Toluu

Josh Bancroft's TinyScreenfuls.com

Geek. Unabashed Fanboy. Selfish, Obsessive, and Easily Distracted.

Fire Drill During the Apple Event Broadcast – The Solution!Yesterday

As usual, my Apple nerd friends and I gathered around one of the big TVs in the “living room” area at work, so we could watch the Apple event and announcements live. Usually, it’s me flipping through all the liveblogs, seeing what tidbits we can glean as they dribble out. This time, since there was a live video stream for the first time since 2002, we were sitting pretty – we were watching and listening to Steve Jobs live on the TV. It was great.

Until, five minutes into the thing, the building sirens go off, and security comes over the PA and announces that the building is being evacuated. It was just a scheduled drill, but it was SO HARD to drag myself away from the new and exciting announcements we were just starting to hear!

As we filed out of the building, I brought up the stream on my iPhone (which worked beautifully – as a video streaming guy, I appreciate how difficult it is to get this right on such a large scale). We marched to the evacuation area in the parking lot, and by luck, my car was parked nearby. So I had an idea.

We all piled into my car (which also got us out of the rain), stuck my iPhone and the Apple stream into my car dock, and we continued to watch and listen to the event in my car during the fire drill evacuation. It was a nerd drive-in movie! Never underestimate the ingenuity of an unabashed fanboy.

Scenes from Gnomedex 10August 30

Posting some of the photos I took at Gnomedex 10 in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. Gnomedex is my favorite conference, and I look forward to it every August as a “family reunion” of my geek people. This year was bittersweet – it was likely the last Gnomedex ever. I took lots of notes, and intend to write up a few more meaty posts on some of the thoughts I had. But for now, I’m posting these, mainly to push down my lame “Site was hacked” post, which has been sitting here for too long.

All photos were taken with my iPhone 4 – I decided not to lug a “big boy” DSLR with me, and I have to say, the photo quality of the iPhone 4, coupled with the amazing apps I can use to manipulate the photos “in camera” (like Pro HDR, Autostitch, etc.) blew me away. This is now my “pocket carry” camera, and unless I really need a DSLR, probably the only one I’ll carry from now on.

Made this combination panorama and HDR shot on my iPhone 4 with Pro HDR and Autostitch, two of my favorite photo apps. Taken from the front steps of the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle, home to Gno

Site Was Hacked – Let Me Know If You Get RedirectedJuly 22

I was notified this morning by a friendly reader that my site was redirecting people to a malware site. Sure enough, upon investigation, it seems I was hit by this exploit, as written up at mediatemple.

I’m pretty sure I’ve cleaned it all up now – I can’t find any traces of infection. But I’d appreciate it if you could let me know if you see any strange behavior on the site, get redirected somewhere unexpected, etc.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

I hate spammers.

Testing Pro HDR for iPhoneJuly 6

My previous favorite two-exposure HDR photo app, TrueHDR, gave me a bit of frustration in Germany. The output wasn’t saved at full resolution, and the grain/noise was a lot more noticeable on the iPhone 4′s retina display.

So I’m trying out Pro HDR ($1.99). Works the same way (take one bright and one dark exposure, merge them), but claims to save full resolution (3MP or 5MP), and has some nice sliders to adjust saturation, warmth, etc. before you save (the HDR process sometimes does funky things to color).

Just did this test shot on my back porch. So far, so good. The sky and the flower pots are both exposed pretty well. I think I’ve found something that improves upon TrueHDR, and another tool in my iPhone photography arsenal.

Some Meals from Bavaria – What We’ve Been Eating in MunichJune 30

I have a ton more pictures to share from our first couple of days in Munich (all shot on my iPhone 4, which is turning out to be a perfectly wonderful pocket camera). I’ll post more later, but here are some of the meals we’ve had.

Not sure what order these’ll post in, but it’s breakfast at the hotel, “churrasco on a plate” from the Brasilian restaurant Ver o Paso, and wurst mit sauerkraut and apfelstrudel from Hofbrauankeller. Yum!