Category Archives: techie

iPhone 4S Review, 6 Months On

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Sometimes I wonder when I read reviews of products. Everyone tends to have bigger preferences with the shiny new things. But after a while, do they still love it?

Well, I’m happy to report that after six months, I still love my iPhone! I almost would say: “I would not want another type/brand of phone”. Although ten years ago I don’t want to have other phone than my shock resistant – amazing storage of 100 sms – Siemens phone, so let’s see how it goes in the next couple of years ;) .

My background: I’m quite the techie geek, I know how to code and I’m also a graphic designer so I don’t think you could get geekier than that. I’m also a writer, I love taking pictures, and I’m an avid user of social networks.

Mobile phones prior to iPhone 4S: Blackberry 8900, Nokia 6600, Siemens M45, Nokia 3210.

Alright, let’s get to it!

Best feature:

The camera. It’s even more than what I dreamed of. The main reason why bought this phone. It’s amazingly good and fast. It allows me capture quick moments, much faster than the normal camera. It’s very quick to start, just whip out the phone from my pocket, and I usually do have them handy, and take the picture! PS: I already posted a review on it here and here.

Other things I love about it:

  • Speed. It makes everything a breeze, especially when you’re looking for something in the city. Map, direction, place recommendations, everything!
  • Apps. There’s just seems to be an app for everything and more. And I love it!

Overrated feature:
Siri. I never use it after the first two weeks. Just maybe sometimes when I want to show off my phone to my friends.

What I wish I could change:

Capacity expansion. Due to my love of apps, my 16gb one is 85% full. The thing is, when I read people’s recommendation of the size, they always said the bigger ones isn’t necessary if you don’t have much music and movies. This is not true. Mine is full of apps and games, and pictures (must start deleting them :P ).

What I thought I wouldn’t like but turned out it’s okay:

  • Battery life. Although it would be nice to be able to use the phone a week straight without charging, I find as long as I could spend the day comfortably, it’s really okay. I use my phone for a lot of things: playing music, facebook, checking e-mails, playing games, so it’s only normal for the battery to run out after a day. Besides, my battery seemed to run longer compared to hubs’ Samsung Galaxy S (especially after the 5.1 update)
  • Touch screen for typing. It’s surprisingly not bad at all. As long as the autocorrect plays nice. I would think if one writes completely in one language, it should be very good. But as I have to write in English, Indonesian, and German, I have to remember to change the language whenever I type or the recommendation will be very weird.

Most used apps:

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iPhone 4S Camera Test – Low Light Situation

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This is an overdue post on how the iPhone 4S behaves on a low light situation. It was autumn and the sun is setting behind the Brandenburger Gate. I think the picture is still alright, it captures the beautiful sky that afternoon. But as you see in the picture I took with my Lumix TZ-7, a bigger lens would be able to capture so much more.

Brandenburger Gate - iPhone 4S

Brandenburger Gate - Samsung Galaxy S

Brandenburger Gate - Panasonic Lumix TZ7

Doing Some Blog Maintenance

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Oh fun! Right? Well… yeah not really. I was planning to do update some functionalities on my blog. I wanted to have the nested comment thing because as it turned out, my theme didn’t support that. I made my own theme based on an old WordPress theme, so it means I’d have to add this functionality myself.

Being a sometimes snobbish geek girl, I tried to hack my way to adding this to the php code. HA! Not working except for adding some unnecessary hairfall on my part. I should’ve known better to look for some tutorial first. Such as  this one. That would definitely make my life easier ;) .

*headdesk*. Lesson learned.

Writing Tools – Software

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I have only been full time writing for a year, and being the geek that I am, I used to try many writing softwares. But softwares comes and goes… and in the end I kept coming back to these three tools (for Windows, as I only own a PC). So I thought I’d mention it:

Microsoft Word

Some people hate it, some people swear by it. Me? I don’t say it’s perfect, but I like it. You have to learn to use it properly, with the document map, headings, and style. Stick to it, and it is a powerful tool. I especially love the grammar check. it’s a good first point of checking IMHO. One possible flaw is that sometimes it couldn’t handle long documents nicely (novels and especially table/graph laden documents like thesis/dissertation). And that’s why the next tool come in handy.

Chapter by chapter (http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.berthet/cbc/index.html)

It’s a freeware tool for Microsoft Word, and it only work on Windows. It works like a document map, but instead of working in a huge file, it creates a new file for each chapter. You could see the word count of each chapter and the total word count for the novel. You could flag a finished chapter, enter some notes, and create a compiled document where all the separate chapter is merged into a single file -> THE NOVEL ;) .

Celtx (http://celtx.com/)

It’s an open source tool for Windows and Mac, originally designed for media pre-production. The first time I used it is for a scriptwriting – Script Frenzy challenge three years ago. Now I use it to keep track of my characters, plots, and outline. I still wish they would enhance it for novel writing with separate chapters, then it would be my perfect tool. One can only hope ;) .

That’s all the software I need for cranking up that novel :) .