Snapseed

Fourth months after Apple’s 2012 12 days of Christmas, I am starting to see the joys of one of their offerings. On the 7th day, iOS photo editing application, Snapseed, was free to download. At the time of download, it seemed like a fairly decent app, however, I didn’t really see the point in it as I did all my photo editing on my iMac or MacBook. The bigger screen, I find, is much more advantageous in those sort of situations compared to the smaller screen of an iOS device.

Lately, however, I have been finding that I am using Snapseed more and more often. And at times, in conjunction with other photo applications such as Instagram. Snapseed does offer a good selection of editing capabilities which can actually transform even the most average photograph into something that is worth sharing. I find that it is good for applying affects that I would normally shun on my computer in a non destructive environment. Yes they probably aren’t to everyones taste but it opens your eyes to different takes on photos.

I am aware that it does add to the argument that people have that computers narrow the gaps between professionals and amateurs, but that shouldn’t really make skills take a back seat. Anyways, here is an example from earlier of a photo edited in Snapseed.

#185 Cleaning the Big Cats and Preparing for a Lion

Two weeks ago Mac OS 10.7 (codenamed Lion) was launched. I was away at the time and could only keep up with what people thought of it using my phone. Ever since the preview of Lion a good few months ago, I have been skeptical over the direction that they (Apple) are taking with the operating system over previous generations. Everything seemed too much like iOS rather than polishing up Snow Leopard. I didn’t, and still don’t like the look of Lion. Whatever works on a truly mobile device such as a phone is very unlikely to work on a desktop computer/laptop and visa versa, even if iOS was described, when launched, to be a mobile version of OS X.

However, despite my scepticism over these changes for the worst, I am willing to give it a shot, so over the past couple of days, I have taken my MacBook and have done a fresh install of everything that was on it. Starting with a fresh install of Leopard, followed by the upgrade to Snow Leopard, iWork, Aperture, Photoshop etc, my once main machine has turned guinea pig for the upgrade. The starting afresh for some reason didn’t run as smoothly as other times I have done a complete reinstall of everything with the Snow Leopard upgrade actually crashing multiple times. I figured it may have had something to do with my deselecting multiple languages and printer drivers when I installed Leopard, so once they were unchecked in the Snowy version, it managed it fine and in only 20 minutes. Additionally, despite not booting up in Tigers sprightly 24 seconds, it does seem to start a lot quicker than I remembered it doing on Snow Leopard, though I haven’t run my MacBook with 10.6 for a good while.

I will hopefully be upgrading it to Lion in this coming week as soon as some upgraded RAM arrives, pushing it up to the mighty 2GB, doubling it from 1GB. It is still half what my iMac is, but bear in mind, my MacBook is 4 years old now, though that does mean that all the multitouch gestures will be pointless… AH WELL! I have an iPad for those.

After I have upgraded and thoroughly tested Lion I will be able to determine whether or not I will upgrade my iMac and possibly even my parents iMac if they want this upgrade or not. At the time being, I still consider Snow Leopard to be my favourite having spent using it about the most out of it, Leopard and Tiger.

#154 iPhone Tracker

I know I am a little late to the party with this, but when this first came into the public eye, my MacBook was unable to run this application.

What I am talking about is the iPhone Tracking (dare I say it, scandal?) where some researchers had been rummaging around in the iPhone backups located on the computer it is synced with and found a file which has locations from where the phone had been used. They had then created an application which visualised on a map where the user had been.

I tried to run this application on my MacBook 3 weeks ago, just when it emerged, but it was unable to run. I do not know why this is, and I am just going to guess that it was that it was on Leopard and it needed Snow Leopard to run. Now, 3 weeks later, and back home and reunited with my iMac, which is running Snow Leopard, I have been able to run this application. This is what the results were:

It clearly shows the main areas where I have used my phone. The centre of Scotland is where it has been used most and is where the points are most accurate. Towards to top left of the map, things start to go a little bit wrong. This is where, from what I gather from the people who created this application, the locations are out because of something to do with the phone mast (I might be wrong with this though), I haven’t been to where all the little dots are but I have been to some of them. The cluster of blobs around Inverness seem to be about right though, and there is a small cluster about Oban which again is true.

It isn’t the most interesting of applications but it appeals majorly to the geeky side of me.

#148 Little Planets

I like little planets I do.

By taking a regular panorama and turning it into a polar panorama, you get something that looks like a little planet. Having completely forgotten all about them, recently whilst stopping off in South Queensferry and not having my normal camera to play with, I recruited the use of my iPhone and some photography apps. One of which was 360 an app which automatically creates and stitches together a panorama. One of the options once it has been created is to make a polar one and here you go.

The output straight from the application was this:

But with a little quick tweaking in Photoshop, I got this:

And in case you were wondering, my last foray into little planets was a few years ago and here it is (made using a panorama on Uist):

#142 iPad to PS3

The other day I was thinking, as you do, and it came across me, why can’t you use an idevice such as an iPhone or iPad to control basic functions of a PS3? A bit of a random thought I know, but using one as a remote would give more functionality than a standard controller.

The way I see it would work (and I have googled to see if it has already been done and as far as I’m aware, it hasn’t), is that it would be in app form. It would be loaded up and connect via either bluetooth or wifi to the PlayStation. Almost acting as a secondary display, an XMB (cross media bar) would be displayed on the iPad screen, all the usual gestures would be usable and the functions could be used. It wouldn’t be able to be used to play games with, but it would make sense if it could be used to view images, play music or play video with good playback functionality.

Using the standard PS3 controller for media functions on a PS3 can get a bit confusing, and not many users would be willing to fork out for a specific media remote for it. The number of users who have iDevices is pretty much at 100 million at the moment, and the app would be available to all, and in my opinion, something which could be quite popular.

Here is something I quickly knocked up to show what I mean, even if it just looks as though it is a secondary screen…