The iPhone 11 Camera Tested

Yeah, I cracked under Apple’s marketing and ordered an iPhone 11 to replace the iPhone 7 I was using since January. My excuse? My eldest daughter was exasperated with the old Samsung J5 I gave her a long time ago, so I promised her an iPhone 7 to replace that ;-)

I was not looking for a pocketable camera – I have two of those, thank you. But Austin Mann says that the 11 might well replace them in daily use…

Here’s a sample from yesterday, unedited: a view of the rooftops of Antwerp, seen from the top of the Vleeshuis museum.

Unedited picture of the Antwerp roof top, seen from the museum Vleeshuis. Click on the image to see the full-size version.

I’m not blown away by the sharpness of this picture, but the conditions were not ideal. I will admit that the photos I took inside the building are much better than expected given the dim lighting in the museum rooms – thank you, Night mode!

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An Eyecatcher, Even For Non-Motorcyclists

Stefan Rohrer is a German sculptor, whose name I never would have known were it not for the picture that accompanied the announcement “Bikes und Blumen” (“Motorcycles and Flowers”) on the Motorrad website:

A sculpture called “Schwalbe 2007” by Stefan Rohrer- Photo by Thomas Schmieder (Click on the image to see the large version)

I suppose scooters fascinated him greatly in 2007, because he did something similar with a Vespa scooter as well:

A sculpture called “Vespa 2007” by Stefan Rohrer (Click on the image to see a larger version)

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Faster Internet Or No Internet At All? What happened?

Since a few months I have been using Cloudflare’s “1.1.1.1:Faster Internet” app on my iPad. I like the idea of having more privacy while surfing the Web, even though it’s hard for me to verify what the app is doing exactly. At least I never had the impression that the iPad got slower because of the app – but your mileage may vary, of course.

Anyway, what I wanted to mention is that the upgrade to iPadOS 13.1 posed a problem for the network connection on the iPad. Some applications, Safari included, had no problem accessing the internet, but my main banking app continued to report “You have no internet connection – please try again later’. Puzzling and frustrating, since a second banking app (for a different bank, of course) had no problems whatsoever. I’ll leave it to the specialists/hackers to figure out what that means about the safety of that second app ;-)

In the end I removed the 1.1.1.1 app completely, and reinstalled it from the App Store. This did the trick: the application installed its VPN Configuration and hey presto, all my applications found the way to the web without any trouble. So even if you have configured your iPad to update all apps automatically, I recommend having a look at the 1.1.1.1 app directly after upgrading to iOS, sorry: iPadOS 13. If it has trouble establishing a VPN connection, just remove it from the device and reinstall it – that should do the trick.

Now I’ll take some time this weekend to read up on Cloudflare’s extension of the 1.1.1.1 app, called Warp. I was already intrigued by earlier articles about the WireGuard protocol, and Warp seems to give us a possibility to try it out without costs. I might well do so; if I do, I’ll report on it later.

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An Old Motorcycle In An Old City

While walking around the center of Beaune, at the heart of the Bourgogne wine region in France, we passed the motorcycle of a seasoned traveler – and it wasn’t a BMW but a Royal Enfield ;-)

Click on the image to see the full-size version on Flickr

Beaune is certainly worth a visit – the Musée de l’Hotel-Dieu is a must-see, the Musée du Vin was a pleasant and interesting surprise. But be aware that the town has become a tourist trap.

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Peter Simms Has The Perfect Bike

Peter Simms says he has the perfect motorcycle, and there is a Brightside Media video on YouTube to prove what he says. BoingBoing pointed me to this video. Yes, it’s about a BMW motorcycle: the iconic R90S. A motorcycle that has “done” 240.000 miles – that’s well over 385.000 kilometers. And also the motorcycle that brought Peter Simms to his spouse – a nice touch.

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A German Beauty In Italy

During our holiday I spotted a few remarkable motorcycles. This BMW 75/5 was parked near the Grinzane-Cavour castle in Piemonte (Italy). Bikes that look this good are usually only on display in museums or collections. This one seemed to be coming straight from the factory, even though it is more than 45 years old! Too bad the pilot was not in the neighbourhood; I would have loved to talk to her/him.

Click on the photo to see the big picture on Flickr.

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About The August Sun In Belgium: Nothing Special To Report

I have updated the numbers of the electricity production of our solar panels. There’s nothing special to report, except that August hasn’t been so sunny since 2013. With a little luck, that will help make 2019 into another 2MWh year ;-)

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