Categories
Umum

iPad Menggantikan Laptop MacBook Pro (untuk Sementara)

Mulai hari Senin lalu, saya akhirnya akan mencoba untuk menggunakan iPad sebagai piranti utama saya untuk bekerja, menggantikan laptop MacBook Pro saya yang saat ini ada di service center karena kendala terkait baterai.

Jadi, MacBook saya yang sudah berumur tujuh tahun lebih tersebut tidak dapat diisi daya. Sebenarnya kejadian sudah agak lama. Terakhir, pengisian daya sudah sangat lambat, dan indikator baterai menampilkan tulisan “Service Recommended”. Puncaknya, ketika satu atau dua minggu lalu mati listrik, posisi baterai sudah benar-benar hampir habis.

Masih bisa saya hidupkan, tapi indikator baterai selalu dibawah 10%, dan tetap tidak mau diisi baterai. Saya sempat juga ganti charger, tapi tidak berhasil juga. Jadilah, akhir pekan lalu benar-benar laptop tidak bisa menyala.

Saya sempatkan cek riwayat service sebelumnya, kali terakhir melakukan penggantian baterai ternyata sudah sekitar empat tahun lalu. Karena memang saya butuh untuk laptop saya berfungsi normal, saya putuskan untuk melakukan penggantian baterai di salah satu gerai service produk Apple di Yogyakarta bagian utara. Ketika saya serahkan, saya minta untuk dilakukan pengecekan terlebih dahulu. Apakah ini murni karena butuh ganti baterai, atau ada sebab lain. Ya, mungkin bisa dimaklumi karena laptop tersebut sudah cukup berumur.

Apakah iPad sanggup menggantikan MacBook Pro?

iPad yang saya miliki sering saya gunakan untuk kegiatan bekerja, namun banyak fokus untuk mengetik, dan membalas surel. Untuk aktivitas menggunakan aplikasi di Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Calendar, Slides), Trello, Telegram, dan lainnya di peramnah, tidak ada masalah sama sekali. Untuk menggunakan aplikasi seperti Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, dan Powerpoint juga tidak ada masalah sama sekali.

Mungkin sedikit masalah ketika saya harus masuk ke text editor, atau aplikasi seperti Sequel Pro, dan aplikasi penyuntingan gambar yang walaupun sederhana, tapi tetap saya perlu gunakan. Oh ya, untuk aplikasi misalnya Microsoft Excel, di laptop saya cukup sering untuk membuka dua berkas sekaligus. Hal ini masih cukup mudah dilakukan di iPad, paling tidak saat ini.

Untuk rencana servis, diperkirakan mungkin bisa sampai dua minggu, tergantung nanti hasil pengecekan. Tapi, karena baterai juga harus pesan dulu, jadi paling cepat diperkirakan prosesnya satu minggu saja.

Ya, mari kita lihat seminggu ini.

Categories
General

WordPress’ Gutenberg New Editor. Yes or No?

I have been using Gutenberg on this site once it was available last year. I have been witnessing how WordPress changed its editor time to time. From its very simple editor, more complex, to the latest one.

WordPress’ Matt already posted a very long Q&A on Gutenberg. I think the article already covered the big ideas behind Gutenberg. At the moment, Gutenberg works really well with the theme I currently using, Atomic Block. It just works.

But again, it’s all about text editor. For regular WordPress user like me, Gutenberg works really well. I mean, I could have what I expect from a text editor. Reading from the plugin page, it seems that there are many unhappy users.

Back to the question. Is Gutenberg a Yes or a No? For me, it’s a Yes.

Categories
General

Telegram’s Photo Editor 2.0, Masks, and GIF Creation Tool

Telegram just released some new features to work on the pictures that hopefully will make the communication (chat) become more fun and enjoyable. For those who love to edit photos, add additional texts, drawings, or even stickers, Telegram offers the functionalities directly in the app. I wish Telegram adds “Call” feature.

Categories
General

Nokia N9 Sample Photos

I love photography.
After using some different cameras (DSLR and phone camera), I think  this year I spend more time using mobile phone, not the DSLR. Sometime, I almost forgot that I still have Canon 450D. After having Nokia N9 in my hands, I wanted to test its camera features, just like what I did with my previous Nokia N8.

Nokia N9 does not have the best camera specifications compared to other mobile phone products (with camera). But, for a mobile photography, the photo quality is pretty good. Let’s look at Nokia N9 camera specifications:

  • 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics
  • Wide-angle lens, true 16:9 imaging
  • Large lens aperture F2.2 for better and faster photos in low light conditions
  • Dual LED flash
  • Digital shutter, continuous autofocus, touch-to-focus and exposure lock
  • Focal length: 3.77mm / 28mm, F number/Aperture: F2.2
  • Still images file format: JPEG/EXIF/XMP
  • Digital zoom up to 4x for still images and video

Now, let’s see how some photos taken using Nokia N9. These photos are not edited at all. Nokia N9 has also a simple photo editor to crop, rotate, brightness, and contrast, etc. I only captured some photos, and send to Flickr directly from the phone using built-in upload to Flickr feature.

Categories
General

canv.as

canv.as — a place to share and play with images. Explore new content created by other users, vote on your favorites, and even make your own image remixes with the in-browser editor.

Categories
General

WordPress Blog WordPress 3.0 "Thelonious"

WordPress 3.0, code name “Thelonious” released.

3.0 is faster, stabler, and more secure, so you can focus on what matters (your audience) and let the rest fade to the background. Custom post types, MU merge, menu editor, Twenty Ten theme, over 1,200 bug fixes… there’s so much to enjoy in this new release, we’re really proud of it. It’s the best WordPress yet, and available for a limited time for only free ninety nine. ;)

Categories
General

Anyway, About the Skateboard from Ovi

Finally, I had the skateboard delivered by Nokia Ovi to my office few days ago. It was shipped using UPS service. Why I got this skateboard? You can read the story on my previous post.
When I firstly got the news that I was the lucky person who got the skateboard, I thought it would be shipped from Finland. But, I was wrong. Niini Kokkonen, Ovi Blog’s editor, said to me that it would be shipped from the US office. On the next day, she emailed me telling that the skateboard had been shipped using UPS service. And I waited. OK, I’ll be honest: I checked the delivery status everyday. :D
Skateboard from Nokia Ovi Blog (by orangescale)
At around 4 PM, I got a phone call from UPS and they told me that I got a package. They asked about my office location. I gave the direction to the guy behind the phone. He said that the package should arrive in about two hours. So I opened the box, and found that shiny skateboard deck with a letter inside it.

Categories
General

VisualMelancholy

VisualMelancholy — a photoblog of Firman Firdaus; an editor, designer, and blogger at Daustralala. I love big pictures! :)

Categories
General

WordPress 2.8's Syntax Highlighting

I just tried WordPress 2.8 Beta 1. The upcoming version will offers many new features. So far, the syntax highlighting is a great addition. It is available on theme and plugin editor pages.
wp28_syntax

Categories
General

Frog All Lit Up by Swallowed Christmas Light

tree-frog-christmast-light

The Daily Dozen feature on National Geographic, edited by photo editor Susan Welchman, is a treasure trove of neat “Your Shots” photos submitted by the magazine’s readers (a selection of which will actually appear on the magazine itself – talk about awesome!).

(Source: Neatorama via Yeni). Photographer: James Snyder

Categories
General

The Flickr Collection on Getty Images

getty flickr
Last year, Flickr and Getty Images teamed up to build what they called The Flickr Collection on gettyimages.com. It’s available now at http://www.gettyimages.com/flickr
What happened behind this collaboration? Flickr General Manager explains:

For the past few months, editors at Getty Images have been busy exploring the Flickrverse to find the right photos to be part of the collection — a task that is somewhat daunting when there are more than three billion images to choose from on Flickr. The goal was to choose photos that created a commercially viable collection, while preserving the inspirational and unexpected nature of the kinds of images that are so prevalent on Flickr. Like Flickr itself, this is a “living collection” and Getty Images will continue to add thousands of new images every month from here on out.

At the Getty Images’ landing site, it’s said that:

These are handpicked images with an originality and authenticity rare in stock photos. Images that are available exclusively on our site, in both rights-managed and royalty-free options.

More photos will be added into the collections.

Categories
General

WordPress 2.7, Upgrade, Plugins and Some Other Notes

I just upgrade my blog to WordPres 2.7 stable release, code name “Coltrane”. Since I have been using WordPress 2.7 branch — I only upgraded from WordPress 2.7-RC2 released yesterday. And, the built-in core updater is VERY useful. I took only less than 10 seconds to upgrade. Nice!
wp27-upgrade1 wp27-upgrade2
So, if you’re using WordPress for your blog/website, it is time to upgrade. You’ll love it. :) As usual, if you do not want to take risk, backup your database first. Just in case you want to go back to your “current” WordPress version. After that, get WordPress 2.7. Anyway, related to this new version, if you have time, there are some notes. At least, these are for me. It might work for you too.

Categories
General

Pixlr, Online Image Editor

Here another alternative for online image editor. It’s called Pixlr. We can upload and image images directly from internet browser. To enjoy this service, we need to have Flash plugin installed. Learn more.

Categories
General

Pimp your WordPress 2.5 Dashboard

One of the gret improvements offered by WordPress 2.5 is on the dashboard interface. Collaborating with Happy Cog studio, WordPress offers some great improvements. One of them is about managable widgets for dashboard. It means, we can manage what kind of ‘widgets’ should be presented on the dashboard.
Also, we can create a new admin interface theme. There are already some admin themes available like WP Tiger, Spotmilk, or Fluency. If we want to customize or creating our own admin theme, we can do it too. WordPress 2.5 introduces another option to have per user admin color scheme. The idea is “call another stylesheet into the dashboard”. And, it’s per user basis. So, every person in the system can have their own theme. Nice, eh? Read more about this if you want to create one. Anyway, by default we will have two color schemes. It’s Classic and Fresh.

Categories
General

Dashboard Editor Plugin for WordPress

For bloggers who use WordPress as their blogging platform, there is a new useful plugin. It is called Dashboard Editor created by Aaron Dowden. What does this plugin do? Here’s a short description:

This plugin allows you to add whatever you want to the WordPress dashboard through PHP and HTML even Sidebar Widgets. You can also wipe the entire dashboard or individually remove some of the more irritating sections like the Dev news, Planet WordPress and the getting started section.

After logging in to your WordPress administration panel, you will be brought to a main page called “Dashboard”. There, you will see some elements such as shortcuts to common administration pages, news from WordPress Development Blog, posts from Planet WordPress aggregator, comments and posts activities, and basic blog statistics. There might be another element e.g. an Akismet statistic — if you install it.