Peace on Earth; Goodwill Toward All ...

iOS 8.1.2 + Restore As New?

As you will observe from the composite image here, I have around 2.2GB of "Other' occupying space on my meagre 16GB iPhone 4S. While this is no major concern at present because I have very few additional apps installed, it irks me to see so much space occupied by something I don't know anything about. Over the years, I've read and tried almost all remedies without too much success. The one suggestion I've always balked at was "Restore As New" because this would mean keying in all my passwords, and other personalized information which, over time, has become quite a lot.

Long story short: I decided to bite the bullet and try this suggestion with the new iOS update issued by Apple this morning -- iOS 8.1.2. This update includes "bug fixes" and should address a ringtones removal issue; and the very minor-ness of the release emboldened me to take the "Restore As New" step on my iPhone. The best way to do this in my opinion is via iTunes, rather than over the air, as one can thus overcome any "unavailable space" issues on your device.

Well, the 1.46GB downloaded quickly enough and I began the process of restoring my iPhone "as new" rather than from the many backups I already have.

Unfortunately, my iTunes popped up an error message, telling me it lost contact with my iPhone because, "session ID not found," or words to that effect. Luckily I've had quite a bit of experience with iPhones from way back in 2007, so I just waited with the iPhone plugged into my MBP and iTunes still running. After about 3 or 4 minutes, the iPhone rebooted itself and this time iTunes recognized it.

Taking this as a warning, I decided to "Update" rather than "Restore" and all went through smoothly now, the downloaded update being applied flawlessly.

As you can see, the "Other" component has now reduced to just over 2 GB. While this is smaller than my earlier "Other" component, it is still too much. I intend to do some more exploring over the coming days and will try and report what's what.

All in all, for me it was worth the experience; and I've lived to tell the tale!

The Stylus: Who Knows What Steve Jobs Would Think Today?

I read somewhere that Apple has patented a stylus, possibly for use with its iOS devices. I also read the opinions of some webpage-writers, that this is something the late Steve Jobs would have hated.

Now I'd like to offer my own opinion, for what it's worth ... how can any human being read the mind of another human being -- and that too when the person being probed is no more with us? It is a well-documented fact that humans tend to change their minds almost as often as they change their clothes. And, from what I've read of him, Steve Jobs didn't appear to me to be so stubborn in his ideas that he wouldn't have evolved with the times.

If customers show a preference for a stylus as a tool to help make them more productive, what better option than to patent, design, make and sell your own? If I were in any position of decision-making, I'd definitely want to do this, rather than allow third-party styli to be used with my products -- especially when one could profitably charge something for the add-on.

Isn't this what most manufacturing corporations do? My opinion is that they offer a relatively inexpensive main product, operating system and then charge for add-ons, accessories, etc. (I'd briefly touched on this earlier here.)

Quoting the patent abstract: "An active stylus is disclosed. The stylus includes an electrode at a tip of the stylus; and powered circuitry coupled to the electrode and configured for capacitively coupling the electrode with a capacitive touch sensor panel. The powered circuitry can further include drive circuitry configured to output a drive voltage at the electrode and/or sense circuitry configured to sense a voltage received at the electrode."

Now although the application doesn't specifically mention the corporation, the two persons who filed for it -- Jonah Harley and David Simon -- are engineering managers at Apple, who have apparently been working on stylus technology for quite some time.(Patent Application Reference here.)

My opinion therefore, again -- for what it is worth -- is that (despite Steve Jobs' adverse comment about styli at an Apple event in 2010,) if one must write about something, it is best to write about facts, rather than spend time on hypotheses -- unless, of course, one is an Einstein or other great thinker and visionary.

Safari On Yosemite Doesn't Deliver For Me

For many days now, I've been noticing a lack of performance from Safari on my MBP. Firefox, however, running in parallel, delivers the same websites flawlessly. I've only got one extension on both browsers -- WOT -- so that could not be the issue. Both browsers are running in Private Browsing mode.

To illustrate, I visited Apple's own discussions forum, where I've had the most frustrations so far with Safari. In the first screenshot, you'll notice that a user has marked one suggestion as a solution to her original query. When a user does this, Apple usually highlights the relevant post with a green border. This doesn't happen on Safari, whereas it works flawlessly on Firefox.

Another issue I have had with Safari in Apple's discussions forum is the "View More" link at the bottom of each page. It just hops me back to the beginning of the same page, because of the link being (in my opinion) incorrectly 'hashed.' As you can see in this composite screenshot, the link works as it should on Firefox.

In Firefox, too, the way the discussions forum is presented is different from its presentation on Safari.

Hopefully, as I write this post, my frustrations are being answered by Apple, who (my Notification area told me) have just a little while ago released an update to Safari. A visit to the App Store confirms the update, which aims to fix issues with history sync across devices, password autofill, improves graphic performance on Retina displays and allows import of usernames and passwords from Firefox.

Although, I lost no time in installing it, unfortunately, my Safari worries are not yet over. I visited the same discussions forum, only to find the same glitches occurring.

Only time may reveal a reason behind the different functioning of the ostensible 'same' webpages on two different browsers.

The G.I.M.P (Or -- Affectionately -- GIMP)

I'm thankful to write that quite a few people have read my posts; many of them have assumed that the graphics I often include have been manipulated using a popular commercial application. To assure those who've asked, this is not the case.

I decided, therefore, to write a very brief 'how-to' featuring the open source (free) software I have been using since version 1 on Windows all those years ago. The latest version I have is 2.8.14. Yes, as I have written many times before, I'm a great believer in open source software -- especially when, in my opinion, it is almost as good as its way pricier commercial equivalents.

I'm talking, as you would have guessed, about GIMP, an acronym for "GNU Image Manipulation Program." GIMP is extremely useful for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, including my MBP and Ubuntu.

The most recent query I've received is about the 'page-curl' effect I've used with many of my graphics and so this 'how-to' is going to be about this plus the additional effect of layer-masking to achieve a transparency effect in other areas of the image, if you so desire it.

GIMP makes this really simple, with a tool named Pagecurl Effect. Just choose it, set the parameters according to your liking and -- presto! -- you have a curling page effect on whichever corner you like! You can also choose the extent of transparency you'd like to have under the curling page corner; or leave it completely opaque, if that's ok with you.

As you can see here, I've curled all four corners, just because -- well -- I can!

You can also make other areas of your image appear to fade from opaque to transparent with a little more creative effort and a couple more steps. First you need to add a Layer Mask to your image. (Naturally, you would need to first of all understand how layers work. And if you've been using commercial versions of image-manipulation software, this will be extremely easy for you.) Make sure your Layer Mask is white. Then choose the Blend Tool, ensuring that the parameter below is changed to "Foreground to Transparent." (You could play around, first, with choosing different colors for your foreground, just to see how they look. I've stuck with the olive green from my image.)

That's really all there is. Click and drag your mouse-pointer over whichever area of the image you want to appear to fade into transparency and GIMP will do the rest. You could play around with this effect by making two or three different images 'blend' into one, using the end of transparency on one and the beginning of transparency on the other. Once you've finished manipulating your image to your liking, don't forget to "Apply Layer Mask" in order to make your edits permanent.

This is my final image after all edits.

If you wish you can always go back and 'undo' anything you're not happy about, before you save your image, as there is a history of changes available in the 'Edit' menu.

Once you're done, export your image to wherever you like and you have a great "GIMPED" image!

Miracles Are All Around Us!