My iPhone 4 got here a day earlier than expected. Go FedEx! I have only played it for a few hours so far, but it’s quite a nice upgrade for me from iPhone 3G.

Things I like so far:

• Multi-tasking. So far, I believe this is actually a better implementation than Android’s. (Yes I have an Android Phone)
• Folders
• Multiple Exchange accounts
• Speed. So much faster, sooo much faster…
• Outstanding build quality. The whole thing just feels really solid, unless you drop it.
• Price. Such quality for this low price.

Things that are kinda disappointing:

• Worse cell reception than iPhone 3G
• Both front and back are glass. That makes me nervous while holding it.
• The notification system on iOS still suck badly comparing to other platform.

I haven’t got time to play with the iOS 4 SDK yet, been extremely busy lately. So can’t say much about that.

It’s totally possible to receive and make calls using your Google Voice number for free! Basically we will setup a PBX server with Asterisk and FreePBX, and Sipgate.com provides unlimited free inbound calls. Here is how it works, quoting Nerd Vittles:

For outbound calls, we’ll combine a little dialplan voodoo with pygooglevoice to instruct Asterisk to place a click-to-dial call using your Google Voice forwarding number. Then we’ll stuff in the destination U.S. phone number. When you dial GV-678-1234567 from any of your Asterisk phones, Asterisk will park your initial call in a reserved parking lot slot and then join the called party to the originally parked call. The entire procedure is virtually transparent both to the caller and the callee. And, unlike the MeetMe conference, the parking lot fades out of the picture as soon as the call is connected. Thus, if either party hangs up, the active channel for the call is terminated on your Asterisk server.

For inbound calls from your Google Voice number, we’ll tweak the dialplan so that it can distinguish between a RingBack call that Google Voice initiated and a true inbound call. We’ll peel off the real inbound calls and route them to a separate Inbound Route in FreePBX for processing in any way you desire.

With this method, you can make free calls on your smartphone whenever these is reasonable Wi-fi or 3G connections available. Or you can set up a SIP phone or connect a regular phone to an Analog Telephony Adapter at home and uses your Google Voice number. A free land line. You can also forward your calls from Google Voice to both your cell phone and the SIP home phone, when you are at home, you can pick up the home phone instead to save cell phone minutes.

Here is a comprehensive guide to how to set up Asterisk and FreePBX along with Google Voice in order to make and receive calls for free on your DNS-323. I did not come up with all these, but learned from various sites. The credits go to them. I just put them together specifically for DNS-323 users.

Before we start, I assume that you:

• Have a brand new DNS-323 on firmware 1.5 or 1.6 with fun_plug enabled and have SSH access. If not, follow this guide first.
• Basic Linux knowledge and comfortable with command line interface (CLI).
• Have a Google Voice Account. If you don’t have one yet, request an invite here or ask those who have one to invite you.
• Have a SipGate account. Sign up here, it’s free. Make sure you write down the SIP Credentials in Settings.
• Forward your calls in Google Voice to your SipGate number.

It’s much easier to do this on a regular computer/server than on DNS-323, which involves many extra steps. On a regular computer you can simply install PBX In A Flash with minimal effort. But our frugal motto makes us squeeze out every drop of juice out of DNS-323 for our money’s worth.

Step 0. Clean Up DNS-323

First of all, we need to stop all unnecessary services on DNS-323. Of course you can leave them all if you have to use them, but it’s recommended to stop what you don’t need.  If you run too many programs on DNS-323, it will have to use swap frequently. Then you hard drive will never spin down, not good.

1. Stop uPNP server.
2. Stop iTunes Media server. You can install FireFly later on on Debian.
3. Remove the built-in Bittorrent client. Simply delete the folder “/mnt/HD_a2/Nas_Prog/BT“. You can install rTorrent on it and start it whenever you need to instead of having a daemon always on. You can install rTorrent later on on Debian.

Step 1. Install Debian Lenny on DNS-323

1. Download http://mesh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/debnas/debnas-0.5.tar.bz2
2. Extract the two files “fun_plug” and “linux.tar” to the root directory of your DNS-323 volume.
3. Reboot DNS-323
4. Wait for a few minutes

You should be able to access DNS-323 via SSH. Username root, default password is 12345678. Make sure you change it! Now we are going to upgrade all the packages to the latest version.

First we need to edit the repository file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/etch.list and replace the word “etch” with “lenny“. Save and  go back to command prompt:

dlink-xxxx:# apt-get update
dlink-xxxx:# apt-get dist-upgrade

Debian is now installed.

Credit for this part goes to Mike Gore and Manuel Treitinger.

Merry Christmas! I’m sure the best year is always the next year. Take more pictures!

I acquired this Rolleicord IIb on eBay for $28.  It’s made in 1938-1939, just a little bit younger than my grandpa. But it’s still in good working condition. I had to clean it up and re-conditioned the leather a bit. The taking lens has little marks. I sound checked the shutter speed, pretty accurate for everything above 1/10; slower speeds didn’t work.

I bought some Ilford HP5+ to go with it. We will see how they turn out. Excited!

Here is the manual for Argus C3. Also check out Argus C3 on Wikipedia.

Pentax Spotmatic is a classic camera. It’s the first camera that has Through-The-Lens (TTL) exposure metering, a technique that’s still unchanged and in use today.