Category: Toys & Tech

iPad 2 Camera vs. Kodak DC120 (2011 Apple tech vs. 1997 SOA tech)

The Kodak DC120 was the first megapixel camera I owned. I got it back in 1998 or so and maybe sprung for an enormous 4Mb compact flash card as well, to add to the industry-leading 2Mb internal memory in the camera (enough to store 2 whole photos in RAW mode, but they didn’t call it RAW yet, it was simply described as uncompressed).

After I posted about the iPad 2 yesterday and decided against pitting its hapless camera against the one on my phone, I realized that I might have photos in my archives with which the iPad2’s test photo could be compared. My digicam archives go back to 1998, spanning those years with shots from different models of Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony, Ricoh, Sanyo, Kyocera, Panasonic, Fuji, Casio, Toshiba, Leica (!!), and numerous spotty models of indeterminate Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean manufacture (I even have shots from a camera that apparently embedded a paid porn site URL in the EXIF data — can’t figure out who’s camera it was, though). All of these cameras proved to be more capable than the iPad 2’s camera(s). Finally, browsing through some shots with the Kodak DC120 that Nam took in Yasothon Province, Thailand, during the annual banfai rocket festival, back in 1999, I found some comparable shots taken on an overcast day. Here’s one:

Cropped image at 1:1

 

The iPad 2 photos from yesterday’s post:

Cropped image at 1:1

Aside from the lighting, I think the state of the art digital camera from 1997 actually stands up fairly well with the best-selling tablet computer* of today.

*Apple says it isn’t a tablet computer (“It’s not a tablet, it’s iPad 2″), so maybe we can classify it as a “touchscreen-operated computing device with highly-intuitive software and two shitty cameras pointing both front and rear for all your shitty photography needs (although it’s not made for taking photos).”

Apple iPad 2 Camera Review

In a thousand words:

The small size of this thumbnail hides the poor quality of the image at its true resolution. You can click the image above to see that, too, but just in case you’re too lazy:

Cropped image at 1:1

I was actually going to post a comparison photo from my HTC Desire HD, but I didn’t realize that the whole world already knows about this issue. The sad thing is, this is the higher spec camera of the two on the iPad2. And the best response I saw from a fanboy on an Apple forum said something about this device not being made for taking photos. It has two cameras that takes stills, yo — it is made for taking photos.

On the other hand, the camera on the iPhone seems very good — I’ll see a friend who has one tomorrow, so maybe I’ll test it out against my Desire HD.

Installing Thai fonts on a Samsung Galaxy 5 i5503 (custom Froyo ROM)

Above: An example of something that didn't work.

Notes: I am writing this guide from memory and it shouldn’t be considered definitive (or even accurate, ha ha). Also, I get this sort of stuff done with heavy googling and then lots of trial and error, an approach that often ends in tears. It happened to work for me this time, but only after trying several different approaches and tools. It might not work for you and I accept no responsibility for that or what it might entail: Worst case, you might brick your phone.

That being said, it has made the Galaxy 5 one of the best values currently on the Thai smartphone market – cheap (about 5,000 Baht new last time I checked), fast, and installable with almost any app.

Credit where credit is due: The majority of the Thai font install procedure below was adapted from NexusOneHacks.net.

One last thing, is it truly necessary to flash your firmware in order to install the fonts? Maybe not, but it was for me. I was previously using firmware I5500LUYJP2 from this page. I tried the same font installation procedure described below and it did not work until I tried different firmware..

—————-

1. Download firmware and follow the Flashing Instructions on this page: MAD ROM 2.3 Extreme App2SD Edition. If you don’t know how to use ODIN, etc., this guide can help you (just remember to use the firmware you just downloaded instead of the one linked in the guide).

2. After setup is complete, root your phone with Universal Androot (I’ve found that often the first try isn’t successful. Just try again.)

3. Next, install Terminal Emulator on your Galaxy 5.

4. Since Froyo lacks copy functionality from shell (for whatever stupid reason), you need to install busybox. Click this link to download busybox. Then copy it into the root directory of your SD card.

5. Make a new directory in the root of your SD card and name it font. Download this zip file, which contains the Droid Sans font files with Thai support. Unzip it, and copy all the .ttf files into the font directory you made.

6. Open Terminal Emulator on your phone, type each line below (without the $ or # symbols that are there to indicate a new line as shown in the application) and press the enter key.

$ su

Note: This command should open a prompt that asks if you want to grant Superuser privileges to the Terminal Emulator application. Click yes. After this point, the $ symbol before each new command should automatically change to a # symbol. This indicates superuser status.

# mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock4 /system

# mkdir /data/busybox

# cat /sdcard/busybox > /data/busybox/busybox

# chmod 755 /data/busybox/busybox

# mkdir /data/local

# cd /data/busybox

# ./busybox –install
(That’s 2 dashes before install!!!)

# cp /sdcard/font/* /system/fonts

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The fourth line from the bottom with the mkdir command probably isn’t necessary, but even if it isn’t, it will just return a harmless error. Also, the busybox install returned a bunch of errors for me, but seemed to work out in the end.

Tiger Joker 120S

Since my Crown is being worked on for another month or so, I really needed to find a cheap motorcycle. It took some looking (thx Yon) and trying (thx Matt) and bargaining (thx Nam), but I finally found the perfect ride for my needs, for which there is a serious lack of information on the net.

The ride I picked up was manufactured by Tiger Motor Company of Thailand (website is hosed as of writing this). The Model is the Joker 120S. I have no idea what the S stands for, or what the different grades were. It’s a 120cc carbureted 4-stroke, front disc – rear drum, four speed autoclutch, extremely ugly bike that I would have hated to buy new, but I picked it up for a good price used. The equivalent Honda or Yamaha would have cost three times as much (Honda is the only overvalued brand of both cars and motorcycles in Thailand; for cars it shares company with Toyota and Isuzu in this regard, and with motorcycles, Yamaha). Plus, I fell in love with its Mad Maxed muffler ( I call it a ghetto supertrapp) and getthefuckouttamyway exhaust pitch.

Of course, the trade off for not buying Japanese is that the electronics are Chinese-inspired level cheesy and most were probably broken beyond repair a couple months after it rolled out of the dealer. So I have to do without an electric starter and fuel indicator, which isn’t a big deal.

The big plus is that this bike has loads of torque, which I’m going to attempt to convert to power with an after-market rear sprocket. Anyway, here’s a few photos of this increasingly rare motorbike, which surely looks better slighty rusted and beat up than it did new:

YouTube iframe embedding

It seems that the new way of embedding YouTube videos is really slow to render when you have multiple videos on a single page. Offhand, I can’t remember tweaking anything else that would cause this blog to be loading in segments like this. The thing is, I don’t really have time to test it now, so I guess I’ll just refrain from posting so many vids for a while and let the ones below fall off the front page.