Tech Blog / Photos / Mac Tips

It all started with the  4.0 Iphone OS update … milions of 3G Iphone users got disappointed. The Iphone was slow, it took 3 seconds to answer a call and for some 10 seconds for “slide to unlock”.

A few days ago I got the HTC Hero (the so called european version of Google’s Nexus One). It’s almost the same phone and I really musta say this, Android is fasssst ! Really fast!

What you get ? Better camera, better Mail (and of course GMail), Google Maps integration, 1 GHZ processor 512 ROM and 576 RAM.

The 3.7 inch AmoLED display is way better compared to the Iphone’s LCD. Almost the same battery life for day by day use.

Still under review….but 8 people out of 10 (IT geeks of course) said the Android does worth the switch from iOS.

Mihai Tech stuff android phone, google nexus one, htc desire, ios vs andoid, iphone vs htc desire, telefoane android

I’m not a big Microsoft fan but I just couldn’t resist their  ”Ultimate Steal” of the year. Here is what it consists of:

• Ms Office 2010 Academic Suite for only £49
• Ms Windows 7 Professional 64 bit Upgrade (you must have a valid license of XP or Vista) for only £30

I took advantage of my @northumbria.ac.uk account and in 5 minutes using Digital River’s shop I had the product keys and download links. Office 2010 is about 586 MB and Windows 7 Pro is about 3.2GB.

Be aware you need to have a Win XP or Win Vista license prior to installing Windows 7 Professional , this is just the upgrade version. However the price is unbeatable. Upgrading from XP it’s a bit tricky but if you have minimum IT knowledge you’ll be fine.

If you had a Office Trial before you can use the same .exe file and just use the new product key since the executable is the same (name, version and size ) so you don’t have to download it again.

Those of you who are interested should visit the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/student/office/en-gb/default.aspx

Mihai Tech stuff microsoft office 2010 student, microsoft studenct license, office 2010 academic, ultimate steal microsoft, windows 7 for students

Beach side - Vama Veche

Mihai Photography beach side vama veche, vama veche

Tried to unlock a BlackBerry 8900 using their service (their website is http://www.foneszone.co.uk and it’s a SCAM) but I found out it’s a trick. I have entered their website, selected the phone and model, inserted the correct IMEI code and payed trough PayPal about 20 Pounds.

After 12h I have received an email from the website owner , Mr. Richard – the so called “code-director” (hahaha) telling me that he was unable to find a proper unlock code for my BB 8900 but I can choose another option from their website, and so on. Practically just bullshit …

Read more…

Mihai Social life, Tech stuff foneszone, foneszone.co.uk, review, scam, unlock, unlock blackberry, unlock codes, warning

ash hole

1) the small opening in the volcanic ash clouds that allow airliners to fly through without any chance of danger.
2) the opening at the top of a volcano from which forth spews volcanic ash

“We were stranded at Heathrow Airport for hours until the airline found some ash hole to fly through.”

Mihai Uncategorized ash, ash hole, volcanic ash, word of the day

While I’m currently using Microsoft Project 2007 here is a new name on the list , and that’s not all … it’s completely free and open source.

It’s called OpenProj and it’s an open source project management software intended as a complete desktop replacement for Microsoft Project.  This software is a serious alternative to Ms Project. OpenProj will do: control, tracking and management of projects.

OpenProj interface

OpenProj is ideal for desktop project management and is available on Linux, UNIX, Mac or Windows. It even opens existing Microsoft or Primavera files. OpenProj is an user interface and even opens existing MSProject files.

OpenProj shares scheduling engine with Project-ON-Demand and provides Gantt Charts, Network Diagrams (PERT Charts), WBS and RBS charts, Earned Value costing and more.
The OpenProj solution has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Galician, Persian, Russian, Korean and Chinese.

Features:

•     Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) used to order and control the tasks of the project for people who manages projects
•     Resources Breakdown Structure (RBS) used to define the structure of the resources, teams, providers, etc.
•    Task Usage and Resource Usage are used to control your project and provide a good track on it.
•    The Report tool provides information about the current status of your project.

Microsoft Project retails for $999.99, is installed on 7% of all Office desktops and drives over $1 billion in revenue for Microsoft. OpenProj fills an important gap in the desktop market, as a key component in the Office family of products now has a replacement available on Linux, Unix, Mac or Windows. OpenProj was also selected for inclusion with Star Office suite boxes in Europe. The OpenProj solution has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Galician, Persian, Russian, Korean and Chinese.

Mihai Tech stuff download OpenProj, free, microsoft project, open source project management, openproj, project management software, project management software for Mac, replacement Project 2007

Ipad will be launched in Romania somewhere around 24 April 2010. About 4 days ago it was launched in the US. IMHO it’s a “must have” gadget for 2010

Apple IPad launch in Romania on Apr 24 !

Mihai Uncategorized apple ipad romania, apple romania, ipad lansare romania, ipad launch romania, lansare ipad

The pictures below were all taken using the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens. I just had some fun playing around in Aperture 3.0 for Mac with the brightness/contrast and saturation. Apart from that, it’s the best lens you can get for under $200 !

As you can see the results are pretty sharp and almost no distortion is visible.

Mihai Photography adamclisi, dervent, manastirea dervent, monument adamclisi, nikkor 50mm, nikon 50mm f/1.8, ostrov, turn de apa

Try this at home, maximum fun … guaranteed !

you jump and she's taking off ! use any type of inflatable mattress.

Mihai Photography, Social life inflatable mattress, jump, Try this at home

After a little digging into Preview I stumbled across two options which allow you to shrink the size of a PDF. Most of the time these two methods may not produce useful result, they may be as tiny as possible. However if you have used a program which isn’t designed for PDF (Word for some reason springs to mind) this trick might be useful. There are two options which you can use, both offer different results.

Both of the compression options are found in the Save As menu. First find a large PDF file that you want to shrink, any will do for this example. Go to File > Save As. In the save box there will be two drop down items. The second one is what we are interested in, Quartz Filter. From the drop down menu select none. This may be counter intuitive at first, however it allows the PDF engine to run and reduce any parts that it can. It doesn’t run any other filters. For the most part on an uncompressed PDF this will produce pleasing results. The image below show the drop down box on the Save As menu.

how to compress PDF files on a Mac

The option of having no Quartz Filter for the most part is sufficient. This can reduce the file size. This option is known as loss less, so it wont remove anything at all and keep things in high quality. This is needed for PDF’s with images. However for PDF’s with only text or simple geometric shapes to may be better to reduce the file size even more.

To apply a reduction in quality (however it still stays pretty good) in the drop down select “Reduce File Size”, I never notice it at first. This option will crunch images and remove parts of the PDF that are not needed, in a similar method of a jpeg images. There are slight problems with this method. Images turn out horrible and lose all quality. However for text and simple bands of colour it is perfect, and the reduction in file size can be massive.

Hopefully these two option apply to you. The first one, for the most part, doesn’t produce any decent results (one files size was larger) if the original PDF is made in Preview. However the second option always reduces the files size, usually by half.

Mihai Tech stuff apple, compress PDF, compress pdf file, how to compress pdf, mac os x, pdf preview, pdf resize, reduce pdf file size, snow leopard

Everyone shares the basic need to connect, but we see that our collective ability to truly live our connections is in flux. We create things that nurture and instigate living connections in both the digital and physical world.

Mihai Uncategorized connections, digital world, living

Park Plaza Amsterdam - room

The Tamron 17-50 mm on the Nikon D300 @ ParkPlaza Hotel / Amsterdam.

Mihai Photography, Social life amsterdam, boeing 737, d300, nikon, photos, tamron 17 50 mm, tarom

Just came back after some Siemens training in Birmingham – UK. Made some new friends (Allan @ ATS  / Laura @ G.Elliot Pub) and almost … 10 horrible pictures taken. Maybe next time… I’ll do better.

Mihai Photography, Social life, Tech stuff Birmingham, technology, training, UK

Hopefully you can forget about the recession and drink a glass of wine ! Skipper does…

Mihai Social life happy new year, skipper

I believe it was February or March I have purchased for only $30 the Pro edition of Panda Anti-virus with a bonus of 3 PC licenses included in the pack. However I don’t recomment it anymore, huge memory load (in XP went up instantly from 309MB to 745MB), lazy updates , not the best AV for sure.

Today I have started the trial for Kastersky AV , highly recommended by a lot of IT guys these days. See you back in a month with a short review.

kaspersky av 2010

Mihai Uncategorized antivirus, kaspersky vs panda, panda vs kaspersky, windows xp

For all of you who need waxing services over the weekend, here’s a good spot.

Mihai Uncategorized ads, chicken, waxing

Usually IT guys like me aren’t stuck with just one domain name (like this blog). I decided a few months ago to use Hostgator for my other domains…done! Account set-up in a few minutes aftery online payment, the old good CPanel -latest version , a lot of scripts easy to install using Fantastico. The Baby Croc plan is their best seller. I’m not advertising for these guys but initially I had a lot of bad experiences hosting companies from Romania ( Webfactor.ro – WBF / Gazduire.ro – I don’t recommend them at all ! ).

Mihai Uncategorized gazduire.ro, good review, hostgator, hosting romania, review, webfactor

Sometimes it’s impossible to get to work using the boat due to bad weather , this is the time when I put my ass in the helicopter.

No more than 25 minutes of good music coming from the rotor. If you have ever wondered how this looks like here are some photos taken @ Tuzla – Constanta a few seconds after departure.

Mihai Photography, Social life helicopter, offshore

I’m watching relaxed a podcast using iTunes right now. I had the opportunity today to get the Windows 7 upgrade for only 30 GBP using my student membership with Northumbria University. For now I have to say no…my current Snow Leopard upgrade seems to be just fine and while I was sharing experiences today with one of my co-workers I decided to wait until my Lenovo X60 with running XP now will get the Win 7 upgrade. The price Microsoft offers to UK students (30 GBP) it’s great I can say, however I’m not sure about how great Windows 7 is. I’m still waiting for proper documented reviews to show up online, not just comments and firefighting between Apple and Microsoft users.

Rent a movie , download it , get some popcorn and adopt my position….I don’t give a f**k about all this SL vs W7 prizefight. If you do go here

Mihai Tech stuff apple, mac, microsoft, relax, snow leopard vs windows 7, windows 7

I really love this photo. I just don’t know why but it’s cool enough to make me happy. Waiting for my lunch to show up after I’ll prepare my Lavazza espresso. It’s just an ordinary day …. by the way just got Snow Leopard installed 4 days ago ! No big differences from it’s younger brother but I have noticed a speed increase and I’m a really big fan of 64 bit applications.

Mihai Photography, Social life acapulco, constanta, eforie, espresso, nikon d80, snow leopard