Je mehr desto besser?

Der Hype um immer hochauflösendere Fotos und Videos nimmt auch heutzutage noch nicht ab. Kameras verkaufen sich nur, wenn sie möglichst viele Megapixel aufwarten. Genauso verhält es sich mit den Videoaufahmegeräten. HD und Full-HD sind dabei die Zauberwörter.

Je mehr desto besser – das ist aber nur zum Teil richtig, denn eine hohe Auflösung hilft auch nicht weiter, wenn die dahintersteckende Optik minderwertig ist.

Wohin mit den Daten?

Schon lange lohnt es sich gar nicht mehr seine Dateien auf CDs oder DVDs zu brennen, denn da passt einfach viel zu wenig drauf. Durchschnittliche Digitalbilder sind ca. 1,5 MB groß. Auf eine CD passen etwa 700 MB, also ist Platz für knapp 450 Bilder. Eine Standard-DVD fasst ca. 7 mal so viel wie eine CD.

Eigentlich eine ganz tolle Sache, denn da passt der ganze Urlaub schön sortiert auf eine Scheibe.

Warum nicht brennen?

Das Problem mit diesen brennbaren Datenträgern ist allerdings, dass die Datenbeständigkeit unterirdisch ist. Die Hersteller versprechen Haltbarkeiten von vielen Jahren.

Meine Erfahrung – und ja, auch mit Markenrohlingen – zeigen das genaue Gegenteil. Nach etwa 1-5 Jahren war von meinen gesicherten Bits und Bytes nicht mehr viel übrig. Von anderen habe ich ähnliche Schaudergeschichten gehört.

Wohin dann?

Externe Festplatten sind bestens geeignet, um große Datenmengen auch dauerhaft zu sichern. Sie brauchen wenig Stauraum, lassen sich bequem am Computer via USB oder Firewire anstöpseln, sind als Datenträger verfügbar und das Kopieren geht rasend schnell.

Außerdem kann man auf Festplatten nicht mehr benötigte Daten einfach löschen – versuch das mal bei einer DVD.

Eine externe Platte mit einem Terabyte erhält man deutlich unter 100 Euro und darauf passen dann ganz grob überschlagen 700.000 Bilder.

Bildgrößen

Die Größeneinheit für Bilder ist in der digitalen Welt in Pixeln angegeben. Ein Pixel entspricht einem Bildpunkt den, man auf dem Bildschirm sehen kann. Damit wäre das Bild aber nur schwarz-weiß, daher gibt es noch eine Farbtiefe, die dann angibt wieviel Bits ein Pixel enthält um einen farbigen Punkt darzustellen.

Gängige Farbtiefen, sicherlich auch bekannt aus der Bildschirmauflösung des Computerbildschirms sind

• 8 Bit mit 256 Farben
• 16 Bit mit 65536 Farben
• 24 Bit mit 16,7 Millionen Farben
• 32 bit mit gerundet 430 Millionen Farben.

Rechenbeispiele

Bei einer Bildschirmauflösung von 1900 x 1200 Pixeln und einer Farbtiefe von 24 bit haben wir dann 5,4720,000 Bits. Ein Byte umfasst acht Bits, also haben wir dann 6,52 MB nur an Rohdaten für die Grafikkarte!

Rechnen wir das noch einmal für eine Digicam mit 12 Megapixeln, dann haben wir (4048 x 3040 x 24) / 8 = 35 MB Rohdaten pro Bild.

Daraus lernen wir, dass Fotos für den Bildschirm so eine Auflösung gar nicht benötigen, da reichen Bilder mit 5 Megapixeln bei 2595 x 1944 mehr als aus.

Rohformat?

Spiegelreflex-Profikameras allerdings können die Bilder tatsächlich im Rohformat ablegen und dann sind die Dateien dann auch so riesig! Profi-Fotographen wollen und brauchen die bestmögliche Qualität für Ihre Arbeit.

Warum sind meine Bilddateien kleiner?

Digitalfotos mit 35 MB findet man so allerdings bei einer einfachen und herkömmlichen Digicam nicht auf seiner Speicherkarte, weil die Bilder durch spezielle Algorythmen komprimiert sind.

Dabei gibt es zwei wesentliche Methoden der Bilddatenkompression, nämlich mit oder ohne Qualitätsverlust.

Eine Datenkompression funktioniert in der Regel so, dass nach wiederkehrenden Mustern gesucht und diese dann zusammengefasst werden. Somit benötigt man weniger Platz.

Methode 1: Verlustfrei

Gängige verlustfreie Formate sind RAW, BMP, TIFF, PNG, JP2, das heißt, alle Bilder, die in diesen Formaten gespeichert werden, behalten ihre volle Qualität. Die allerbeste Kompression hat allerdings JP2, danach folgt PNG und TIFF. RAW und BMP komprimieren gar nicht.

JP2 alias JPEG2000 wird von Windows 7 direkt leider gar nicht unterstützt. Mit dem kostenlosen Apple Quicktime Picture Viewer oder XNView lassen sich diese allerdings anzeigen. Sicherlich kann es auch die eine oder andere Bildbearbeitung. Auf dem Mac ist das gar kein Problem, es ist keine Zusatzsoftware nötig.

Alphakanäle werden von TIFF, PNG und JP2 unterstützt.

Beispiel Desktop-Wallpaper:

• BMP = 6,9 MB
• TIFF = 2,4 MB ^ Ersparnis 35%
• PNG = 1,8 MB ^ Ersparnis 73%
• JP2 = 0,3 MB ^ Ersparnis 95% (6 x kleiner als PNG)

Methode 2: Verlustbehaftet

Beim Musikformat MP3 wird eine Psychoakkustikanalyse vorgenommen und somit werden nicht oder nur schwer hörbare Töne schlichtweg weggelassen. Deshalb bleibt weniger Material übrig das komprimiert werden muss und die Dateien werden letztendlich kleiner.

Bei Bildern funktioniert das recht ähnlich, denn oftmals liegen sehr ähnliche Farben nebeneinander und werden dann einfach zusammengefasst und später durch berechnete Annäherungen (Interpolation) wieder auf dem Bildschirm dargestellt.

Das dort bekannteste Format ist JPG. Man kann sogar die Höhe des Qualitätsverlusts mit den meisten Bildbearbeitungsprogrammen festlegen und dann selbst bestimmen wieviel Verlust man in Kauf nehmen will.

Der Vorteil ist klar: die Datei wird kleiner.

JP2 kann übrigens bei Bedarf genau wie JPG auch verlustbehaftet speichern.

If I see an update of an application, I want to have the latest and hottest stuff, of course. But first of all I read the changelog to know what is new or changed, and then I do run the update.

Unwanted changes

Sometimes, the developers change the behavior of a certain feature or in worst case it is even removed. If I really need this functionality exactly as it was before, it would make sense to downgrade the fresh installed update back to the old version.

New software is not always an improvement. A good bad example is Aptana Studio having removed the FTP-Sync functionality from version 1.5 to 2.0. It was so heavenly useful and now it is gone. The developers stated to eventually bringing it back in a future version.

Back to the past

If that worst case scenario became true, it is often impossible to get the old version back, because the vendor often just serves the latest version for downloading. But, what if there is no archive existing? Where do you get it?

For the Mac user

On a Mac you can use Time Machine and grab your old copy back from the Applications backup folder. But what, if no Time Machine backup was created?

Then go to http://mac.oldversion.com/ and download what you need. They have a large archive and host really many old versions of favourite applications.

For the Windows user

Go to http://www.oldversion.com/ and download your older piece of software.

While living in the virtual reality I help my environment to save valuable resources. One of them is avoiding the use of paper whenever possible. But, unfortunately there are some rare situations where somethings needs to get printed out and signed – contracts for example.

And the winner is

Some years ago, I decided to afford me a printer to exactly match such requirements. A good device with a reasonable price and performance ratio for my needs is the Brother HL-2040 series. It is a black and white laser printer with economic power and toner saving working on Windows and Mac.

When something is really needed

As Murhphy’s law confirms, the printer will stop it’s work when really needed. And exactly that happened. I did not use it for about two months and the first print job ended with paper jam, so the second did, too. After that all four LEDs started flashing and no printing was possible.

If you have a similar problem, then these two tips may help you out, because this is not mentioned in the FAQ and the official technical support did not know!

Solution

Tip 1:

Remove paper jams with the device still powered on. DO NOT POWER OFF! Open all paper trays and toner lid, then close. The motors will begin turning and the printer will be ready, again. Maybe it is required to press the GO button.

Tip 2:

This printer does not have a text display, just LEDs. Turn the power off, hold the GO button, power on, still hold GO for eight seconds. Release and press again. If the ready indicator is green, try a print. If the LEDs are all flashing again, do this Tip 2 instruction again and power off the device instead of printing. IMPORTANT: Let the power off for some hours, not only seconds or minutes! Turn on the next day, and voila.

Pricing

In my humble opinion the price for this update is very much to much. Some months ago, I just bought the update from 3 to 4. If the performance increases, then it is some bucks worth, but this time…

The update

They offered a free v5 trial for 30 days. Thanks, that’s great! But using that in makes your v4 operating systems converted to v5. Guess, what happens when the 30 days are over! Right, your VM’s are dead until you buy the update. There is no way back to 4, except for you made a copy of that images before. Ok, the installer warns about that, but is it fair, yet? Why is there no option, that a copy will be created by the installer itself?

Alternatives

Are there alternatives for OS X for another virtualization software? The first application I had in mind was VMWare Fusion. They offer a free trial, too. So I went out to their website to grab my personal copy. Good thought, but that was only a idea. They force you to fill out forms with lots of your personal data. That is not the way I want to get a free trial!

So I went further and remembered some news I read about Sun’s Virtual Box. That is the way how it should be! Free download, free ware, full of rich features and available on Windows, OS X and Linux.

Virtual Box

First of all, I must tell you, that I am very impressed of that piece of software! It is tiny, easy to use and brings all functionality you need and supports all notable kinds of modern OS in 32 bit and 64 bit!

Approaching

In this article I will compare Virtual Box against Parallels 5. I tested several features and performance. The operating systems used are Windows 7 in 32 bit and Debian 5 in 32 bit – both given 32 MB Video RAM with activated 3D and 2D accerlation. Main memory is set to 256 MB.

Performance

Performance and speed is really important when using virtual machines – at least for me. And the winner is: Virtual box! It does not slow down my Mac with 2 GB RAM like Parallels does. It even starts and shuts down very much faster and it seems my harddisk is not tortured that much. Virtual Box is optimized to run multiple instances, and I think that brings the speed.

With performance at all I mean

• Pausing, resuming and sleep like hibernation
• Harddisk usage
• RAM usage left for Host OS
• OSX response (keyboard, mouse, usage of apps)
• Guest OS response (keyboard, mouse, usage of apps)

What’s missing?

Virtual Box is not that rich as Parallels, but here is a list of features which are not yet available in Virtual Box:

• Drag and Drop files between Host and Guest OS, but you can share folders!
• Application folder of Guest OS integrated in Host OS.
• No bootcamp partitions.
• Seamless mode (guest OS window integration into host OS) only works on primary monitor!
• Keyboard input is interpreted as “PC”-keyboard.

Conclusion

The speed of Virtual Box is much better, at least on my hardware. I never used bootcamp and I am a little bit sad, that the seamless mode does not work on my secondary monitor. Also I am missing the drag and drop, but get used to the shared folders quickly.

Parallels got deinstalled!

Apple of course does not want this and sued several times against Psystar, because it is permitted and listed in the software agreement to run OS X on non-Apple-hardware.

A very required assumption for Rebel EFI enabling running OS X, seems to have a Intel processor, because since the release of Snow Leopard only Intel CPUs are supported.

On a Mac, hardware and software are the best friends and everything runs smooth. That is a proof and you can check this out by yourself in any store selling Apple products if you do not own one.

I am really afraid, that OS X may get a bad reputation from all those jealous PC users thinking their Windows OS and hardware is much better. They will run that on cheapest hardware and the smoothness of the OS X workflow is gone. Of course this is the wrong way and I am sure they will blame Apple of bad codings.

A browser is one of the most important tools nowadays and so it is important that it behaves fast, easy to use and recource saving.

On Youtube they introduced “Google Chrome Frame” which is a plugin for the Internet Explorer. This makes it possible to render websites with the Chrome engine with all its advantages on speed and quality inside Internet Explorer.

I am not sure, if that is good, because I absolutely dislike the Internet Explorer because of all those uncomfortable differences compared to the other browsers. Any further existing options on testing websites makes it harder for a web developer to test it out. My web dream is without beeing Internet Explorer.

Credits: Logo was re-created by myself from their respective owners Google and Microsoft.

Windows95 and even WindowsXP can be running on a iPhone!

As owner of an Apple device I have of course no real intention in using it, but “yes, we can“! If you are interested in, you even can get the source code.

Sources: Image

When I was playing around a little bit with it, after the upgrade to the 3.0 firmware and quit Skype, then it somewhat crashed. I saw the the dialog as the picture shows at the right hand side, but then, after relaunching the spingboard, everything worked fine.

For sure, I did I a reboot after that and noticed by the way, that one of the new 3.0 firmware improvements is the SIM-card-unlocking. It is so much faster, that I can not feel any delay, anymore.

1. First of all monitor the fans and temperatures using tools like SpeedFan and make sure everything keeps in a normal range. Disable the screensaver and do something memory and CPU expensive like SETI. When the computer crashes and the last view shows values out of range, then replace the fans by better ones and in case of CPU overheating, remove and renew the heatsink paste. Maybe it got too dry and lost its thermal conductivity.
2. 

   Test the memory bars each by each. Take all out except for one and run a memory tester booting from CD or a USB stick.

   Remove the power chord when doing that! If you still leave it in, the power adapter gives some voltage to the mainboard and a short circuit will happen fore sure.

   When the test is completed and no errors are shown, that bar is ok. Turn off, replace by the next one and so on. Do not use a corrupted bar anymore.

   • If no error occured at all, put all bars in and run the test again. When now an error is displayed, the slot may be dirty or corrupted!
3. 

   Do a full harddrive surface scan. This is neccessary because Windows uses a pagefile to supply virtual memory. If the sectors are bad at this area, data is written, but not read correctly and placed into the RAM without any further validation. With a surface scan Windows will mark that bad sectors not to use them again. Go to the workplace, rightclick your main drive (mostly C:) and select Extras then Check drive and Surface scan. This may take a very long time depending on your harddrive speed and storage amount.

But it is not that free I have expected to get it. You need to enter your Live ID to receive the serial keys and to get the end link for the leech.

Begginning to write this article I put my Live ID userdata in and I am still watching the green spin wheel letting me authenticate. I am afraid, this could take another while.

But after all let’s see if Microsoft has learned something and what got else copied by Apple.

Update:

Taking the Firefox browser instead of Safari took me to the download almost immediately. I tested it out several times, it looks like deceitful blocking.

With the help of my favourite remote application LogMeIn.com I connected to his windows computer with my Mac. Installation of mySQL was done in a few seconds and ActiveState perl, too.

So we copied my scripts to his machine and did the first run which stopped, because some perl modules are missing. Ok, that is normally no big deal and they can be easily installed with the package manager – I thought.

A big suprise came up when I typed in ppm and saw a GUI. Huh? A Interface for modules in perl? Nice done and easy to use, but DBD::mysql is missing.

The next step was to try to use it with the command cpan which gives me the classic command line interface shell of the origin ppm. Installation ran quickly thru, but the packages could not be compiled. So I tried to get the ppd file and that lost success, too.

We solved the problem by recognizing that in perl 5.8+ the drivers are not available at all. Using the GUI ppm and adding the repository

http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/

made it. Then we just searched for DBD-mysql and it went thru without any further problems.

Merge windows

To feel as fit as a fiddle on my Mac’s screen I need to have it clean with only that windows in front I am currently working in.

For how to hide unwanted applications without termination I blogged the article The secrets of hide and seek.

The Eventbox is my best friend when getting updated on RSS feeds, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. When clicking the arrow to see the original or full details it opens the source in Safari as a new window.

If you click many details, you will get many Safari windows open. You can configure Safari to put them in tabs. I have not enabled this, because I prefer that when applications open a browser it should be a fresh window.

When having lots of Safari windows, but you want to have them just in only one and seperated by tabs, you can go to the menu Window and select merge all windows.

To verify it does not depend on my firewall configuration I have tried doing the same on Windows using Total Commander as FTP client. That has worked instantly without any issues and delays. From my former times on the glassy operating system I remembered on the free available cross platform FTP client FileZilla, so I decided to test it on my Mac. And the result is very positive.

FileZilla

FileZilla‘s user interface is very well designed and gives many quick information of all the data I need. The feel of speed is awesome. It supports all today neccessary transfer standards and the preferences provide tons of settings in a tree organized view.

The most important thing for me of course is, that it does the thing what the Cyberduck still does not do the job even with comparing all combination of settings.

One primary functionality I do expect from a FTP client is to be able to use a custom editor to directly edit a remote file. I am very lucky that FileZilla does me that favour using my prefered programming and text editor (currently Smultron).

But when saving a remote file you need to go back to FileZilla to get it uploaded. That is no big deal, but an annoying message box is coming up recognizing that a file has changed. Of course it changed, and I want it to be uploaded. On no account I do not want to confirm that box, so I searched through the preferences. There is nothing and the official FileZilla forum does confirm that!

It has been filed, that there should be option for beeing able to auto-confirm that. The only way until now to get rid off it is to compile the source code with modification. So I did! That was quite horrible, because lot of errors occured during the makefile, but I hit the ground running.

Download the modified FileZilla client 3.2.4 without that always nerving message box compiled on OSX 10.5.6. I would be pleased, when you leave a short comment when downloading to appreciate all the time on spending getting it work. Just unzip after download and move to your Application folder. Thank you!

Skype

Yes, I do have an account on almost every important protocol and I was managing them with the Adium client. That is really a great and superb tool with an awesome tight interface. But, I have made a hard and ultimate decision.

I decided to take just only one messenger and one protocol, since now: Skype.

Why Skype?

• It runs on important platforms: Linux, Mac, Windows, Mobile phones.
• The interface is free available and really easy. All functions an instant messenger needs to have are there. My favourite is to sort out old and unused contacts.
• Encryption is enabled by default. Other instant messenger do not even encrypt at all or plugins are not easy to install.
• Can run even through firewalls.
• Chat, audio/video possible. Even conferences with multiple users.
• Standing out audio/video quality and reliable.
• Working and fast file transfers, also encrypted.
• Less network traffic by using just only one protocol.
• Available web graphics to show current online status.
• Great directory with search. You can specify by yourself what is visible by anybody and what to your personal contacts.

If you need, you can charge services at fair prices:

• Call from internet to local lines and mobile phones.
• Send SMS to mobile phones.

That list is incomplete, but that points are facing exactly what modern instant messaging in those days should be able to do. There are even LAN/WiFi phones available having Skype implemented. Also, having just one account makes it easier to configure and to handle.

If you have Skype installed and want to get in direct contact with me, click the Skype icon (blue cloud with a “S” inside) on the top right social profile bar to add me to your contact listing.

Safari 4

The new Safari browser is my favourite browser since the the release 3. It is so fast, that no other browser can beat it and the display is really great.

Due to I am developing websites I love Safari, because it supports DOM, CSS and XML so well like really no other does. Safari and Firefox, are cool, but anyhow I am more familar with Safari.

Now, Apple just has released the Safari 4 with innovative features that are really cool. You may have seen some of them as plugins for Firefox, but now it is built in natively and it works so damn fast and reliable. I am absolutely juiced up.

The interesting part is, what’s new? You can read the details on Apple’s website, but let me tell you with my own words.

The tabs and its plus sign are now embedded into the title. That looks weird, but I needed some time to get used to it. In the end, it saves some space on the screen and that is absolutely what I do prefer.

A new overview is embedded as a grid icon into the bookmark bar and clicking on it shows a 3D thumbnail page of the most visited ones. Clicking on a icon zooms into the page with a really nice and fluently transition. It can be customized by nailing favourites or the amount of thumbs to be displayed.

The history search went much faster and you can browse through it using the great cover flow previewing the visited sites. So you fill find back much more easier where you have been before.

Apple did not forget the developers and the tools gained some features and display options like Javascript error detection and more.

If you need to find something, the search eventually inherited a live find feature during typing.

The zoom function is now completely different. Before it just scaled the font, but not the images. Now everything is zoomed in or out. This gives also a nice option to make screenshots of large websites.

It is still beta, but I love it! By the way, there is a version for the PC users available, too.

Of course I could use spaces with its multiple desktops, but actually I find it quite exhausting having multiple desktops and to remember where is which application and move all the time. Anyhow it causes me some additional and unwanted stress.

The way I am working is the great functionality using the secrets of hide and seek applications.

First of all, you need to differ between hiding and minimizing.

It enables you to select a music style like from a library containing jazz, rock, swing and some others. Then it starts to play a ground beat and you just begin to record your singing voice into a microphone.

Afterwards, Songsmith analyzes everything and will add furthermore instruments like chords to the song. It also does some intros and outros as you may know from any hobby keyboard.

The software itself is quite cool for people getting into music, but let us have a look at their video advertisment on Youtube.

Click to play video

Do you know what is hiding behind the flower power sticker?

Perfectly matching Microsoft‘s compaign “I am a PC“: Yes, it is a MacBook Pro by Apple!

Testing Windows 7

With the new update of Parallels Desktop 4.0 it is now possible to install Windows 7 in a virtual machine.

The first problem starts with downloading Windows 7 beta from the offical download site. The servers are absolutely overloaded. To get the 2,41 GB image I was using the free DownThemAll extension for Firefox.

The installation was really quite fast and run through without any problems. I have made some screenshots during and after installation.

The Parallels tool installation works fine. Coherence and other features do work well.

My first quick impression:

• Installation and boot is much faster than Vista
• Look and feel is almost like Vista
• Taskbar and Start menu looks a bit easier
• Seems to eat less resources at all

When to use Windows at all, I am still a big fan of Windows XP, currently with service pack 3. The new Windows 7 seems to work with the same fluence.

But better let us wait for the final version. As I remember from past, the Vista betas and the final edition differed quite much.

I did not expect to say it: Thumbs up, good job, Microsoft!