Skype Calls Fail

Posted on by
1

So, they claim that all calls from US/Canada to US/Canada numbers (landline or mobile) will be free. And, sure enough when I tried to call my home number earlier this morning it rang.

Next I tried calling a Canadian number that was in my contact list: Call failed. So, I tried a US mobile number. That worked. I delete the contact from my list and try again, but it still knows the name I had associated with the number. Exit Skype and restart it. Now I can call the number in Canada. Annoying, but I guess it was free (the quality was pretty poor too, although the call to the US number was OK, so perhaps that was a problem at the other end, which happens to also be a VoIP service number).

A couple of hours later I try to make another call to a US landline: Call failed. So, I retry the call to my home number: Call failed. I don’t even know for certain whether people could have called me; since I could not call out, perhaps I was actually off the network?

Conclusion: I will stick with GizmoProject, which has worked flawlessly for me on Linux and MacOS as well as with hardware ATA and SIP phones. It might not be free to call US numbers, but at least I know the call will connect, and the voice quality will be acceptable. I keep seeing people in the Gizmo forum claim that Skype is better, but I’m not seeing it. Coupled with all the problems its architecture can impose (you give them permission to use your computer and bandwidth when you sign up), I don’t see any reason to stick with Skype.

Crimson Bottlebrush

Posted on by
3

Crimson BottlebrushOne of a number of shots of the crimson bottlebrush flowers that are in bloom all over the bay area at the moment. This one was outside my apartment.

The crimson bottlebrush, sometimes also called lemon bottlebrush because of its citrus aroma, is Callistemon citrinus. A native of Australia, but very common in the San Francisco bay area too it seems.

Gate E Queuing Paths

Posted on by
Reply

Gate E Queuing PathsSeems that there are rules for where you queue for each of the ferries that depart from Gate E in San Francisco. Passengers for the Harbor Bay ferry service, to the Bay Farm island end of Alameda, must queue neatly around the edge of the water. Alameda/Oakland ferry service passengers queue down the access road towards Embarcadero.

Again, apologies for the photo – it is a cell phone capture, through a glass panel with the afternoon sun reflecting off of it.

Spider’s Web

Posted on by
2

The fine strands of a spider’s web, carefully strung under the overhang of a garden shed roof. This one proved too challenging for the camera’s AF system (I guess the fine strands of web were not significant enough for it to consider them the subject of the photo). With a simple flick of a switch though, control is regained and the web came back into focus (or close to it anyway).

Lemon & Lime

Posted on by
Reply

Lemon and LimeAn unusual side-by-side on the same tree appearance for two of my favourite citrus fruits: lemon and lime.

OK, not really. The green one is just a lemon that is not quite ripe yet, but can you tell them apart just by looking? Had I captured just the green fruit, would you have known it was not a lime?

Firefox Colour Management

Posted on by
21

Uploading some new photos to Flickr this morning I noticed that while the colours seemed vibrant in Photoshop and iPhoto, by the time they got to Flickr they had lost that vibrancy.

Thinking the problem was the FlickrExport plugin for iPhoto, or iPhoto itself (I resize the images for upload too, so there is a conversion in there), I tried re-uploading the image scaled in Photoshop. Same thing.

So, I think, perhaps it is the browser… Sure enough, firing up Safari showed the red rose with the vibrancy of the original Photoshop. I had an old version of Firefox though, so I upgraded to the latest, and also installed the latest stable Camino as well. Still the same thing in Firefox, and Camino was also rendering the same dull version.

The photo on the right is a mix of two screen captures of the same image (from the Flickr page). The top is Safari, the bottom is Firefox.

Next, search to see if anybody else is reporting this issue. I found a post on Antipixel’s blog from over two years ago commenting on the same effect. I checked his post in Firefox and Safari, and sure enough the photo he included is still dull in Firefox by comparison.

Gap Employees Will Be Towed

Posted on by
1

Gap-ParkingNot only does it single out employees of one company, but it seems to suggest that the employees themselves will be towed 🙂

Are they that large that need to be towed out of the parking lot? The ones I’ve seen around the San Bruno don’t seem to be anywhere close, but maybe there are some large enough to require towing like the “other non-authorized vehicles” being warned by the sign.