad about dropping a few Benjamins even if Terra was not going to sympathies with me. It is well past due I kept telling myself. I was still rocking the stock hard drive for God sake!
Before I could go get a new hard drive and external case I needed a quick Google search on how to replace the hard drive in a 15” Mac Book Pro. I needed a Torx T-6 and a very small Phillips screw driver. I headed to the hardware store. I picked up a small set of screwdrivers for $5 and a set of Torx drivers for another $8. I got back and started to tear down my Mac Book Pro. I took out about 14 of the 19 screws but needed a smaller Phillips. I had a #0 but needed a #000. Crap, back to the hardware store. I had pay other $13 for what I needed to get the last 3 screws out. Did I mention this was giving me an ulcer? As I tore my computer apart I started to realize how much of my life depends on this laptop. It is ridiculous! I felt sick.
After getting all the screws out I went and picked up a new 500GB drive spinning at 7200 and a Rocketfish SATA external enclosure. Back at the homestead I got Snow Leopard installed on the new drive and was happy that my old HD was not totally deleted. My photos, movies and other stuff was still there. I felt a little better but my wallet was a lot lighter.
So now I have Snow Leopard installed and a new 500GB 2.5 7200 drive. I have to say it is like a new machine. So much faster that before. I have fed my ulcer with a few many beers while moving files around between drives. All is good but I am not going to get much sleep tonight with so much to get off the old drive. Now it is just me, a moth that keeps buzzing around the lamp, my cold beer, and my Mac Book Pro. Oh, and Conor Oberst keeping me company on iTunes.
And with that I leave you with a video. Not one of mine but from Mr. Oberst’s new documentary. I have not seen it yet but hope to pick it up soon.
I for one am pretty excited! Chroma Circuit, Trading Stuff, Fickleblox, Just Letters, South Park, The Roach Game, and Red Hood are all available in the App Store right now. So go out and pick one of these up and give it a test.
