My son told me I had to see Inception. He did again last night. I rarely go to movies. I’m not a big fan of crowds and people kicking my chair the whole movie. But last night no chair kicking. My kudos to the movie theater Gods. I went early to pick up tickets and then went for a snack/drink. Getting to the theater 15 minutes ahead left us in some neck wrenching seats. Enough bitching and on to the movie.

Did the Dreidel drop? OK maybe its not exactly one of those. But this is one of those movies you might think about the next day in the shower. Or a few days later. Or right now as I’m writing this.  It’s like your frigin life summed up in a few levels (four) of madness. It questions what is reality and what is not. It reaches into your past relationships and present ones. Planting that seed. Did it happen in a dream. Or is this a dream. This every day morbidity of life. This is like the next version of the Matrix. Are we are really hooked up to something that we can’t explain or get out of its way.

15 minutes before the movie I was warned to pay close attention. Like I needed more work after a head banging day with the bytes and bits that never work. Great job by Nolan on this film. It’s starting to be like the modern day Ground Hog day for me.

Please kick my chair when done.

As I mentioned before  besides iPad and IPhone Stencils and SketchBooks I spend most of my day frustratingly writing large ATE RF test sytems that test radios. (Cell phones fall into that category).

So this blog from Aaron Swartz bring up an excellent point. Bars suck at telling us the real signal strength. dBm would be better. How about an App for that! Give us SNR, Gain, Noise figure, Group Delay, Passband. I’m sure I could come up with a few more.  An App would tell us exactly what is going on when you Death grip this masterpiece.

That info for doing that App is of course not available to developers. And Stevie-poo would never let that one past. Pigs will fly first.

On a related note. It looks like Apple certainly has impressive RF testing capability. Did most people know what an anechoic chamber was until yesterday? The “3 hour” tour some press members were given of the labs was interesting on a number of levels. Letting them inside the hallowed gates was startling. Then showing them so much. Yes they are doing their due diligence. For a company that didn’t make their first cell phone until a few years ago they really have the digs. I think I’ll send my resume out there….

I know I’ve had the iPhone 4 for a short long while now, but today I did my first FaceTime with someone. I have to say it is pretty cool. I didn’t think I would be that impressed, but they might be on to something here. It’s just fun. What made it funnier is that I did it with someone from the MIS department of one of my clients and it seemed the whole department got into the action. Besides a few inappropriate gestures and placement of the camera by to be unnamed individuals it was a unique new experience.

I answered the call and had forgotten to turn WIFI on. So once I did that it started fine. Otherwise you get an error message. The only hitch we had was that I could not see the callers camera flip. It just showed a frozen screen of his last front facing camera image. He could see my camera flip just fine.

So cool on you Apple. I’m interested to see how open this is and thinking of “product” as always.

As I approach 5000 Twitter followers I can only wonder. Don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate everyone that has followed me. I’m really aiming to find fellow software technologists and developers and have them in on the conversation.  But I’m not sure my automated methodology has really created that environment?

So I’m contemplating an experiment. Let’s call it a scorched earth experiment. Or would it be a neutron bomb approach? I’m thinking about deleting (the over 5000) folks I’m following and after seeing how many will stay with me. I’m sure the experiment has been performed before. Will the cream of the crop be left or will I just be fool for not keeping “numbers”?

What do you think?

Many do not know, but I am and have been heavily involved in the Test and Measurement Software business. This involves writing software for the design, verification, and manufacturing of radio devices like cell phones. I know you probably know me as the guy who created the iPhone Sketch Book and the iPhone/iPad Stencil, but Kapsoft is a consulting firm dedicated to the Test and Measurement Business. I have worked for over 30 years designing software (mostly .NET C# based systems). Even today I’m writing a very large system for Hardware Integration Testing for a large client that is involved with developing GSM and 4G radios.

So what do I think of the latest iPhone 4 admission by Apple? SNR is the key (first) test we run on any RF or Antenna System. SNR is the ratio of Power to Noise. Less noise – more power – more bars. So let me get to the point. If you give a monkey a nose job what do you end up with? Right. A monkey with a nose job. So a more meaningful metric is the SNR number itself – not some arbitrary translation to a bar graph that has too few increments. What they really said is the “network” is not as good as we first lead you to believe.

I still love this frigin thing. Bottom line.

It crossed my mind the other day that at the Keynote (WWDC) Steve Jobs actually brought up pics of the Bumper cases and talked about them briefly. At the time I thought it a bit odd he was pushing these cases. Did he know something we didn’t know yet?

Looking forward to seeing it in magazine. (Ok, I wasn’t the oldest guy at WWDC. Trust me).

[First Thoughts]

The phone is syncing right now. Seems to be happening faster then last few times.  I first am always amazed by the packaging. Simple and brilliant as always. After all thats the first customer experience - opening the box. No wasted paper as the box seems to be suspended in air inside the outer box.  The phone is thin. Very thin. It’s a little dauntingly thin. But seems solid and even lighter (but we know it weighs the same).

[Update]

Feeling a little nervous with the phone bareback, so I went to Ardmore PA Apple store looking for a case. I was kind of suprised (maybe I should not have been) to see about 6 people waiting in line already for tomorrow’s actual release event of phone. I was informed that no cases would be available until tomorrow at earliest “until the phone was released”. I pulled the phone from my pocket and said “what do you mean its already out”.  The nice Apple employee laughed and said he didn’t want to see one until he can get one. I proceeded outside to take a picture (this was my first pic with the new phone). It seemed to go through some initialization before the camera would come up. The first guy in line immediately recognized I had the “4″ and started screaming “there it is!”. I almost caused a riot in this sedate community.

Here is my first movie. I call it sausage smoking hot.

iPhone 4 first video

I feel like I got squeezed into a phone both. I guess that 720P doesn’t play well on Youtube.

[Update 2]

I’m trying to find a Case fast for the phone. I’m not liking the bare back. (Tiger Woods I’m not.) Looks like Bumper Cases would take a few days. No quick solution in sight. I’ll give iMovie a whirl and report on that. So far all all well with phone. I looked hard at trying to find the yellow pee stains reported. After a while I was seeing yellow spots on everything I looked at including my walls. I don’t think I have that malady but my eyesight is so bad its anyones guess. At an outside bar last night and had a guy spot it from across the bar. People are excited. My girlfriend doesn’t get why. “Its just a phone!”

[Update 3]

Note to Google Voice users. You must initiate the startup activation to the phone again since your forwarding to the new phone is disable. Go to Google Voice Website and hit the activate link next to forwarded phone number. A pop up with instructions is display that has you call a number from the phone. and then all is well.

It is always a pain getting all the passwords back into the phone. Interesting the Facebook and Foursquare carried over passwords. I’m not going to claim to know how that works. But all the email account passwords must be reentered. Also my  Twitter Birdfeed client seems to rendered useless. Brizzly (new one that is free) from acquiring company does not work either. It will not log into Twitter. Must be OS4 thing. Oh well. Switched to TweetDeck.

At 2PM there was still a line at Ardmore Apple store. No I’m not stalking it. But I do go over there to buy food nearby many times a week.

I don’t have the yellow stain on my phone. Rumor is that is will go away. FM.  I do see the bars issue with my hand. Someone thinks thats a software bug and calls are still better with the 4.

[Update 4]

Did have a call cut off which seemed to be from handling the phone. The Haters I know are really getting on me about the problem. Especially the Android lovers at one of my clients. Apple should give out bumper cases. A check at the store yesterday revealed they did not have any. I need a case around this thing fast. I broke a 3g pretty easy.

[Update 5]

Apple’s Bumper case has been found.  But problem found today with my Griffin car charger does not fit (go all the way in) with Bumper on . Need to slip condom off to charge. Pity. I’m assuming other 30 pins connector things with male plugs might have clearance issues.

Waiting on the FedEx man. Hope they deliver it to the right door. They have been known to screw up that way in the past. In any event I’ll do my usual unboxing pics and review. Why not. It’s like Xmas.