iPhone 11

Getting a new Smart Phone

My previous job had given me an iPhone 7 Plus because they used all Apple and were paying the bill. When CCP Virus hit, they still had my number on their plan, and so when I left, they just let me stay on it for a while. Recently they have not been doing any better, so I took back my number and wanted to take the opportunity to update my phone. I used to always get the Google released phone because I had fewer problems with them. But I now feel better about the quality of the Apple iPhone.

I spent some time looking over the iPhone 11 vs. 11 Pro Plus. The only significant difference I can see is the screen size is slightly bigger along with the display type and the extra camera on the pro. I did not feel the need to spend more on the pro, not to mention you must jump up to 256GB of storage, adding more cost. The standard iPhone 11 next to the 7 plus feel almost the same size, so I do not feel like I lost anything.

So far, the new phone works almost the same. There are a few things that I think I notice about running the OS and apps, they do seem to load or jump up faster. But with no home button, some things take more time to do, such as switch apps, or if the bedtime mode is active, I have to dismiss and then slide open past the lock.

FaceID is kind of nice because you do not have to touch anything. But it can have problems when it does not see you well, and with all the mask nonsense, it does not know who I am with a mask, and I end up putting in a code. I may be able to teach it my face with a mask, but that’s super lame.

So, I do almost feel like I did not gain much by getting a new iPhone. Yes, it has better chips and screens. The iPhones do not feel fresh in software. The camera is much better, and I want to do some more testing. We are getting to the point that most new phones do not change much. When the software is the same, it makes the problem even more noticeable. I notice the battery life, as that 4-5-year-old iPhone 7 was only saying it had 87% but was getting low at the end of the day, not leaving WiFi.

But when you move phones, the major hassles are getting apps set back up. Some require logins or restoring data. Some even store everything on the phone that is not great. Yes, you can make the move or restore from another phone option that iPhones seem to do much better than Androids. I chose to start fresh, which may not have been the best, but I do not store anything on the phone, so it worked out fast enough.

I move Android phones about every 1-2 years. Sometimes it was just the fact they would stop booting (happened to 4 different phones). But the fact the iPhone 7 is still running shows something. On Windows, I reset the OS every year or so because it gets filled with stuff that makes it slow too. It is also an excellent time to update some hardware, but not rebuild the entire thing. I had never needed to reset the iPhone. I did a reset of my iPad, but that was when the screen shattered, and it was being sent in for replacement.

The iPhone 11 will probably be updated soon, but I am ok with not the newest anymore. A few years ago, you would not see me saying iPhone seems better than Android, but I do like them now. I expect to slowly move my family over to iPhone so that things are the same as mine. I got my kids on iPads last Christmas, and they have been solid tablets for them. I am sure there will be something I did not move over right or an app I missed but not a big problem. I am happy with it. I just need to find a case I like and get the camera figured out.

Tek4.ME My New Technology Blog

A few weeks ago I quit my normal crummy job that wasn’t helping me with my goal of working with computers, technology, or the internet. I had gotten my degree as an Information System Administrator but the job market for IT workers is very hard because there aren’t that many jobs where I live, but I had a few ideas on how I can still have an income.

First I have done some service calls for a company installing Internet, and those pay good for the work, I also have some friends that has been offering to get me doing the service calls they do but in my area. Because these calls aren’t consistent I plan to do some other stuff with my time when I’m not just taking care of my kids.

So my plan is to write on my Technology and Gadget blog Tek4.ME as much as I can. It will have topics such as news about upcoming Apple, Microsoft, Google, and other Companies new products and services. The blog will also have tips and tricks for best using your technology and online services. Some of the articles already up include my Hands on Review of the Nexus 7, information on why YouTube won’t be part of iOS 6, and what’s new in Windows Essentials 2012.

Finally I would also like to start building a few websites a month; this would be things like setting up and building a site using WordPress or Drupal for any type of business or organization. If interested check out more information at Grand Junction Computers web site.

Please follow us on RSS, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook for all the updates!

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Carbonite Pop Up Ad WTH

Carbonite pop up ad
Carbonite pop up ad

What the heck Carbonite! When did Carbonite think it was a good idea to start putting pop up ads on people computers who are paying for a service already! I got your stupid email already and I didn’t want it so I didn’t sign up for this service, but now you are putting pop ups on my system. This kind of think will make people jump ship from your service real fast.

Yes I like the service and I understand you want to tell people you have other levels of service but it goes back to the days of adware and scams like that to start this crap. I was ok with the emails once in a while saying you have other services and I listen to the ads on TWiT.TV but I don’t want crap popping up on my computer.

Please stop those ads, and thanks for the service I do have I like how well it works and want to stay in my current plan!

Full Screen Borderless Half-Life 2 Steam Games

If you are like me and have two screens you end up with other things going on, on one screen while you are playing games. While playing Left 4 Dead 2 the game was crashing so someone said they used borderless full screen. So I set up Team-Fortress 2 and it is so much better to have it this way. So here is a little tutorial.

  1. In steam open your Library of games, select the game you want and right click it to open the menu and select Properties.
  2. Click on Set Launch Options
  3. Add the “-window -noborder -novid” to the box and select OK
  4. Start the game like you normally would

This should work on any game any game with the Valve Source Engine based on Half-Life 2 such as Half-Life 2 and its episodes, Team-Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Day of Defeat : Source, Counter-Strike : Source and Half-Life 2 Death Match. Now I need to see if World of Warcraft has some of the same options.

The -novid option makes it so that the Valve video and the game intro video don’t play every time you load the game.

Kinect for Windows and Microsoft’s Last Keynote from CES 2012

Steve Ballmer with Ryan Seacrest

After hearing the last keynote from Microsoft as CES 2012 I was kind of disappointed by it, they has Ryan Seacrest and he sounded like he was just reading lines and didn’t care about anything the they had to show. And Steve Ballmer was his same yelling self the only thing new that they showed was relay the Kinect for windows and it wasn’t even much more than a video of it. They mostly recapped things about products that were out or things that were known about new products such as Windows 8.

As for the Kinect for Windows it looks like it will let you do motion controls for your PC along with know where the user is. But I think this is just a gimmick like voice controls are right now, they are built in to Windows 7 and work well it is just so easy to just mouse to something and click it. Also when you want to change your thoughts to text a keyboard is so easy to use and is faster. I’m sure they will market this as a use for all kinds of things but it won’t go anywhere. Most laptops have cameras built into them and how much do they get used and if they wanted to they could see if you are waving a motion using those cameras.

Another bad thing is the price, who will pay $249 to wave at their computer, and have no real use for it. They say it will be used in medical fields and education, ya sure if they had their way, but education is having a hard enough time getting teachers to use projectors and PowerPoint let alone money to get these in schools. And how will a doctor use the system, O he doesn’t have to touch a screen that would have a image of something, most of their time would be looking at what they are working on.

It is available on Amazon.com for $249.99 and will ship February 1st 2012. And MS Press site didn’t think it was even that important to have an image of the Kinect just ol Steve and Ryan.
Amazon.com : Kinect Sensor for Windows

Handbrake Windows 7 + 8 64-Bit DVD Ripping

So if you are into getting your DVDs onto a computer for viewing on the go or just because you want to box up those disks and you can’t find the show on Netflix or what not you have heard of Handbrake for converting video files. But when working with it on Windows you had to get a program called DVD43 that would unlock your DVD so you could make a backup of the video. The only problem is that it doesn’t work in Windows 7 + 8 64-Bit or other 64-Bit Windows so what do you do?

I have found on the Handbrake forums a post that says all you need is one DLL file and you can get things going. Glyxor on the forums talks about using libdvdcss.dll from the GStreamer install to get this to work.

Here are the step by steps to get things up and running.

  1. Download (64 bit) Handbrake for Windows from http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php and Install it. Take note of the install location.
  2. Download the libdvdcss 64-Bit from VideoLan at  http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.11/win64/libdvdcss-2.dll and move it to your Handbrake install location. ( C:\Program Files\Handbrake )
  3. Rename the libdvdcss-2.dll to libdvdcss.dll in your Handbrake install folder. ( C:\Program Files\Handbrake )
  4. Start Handbrake, put in your DVD and go from there. For a good Handbrake for Windows tutorial go to https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/WindowsGuiGuide

Note: Make sure you download the Handbrake 64-bit version, and rename the DLL to libdvdcss.dll its what worked for me.

Note: Some have said you can just get the libdvdcss from http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/ I tried it with the latest version and all I got was garbage video, even tried with the name libdvdcss-2.dll and libdvdcss.dll and no luck. If you use a different version then latest let me know and I’ll give it a try. The one I have for the download dose work with the newest version of Handbrake.

Note: For MAC OS users if you have problems ripping DVDs you can also do the same trick to get it to work, just download the libdvdcss from http://download.videolan.org/libdvdcss/last/macosx/libdvdcss.2.dylib and rename it to libdvdcss.dylib and put it in the /usr/lib/

Ubuntu / Mint Linux: I have switched to Linux Mint and after installing Handbrake I was able to just make copies of some of my disks with no extra library’s I’ll list the steps below, you may also need to enable “Community-maintained free and open-source software (universe)”. Also the process may be much faster, nothing scientific but it didn’t take as long on the same system to rip a normal length movie.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install handbrake-gtk

Now you should be able to make copies of your DVDs and all should be good, if you have a newer computer it should take about 30-50 minutes a movie, it took me 34 minutes to make a backup copy of Avatar on my system so times will vary. Hope this helps this problem was making me upset because some of the other copy tools just suck and give you a slow copy that looks like garbage.


UPDATED:

12/21/2016 – I have done a little testing on Windows 10 64-bit and this wasn’t working for me, I didn’t have a lot of time to test things so you may have better results. It seems that LifeHacker.com has ripped off the entire artical from me now and nolonger link here as the source, shame on them. I also don’t post on this site but once every few months now so meh. I may look into getting this working again on Windows 10 now that I have moved over to it full time.

06/12/2014 – This should work on Windows 8 64-bit systems, but not tablets that use the ARM processes such as the Windows Surface. The libdvdcss still hasn’t been updated for Windows to the current build 1.2.13 so just keep using 1.2.11 and enjoying Handbrake.  Also I’m adding how to get Handbrake on Linux Ubuntu based systems.

11/10/2012 – Seems that the link to the for the win64 libdvdcss-2 was changed and the latest is not in the version 1.2.12 so I have fixed the link to version 1.2.11 that I have found to work on most movies. (http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.11/win64/libdvdcss-2.dll) not (http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/last/win64/libdvdcss-2.dll)

10/06/2012 – I have tested Handbrake 0.9.8 with libdvdcss 1.2.11 and was able to open an older movie (Ocean’s Twelve) and was able to get it to rip just fine, but when I tried a new movie (The Avengers) VLC (2.0.2 32-bit and 2.0.3 32-bit) crashes, Windows Media Player will open it but it is garbled (even there ads for other videos they want you to buy), and Handbrake gives an error “No Title(s) found. Not sure if this is some of the problems people are seeing but it looks like those jokers over in Hollywood are trying to screw us over again.

One note also it did play on my Xbox 360 S so they must have done something to make it work for non-computer systems. And another note after trying it on the Xbox Windows Media Player did play it without trying to load it with Handbrake or VLC.

After more playing in VLC there is a problem with the Menu (VLC Forum) you can get it to play if you check the “No disc menus” box but then you have to try and find the right Title out of 99 different ones. This error must have something to do with the buggy language menu that first plays on the disk. It also seemed to lag and skip around a bit when changing chapters once I got it playing. In Ubuntu 12.10 with VLC 2.0.3  same problem with it crashing or not loading right and being all garbled.

When looking for more on this problem you can also use this for MAC OS to get Handbrake working again by copying the libdvdcss to the /usr/lib/ directory.

05/24/2012 – Updated for full 64-Bit Handbrake

03/030/2012 – Reduced steps and added my copy of livdvdcss.dll as a zip that I know works.

OLD STEPS:

  1. Download Handbrake from http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php and install the download you go of the newest version. Take note where you installed this.
  2. Download GStreamer WinBuilds from http://code.google.com/p/ossbuild/downloads/list ( I got the newest GPL version ) and install the what you downloaded. Take note of where you installed this.
  3. In Windows Explorer go to the location GStreamer was installed ( C:\Program Files (x86)\OSSBuild\GStreamer\[version] ) then into the bin folder and find the file libdvdcss-2.dll and copy it to the clipboard.
  4. In Windows Explorer go to the location Handbrake was installed ( C:\Program Files (x86)\Handbrake ) and paste the libdvdcss-2.dll and rename it to libdvdcss.dll
  5. Start Handbrake, put in your DVD and go from there.