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Upgrading my Apple AirPort Extreme 

I purchased a new Apple AirPort Extreme this week. The idea is to move the old one into the end room recently decorated, which together with the two AirPort Expresses, covering my office and master bedroom would cover the whole house. 

As I often am with Apple I was very surprised at the ease at which things went. 

I plugged in and the AirPort Utility on the Mac discovered the new device and gave me three options. 

  • Migrate setting from Existing AirPort Extreme and replace
  • Add to existing network
  • Setup as a new network

I took the first option and after a few minutes it prompted me to transfer the cables from the external harddisk and BT router from the old AirPort to the new. This I did and after a few minutes everything was back up and running on the new device. 

I then ran the wizard and added the old Airport in to the existing network as a wireless extender. Once setup I unplugged the old AirPort and plugged it into the room. 

Easy. 

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On line Storage – in the Cloud

Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google, Adobe Creative cloud and of course Apple’s iCloud; not to mention all the other third party smaller solutions.

Currently I have 2.8 Gb of free dropbox, 5 GB free iCloud and 20 GB of Creative Cloud, but none of this is good enough for hosting current projects and keeping my five star images safe on line.

I have started to look again at online solutions as last week I had two disk fails, one hosting a current Wedding photographs I was editing and another hosting my live Master Lightroom library.

Now lucky I lost nothing, I always try and keep at least three backups at home and one off site but I was worried for a while.

Maintaining off site backups is a pain and there generally about a month out of date so I am sure you can see why I have started to look at online ‘cloud’ backups again.

Now usually these things are quite straight forward, if your a Microsoft user and/or MS Office users Microsoft’s OneDrive is the one to go for.  Google is fine if you trust them with your images but they are out to make money out of your by targeted advertising, possibly not for storing a clients images on.

As an Apple user then you may think I would suggest that, well up to this week that would have been a no, they were too expensive but with this weeks price drop they are now only a couple of pounds a year dearer then Dropbox with the new iDriveApp for the iPhone it may become an option but currently for me Dropbox is at the top of my list.

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iOS 9 is out

Well its out and on the whole for a maintenance release I am quite pleased, some nice improvements and it seems to be working fine on our iPad2 and iPhone6.

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What I am not happy is about is the update of our iPhone5.  I basically hung at the slide to continue screen.  No matter what I did, reboots restores etc, nothing could get it working except to setup as a new phone, not something I wanted to do.

Apple have suggested a fix on their support site but it did not work for me.

In the end the fix was to download iOS 8 and restore that then restore the data.  So now I am back to OS8 on the iPhone5 until Apple come up with a fix.

Instructions from https://www.reddit.com/r/ios9/comments/3l7nt8/slide_to_upgrade_freeze_iphone_5c/

To go back:

Step 1 – Backup your pictures! Even though you can’t get to your phone and use it you should still be able to backup your pictures

Step 2 – Download IOS 8.4.1 for your iPhone or iPad from this site –> https://ipsw.me/8.4.1

If you are confused which file to download check the model on back of your phone and use site below to determine the version you need.

https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Models

The file was taking a while to download for my phone so I searched the filename on Google and downloaded from Mega.

Step 3 – Reboot phone into DFU mode – hold down power button and home button – when it reboots let go of power button – still hold home button

At this point it will ask you to connect your phone to iTunes – will have to connect phone to the computer.

Step 4 – Hold down the Option (Mac) or Shift (Windows) and and then click restore.

Step 5 – Browse to the 8.4.1 file you downloaded and select it. This should restore to the previous IOS version. Note: This will wipe phone.

Step 6 – Restore from backup. Hope that you backed up before attempting to update.

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Apple Pay Comes to a few more UK Banks

  I see that HSBC Halifax Group cards are now working with ApplePay.  We are now less then a day away from the release of OS 9 so the banks have taken a year before the majority of UK customers can use Apple Pay and we still have some of the big players like Barclays holding out. 

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Ilford get bought out

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There are not many film manufacturers left. Ilford in the UK, Kodak in the USA and Fuji of Japan are basically all that’s left for traditional silver photography.

Not sure if I should worry or not but Harman the parent company for Iford has been bought.

14th September 2015

HARMAN technology, manufacturers of the famous ILFORD Photo range of Monochrome Photographic products, have been purchased by Pemberstone Ventures Ltd for an undisclosed amount.

Pemberstone, a UK based investment company have been tracking the performance of HARMAN for some time.Mark Anslow, CEO of Pemberstone Ventures comments:“We are very excited by the potential of the Analogue Photography movement and believe that HARMAN is uniquely placed to drive the resurgent Film market into the future”.

Peter Elton, Managing Director of HARMAN concurs.“Film has become an interesting medium for young photographers to work with again.We are seeing this very clearly. Our new owners will assist us to connect more effectively to this younger generation in the future, and we will prioritise this as our main goal over the next five years.”

“We remain totally committed to Analogue Photography, and indeed to all forms of Imaging.Our Product Range is uniquely stable and of the highest quality, and we can assure all of our customers that we will continue to support them in our customary way for the foreseeable future”

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Apple News

So we got the expected updates for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, i’ll not be upgrading as my 6 Plus is fine.

The iPad Pro looks interesting, it will be dependent on what Adobe do on whether I finally upgrade my old iPad2.

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A flurry of posts after nothing for a while

If you only check my blog every couple of weeks then you will not have noticed but if your one of my more regular readers who checks every few days then you will have noticed theres been a bit of a gap with no posts and now a huge flurry of catchup posts.

Well basically, after getting back from Orkney I started to feel a little under the weather, then after the weekend it hit me like a tonne of bricks, and I have spend fours days in bed with a blanket over my head not wanted to have anything to do with the world.

The fever, chills, constant headaches have now passed to the point where I can face a computer screen for at least a few minutes in every hour so I have been posting a few updates.

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Shooting details

Details in ~Orkney-2Even when on holiday to beautiful places like Orkney, I still look out for details and more unusual shots.  The above shot of the cobbled slip way needed more dramatic light and then should have made a dramatic Black & White, unfortunately this day in  Kirkwall it was bight sunshine.

Looking out for objects to photography, with it being a harbour then this lifebuoy just had to be photographed.

Details in ~Orkney-3

The last shot is the one that I think actually works from this set. After parking up near the harbour and walking into town this old petrol pump took my eye as we walked up an old street towards the centre of Kirkwall.

Details in ~Orkney

 

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The End room starts to get furnished

new room-2 new roomJust to quick snaps of the end room, now with three large book cases at one end.  This means we can finally unbox our books that have been in storage or blocking up the wing hallway for the last two years.

Not only that but I have unboxed my hi fi so we now have music in there.  Currently only two sources set up, CD and a wired input from my iPhone.  I am thinking about moving the main Apple Wireless Extreme from the living room into hear and getting a newer model for the living room.