Silent Ringtone for the iPhone

It is unfortunate that the iPhone does not provide with the ability to block or silence some of the calls, coming from some particular phone number.
If you are anything like me, you have a desire to completely silence calls from certain people, who a crazy but are still useful to know. Just not at 2 am. And turning off your iPhone is not an option, as you'd rather be able to stay in contact with your aunt Griselle at any time of day or night, as her cookies are delicious. Delicious! So what do you do?
Simply download this small file SilentRingtone. If it does not open automatically, drag it into an open iTunes window, and it should take care of it from then on. The new ring tone should appear in the ring tone list inside the iTunes.
Assign the ringtone to any contact you'd rather not bother you using the edit function inside the Contacts app on your iPhone. When that crazy Mary calls you nothing will happen (though the iPhone's screen will light up showing the contact's name and it will vibrate if you are in the silent mode or have the vibration enabled at all the times) but no sound will be made.
Problem solved.

One of the First Images I Captured With a Digital Camera.

Big Sur, originally uploaded by dkitsov.

Image: Fern

A method to better calibrate an LCD monitor with eye-one (i1)

I am happy to report I have discovered a method for a more accurate calibration for the LCD screen (monitors, displays), using Gretag Macbeth (now an X-rite company) i1-Match series of color management solutions.

I haven't written it up yet in a nice way, but the idea is that the reference file with 49 RGB patches, while good enough for CRT calibration and a calibration with the profile creation that uses a conversion matrix, the data acquired is not enough for the LUT table method that is preferable for LCD screens.

There is a way to hack i1-Match into using reference data that contains either 99 patches (Gretag Macbeth LCD ref file) or even more if you desire. All is needed is a couple of copy paste moves and a two file renames.

Will publish it later, stay tuned.

HIgh Quality Color Profile for Epson3800/Kirkland Pro Glossy

It doesn't seem that Costco has an official support site for the Kirkland brand inkjet paper that they sell, so no color profiles are available. Never fear, The Dima is to the rescue!

Well at least for those of you that are using an Epson Stylus Pro 3800 with the Ultrachrome K3 ink-set.

I have created a custom profile using outstanding test-charts by Bill Atkinson that he provides for free to all interested parties.

I used a 1452 RGB target which was measured three times and averaged using weighted method to compensate for the possible measurement errors.

In order to use this profile successfully you must use following settings when you print out of Photoshop or any other color aware application:

• Setup a soft-proofing space as such: View>Proof Setup>Custom>Device to Simulate>EPSONKirkProGloss.icc. Chose either perceptual or relative colorimetric intent, tick the black point compensation. (You must have a calibrated and preferably profiled monitor for this to work well)
• Print your file with the following settings: Photoshop manages color. Intent that matches the one you setup in your soft-proof settings.
• In the printer driver chose custom. Use Premium SemiGloss paper setting, it will change your black to photoblacK if it's not already active.
• Under the Custom, click advanced and choose SuperPhoto 2880 as your resolution.
• Turn Off High Speed and Finest Detail.
• Printer Color Management is set to Off (No Color Adjustment)
• Click Paper Config and type 3 as a paper thickness, don't change other settings.
• Click all of the OK's and print.
• This settings are for the USA made Kirkland Professional Glossy Inkjet Photo Paper Itm./Art. 126755 and Itm./Art. 933656. sold at Costco.

Download Link

Save it in your profiles folder Windows>System32>spool>drivers>color

If you done everything right it looks amazing!

Use at you own risk. Have fun printing.

Traffic Pilot for the iPhone is in the Works

Berkeley's traffic.berkeley.edu confirmed that they are working on the iPhone version of the software, that uses the cellphones with the GPS to analyze traffic conditions. The users of this software recieve realtime traffic updates using their cellphone.
This surely will be one of the "killer" iPhone apps out there. There is a gotcha, however. The project is run with Nokia as one of the partners, so I am not sure that they would agree to release an application for a competing platform.

A Fix for DIRECTV2PC "Internet Connection is Not Available" Trouble.

So you got yourself a DirecTv box that is capable of supporting DirecTv2PC. You have installed the soft, got your activation code, but unfortunately are not able to activate the DirecTv2PC on your computer due to inability of the program to connect to the web. You were careful enough to unlock the 443 port on you router and enable it in your firewall settings, but it still won't work.


Here what you do to resolve the issue:

Locate hosts file, usually in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc.
Insert this text: 203.73.94.101 activation.cyberlink.com
Save, without changing an extension of the file.

That's it. This works beautifully on WinXP SP3.

Edit Oct 23, 2008: For the info on how to change the content of the hosts file on Vista, please follow this link to the Tim Hibbard post.