Check the rest out on the Flickr photoset

Find the rest at the Italy flickr photoset

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the London Facebook Developer Garage hackathon, a roughly 8 hour event where people hack on ideas that incorporate Facebook API hooks to showcase the power of developers and the Facebook platform.

In short, it was an amazing time and something I think every person who studies a Computer Science based degree should do; just to socialise, meet the Facebook developers who build amazing things and learn from the guys who are developing these APIs to scale on huge loads.

I went as part of the Rummble team, which we worked on a very cool friends sourcing application that will be launching very soon. We were chosen as one of the final three by Ethan, Mark Z, and Mike from Facebook to present the next day at the European press conference. Very cool.



I got a chance to meet all the great people from Facebook; Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Vernal (manager of FB Platform), Ethan Beard (Director of the Facebook Developer Network), and Julia Lam (Developer Marketing at Facebook). Mark Zuckerberg is one of the friendliest people I have ever met and is a great person to talk with in a small group, he continues to have big ideas (only with others in the company) on how to empower every day people to stay connected and informed about their social graph.

Facebook is a platform that allows other developers to reduce the friction in registration and profile creation for every day users. With the Graph API as developers we can use Facebook as a base to enable users to instantly start using our products by pulling in profile and likes information to create a better user experience (and reduce the friction of the user creating another account).

The cool people at STA Travel are compiling a collection of things to in Western Australia, so in short here are some of the places I do enjoy to visit in Perth.

Sculpture by the sea

Every year (4- 23 March) Cottesloe Beach is scattered with amazing sculptures ranging in all types; from strange to amazing and from small and scattered to art you can walk around in. Best enjoyed at night while eating your fish and chips for dinner by the sea. Website

Blue Water Grill

While Blue Water Grill is a little on the expensive side (though probably cheap if you are coming from the UK), but given that you can enjoy an amazing steak while overlooking the Swan River it’s definitely worth the price; once again especially in summer. Website

Ocean Beach Hotel

The Ocean Beach Hotel is a great place during summer to sit by the window and enjoy one of their fantastic steak sandwiches for lunch. This isn’t no ordinary sandwich but truly a magical creation you can only appreciate in person. Website

The Moon Cafe

The Moon Cafe is a cool little cafe tucked away near the Perth city. Serving anything from pizzas to burgers to Vanilla + Coke (not the way you’d imagine), definitely a place to check out if you enjoy eating at 1AM or somewhere with very cool couches. Website

Chelsea Pizza

Chelease Pizza Co. is one of my favourite pizza places in Perth for cheap but amazingly delicious pizza, which you can take away or enjoy it in house with a beer or wine.

The country (outback)

I must admit I have taken the outback for granted but it is quite a relaxing place. No traffic lights and usually great beaches if you stick to places by the coast such as Dunsborough, Albany, and Margaret River.

If you are near the Dunsborough area you must visit the Duckstein Brewery just an amazing place to have lunch situated in the best location.

Outdoor cinemas

Outdoor cinemas fall into two categories, the festival/special (but still inexpensive) outdoor cinemas such as Burswood Outdoor Cinema and the Kings Park Outdoor Cinema. But if you happen to hire a four wheel drive (or SUV/wagon) you could check out the cliche but sometimes cool drive in cinemas such as the Galaxy Drive In

EnjoyPerth!

A cool little website, EnjoyPerth! covers what’s going on in Perth

Six Thousand

Six Thousand is a neat blog covering the culture of Perth and something the things you miss when just roaming the streets of Perth.

This is certainly not news, I understand the Sunday Times is owned by News Corp which also owns The Sun. But really, who cares?

Here’s a quick guide which will allow you to play movies (MP4) off a usb stick, effectively eliminating the 16/32/64GB limit of your iPad and reducing your pain after realising that you should of gone for the 32GB.

You are going to need the iPad Camera Connector Kit for plugging the USB stick (NOT a usb drive) into the iPad.

In short we are doing the following

• Jailbreaking the iPad
• Installing iFile from Cydia
• Browsing the usb stick from /var/mnt/mount1

Jailbreak the iPad

Jailbreaking is the process of unlocking your iPad to run applications and tasks that are locked away by default; while you won’t notice much of the difference it enables special iPad apps to do more exciting stuff (like play Nintendo 64)

We will need to download the SpiritJB application (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux) from http://spiritjb.com

Once you have downloaded the application, connect your iPad and launch the SpiritJB application.

Hit Jailbreak. Your iPad will reboot, show a loading bar and then return to normal. And that’s it; you have a jailbroken iPad

Installing iFile from Cydia

Thanks to Carsten Heinelt for making such a cool app.

For those of you not familiar with jailbreaking, Cydia is the App Store for jailbreak applications. Locate it in your home screen and launch it.

If prompted for selecting a filter, click the first option. After which you should see the Cydia front page, click on the Search button at the bottom.

In the search bar at the top enter in the term “iFile”, once you see it appear in the results tap it.

You should see the app page, tap the Install button in the top right hand corner.

And once again confirm the install in the top right hand corner. The screen will go into a black state while the install is in progress.

After the install is complete you should see the Return to Cydia button at the bottom.

Now close Cydia, we are done here.

Using iFile to browse the usb stick

Locate iFile in your home screen and launch it.

You should be sitting a listing called mobile, now go back one by going to the “var” button in the top left corner.

Ensure you are now at the var listing.

Now plug in your USB stick, wait a bit and then clear the message saying your device is supported. Don’t worry, it is!

Locate the item called mnt in the var listing and tap to open it.

You should see only one folder, called mount1. Tap to open it.

You should now see the contents of your USB stick, feel free to browse around and locate your MP4 video files. Tap on your video file to load it.

The video now plays like a normal iPad video.

There you have it, how to get video files onto your iPad when you are hitting the storage limit!

If you have any questions or comments, just leave a comment below!

Check out the rest of the photos here.

It seems that people can’t take a joke any more and seem to believe everything they see on the Internet now or they are just too stupid to notice when someone is joking. Take this example with the fake BP twitter profile.

Noticed how Microsoft is the first to usually build something new, but it takes another company to show them how build something that both works and is marketable to consumers?

The Tablet PC
Trumpeted by Bill Gates as a device that allowed you to interact with your computer in a more personal way. But you needed to use a pen, a pen that made you look like you belonged in the Stock Exchange or on some SciFi show; who would be impressed if you whipped that out in public? And then it ran bog standard Windows, so you had to use a pen to navigate Windows’ various small menus, hardly an enjoyable experience.

Then Apple came along with the iPad. It was sexy, small and you didn’t need a lame pen to use it; you used a finger. And now Apple will sell more iPads in one year than Microsoft sold in the last five years.

WebTV (1995)
Originally a standalone company and then bought by Microsoft and later rebranded as MSN TV (because when you put MSN in front of the name it instantly becomes popular…..). It was supposed to bring the Web and TV together but in the late 90s the web and the TV were too separate thing: one for documents and the other for entertainment.

Now Google has thrown a lot of weight and big name partners behind Google TV

Pocket PC
Supposed to be the computer in a pocket, this squeezed-scaled-down bulky Windows computer in your pocket only attracted the same people that would enjoy a Tablet PC; so yes people don’t forget to whip out those pens in public when you need to call someone or respond to a text message. One again Microsoft stuck with the scaled down Windows experience where buttons are the size of a pin and you need reading glasses to use your phone.

So it then takes Apple (BlackBerry as well and more recently Google) to show Microsoft how people deserve to use their mobile devices; like real people. Now Microsoft has backtracked and taken a new radical approach to mobile devices.


It seems Microsoft is still the Microsoft that just builds Windows and Office (oh and Xbox….)

Supposedly in Canada during the 1980s it was okay to creep out both your viewers and the guests of your show.

Even if you “hate” Coldplay, you may find this version by Rhythms Del Mundo (Buena Vista Social Club) to be one cool song. Just a great song to chillout to.

For those you want to buy, you can grab it off Amazon

Adobe has recently begun a campaign to convince Apple to add Flash to their suite of mobile devices, with the title of the campaign:



I call crap, Adobe doesn’t love HTML5 and they don’t love Apple. They love making money, who doesn’t? Adobe wants their money making Flash platform on all devices and with the iPad pushing the future of the open web (a web without Flash) Adobe can see their dominance dropping; they are scared and are hoping the public can be on their side do their job by holding Apple to ransom and bundling in Flash.

Why should Apple, who pumped millions of dollars into the R&D of this device have to open up a platform that they created? Apple built the device fair and square and should have every right to determine what goes on their device.
Why should Adobe expect special treatment and have Flash installed (at Apple’s expense through Adobe’s licensing) on the iPhone platform?
Do we see Sun Microsystems/Oracle or Microsoft running immature advertisements whining about getting a date for the prom?

And why should Apple be open if Adobe isn’t going to be open? Flash may be part of the Open Screen Alliance but the Flash specification is still not entirely open, Adobe still controls Flash. Clearly a case of the kettle calling the pot black.

Apple are exercising their own freedom, the freedom to not let Adobe continue their division of the web. A web that currently requires more than just a browser to watch video content.

As with all things in the animal kingdom, things evolve and it looks like YouTube commenters have evolved into the creation of very intelligent Facebook groups.

So far, my favourite place on Earth. I love tall buildings, inner city living and being able to walk to anywhere. Check out the rest of the photos at the flickr. photoset

I don’t care what I have to do, I am going to live there.

Welcome to callumj.com

This Internet page is where I throw up interesting things I’ve come across. No long descriptions or super essay blog posts, just the meaty bits.