Amazing first iPhone bill from Vodafone Australia

I've just received my first bill for iPhone 3G from Vodafone Australia.

As you can see it's rather excessive. I was unsure about what my data usage would be so I initially signed up on a business capped plan that would give me 500Mb per month.

There's a number of anomalies here, according to the online usage Vodafone say I'm entitled to 500Mb and that I've used 12.11Mb so far with 487.89Mb remaining:

On the phone it reports a total of 98.2Mb:

From the 15 page bill I've been sent, it looks like their billing system is continuing the old practice of charging in units of 5 minutes for any internet traffic:

Certainly not the way it's expressed in the plan agreement.

Presumably I'm not alone but I'll hop on the phone to them today and try to sort it out. Wow, that iPhone sure does increase data usage.

Did anyone else experience this?

Update 1

Lara seems to be having hickups this morning.. Anyhow, it turns out that when I purchased the iPhone, which can only be done on an iPhone plan, it was not immediately put on the iPhone plan but rather stayed on my old (high data cost) plan until the end of my billing cycle.

Gavin at Vodafone politely told me that nothing could be done and that I should talk to the store where the phone was purchased to take it up with them.

I've now spoken with Reggie at the dealer and he was sympathetic and said he'd call Retail Support about the issue and call me back...

Update 2

Reggie called back to let me know that the problem has been escalated to the "iPhone Taskforce" who are working through these issues. They will call me in about two weeks and I shouldn't worry about the bill in the mean time.

Update 3

Thanks to "tester" for the link to a thread on Whirlpool where "Kirsty from Vodafone" says:

"Hi guys,

Vodafone addressed the issue some of our customers have experienced with purchasing their iPhone cap plans midway through their normal billing cycle in a press release dated 25/07/2008. In the past, plans were only changed on the bill cycle date. We acknowledge that this is not practical for customers signing up for the new iPhone 3G caps. From 23 July, anyone signing up for a iPhone 3G cap will immediately be able to enjoy the benefits of their new plan, rather than waiting for their bill cycle date.

Vodafone is reviewing the excess data usage of it's customers who signed up to an iPhone 3G cap mid way through their bill cycle, and will waive any charges that would not have been incurred if the customer had been able to use their iPhone 3G cap, with its voice and data allowance, from the outset."

This is certainly good to hear.

Update 4

7-September-2008

I'm pleased to report that my bill has been re-issued and I've received a credit for $1,500 on that bill.

Working with Django 1.0 and Google App Engine

I've taken some time off regular work to build BaristaReview.com, a site where you can find and review your local coffee shops.

To build this new site, I decided to use Google App Engine and Django.

Right now, Django is racing towards the version 1.0 release and it's changing fast. Unfortunately, due to some constraints in the runtime and the fact that you have to use Google's Database, it's not all smooth sailing.

Most things are working quite well, and the site is very responsive (certainly to django hosting I've tried elsewhere), but I've run into some roadblocks when I come to upload image files.

On App Engine you can only run pure python code, so using the latest Django I see log entries like this:

Could not import "fcntl": Disallowed C-extension or built-in module

More seriously, there is no local file system, so when I try to upload an image file, it fails with:

NotImplementedError: This class/method is not available.

When django tries to get a temporary file like this:

self._file = tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix='.upload')

Which is fair enough.

Anyhow, it's early days and there's lots of other people playing with this technology. Certainly it's a great deal from Google and I'm totally excited about the state of Django. I'm in geek heaven.

Back on 20m, doing PSK31 and Bitx20

My primary antenna for the past few months has been an 80m dipole. It works pretty well and I hear lots of regular groups chatting but I really miss my PSK31 contacts.

There is a digital mode range on 80m (3.620 - 3.640) and I've been calling CQ there for some time but have only had one PSK31 contact on 80m and that was a conversation I stumbled across on 3.66Mhz.

The other reason to abandon 80m for now is that I've just constructed a bitx20 transceiver and am trying to get it going.

As you can see from the waterfall on the right, there's lots of PSK31 activity on 20m and I'm seeing US stations pretty well here at 3 in the afternoon.

Apple store opens at Chatswood

Dropped in to the new Apple store at Chatswood Chase this afternoon and ran in to well known blogger Ben and his wife (trying to get his hair cut).

On the way there I walked passed the excellent Maccentric store that has taken care of us so well in Chatswood for many years. Maccentric has a 10% off store wide sale but I must report that it was looking pretty empty.

The new Apple store, even at 3pm in the afternoon was extremely busy. Several of the staff have been imported from the US, presumably to kick things off on the right foot.

It must be tough for an existing store when your supplier opens up within a block of you. I hope they got plenty of notice and perhaps some help in moving if they so choose.

The guy that served me had a badge saying "Ask me about MobileMe" so I did.. he apologised and said that while there were still some bugs, the major outages hopefully are over. I asked about my problems with the backup phase of my iPhone sync and he wasn't able to help.

The store looks great, I'm sure they'll do well, and it seemed like a good size for the number of products.

iPhone 2.0.1 still not quite right yet, 2.0.2 better

Like everyone I had a few annoying issues with the original software but I still feel it's the best phone/pocket internet device, I've ever used.

One of the most annoying little issues I've had is that syncing the phone would hang during the phone backup. Once I thought it was going to finish without me cancelling but then a call came in.

My update to 2.0.1 went smoothly and during my first sync I hoped the problem would be gone but no. Amusingly the log says:

Backups still don't complete so I've done this:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool true

Anyhow, my problems aren't nearly as annoying as Ben's so I count myself lucky.

The phone does seem smoother with 2.0.1, the annoying pauses have gone away and I think the 3G switching problem I had might have improved a bit.

Update 2.0.2

After a day with 2.0.2, I'm pleased to report that it drops back to 2G in my bad 3G signal environment much more smoothly than before.

It still won't backup my phone, so I've disabled that.

The Console log says:

20/08/08 10:40:13 AM [0x0-0x27027].com.apple.iTunes[365] MobileDevice: receive_message: Could not receive size of message: 0 Unknown error: 0 
20/08/08 10:40:13 AM [0x0-0x27027].com.apple.iTunes[365] MobileDevice: _read_callback: Could not receive message 
20/08/08 10:40:13 AM [0x0-0x27027].com.apple.iTunes[365] MobileDevice: send_message: Could not send message size: Bad file descriptor 
20/08/08 10:40:40 AM [0x0-0x27027].com.apple.iTunes[365] Created child to sync device with pid 738... 

And it hangs at that point.

Jury duty - well worth while

I've just completed a short stint as a juror on a criminal trial here in NSW.

On several occasions in the past I've been called and have either got out of it or not been balloted. This time it was all go.

The case was a federal crime, importing drugs into the country. I think the jurors all felt deep sympathy for the defendant and the predicament he'd ended up in.

Out of this experience I have gained respect for the legal system, the police, barristers and most of all for the ability of 12 citizens, chosen at random, to work together to decide facts that will have a major impact on someone's life.

Parts of the process were a little tedious, sometimes gross, but always enlightening.

We've all seen way too much court room action on TV, it wasn't like that at all. We all took notes and back in the jury room it was a bit like a comprehension test where we gently formed a view on what we had seen and heard.

In the end we found the defendant guilty without too much deliberation, but as we said our farewells outside we all wondered what would become of this poor man.

Building a BITX20 20m SSB transceiver

The current project on the bench is a single sideband transceiver for 14Mhz. It's a kit from Hendricks.

I'm following the instructions and testing as I go rather than one big "smoke" test at the end. So far receive/transmit switching works, the audio amplifier and mic pre-amp and mixer work. Very encouraging.

I first heard about this design on the Soldersmoke podcast. It's by Ashhar Farhan VU2ESE, his article is here.

There is much to commend this circuit, coming out of India it is designed to use low cost easily obtained components. Ashhar comments that if you can't get (or afford) torroid transformer cores, tap washers may be substituted.

The circuit is "bi-directional" in that it uses the narrow crystal filter for both receive and transmit and switches amplifier stages using diode switches. The amplifier stage is pretty much the same throughout so despite the switching it's pretty easy to see how it works.

The kit I'm constructing is revision 3 and has push pull IRF510s in the output so it should deliver about 10 watts which is quite substantial with a reasonable antenna on 20m.

I plan to build this into a box including the frequency counter from Doug N3ZI mentioned earlier.

Update

Construction is going well although I found a few missing and substituted components in the kit.



I'm looking for a signal on 20m to use for receive alignment.

Sony DSC W300 review

I'm a keen photographer, not a great one, but keen. Over the years I've captured a few shots, perhaps 10, that I'm happy with. The transition from film to digital has been tinged with grief and nostalgia for the feel of mechanical film cameras.

The "money" shots, have mostly been because I was there and had a camera with me. (Was it Robert Frank who gave the advice to aspiring photographers asking about equipment, "F8 and be there"?)

I also appreciate "exhibition quality" photographs. After comparing a fine ink jet print compared to my best darkroom effort, I threw out the chemical darkroom.

When I want great quality, I use a DSLR. For every day, I use a pocket point and shoot. 99% of my images are shot with the pocket camera.

Recently it was time to hand down my camera and after careful consideration I opted for the little Sony DSC W300. Here are my comments after more than 500 shots.

It's a lovely looking camera with a titanium coating that I think resists scratching while being light weight. Small and flat enough to really fit in my top pocket was one of my primary requirements.

Only a 3X zoom which is not outstanding but the lens is a maximum of f2.8 so it's worth it. (Those huge zooms are incredibly slow even though the font element might look big).

13.6 megapixels is more than I need so I run it at 5Mp normally.

Starts up reasonably fast, not as quick as a film camera though.

The display on the back is great, the UI is a little bit flashy, with animation and so on. Sometimes I hunt around for things but generally I find them. The main features: macro, flash, and self timer are directly available except for exposure override (+- EV) which requires you to go through the menu button and then possibly more pushes.

The dial has the useful functions I want including High ISO and higher ISO. (More on this later).

Battery life seems very good. I would take it away for a week without worrying.

There's a bunch of fancy functions like recognising faces and focussing on them, even recognising faces and focusing on children's faces rather than adults! (Really, I kid you not). But generally I don't use these.

The best feature is that it has an optical view finder. Very small but there. Being able to hold the camera steady against my face is a great feature for me even if it isn't very accurate.

Complaints

Doesn't take standard memory. Like SD. I had to buy some mysterious Sony Memory stick to put in this thing. For the features I was prepared to suffer this pain but this is a real negative. Just give me an SD slot next time!

The cable for plugging into the computer is not only proprietary, but I always plug it in the wrong way up first.

It looks almost the same on both sides and there is no visual clue as to which way is "up".

Photos

This is all academic, until you see some shots. I took the shot in this early blog post in a lift under very strange lighting. The point is, I had the camera on me.

In daylight, the photos look great:

What's really impressive is that in near dark like the shot below, available light f2.8 1/20th sec, ISO6400, pictures are still somewhat usable:

Overall, I'm happy with this camera. As I said above, I hate the storage card, the cable and I'd like to tweak the options that are available directly on the buttons. I love the high ISO, screen, and viewfinder.

This review was inspired by the other camera I considered, the Ricoh digital reviewed by Alastair.

Starstuff is back! (as a podcast)

Saw some great news in the paper this morning, Stuart Gary's StarStuff which was taken off ABC NewsRadio has returned as a podcast here.

Indeed it's true. In the first episode of the new series, Gary explains that he's able to use the ABC science podcast platform and promises to maintain the high standard. There is some mention of content changes due to licensing restrictions - something that hindered StarStuff's original attempts at a podcast.

Stuart thanks everyone for their support and says "it's been most humbling".

Like many others, I was outspoken about the loss of this fine program. It's great to have it back.

Great (star) stuff.

Water and pyro rocket test

Neighbour Peter hatched a plan to combine traditional (fired) rocket motors with the new sustainable water and air propulsion. Unfortunately the water pressure seal failed and launched prematurely on us:



We were joined on this test by Alan who had a good time and wrote it up here. Here's Peter's video:



As usual, the rocket video is shot with a little transmitting video camera which has survived amazingly well give the rough treatment.

That dark sky over Sydney came through and dropped snow-like hail on our suburb.

GutterTool Pro Turbo (with clearvu leaf mirror)!

The gutters here at Marxy Manor are full of leaves and when it rains they overflow in all the wrong places.

Being a fan of PVC pipe constructions (see the laptop stand) I had a bright idea that a quick trip to the "$2.50" shop provided the bits for.

To be honest, it doesn't work too well, the mirror goes out of alignment very quickly and the force required to lift the twigs and leaves it too much for the flexible pipe I'm using - perhaps pressure pipe is the answer.

Anyhow, a bit of home invention is great fun. Could this be the next "stump jump plough"?

Low cost embedable frequency counter

Heard about this on the wonderful Soldersmoke blog. A flexible digital display for home home brew radios, from Doug N3ZI.

The pre-scaler is configurable to make it useful in ranges up to 50Mhz or so. It uses an Atmel ATtiny24 which comes pre-programmed. The software includes clever things like handling the IF offset.

Normally, low cost frequency counters tend to show annoying jitter in the last digit but the author has overcome this so it seems very stable in operation.

There are three versions of the kit, from $10 to $30 for the full kit. I bought the full kit and it came quickly, went together easily, and worked first time.

I'm thinking of pairing it with a Bitx20.

Thanks Doug!

Update

I've hooked it up to an MMR40 7Mhz rig.

I needed to make a buffer amplifier to boost the local oscillator level enough for the counter. It's based on a snippet from Experimental Methods in RF Design.

The local oscillator output is 0.27V peak to peak, after the transistor buffer it's 1V peak to peak. I used a 2N2222a that I had on hand.

The counter was set to an IF offset of -10Mhz. Doug's software lets you do this with ease using up and down buttons that accelerate if you hold them down.

There's a plastic box HB5970 that fits pretty much perfectly. It's 140 x 110 x 35mm the CPU board slides into slots and I've just used the LCD board as the front panel (a bit ugly but functional).

Having boxed it all up it looks great:

I had to increase the input capacitor's value in the counter to get it to be sensitive enough with my buffer to work reliably.

Anyhow, a great kit. Highly recommended.

iPhoto book in Australia

I've just received the first book printed through iPhoto using Apple's printing service.



The book was assembled in iPhoto from pictures taken with a pocket Sony DSC W300 camera (which I'm very happy with).

It was AU$12.50 for a 20 page (read 20 sides plus front and back cover) 8" x 6" soft cover book.

The books are printed somewhere else in the world and re-posted from Mascot in Sydney (near the airport) so it took 15 days from order to arrival, although it shipped in just two days from somewhere.

I've got to say - it looks great! A very professional looking production that I'm proud to give away and keep on the shelf (I ordered a couple of copies).

Normally, I choose a few digital images to get enlarged at the local printer for gluing in my album, I'm thinking of switching to doing a series of these books for hard copy storage.

The printing is a semi-gloss, sort of waxy look. There's a bit of metamism (that effect where the dark parts of an image reflect light at some angles). It's full edge to edge printing and the preview if super accurate in terms of where things get chopped.

This collection wasn't super quality, many were shot at high ISO (1600), all with available light at a party. I feel that the colours have been a little boosted but overall the effect is great.

Twinkle on iPhone 2 - location based awesome

I've been hearing about location based services being the next big thing for many years.

Now that I'm playing with Twinkle on the iPhone I'm starting to get it.

You can see, and therefore make contact with, people who are close to you. It can be a little spooky and of course you need to be aware that bad people might be looking for people to stalk close by, but it certainly shows a new way to hook up with interesting folks who you might want to hook up with in "meatspace".

I can see a ton of applications for this already.

Oh, and to take screen shots on iPhone 2, hold down the "home" button and click the top button. The screen flashes and the picture goes in your camera reel as a PNG.

A chat with Ben & Pete podcast - iPhone 3G

We're back with a podcast where we discuss our experiences with the iPhone 3G. The mp3 is here.

Water rocket launch at Killarney Heights

Peter has improved the launch platform and the spin is much reduced now.


Here's just the flight in slow motion:

Sleek Geeks in a lift

After a talk on ABC Radio National about the iPhone this morning, I was riding down in the lift at the ABC's Ultimo centre, the doors opened, and in walked the "Sleek Geeks" - Adam Spencer (with his bicycle) and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki.

I'm a huge fan of both these guys, and they were gracious enough to allow me to snap this picture as we descended. Adam rode off and Karl stayed for a chat about some computer troubles.

Thanks guys for being so polite in the face of a stary-eyed fan in close quarters.

I miss Starstuff on ABC Newsradio

I tuned in to ABC Newsradio today and mourned the lack of the regular Starstuff program produced and presented by Stuart Gary.

The site simply says "After eight years on the radio StarStaff takes its last journey across the universe this week. Tune in this Sunday at midday EST for the final episode of StarStuff".

As a devoted listener for many years, I'd like to express my thanks to Stuart and the ABC for running this program. I used to really like listening to it late at night on Sunday nights, the schedule change took some adjustment but the podcast made up for it.

Stuart's enthusiastic and informed presentation and interview style were always welcome and his regular guests were terrific.

Apparently ABC Newsradio is trying to focus more on the rolling news role of the station, which I value too, but lets just hope that all things space are not replaced with all things sport.

I'm not the only one to mourn the loss it seems.

Got a 3G iPhone pretty easily in Sydney

I've been hanging out for an iPhone for a long time. Rather than going to the city I decided to head for Warringah Mall north of Sydney.

I got to the Vodafone store at about 8 for a 9am opening. There were 8 people in the queue and security guards hanging around. (The store said they were mostly worried about a robbery over night as the phones were hidden out the back).

Doing the paper work and using the Vodafone systems was an incredibly poor and slow experience. Part of the process involved ringing up and we waited 55 minutes in the phone queue. In the end I brought the phone home to "unbrick" (as they call it).

This little Vodafone store had 60 in stock. Everyone I spoke to in the queue wanted the 16Gb black version, while we were waiting a sales person from Crazy Johns was trying to offload some 8Gb models but no one seemed interested.

My home has poor signal from Vodafone and if the bars on the display are anything to go by reception is better than my past phones. In a call (to Ben) it seems like the audio is good but I do still need to find a good spot at home.

Oh the security guard you can see in the shot rushed over to tell me that I'm not allowed to take pictures after the shot above. Strange days..

Updates

So far I've bought the iPhone version of OmniFocus but the syncing update for the mac is due on the 10th (US time) so hasn't turned up yet.

NetNewswire is free so I got that but they want me to sign up on newsgator so I haven't done that yet.

The GPS seems very fast to get a fix, I walked outside and took a picture and the lat long is in the photo's exif.

I wonder why they don't allow a "turn by turn" navigator? I would definitely buy that...

The iTunes remote is kind of cute.

No glitches so far, very smooth user experience.

Update 2

Mobile Me seems to be working now and yes it pushed an email to the phone, it took about 20 seconds. Now, I understand that a single connection exists from the phone to Apple to do the pushing, I wonder if I get charged for that data?

Apps so far

The Apple Remote Control app is really great. I remember they had a patent on this and I'd have to say it blows away any other remote control, at least for talking to iTunes. This feature prompted us to set up some living room speakers connected to a mac and do some music listening.

Truphone does voice over the wifi network. I already have credit on Skype so really that's what I want but until they release I'll use Truphone. Voice quality is fine but the delay seems very long.

Rather than flying or driving, caught the train

As the price of petrol climbs my theoretical enthusiasm for public transport increases.

This weekend the family made the trip to Coffs Harbour. Normally we would either drive or catch a plane but along with my fun-loving sister and brother-in-law, we decided to catch a CountryLink train from Sydney Central.

We decided to pay a little extra and go "first class". The best thing about the trip was meeting other passengers. Along the way we had some great conversations and heard some truly amazing stories that I won't betray here.

The staff were really nice and seemed to be even having some fun.

The seats were rather hard and next time I'd consider taking an inflatable cushion of some sort. The trains themselves are very modern and even had a payphone on board (mobile reception was decidedly patchy along the way).

The wine was pretty good (served after noon) but I'd have to say that the food was hearty but not exciting. Here's the roast pork.



Sydney to Coffs Harbour took nine hours whereas the trip by plane is about two all up. I found myself strangely tired from a day of sitting in a chair, but definitely enriched by the experience.