Train videos! =) (Shot with Lumia 920)

My nephew is very keen on trains, vehicles, dinosaurs and stuff like that. Live dinosaurs are hard to find and despite the cold Finnish winter even mammoths aren't that common.. But I happen to live next to a train station so I figured I might shoot some exciting videos for him to view =) Thus, I took my Lumia 920 into freezing conditions (it was around -10 to -15 °C ) and took a few short clips of trains passing by/stopping. The last one that with train going full speed just about a meter away was actually quite an experience to myself too!

Overall I think the video quality is exceptional, very crisp and steady thanks to the optical image stabilization found on the device. The noisy hum of the full speed trains are quite well recorded as well. Check out the 1080p full HD videos on YouTube!

Wireless charging with Fatboy pillow and Lumia 920

Here's a really short video of how easy charging can be with the Nokia Lumia 920. Just lay down your phone on the pillow and it'll start charging =) Check it out on YouTube:

Nokia Lumia 920 - my new phone!

I've got a new phone again - Nokia Lumia 920! I wanted it in yellow and boy it looks hot! Had my doubts about the glossy finish, but it's really neat. It's a nice, fresh contrast to the classy, matte black Lumia 800.

This time it's not about an actual need to take up years gap of advances as it was when I switched from iPhone 3G to Windows Phone a year ago, but more of an huge interest on the new, feature-rich WP8 flagship device from Nokia. Especially the low-light camera capabilities interest me since I like taking photos and on mixed/low-light, Lumia 800 can't do squat (see sample below).

Sample comparison. From the left: Lumia 800, Lumia 920 auto settings, Lumia 920 Night Shot mode (all lights are out inside unlike in the first two shots)

In addition to the image stabilization feature, the phone has been packed with so much cool stuff - the super sensitive, high resolution screen (yes it looks amazingly sharp compared to Lumia 800), it has WP8 with more speed, power and customization + apps (I can now play Angry Birds Space and Star Wars!) ;D plus NFC and wireless charging that I haven't had time to test yet!

Based on two days testing, I can say that yes, Nokia really delivers this time and the floating lens stuff is not a gimmick! Sure, the photos taken in really dark night condition tend out to have some blur when zoomed 100% but most of the time the photos are truly remarkable.

Click on the photos below to view a gallery with more nightly photos taken with the Lumia 920!

PS. the phone is a bit bulky if you compare it to other smartphones out there, but I think this has been made into a much bigger "issue" than it really is. The size and weight really doesn't bother me at all, if anything it feels really solid and fits perfectly to hand!

PPS. Don't get me wrong, Lumia 800 is still a very solid smartphone and takes great daylight photos. Will get WP 7.8 on it when it comes out.

Lock screen wallpapers for Nokia Lumia 920

Earlier this year I posted some lock screen photos for WP7 (480x800 pixels), but now that WP8 is out I figured I should post some of the wallpapers in higher resolution. I decided to set the images in 768x1280 pixel resolution because that's what the awesome Lumia 920 is sporting.

Unfortunately, I still have to wait for my phone since Nokia is having problems delivering the devices to retailers.. even it's own flagship store in Helsinki where I pre-ordered! =/

Anyway, click on the image below to get the wallpapers from my SkyDrive!

Lumia 920 lock screen wallpaper photos

Xbox 360 Halo 4 Limited Edition

For quite some time I've considered buying a new Xbox console because the old one was quite noisy and lacking with some ports and built-in wireless. So when Halo 4 was announced Microsoft also announced a special edition Xbox 360 console to be released simultaneously with the game on November 6th 2012. As a Halo franchise fan, that was the perfect time and excuse to finally buy the new console.

Even though the Xbox Halo 4 Limited Edition console is quite expensive and everyone is expecting a totally new Xbox hardware next year (rumored to be Xbox 720 or something), I thought what the heck! It looks great and unique, ships with two cool controllers, Halo 4 bundle copy and has huge hard drive. And yes, it's very quiet. No sound at all if you've installed the game, at least. On my old Xbox 360 Elite the humming was still quite loud even when game had been installed.

So here's just a few pics of the console and controllers. It has a mechanical looking, Forerunner-ish stripes in cyan and silver and the plastic cover is transparent both on the console and the controllers. Also all the lights are blue instead of the classic Xbox green. I'll write more about my impressions of Halo 4 on another post =)

Mobile broadband vs. fiber optic connection

The past month has been very busy for me! I've got a new job as Web Designer situated in the capital city and thus I've also moved to greater Helsinki region. This is the reason for such a quiet season on my blog, sorry about that!

There's still much stuff for me to sort out around here, but finally today I got my new internet connection working. For a short period I trialed a mobile broadband, "mokkula" as we call it here. For basic web surfing it was ok, but the speeds were varying a lot and the capability to sustain multiple connections failed to impress, even despite the 4G DC (?) signal was strong all the time. I need a solid connection for average web/download use that works even if I'm playing online on Xbox.

That is why I decided to return the mokkula and found out that there is an optical fiber connection available in my apartment building. They said it's the top-notch technology, especially designed for data transfers and fast speeds. This is also the impression I had of fiber optics and a quick Speedtest.net testing gave very, very consistent speeds. Almost all tests capped steady at 10.8 Mb/s for download and 2.0 Mb/s for upload. The ping number was constantly below 10ms, which is really impressive compared to the 60-80ms I got with the mokkula!

Speedtest.net results for my new broadband (Sonera's fiber optic) internet connection.

So this was my first post from my new home =) I've got some other new gadgets I haven't tried yet - hopefully I'll manage to test and write about them soon!

The new Outlook and Skydrive

Recently Microsoft has been modernizing it's  core products in quite a fast pace. I've already talked about Windows 8, but now also Outlook.com and Skydrive.com have new, fresh and modern appearance and they're totally worth a try.

SkyDrive
 

I've used SkyDrive a lot in the past year because of the great integration with my Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. Instead of always connecting my phone to the computer to download the images, I quite often upload them to the cloud storage straight from my phone. The SkyDrive app on WP7 is pretty neat, but now that Skydrive.com has been totally modernized, I'm very pleased to use it on my computer.

The interface is very clear, simple and fits greatly to the browser window. You can easily have side panel to show extra info, or access the settings or social media share options, etc. The new SkyDrive site uses some modern HTML techniques that enables e.g. re-arranging photos with drag-and-drop gestures and uploading photos by dragging them from your desktop to the browser window, skipping the annoying "Select files to upload" type of dialogs!

One of the few things that annoy me is the fact that you can't rotate images that are already uploaded to SkyDrive. That should be fixed since sometimes the camera doesn't get the rotation of the image right, causing many portrait images rotated into landscape pics.

Outlook.com

I haven't used Hotmail much since it's always been my secondary email, but with the re-branding (to Outlook.com) I'm considering using it more than before. First of all the web email interface is better than anything else I've tried, even Gmail seems less easy to use compared to it. You can change the interface main color, reading pane position and more very easily.

One cool thing is also an extra panel that shows social media (FB, Twitter) content from the person who's email you are reading, nice! You can also chat on Facebook (also on SkyDrive) directly from Outlook.com without need to swap back to other browser tab or window. It's the same high social media integration that I've seen on Windows Phone.

Outlook.com could have many inboxes, from 3rd party services like Gmail, but I haven't tried that yet. What I did like was the option to create aliases for my old Hotmail account. The old email, macjuhruo@hotmail.com, obviously isn't the best possible, so just with few clicks I created a juho.ruohola@outlook.com alias that automatically forwards the mails to my Hotmail-account and inbox. There's still plenty of settings and stuff I haven't tried, but overall the impression of outlook.com is very positive.

Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 announced

It's been a long time posting, but Nokia announced it's new Lumia phones in NewYork last Wednesday and they're worthy of a post!

The new Lumia phones, 920 and 820 are the successors of the current models Lumia 900 and Lumia 800 (which I have). While the old models will not be upgradable but to Windows Phone 7.8, the new models will run Windows Phone 8 that brings a whole lot new features to the table and better integration with Windows 8, also released later this year. Windows Phone 8 enables the new technical features both the Lumia 920 and 820 have.

Lumia 920

Lumia 920 is definitely the new flagship phone of Nokia. It has big 4'5" screen with a lot of exciting and innovative technology, such as doubled refresh rate, super high resolution (tops the retina display of iPhone 4s), NFC and most interestingly super sensitivity that enables you to use the phone even with your gloves on! This will be great especially in winter time, one thing I cried about in my earlier blog post. Lumia 920 also features wireless charging, which sounds awesome, something I didn't expect to see in mass products for some time.

To me personally, one of the greatest improvement of Lumia 920 is the Pureview technology they're bringing in. A floating lens enables Optical Image Stabilizaion (OIS) which should allow blur-free photos in low light conditions and stabilized videos instead of shaky ones. Some of the demos from the announcement event were really impressive and promising. I like low light photography and that's basically what the coming Finnish winter has to offer anyway =)

Lumia 920 comes in bright and vibrant colors red and yellow (in addition to white, black and gray) which makes the classic Lumia design look even more tempting. I'm really looking forward on getting hands on time with this phone! You can read more about Lumia 920 on Nokia's website.

Lumia 820

Lumia 820 is a classified as mid-range phone, although by it's specs it's not a far cry from Lumia 920 and certainly it's much more powerful and fuller of new features than the current flagship phone Lumia 900! It even has removable battery and micro-SD card that some people would've liked to see in Lumia 920 as well. Where 820 lacks the most in my opinion is the design. It differs oddly from the award-winning design of the Lumia 800 and 900. Also the screen resolution is only 800x480 which is the same as with Windows Phone 7.x.

Of course, some compromises have to be done with the mid-range phones. Still, the phone has large 4'3" screen and many of the cool stuff of the Lumia 920, like wireless charging and NFC. More about Lumia 820 on Nokia's website.

Availability, price?

The new Lumia products are very cool, but the event that went down in New York could've gone better. For instance, I couldn't see the official Nokia stream until halfway into the show. Also the people who where on stage seemed lacking enthusiasm and perhaps missed some rehearsals.. Such important events for Nokia deserve a much better execution. And why didn't CEO Elop speak more? He's great on stage! And then there's the "scandal", certainly a PR nightmare, that arose when their sample video of the OIS system proved to be misleading if not totally deceitful and faked.. But the worst of all, they didn't announce any information about the pricing or availability except "Q4 in select markets". I can't believe Nokia is still doing it this way, which is killing-the-hype-and-letting-competitors-sell-the-phones -way. I met Mr Elop at the Nokia AGM last spring and the only thing I complained about to him was the huge gap between announcing a phone and getting it to the market shelves. It's really frustrating they have not managed to fix this and I am afraid it will come with a heavy price to Nokia.

All I can hope now is that they'll bring these new superb new phones on the market fast! Surely before the holiday season. And I hope this time homeland of Nokia, Finland, won't have to wait until next year.

Update:

Just as I got this post out, rumours started to appear on the web that these phones would be shipping mid-to-late November, perhaps even earlier in Europe. I hope this is true so it would hit the markets just in time for the Christmas shoppers!

Secondly, Nokia apologized the OIS video mess, then stepped up and took The Verge outdoors for a real photo session with Lumia 920 with Pureview and some competing smartphone flagships like iPhone 4S and Samsung Galaxy III to see how much Nokia's OIS improves the image quality in low light conditions.

Scotland/London/Olympics 2012

I spent the last 10 days of July in the United Kingdom with my friend, first in Scotland (Glasgow with visits to Edinburgh and the highlands) and then in London. We attended a few Olympic venues too; football in Glasgow, boxing and canoe slalom in London. I really enjoyed my time and Britain truly showed us it's hospitality.

This was my first visit to the UK, but certainly not the last! There's so much left to see in London alone. Click to see photo album from the trip. There's a mix of mobile photos (Lumia 800) in there too, including all panoramas.

I also used Photosynth quite a bit for static and interactive panoramas. Here's an interactive view from inside the Glasgow Cathedral.

Quiet Summer Time on the Blog

Me and a reindeer in Lapland Finland =)

I'm sorry for the pause in my writing to this blog. It's summer time, my favorite season of all, and I have been outdoors, on vacations and in a news block so I haven't had much to write about. I hope I haven't let my few followers down! I expect this quiet time to continue as my second part of vacation begins and hopefully summer heat will finally reach Finland at some point as well!

To give you at least something fresh to look at, here's two mobile photo albums: one from my trip to Oulanka National Park in Kuusamo and the other from a lovely summer day at my home town of Rauma. All photos were taken with my Nokia Lumia 800. Sadly, the battery died at the end of the second day in the middle of the National Park. The third day, however, was rainy so there's not much you're missing except overall gray photos and not-so-jolly hikers =)

Photos from Oulanka National Park, Kuusamo, Finland
Photos from Old Rauma (UNESCO World Heritage Site), Rauma, Finland

Have a great summer time everyone!

Microsoft, the cool kid

Windows Phone 8 start screens

The title of this post is something I could not have imagined to say just few years back. But things change, and the technology sector for sure is constantly evolving. I believe things can change dramatically either by innovation or pressure from the competition. In Microsoft's case I think both are prominent.

In the last few years Apple has been growing so fast that everyone else seems to be the underdogs now.  Despite having a small share in the PC market throughout it's history, Apple now dominates the tablet market which many think is the way of the future, "post-PC era" as it's called. Apple's innovation (and overwhelming success) in the tablet and phone market has been the major wake up call for Microsoft.

The Surface tablet from Microsoft. Drool-worthy.

I think they've gotten the message and now, and are taking big and fast moves to change their own identity. With Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and the Surface tablets Microsoft is making their debut as the cool corporation, dumbing the boring, gray old face we've all gotten used to. There is doubt over how Windows 8 will succeed on the dektop/laptop market. But for tablets, it is fantastic. And by bringing their very own tablet to the game, Microsoft clearly states they are serious about it.

So, next fall will be interesting. With Windows products as cool and elegant as Apple's, will Microsoft be able to push it big time into the tablet and phone market? Hard to tell, but when I saw the Surface tablets with their bright, vibrant keyboards/covers, stylish metal chassis and Metro tiles running on it's screen, I was WOW and basically ready to buy. Quite an achievement for Microsoft, a company a regular Apple guy like me so much loathed not so long time ago.

Photosynth and Fhotoroom for WP7

This week was interesting on the mobile photography sector as I took two phone apps into use: Photosynth and Fhotoroom. Here's a quick look into them.

Photosynth


A photosynth I took from Kirjurinluoto recreational area in Pori, Finland. It's easy to embed these synths to your own website if you don't want to give just a link.

First up is something people (using Windows Phones) have eagerly been waiting for: Microsoft's Photosynth that allows full 360° panorama images of the environment. This way you can capture everything you see around you in a way no regular photo ever could. Photosynth has been available for iPhones for quite some time, but now it's finally released for WP7 as well.

Firstly the bad news: on my phone the app seems to crash from time to time, in some occasions right after taking the photos for stitching, losing all the work I've just done. Secondly, the image resolution isn't quite as impressive I had been hoping for. The former is probably caused by bugs, we're talking about 1.0 version after all. As to image resolution, I'm not sure if it's there to stay or might it be upgraded in the future, when phones with more processing power are out.

The good news is that the stitching works surprisingly well. I've used Photosynth on an iPad 2 and that version had serious problem getting things right, but this WP7 version creates full 360 circles and stitches images impressively well. I've only taken few panoramas with it, so this is just my first impression. But none the less, Photosynth is free and you can easily share and save the picture into different places and locations. You can also autosave the image to your camera roll. Oh, and I love the Metro user interface of the app, it's very clear and simple to use.

Download Photosynth from the Windows Phone Marketplace for free

Fhotoroom

A regular photo filtered into a vibrant and tilt-shift blurred image. Some of the available Fhotoroom effects on the right.

You've probably heard about Instaram, the super-popular iPhone (and now Android) app that makes your dull photos into cute and neat little pieces of art. That app is not available for Windows Phone as of now, but that's where Fhotoroom steps in. I find it an extremely good substitute, there's a great amount of nice filters, effects, frames etc. And it's free! On top of that, the user interface looks lovely and it's easy to use throughout (can't say the same about their website..).

Fhotoroom also shows popular and recent images from the Fhotoroom users (a lot of self-posing girls, don't know what's with that =D ). You can easily choose to upload your photos to many popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, but you can just save them to your phone or directly to SkyDrive if that suits you the best.

You can get Fhotoroom from Windows Phone Marketplace for free

Windows 8 on Mac Mini

Ever since I saw the first video clips from the upcoming Windows 8 sometime in 2011 I wanted to see it live and try it myself. The Metro UI was simply looking so fresh and cool, coming from Microsoft after all! Sometime afterwards I started using Windows Phone 7.5 on HTC Radar and Nokia Lumia 800. WP7 also features Metro-styled Live Tiles and UI in many of the apps so it's pretty close to the Windows 8 Metro user interface.

Even despite Windows 8 consumer preview being available to public, for free, I had a problem: I was using a Mac instead of a PC and wasn't planning on buying a PC in the near future. It wasn't until late May 2012 when I got tipped (Thanks to @gadgetero on Twitter!) that the Win8 preview can be run on a Mac with ease, using VirtualBox virtualization software, also available for free download.

So I went and downloaded the Windows 8 consumer preview from Microsoft and VirtualBox from Oracle. I recommend to follow the instructions on OS X Daily.

Installing VirtualBox was very easy as was setting up the virtual machine and it's options. Really nice software! When I was a kid, virtual PC emulators for Mac cost a lot of money so it's cool you can nowadays get such quality stuff for free. Next up was the installation of Windows 8. It crashed during the installation once, but I think it was due to me being away from the computer (Win8 installed faster than I thought!). Despite the crash, I could finish the installation right after reboot with no further problems. Afterwards the VirtualBox Win8 always got stuck in the start up screen, but I could bypass this bug by changing the virtual machine boot order from the settings (Hard Disk as #1 boot drive).

 Windows 8 with Metro UI running on VirtualBox on my Mac Mini.

So what do I think about Windows 8 now that I've gotten the chance to try it? I think it's really great! Instead of the half-empty desktop and static icons I've used to, the Live tiles were truly alive, telling me info without opening the actual app. The ones that were immediately working for me were the E-mail and Weather (after set-up) tiles, but I can only imagine how cool it will be once all kinds of apps are built to utilize the Metro stuff to the max. Many have argued that the big tiles are not suitable for a mouse use on a big desktop computer screen, but I found them rather easy to use with a mouse too and I do love simplistic design. You can get a lot of info just looking at the tiles, plus to me it's like the quick place to launch any of my favorite apps, especially if I see there's some interesting new stuff going on in it. I don't need a gazillion icons (they tend to pile up on my desktop anyways). Of course it's not going to be an optimal start up view for everyone, but you can get to the old style Windows desktop and resource managing with one single click.

I love the vibrant colors, nice little animations and clear, fresh, neat interface Metro has to offer. Time will tell if I feel like that after months of using it, but the first impression is good! I can imagine Windows 8 will rock on a tablet since mobile devices are the ones where Metro is really meant to shine after all.

I have to admit the built-in preview apps themselves were quite buggy and crashed many times. Also my Mac Mini isn't the most powerful machine on Earth so e.g. games were so laggy they were impossible to use. But the basic Metro desktop etc. worked pretty smoothly, albeit not in full screen. But no matter if you're using a Mac or PC right now, you should give Windows 8 Consumer Preview a try, there's no complete escape from it anyway once it starts shipping later this year!

PS. thanks to @gadgetero again for the social links code on the right menu =)

Stockholm in pictures (taken with Lumia 800)

Greetings from Stockholm, the 'capital of Scandinavia'! =) Indeed, this beautiful capital of Sweden can rightfully claim to that title as it is a city with such a long and interesting history. In the 17th century it was the center of one of the most powerful empires in all Europe.

The city has a lot to offer, let it be historical sites, shopping or just the beautiful scenery - the city is located on many island in a spot where Mälaren lake connects to the Baltic Sea. If you're ever traveling there for a couple of days, you should get a Stockholm card to enjoy vast amount of museums and attractions for free! And it works as an unlimited ticket to the public transit too.

This was the one of the first times I left my DSLR camera behind when traveling as I didn't feel like carrying it around anymore and wanted to test if I could capture the memories just with my phone (Nokia Lumia 800). As a result I took over a 100 shots and put them to a gallery for all of you to view (I'll add captions later on). Most of the pics are completely unedited and the panorama shots were taken on-phone with Creative Studio, a free app available for the Lumia phones. Click the link below to view the gallery.

Stockholm travel pictures gallery

Steve Jobs biography

I'm not a bookworm sort of guy at all. In fact, I rarely read any printed material, but the official biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson was something I absolutely had to read. It took me some while to read this massive book, but it was totally worth it.

I must say the first half of the book was far more interesting than the second half. I think this is because of two things: firstly, in the beginning Steve Jobs, Wozniak, Gates and all the other legends of Silicon Valley were inventing the 21st century. It felt to me that so much more exciting stuff happened in the first decades of Apple. Second reason is that I simply remembered some of the stuff in the latter part of the book (I've been Apple user since 1991). Of course the extra details from more recent Apple history were interesting, but still, it's more about the development process of some of Apple's core products of today, rather than the birth of the characters or the tech sector as a whole.

The book didn't reveal anything extremely surprising about Jobs, I knew he was a really, REALLY difficult person. But a genius. Many mock Apple and Jobs, saying that he didn't invent anything since the technical innovations were already existing. But the book depicts well how Jobs visioned HOW the technology should be used in convenient way for the users. Perhaps the biggest news from the book for me was the bizarre diets and other obsessions Jobs had.

I am no book critic, but f you are even a bit interested in technology and IT-history, Jobs, Woz, Gates, Microsoft, Google, Apple or anything related, I think you should read this book!

Storage in the Cloud

These days when Internet connections are fast and everywhere, saving data on local hard drive is rapidly becoming obsolete. Many applications are already running on external servers rather than on the user's computer as well. It's a very fascinating scene - it gives the freedom to save data/apps in one place but use it anywhere, on multiple devices from desktop computers to phones.

"Cloud" services as such aren't entirely a new thing, however. I'd imagine e.g. Picasa Web Albums can be counted as one and I've been using it for years. But it's been a very specific service. Today, there are fully functional web-apps, vast amount of services but also plain and simple cloud storages, They've been around for some time too, but now their use among regular users are exploding, thanks to the extremely user-friendly interfaces (e.g. Dropbox) and system level integration in Mac OS X (iCloud) and upcoming Windows 8 OSes (SkyDrive).

I don't have experience from iCloud (even though I use a Mac), but I've been getting familiar with SkyDrive since I use it a lot on my phone. In fact, I am slowly moving away from physically connecting the phone to my Mac to transfer images and videos, I simply save them from my phone to my SkyDrive folders and they're safe there even if something happened to my phone. SkyDrive actually has automatic image back-up from the phone, but I don't use that (I want to trash bad pics immediately). Same functionality is in iCloud backing up your docs, apps, music, pics etc. automatically. So even if your back-up hard drive was destroyer along with your device, the stuff will still be safe on servers far away, and you can fetch the stuff back. Pretty cool!

Left: SkyDrive app on Windows Phone 7.5. Right: Dropbox icon in Mac OS X.

My version of OS X cannot run SkyDrive application so I can't tell about that, but browsing through the files and folders and uploading stuff is pretty convenient through web browser as well. Dropbox, on the other hand is fantastically integrated into OS X desktop itself, it appears as if it was a local folder. Just drag and drop files and they'll synch into cloud! Ready for you to use on different platforms whenever necessary.

So if you're thinking about getting a back-up hard drive or a new USB-memory stick, think again, they might not be necessary at all! Most of the big players in tech industry are now offering some sort of cloud storages/services, mostly for free! You should check them out.

Update: Google Drive went official today so it joins the competition of the largest Cloud storages. Engadget has put up a nice comparison table
 

Links:

SkyDrive from Microsoft
Dropbox
iCloud from Apple
Google Drive from Google

Titanic - A Night to Remember

April 14th-15th 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the tragedy of Titanic. The world's most luxurious ship sank after hitting an iceberg on it's maiden voyage taking over a thousand lives to a chilling grave. Still today, the story of the "unsinkable" ship remains perhaps the most notorius in naval history. I want to commemorate the occasion as I have always been keen on history and the Titanic disaster became familiar to me after seeing James Cameron's Titanic and reading the book "A Night to Remember"by Walter Lord.

First off I want to give big credit for Cameron and his grande movie. It is a true masterpiece of motion picture. Honestly, I didn't fancy the teen love story in it as I'm not much into romantic movies. To many, just mentioning the movie brings fanatic emotions either for or against Leonardo DiCaprio. To me, the movie was much more important as a whole than just pondering if Leo is an annoying brat or not. I think the setting is perfect for a love tragedy because there was so much tragedy altogether; the plain bad luck that the ship had, the lack of lifeboats, the class distinction and so forth. Just looking at the list of survivors tell you the sad story of how badly 3rd class passengers where treated and I think all that was well told in the movie.

I like it how the movie combines historical drama, action and even some humor. Some times the mix seems to be a little too "Hollywoodish", but mostly I think Cameron handled the story with a great respect to the real events. I must recommend reading the fantastic 1955 book "A Night to Remember" by Walter Lord. It tells the story of the Titanic based on the survivors' stories and strictly based on fact. No additional drama is needed, I might add. Titanic had real-life heroes and real-life villains (or cowards to say the least) and what I really like about the movie is how well they and their deeds are represented. I did a school study about the movie and researched the backgrounds of the people in the small side roles in the movie and they are very recognizable, they even look like their real-life models!

So if you are planning on going to see the Titanic 3D version or just play it from your old DVD, read the book first! It makes the movie much more interesting and (if possible) even more tragic as you know that some of the good people in the movie were real and did their best till the very end.

I recently read how James Cameron changed the starry sky in the movie to match the actual sky on that fateful night at the place of the sinking after having a note from astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. I think that just shows what kind of a perfectionist Cameron was with this movie project. No regular viewer will even notice the stars have changed places, but as a gesture it's awesome.

May the story of Titanic live on, it truly is a night to remember. Safe journeys.

Image: Paramount Pictures/AP Photo

Lumia 800 software update rolling out

As I'm writing this post, the much awaited software update (version 1600.2487.8107.12070) for Nokia Lumia 800 is being installed on my phone. The update should significantly improve the battery performance and it also includes some usability improvements and fixed bass audio levels.

Update instructions can be found from Nokia's Lumia 800 Software Update page. The availability page there is also pretty neat, now I know for certainty that my Lumia 800 is a German Country Variant 059L7F7 (I bought it from Amazon Germany unlocked) =)

More background information about the update procedure itself at can be read at Nokia Conversations.

The battery has drained out quite quickly before now, which is why I previously posted some battery saving tips. Extra battery life is most welcome, but I'm still more anxiously waiting for the future updates that should be on their way, including camera software fixes + tethering support.

6609 games later - Halo: Reach

Wohooo! On Friday 23 March 2012 I finally reached the max rank of Inheritor in Halo: Reach, after a whopping 6609 games! =D Reward: the haunted helmet. Price: weeks and weeks of time sacrificed for the cause. Since the game has played a big role in my life for the last years I figured achieving the max rank was worth a little sparkling wine!

Becoming Inheritor doesn't actually mean I'd be among the top skilled players, not at all. If anything it only tells that I've spent ALOT of time playing the game =) I can honestly say I'm only about average+ player by my skills, perhaps party because of my playing style - I just want to rush into battle (foolishly) and have fun instead of hiding in distance and sniping the enemy players.

Reaching the end of the line is something I never believed I could achieve when I started playing the game over 1,5 years ago. But now I'm there, the journey is finished and new challenges await - not in Halo: Reach, but in Halo 4 that is coming out later this year. Looking forward to that!

Thank you Bungie and 343 Industries for the great moments I've had over the thousands and thousands of games played!

If you're interested, you can see my Halo: Reach stats page

Tracking ships, planes and satellites!

It's inspiring to live in a world where technology and the internet have revolutionized the easiness of sharing information - and made vast amount of knowledge available to everyone. There's actually so much information that quite a bunch of it is totally useless too. But even useless stuff can be cool and that's what this post is about.

Have you ever wondered where that big jet flying in the skies high above you is actually heading? It's possible to find out with Flightradar24.com! It's kind of amazing that an average Joe is able to track all the flights and see their real-time position on the map. For years, I've suspected that an intercontinental route is going just above my hometown of Rauma, and checking out Flightradar a couple of times has proven that - there's planes going from especially Japan, Dubai to USA. So, check out the site and watch the skies from a new perspective =)

  People suffering from lost sense of balance and vomiting, must be the Baltic Sea...
or Tallink Silja ferries!

But it doesn't end there! If your friends are on a ship, say, like the "Swedish ferries" going from Turku and Helsinki to Stockholm, you can stalk the exact locations of their party boat. Or, if you're about to head out to enjoy the archipelago, you just might as well check out if the big ships are going to pass you by for a nice photo shoot! Track the ships with Marinetraffic.com

And finally, you can even track the satellites orbiting the Earth! For a reasonable, satellite specific tracking you can check out www.n2yo.com. If you want to to see all of the satellites, you can check out Google Earth Blog page that utilizes the 3D map view familiar from Google Earh. It tracks 13 000 satellites! Makes you wonder how many big brothers are there, watching down upon us? =D

Creative Studio for Nokia Lumia phones

Nokia recently released Creative Studio, a simple yet very useful image capturing and editing tool for the Lumia Windows Phones. And it's free! Here is a quick look into it.

The app features a basic set of effects and editing capabilities, both for new pictures or pictures from your image albums. To me, however, the most precious feature is the panorama shooting mode that enables you easily to stitch four photos into a single panorama image. It's really fast and easy to use plus it's quite accurate (assuming the gyroscope sensor in your phone is ok).

Another cool feature of Creative Studio is the possibility to preview "face warp" and "live styles" effects on your phone's screen while pointing the camera on your desired target. Then, if you like what you see, just tap on the screen or the press the camera button to capture an image.

Taking photos is basically lag-free, even when taking the panorama shots. After you've taken a photo, in either regular mode, panorama mode or some of the live styles, you can choose to further edit the picture and repeat editing as many times as you see fit. You can also compare "before and after" before applying the effects. Only after you're done editing and hit Save, the effects are applied to full size images and it takes a few seconds.

Here's a few sample photos taken and edited with Creative Studio:

If you have a Nokia Lumia phone, you can (and should!) download Creative Studio from the Windows Phone Marketplace. It sort of combines different apps you might be using at the moment (image editing apps / panorama apps) and it definitely will be my #1 photo shooting app for the time being.

End note: One thing I've been dreaming about since I got my Lumia 800 is a panorama feature built-in with the actual camera app of the phone (like it was featured in HTC Radar). Now I've got a good panorama mode but in separate app. Luckily, the camera wizard at Nokia, Damian Dinning, has confirmed that a panorama feature is coming as a built-in feature in the near future so I really look forward to that too!