201015Oc+8221720: Leaving Korea Again Time Lapse
Leaving Korea for the second time on the limousine bus. Time lapse of part of the journey. Was too tired to continue the rest of the way.
Leaving Korea for the second time on the limousine bus. Time lapse of part of the journey. Was too tired to continue the rest of the way.
This was my contribution to the One Day on Earth project. The idea was to document anything on the 10th of October 2010 - 10.10.10. I missed Barcamp Singapore 6 to document this day in life of singapore.
I started in Changi east where you can see the planes land to the Marina Barrage where you find loads of people getting married. The unique professional kiters in Sengkang and then back to the city for the grand finale. Do leave me a note if you enjoyed the little video. Music: Waters of March - Astrud Gilberto - The Best of Two WorldsI was planning for a shoot for the One Day on Earth project on the 10th of October 2010. So I was researching into the tripod mounts that is available in the market today unfortunately I found quite a few DIY stuff but not too many ready made. I, having not enough time decided hacking one would be the last thing I would do. I ordered 2 tripod mounts on the same day in hopes that either one will arrive on time. 1 from China and the other from the US called Mosy Mount which i really like. I have half expected that it has a possibility of not arriving on time and that I have to hack one on my own. If I had to i would need to figure out one method that would work for me.
So I decided on the Soft Silicon Case with a 1/4 Inch L mount, and then making it all stick together through 1/4 inch screws withe 1/4 bolts. I couldn't find some of these materials so I had to improvise.
What i had:
1. 2 Inch Steel Corner Brace - (L Mount)
2. 6 x 1/2 inch Self Tap Screw
3. Old Thick Rubber watch strap
4. iPhone 4 Silicon Case (Easier to screw into).
What I did was loosen the thread for the L mount (Steel Corner Brace) by using a 1/4 inch Screw to fit into the mount. Did it as much time so the threads can be screwed in and our easily. This is to fit the tripod head.
Then i measured the location to drill into the silicon case that would center the iphone in portrait mode. At this point I wasn't really thinking but I should have mounted it in landscape mode. Because it's a 1/2 inch Self Tap screw it won't fit into the mount I i have to cut a piece of old watch strap which is thick enough to hold it at other end of the Self Tap screw which sandwiches the L-Mount.
After that I filed down the sharp pieces and mounted it into the Joby GorillaPod and it's sweet. I have a temporary iPhone 4 Gorilla Pad mount. Check out the pictures below :) Oh and total cost of the entire rig is SGD 16.50. It's not entirely very nice but it will do the job for me tomorrow.
I finally found why my connection does not drop when i apply the death grip on the iPhone 4. Apparently the antennagate only applies to 3G connections and like any phone the network will fall back to a GSM/EDGE network when the 3G connection fails or is low. This is an inherent Telco Grade system feature. If you are facing drop calls, it's really because you are in a dead zone.
As you can see in the video, on 3G the death grip brings the iPhone 4 from 3 bars to 1 bar, but surprisingly, I have never seen the iPhone go beyond 1 bar, switch to GSM/EDGE or No Service notification. What i found out yesterday is that when I turned off 3G going to the fall back GSM/EDGE network, i cannot apply the death grip on it. It shows full bars (Since it was like 2am in the morning i waited till this morning to do this post)
That is when I realised that like most any other phone, it is intelligent enough to keep you connected through it's cell network to keep the connection going. This is probably because it is Singapore where the cell coverage here is nationwide. You can see in the previous experiment, it does not really disable my network connections because of this - http://mikefoong.com/theitchannel-iphone-4-death-grip-experiment
Here is the video:
Ok I confess, I have been trying to kill my iPhone 4 with my Sith death grip that is worthy of Darth Vader.
I did 2 experiments just make sure that it is repeatable. I held it so tight that could literally choke some small animal to death. You can see that the iPhone signal did drop but not so much that it completely render the phone useless. Here are the videosPart 1 of the Experiment
Part 2 of the Experiment
Cheapest iPhone 4 with a Contract Plan
M1 has the cheapest for Tier 1 Pricing and with the most value. The difference is about S$130 from SingTel's Plan. All the telcos provide 100 - Minutes of Free Voice Calls. The SMS are the same at 500 free SMS for all the Telcos and so is the Broadband on all the telcos which offers 12Gb of Data. Both the 16Gb version of the iPhone 4 and the 32Gb version is the lowest in M1.
Mid-Tier Plans
They are tied between M1 and SingTel. Both the plans and pricing are exactly the same however the differentiator is that M1 provides 100 more free voice calls minutes and than SingTel, otherwise the SMS and Broadband are the same.
Free iPhone 4
You know that this is a gimmick right? The total investment that you pay eventually are about 5 times more. But if you plan to get it anyway, the cheapest is M1. It is about S$150 cheaper.
If you for some reason plan to go for a tier 3 plan. As you can see the cheapest of the 3 is SingTel. My advice is to look at your voice and SMS usage and see which is worth it for you. Inclusive of the plan I feel that Tier 2 32Gb iPhone 4 is the best value. With 12Gb of data, you don't really finish all of that per month and i have a 90% data usage on my iPhones.
There you go my quick analysis of the iPhone 4 Plans for SingTel, StarHub and M1
theITChannel Podcast has temporary migrated to mikefoong.com due to some changes and problems associated with the podcast server. So you will not be able to get it off iTunes for now until we solve the issue. For now you can listen to us here or download from this site. You can still get the audio file from matechulous.com as well. This site is hosting the file for now.
The show started with the Apple iPhone 4 and its issues, and we quickly moved on to Android, E3, Kinect and xbox 360 Slim.
Sheldon gave us a run down on how to upgrade the iPhone 3G to the new iOS 4. Listen in, and give us your comments :)
Michael
