Author: rolfje

Mine are real.

Posted on By rolfje 3 Comments on Mine are real.

As Seth Godin pointed out, “Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.”

Just to let you know, all my mail is hand typed, including the “Kind Regards” and my name at the end. You may find it silly, but I think it shows that you care. I always think about my greetings, and I even try to vary them every now and then. Having a default greeting underneath every mail, wether the content of that mail requires it or not is just plain silly.

Almost just as silly as the disclaimers people put in the mail, thinking that it has any legal value, or even thinking somebody actually reads those.

Next time you receive a mail from me, keep in mind that my greetings are actual, meaningful, honest greetings, personally written from me to you. You may have noticed that I am never “yours”, because then I would be “truly” lying.

And yes, it als gives me an opportunity to leave them out, or tone them down. You’re allowed to check your mail now. Go and feel special.

Fun

Macbook Pro Screen update issues

Posted on By rolfje No Comments on Macbook Pro Screen update issues

My wife has this great Macbook Pro 15″, and I “don’t mind” using it every now and then. I noticed that when running on batteries, screen updates are a bit strange:

  • When scrolling down a webpage, the page get garbled. Scrolling the garbled piece out of the window and in again sometimes fixes it.
  • When resizing a Finder window, the icons in the window flicker a lot, you can see them being cleared and redrawn.

I noticed more people having these problems on several forums, and I also read that resetting the PRAM could fix it. Well, I just reset the PRAM and it seems to have fixed it, indeed.

I used the method mentioned on Apple’s support page, which tells you to shut the computer down, and boot it up holding the command, option, P and R keys. As soon as you see it shutting down after you’ve started it up, release the keys.

This is all I did, and it seems to have fixed it.

Apple, Hardware, Software

Anything you say…

Posted on By rolfje No Comments on Anything you say…

…can and will be used against you.

I got an email with a great link to a blog post containing 2 links to great presentations on why you should never talk to the police, even if you’re honest, or want to help, or have an alibi, or whatever. Never, ever answer any questions, no matter how trivial. Although this is an American presentation, it definetely applies to a great extend on Dutch and probably a whole lot of other European laws aswel.

Thanks to Pim for sending me this link. I really enjoyed the talk by Professor James Duane, he is a great presenter and a very articulate speaker. I’m jealous of the people in his class, it must be one good teacher.

Uncategorized

Censorship: here to stay

Posted on By rolfje No Comments on Censorship: here to stay

For those of you who think that media and information are free and uncontroled, guess again. Lately I have been seeing more and more incidents of large corporations hiding information, and even telling other people to hide it for them. I think this is plain wrong, and the guys involved should have been fired or punished otherwise.

If you have information which is of interest to the public, and somebody is making you sign a paper with which he can force you to shut up, you should think twice (and then not do it). Not because of the money, not because of the information itself, but for the sheer principle. Information should not be controled in that way. By anyone. It is dangerous.

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Apple, Microsoft

New Helicopter to Master

Posted on By rolfje 2 Comments on New Helicopter to Master

A friend of mine and me ordered 2 Walkera 4#3B electric model helicopters 3 weeks ago. Last frinday, they finally arrived, and this weekend we had some good fun flying them.

If you think flying a PicooZ is hard, don’t even start thinking about one of these. It looks easier on the youtube video’s than it seems. I have some experience with RC models (mainly cars and boats), but flying this helicopter is really hard. I can not get it to hover steadily, I need some serious practice to tame this baby. 🙂

I just took my camera out to shoot make some action shots of the heli’s in the air, when one of them crashed so hard that the tail boom broke. We ordered some spare parts for both ‘copters, they’ll arrive somewhere next week. In the meantime you can check out some of the photographs I made of my Walkera on my desk.

Hardware

Turn your iPhone into a Drive

Posted on By rolfje 1 Comment on Turn your iPhone into a Drive

My Nokia 6300 behaves like a flash or thumb drive when I connect it to a computer using an USB cable. I think this should be standard functionality nowadays. Cellphones are replacing the Filofax and MP3 players. I can read mail on my cellphone, take pictures and movies. It contains an 4GB memory stick, sometimes even more. So why do I need to carry this silly thumbdrive with me?

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Apple, Software

Cowbell++;

Posted on By rolfje 2 Comments on Cowbell++;

I just came across this great post about creating captivating content. The punchline: It’s not about getting the scoop, it’s about finding the cowbell and amplifying it.

More funny cowbell references:

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to “explore the studio space”. No, really. 🙂

Apple, Fun, Software

Apple I Basic Reconstructed

Posted on By rolfje No Comments on Apple I Basic Reconstructed

Feast your eyes on this:

0000000 4c b0 e2 ad 11 d0 10 fb ad 10 d0 60 8a 29 20 f0
0000010 23 a9 a0 85 e4 4c c9 e3 a9 20 c5 24 b0 0c a9 8d
0000020 a0 07 20 c9 e3 a9 a0 88 d0 f8 a0 00 b1 e2 e6 e2
0000030 d0 02 e6 e3 60 20 15 e7 20 76 e5 a5 e2 c5 e6 a5

It is the first 64 bytes of the Apple I Basic, as reconstructed from tape by Michael Steil. You can read all about how he did this on his blog. A nice read for the people out there who can still remember putting tapes with strange sounds on it into the computer.

Apple, Fun, Software