August 2007 Archives

One of the side benefits to my new Macbook Pro is that it came with the updated iLife 08. I love iPhoto. Its everything I need in a photo organizing and small editing application. Plus with each update the program gets beefed up and handles more and more photos (and video clips) wonderfully. Something I need now that I have almost 15,000 pictures stored up. But sadly this update broke my current online photo album. More exactly the plugin I use with iPhoto, Photon, to upload pictures to my photo album. It was working so well.... sigh... and I finally got it all up to date as well!

(In case you want to skip everything below, heres the point I'm getting at)

But lucky for me, iPhoto 08 has something new called Web Gallery that works with my underused (and overpriced) .Mac account. Its a jaw dropping web gallery tool that works right out of iPhoto. Easy to add, delete, update, and manage. Heck, you can even email photos from another computer or iPhone and have them appear in the gallery. All without a single line of html from me. You can even post movies through the new (and really lame) iMovie 08. To publish a photo album just click on the Web Gallery button. Then it'll appear under the Web Gallery list on the left.

The interface of the album take a while to load, and you'll need a decent connection to actually enjoy using it. The look and feel of the interface takes heavily from iPhoto, and feels more like you're using a program then a webpage. One of the most impressive things is the quick view roll over. When you slide your curser across an album you get a preview of every single photo in that album. This is what sucks up so much bandwith as your computer loads up hundreds of photos for these roll overs. When you view an album you can look at it in several modes, and even scale the picture sizes just like in iPhoto. The three views are: Grid, Mosaic, Carousel, and Slideshow. My person favorite, and eye popper, is Carousel. (Shown below) Its a sure fire way to impress your friends.

The only thing this gallery is missing is comment support, which would require apple to actually give its .Mac users MySQL support or some other database to use. But I guess its wishful thinking at this point.

So while I was first really annoyed at the fact that the photo album I had spent so many hours working on was now bust thanks to iPhoto 08, I'm actually pleased to be using Web Galley. Just take a look at the fun photos I've put online. Web Gallery, so easy, even my parents could use it. (Thats saying a Apple)

After three and a half years, I say goodbye to my little 12in powerbook G4 and hello to my brand new Macbook Pro 2.4 Core2 Duo. Oh the sweet sweet love of a new computer. The kind of love that can only be qualified by me opening iTunes, iPhoto, and Safari at the same time. Or having your photos load up in seconds, as opposed to a minute. Or being able to run Windows and play some Half-life 2. Sweet sweet dual boot love. In picture form below.

As before I'm using the free LCD that James gave me when he returned to England. Some new additions would be the Targus X-Stand below my computer, to keep those two cores nice and cool. The Gelaskins sticker on the back (a topic of conversation at work), to make it look even cooler (I almost put racing stripes on it). The iSkin keyboard cover to keep my toast crums off. You can also see my new Nokia N73 phone next to it, not really doing anything. Just looking nice.\

Its been kind of nice having two computers around this past week, as the newbies don't have internet yet and like to leech off my connection. Though I really do need to sell my 12in on eBay soon. I'm a bit poor after buying all this stuff!

I've been putting off buying a new bike for probably the last 6 months. The bike I'd been using had rusted so badly that it was the subject of many jokes. The sounds that bike made were just god awful. The bike clearly had to go. But what to do with a dead bike? Most large garbage in Japan has to be taken away by a special squad of ex-ninjas to be wisked away to some hidden landfill, or Korea, when it is secretly turned into tofu and natto. But this costs money, and I'm what many people would call "lazy." So I decided to do what most Japanese people do, dump it somewhere. The most obvious place to dump a dead bike is the river. I know this because you can usually see at least one bike every time you look at Japanese rivers. How bikes get there is probably akin to how elephants get to elephant burial grounds. But I'm not that bad of a person, and the boy scout in me would be eternally sad. So I took the bike to the little train station by my apartment and left it there with the key in lock. I had hopped that some kid would take it away, or that eventually the bike would be cleared away during the once a year Bike Clearing that happens at all train stations. But I was not so lucky.

What ended up happening was that on Sunday night, the day after I ditched my bike, I received a call from the cops. Seems they had found my bike and wanted me to come pick it up. I agreed after about 10 minutes of police badgering, and em trying to not understand. So I walk to the police box in my neighborhood. Except its the wrong police box. Seems my bike made it across the river to an unknown police box. As soon as I got home the cops called again. Except this time the guy was a bit angry at me and the longer he talked the angrier he got. This resulted in him talking faster, so which I understood even less of what he was saying, so he compensated with saying it louder. We eventually agreed to me picking it up the next day.

So the next day I walk over to my Japanese teacher's apartment and ask for her help. We go to the police box, which was empty, and she calls the cops. Who tell us to come back later. So we go to her place and study some Japanese, and the cops call again. This time they say they're going to bring the bike to us, much to our surprise. So 20 minutes later the cops show up, with the bike, which now has a flat tire in addition to being a hunk of rust. The cops tell me I should oil the chain. I couldn't tell if that was a joke or not. So after my lesson I walk the bike back to the train station, only this time I take the key out of the lock. Hopefully it'll go away on its own eventually. So is the life of a bike in Japan.

Moral of the story: Take the ID sticker off your bike when ditching it. Otherwise the cops know who to call.

After my two vacations this summer and a new computer, I'm a little low on cash. But that doesn't stop me from buying things I need to get through my days. Like my new bike and a new phone. So here are a few photos of where my money all goes.

First of my Nokia N73 (AKA Softbank 705 NK). My old Nokia phone was looking good, but its reception wasn't very good and its batter lasted about 8 hours. Annoying when you're usually away from home for more then 8 hours at a time. I like the N73 (its no iPhone!) for a number of reasons. A very nice screen. Slick interface. A very very nice camera that slides out in the back. Infrared (which my old phone lacked). Plus a battery that doesn't suck. I only had to pay 20,000¥ thanks to me having used Softbank for two years. To think that they actually wanted 70,000¥ for it new (more then an new iPhone). At least I got it set up to Sync and control my Mac over bluetooth. (Note the OS X theme installed on it) I would call it the best phone Softbank has right now, if not for the fact that I had to spend 5 hours trying to get around the various things they did to cripple the phone.

After ditching my old bike, which is a story in itself, I bought myself the largest bike I could find. Believe me, the looks I got when ordering this bike and then when I raised the set up all the way. I now scare small children when I ride by. But boy does it feel good to have a bike thats made for someone over 6 foot tall. Definitely worth the 40,000¥ I paid for it (a friend was more than happy to inform me that my bike cost half of what her car cost her). Twenty-one gears, one bell, one light, and no rust. The things I enjoy in bikes.

I can't wait to take this bike on the Seto Inland Sea Bike Trail. It should treat me well over the 50 miles of islands and bridges.

Diving in Fiji is simple amazing. Towers of coral, multitudes of fish, and many many sharks. I did 8 dives around Nananu-i-Ra off the north of the main island. For a nice overhead google maps view of the reef at low tide, click here. I dived with Ra Divers, and my 8 dives with equipment and guide cost me 600 Fijian Dollars. I would most certainly dive with them again if I went back to Nananu.

The nice part about diving Nananu is that there are a massive number of dive sites within a 10 minute boat ride from the island. Each day I did two dives in the morning, and was back on the beach by 1 pm. While I was there the area was amazing void of people. Each day our boat was the only boat on the water. Sadly the weather was rather windy while I was there and thus the water visibility wasn't as nice as it usually is.

I took a very large number of pictures with my trusty Canon IXUS 800IS camera, and figured the best way to explain the diving was through an orgy of pictures and video.

The area had a massive number of small caves and arches to swim through. I got rather dinged up thanks to a few sharp rocks in one cave. Every day we were out we saw sharks. And not just a few, a lot of them. In case you were wondering, White Tipped Reef Sharks.

Our dive master Bob was very very nice and knew every inch of the reef. The other divers in my party were all Kiwis, Brits, and Auzies. The coral really towered over us.

The hard and soft coral in Fiji were beyond words.

The towers of coral usually started 4 or 5 meters underwater and went down as far as 30 meters. It made for some nice views, and interesting safety stops on the way up.

Two different days we saw black and white sea snakes. In the video at the bottom of the page, one swims right around our dive master.

I took a lot of fun cave and ledge shots.

I needed at least one photo of me in this entry.

I'm still working on my Fish Photo abilities. They're tough ones to get a snap shot of. I kept seeing some fun filled puffers on several dives.

A couple of the days we ran into some massive eels. I think this one was nearly 2 meters long. The day we saw the reef sharks the visibility was really poor for photos, but at any one time we had 3 or 4 sharks in view.

If the pictures are not enough, the video below will give you an idea of the conditions and wildlife we ran into on our dives. Probably more so then any of the photos could.

So there you have it. The fun of diving around Nananu. I'd go back in a heart beat. I can't explain how wonderful it is.

So I now have finally gotten around to writing up and posting pictures about my trip to Fiji. I'm spent half my time diving, so I decided to write all that up as a separate blog post.

The reason I went to Fiji was because several German people I met in the Philippines told me it was great for diving and a wonderful place to visit. Envision this with a heavy German accent: "Ave you beeen to Fiji? You must go! Ze coral is vunderbar! Hail Fiji!" So I decided to spend a few days there. The problem is that Fiji is quite far away away from Japan, even more so when you're really cheap about plane tickets. Natalie and my trip went something like this: Fukuyama to Osaka. Osaka to Kansai Airport. Kansai Airport to Korea. Korea to Nadi, Fiji. Nadi to the little island where we stayed at. That entire trip took almost exactly 24 hours. Ten of it on the plane from Korea to Fiji. Which sadly passed back over Japan during the flight. At least I was able to eat some Burger King at the airport in Korea.

But even better, when we got to Fiji the country was in the middle a massive rain storm. Nothing like ridding in a small boat for 10 minutes, wearing rain jackets, in a massive storm after traveling for 24 hours. But luckily when the rain stopped the our Island was very pretty and warm.

We spent our 6 days on Nananu-i-Ra Island, which is just off the main island of Fiji. About two hours by car from Nadi. According to the Fijian peoples, Nananu is where spirits leave this world. I didn't find any spirits, just a lot of crabs. The island is super small, as you can see here on google maps. All power is run off generators, and all water is very cold collected rain water. But our room was quite nice and there were plenty of sandy beaches. While on the island we stayed at Bethams Beach Cottages. Nice place and a nice rooms. No complaints. (Except we saw the biggest beetle I had ever seen. The sucker was as long as my hand!)

The island has a nice ridge to walk along and a very good view of the mainland. All the green grass and green mountains were a nice change from the concrete jungle that is Japan. There was even some decent snorkeling off the dock near our cottage. I preferred the diving much more... Though it was winter in Fiji the weather was very very nice. Hot, but not too hot. No humidity. Lots of sun. Warm water. And very few other people around. Sigh.... I wish I was still there.

So after beaching and diving for a week we headed back the same way we came. Nearly 24 hours of travel back to Japan. At least the food on Korean air is nice. And they give you real knives. I really gotta go back to Fiji sometime. It really is an island paradise.

Last week I replaced my Nokia 6630 (Vodafone 702NK) with a brand new Nokia N73 (Softbank 705NK). As with my old phone I soon found myself knee deep in problems thanks to Softbank crippling most of the useful features on the phone. So after a week of googling and reading Japanese I now give you a simple guide to using your Nokia N73 (Softbank 705NK) with a Macintosh running OS X. (If you're using a PC, follow this link for Windows programs and install guides.)

DISCLAIMER: I don't know anything about phones, unlocking phones, programing phones, or anything besides whats listed below. Don't ask me for random help beyond whats printed below.

If you live in Japan and have a Nokia phone from Softbank you've probably pulled some hairs out trying to get its basic features to work. Softbank (which was once Vodafone) feels the urge to cripple its Nokia phones so that you can't install programs, themes, or even custom ring tones. Luckily there are work arounds to all these problems by using some free programs and doing some work on your Macintosh.So follow below and good luck. (If you have a Nokia 6630/ Vodafone 702NK go here. If you have a Nokia 6680/ Vodafone NKII go here.)

The things I'll be covering are: Syncing with your Mac. Playing Music. Accessing Photos. Custom Ring Tones. Installing Themes. Installing Salling Clicker.

Syncing With your Mac
What you need: A Mac with Bluetooth.

This is by far the easiest thing to do as its a feature that actually works. If you have a newish Macintosh your computer will have Bluetooth installed on it. To access it go to your System Preferences and open up Bluetooth. Click on Setup New Device and follow the directions. Make sure you've turned on Bluetooth on your phone. Once you've followed the directions just use iSync to move Address Book contacts and iCal info off your computer to your phone. Simple.

Playing Music
What you need: Nokia Multimedia Transfer, iTunes

The N73 should be able to play mp3s, but thanks to Softbank the 705NK version doesn't. It'll only play files that are converted to .aac extensions. You can use iTunes to import a CD to your computer in .aac format (many of you may have already imported your files in .aac format), by going into iTunes-> Preferences ->Advanced-> Importing. Once you've done that you can open up the Nokia Multimedia Transfer program and either transfer the tracks to your phone by USB or by Bluetooth. If you ALREADY have music in mp3 format just go versiontracker.com and find a program to convert your audio (most audio software is shareware, so it has a limited time of use.) Its probably much easier to use iTunes, and I wouldn't really recommend using this phone for playing your music collection. Plus you can't use .aac for custom ring tones anyways.

Accessing Photos
What your need: Nokia Multimedia Transfer

This is quite simple. Just use the Multimedia Transfer program to copy photos to and from your phone. Just drag and drop. Use Bluetooth or USB. Photos appear in thumbnail form for easy viewing (photo above).

Custom Ring Tones
What you need: Nokia Multimedia Transfer, Switch Free

Since we can't use mp3s for custom rings tones we have to convert our files to a different format. In this case .au. The most easy way to do this is to just download Switch Free and convert an mp3 into a .au file. Then use the Multimedia Transfer program to copy the file over to your phone. Simple. As the .au file might be quite large after exporting, you may want to edit the mp3 file down to just the portion you want. Use Quicktime Pro or MP3 Trimmer, and then convert the file and move it over.

Installing Themes
What you'll need: MiniSD Card Reader, UnsisxPy

As the 705NK won't install themes automatically, we'll have to do it manually. First, download a theme from a webpage onto your computer (This OS X Theme is rather fun). Now download UnsisxPy. Drag the theme (.sis file) into the UnsisxPy script. The script will break apart the theme and make a new folder in the same directory as your theme file. The folder name will be the same as the name of the theme file (.sis file) you downloaded. Now take the MiniSD card out of your phone, put it in your card reader, and plug the reader into your Mac. Open up the folder UnsisxPl made, and copy the Private folder onto your SD card, just in the root directory. Your theme should now be available for you on your phone.

NOTE: You MUST use a card reader. The Multimedia Browser won't work for this.

Now for example, if you used the OS X theme I linked to above you would have downloaded a file called Beta11.sis. Then you would have dragged that file into the UnsisxPy script, and a folder called Beta11 would have been created. Inside the Beta11 folder would have been a folder named Private. You would then have just copied the Private folder to your MiniSD card. Lastly you would have gone into your phone and selected the theme in the Theme program.

Salling Clicker
What you'll need: Nokia Multimedia Transfer, Salling Clicker ($23.95)

Salling Clicker is a program that lets you remote control your Mac via your cell phone over Bluetooth. This means iTunes, iPhoto, Keynote, Powerpoint, Volume, Mouse, ect. Very handy for only $23.95. But once again it won't install without some work on our part. First buy the program, install, and set it up. By default the program will send an install file to your phone. This won't work for us. The Salling Forums have a workaround that USUALLY works. On your phone go to wap.salling.com and try installing the JAVA version. This didn't work for me, so heres my way.

First manually download the JAVA install onto your computer from here (http://www.salling.com/wap/unsigned/SallingClicker.jar). Now use the Multimedia Transfer to move the .jar file to your phone. Inside your phone go to the Application Manager and install the file. It should appear in the Amusement folder of your phone.

(Ok, after I first installed Salling Clicker I couldn't find it ANYWHERE in my phone GUI. Maybe I missed it, but I do know it appeared when I added as an option in the SQUARE button. You know, top right big button with the hot apps? Anyways, if that happens to you, try adding it as an option there and it'll show up.)

NOTE: I can connect to my computer FROM my phone Salling Clicker client. I am UNABLE to use my computer to connect to the phone client. This doesn't hinder the functionality of the program, it just means you'll get an error if you hit the Connect button within Salling Clicker on your Mac.

End Notes and Thanks
So there you have it, how to do a bunch of things. Thanks to this Japanese Softbank 705NK Wiki page (all in Japanese) for the help. If you have a PC and for some reason read this far the wiki site has PC directions for you. A special thanks goes out to Softbank for being idiots and crippling their phones. If you have questions, post a comment. If I don't answer your question its because you either didn't read my directions in the first place and the answer is damned obvious, or you're asking me how to do something not listed above which I then don't actually know about.