How to use an iPhone 4S on AT&T GoPhone

I’ve recently bought an iPhone 4S in the UK, knowing that I’ll mainly be using it on my AT&T GoPhone prepay plan while I’m in the US.

A quick web search on if and how this is possible showed various reports of varying clarity – so I thought I’d set the record straight and tell you that

  1. it WORKS, and
  2. you don’t need a jailbroken iPhone
  3. you WILL be able to use 3G data

Let me show how it all works.

There is an updated version of this article here.

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Apple gave me a brand new iPad today – NICE!

I’ve been witness to Apple’s amazing customer service today: My iPad had a minor screen problem, I bought it in a different country and didn’t have my receipt with me – and they’ve replaced it with a brand new one!

Cudos to all those involved and the mastermind behind creating a customer experience that’s second to none.

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Cocktails and Dinners

We had breakfast at The Eleventh Street Diner and sat net to this neon sign. It’s on even during the Day and the congrats intrigued me. Shot on Hipstamatic using Kodot Xgrizzled and MattyALN lens. Here’s the shot with a normal camera:

The Sky over Kissimmee

I shot this just before the sun was setting. Hipstamatic has this feature where you shake the iPhone and it’ll randomise the lens / film combination – this was one such occasion. Luckily it remembers said settings for later retrieval. In this case it used the John S lens with Pistil film.

Mobile Posting is back – live from Miami Beach

I used to enjoy posting pictures from my mobile devices, and I’m not afraid to admit that I was very sad when this feature stopped working. One day – as if by magic – I could no longer upload pictures from anything mobile to this site. Well those days are finally over and I’m extremely …

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Inside Impossible: A Factory Tour

We were lucky enough to get an glimpse inside the Impossible Factory in Enschede a couple of weeks ago! With way too much on my plate right now I didn’t find a chance to post this until now.

Setting off at 4am from London we first flew over to Bremen,  from where my friend Oliver was kind enough to drive us 200km over the border to Holland. Thanks, Oliver!

What can I say – it was a blast! All our questions about Impossible material were answered, we were shown how it’s made and how it all came to be. We had an amazing chat with Andre Bosman who took literally hours being the perfect host and tell us everything us fans wanted to know (he’s also CEO and Co-Founder of the company).

Thousand thanks go to the entire Impossible Team who made us coffee and nibbles so we felt right at home. Let me show you some pictures mere mortals (and Polaroid enthusiasts) can only dream of: let me take you Inside the Impossible.

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Happy Halloween

Julia carved this wonderful pumpkin – it looks amazing! In the evening we were contemplating a tea light on the inside but decided the back light from a bicycle would be much nicer (and won’t burn the pumpkin). Since it was so late in the day I decided to take a long exposure with one …

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More Zenbrush Sketches

This sketch started out as a face but ended up being a chicken instead. Then I moved on to faces. The last one reminds me of Zoidberg from Futurama.

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Dolby E Decoders in Cortex

So we’ve got these Dolby E Decoders and Encoders at IMG MCR.

We need to use them more and more for various client requests – but for the last year or so Richard Bagnall was the only human in Chiswick who understood how to make them do something useful. We all had a look at them and most of us are still clueless as to how they work.

In many attempts he was kind enough to explain to me what we as operators need to do in order to utilise them, and I’m exicted to say that last week something made CLICK in my brain when I understood the magic behind them: they’re not complicated as such – they’re just incredibly badly labelled ni the Cortex system!

Let me pass on this essential knowledge in this guide and assure you this: if you know how to work an Axon Shuffler, you sure can operate one of these Dolby Cards!

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Zen Brush Sketch: Spike

I’ve done done some more drawing exercises and came up with this little character: Spike (due do this hair style). I’ve started him in Manga Studio and can’t stop drawing him now. Julia says he always looks like he’s in trouble (I’m still working on the happier expressions). This sketch was done in Zen Brush …

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It’s a Kodak World – Welcome!

I’ve finished another sketch in Manga Studio, still trying to come to grips with it. This time I’ve used my trusty old Wacom Bamboo tablet. It’s handles just as nice as my Intuos 4. Doug TenNapel was right: the hardware doesn’t really matter that much (even though I love my Intuos). Thats great news as …

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Wacom Intuos 4 = Happiness

A couple of weeks ago I ordered us some proper Wacom Intuos 4 tablets – a small one and a wireless medium one. It’s love at first touch 😉

I’ve had a first generation Wacom Bamboo before and thought it would come in handy for touch up work in photo retouching and some other pen related activities, and even though it worked I never quite warmed to it. That was in 2008.

Back then I even invested in Manga Studio EX4 which had just come out thinking that my drawing skills would improve when I rtied the two together. Unfortunately the software is so unintuitive and the tablet was so basic that I soon lost interest in further explorations.

With the Intuos 4 that has all changed: it’s like drawing on a piece of paper with incredibly accurate feedback. It even recognises the angle of the pen to the tablet and changes the brush size and stroke accordingly. Whoa!

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How to render with Alpha Channel in Anime Studio 8

We’ve been playing with Anime Studio 8 Pro and love it – for years I’ve been bombarded with “special offer” emails that told me how amazing this programme was so we finally gave in. I’m glad we did – Julia and I are having lots of fun creating 2D animations.

The included tutorials are great, but I believe they’ve been made for previous versions of the software. Some features have changed, and this is one I’ve had trouble funding on the web:

How to render an animation while retaining the Alpha Channel.

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Woody dancing at the office

Woody is our favourite wooden artists’ manikin. He currently lives on a shelf with two woolly ninjas (Blackberry and Blueberry) but we though it was time that he was brought to life. I was delighted when I found him in the additional content for Poser 7. I animated him using Animate 2 in DAZ Studio …

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Adobe Premiere Pro CS 5.5 – my personal hands on review

To complete my migration from PC to Mac I’ve downloaded the trial version of the latest Premiere Pro CS 5.5 yesterday. I bought CS 3 a few years ago and haven’t regretted it, but at work we have CS 4 and now CS 5 and I can see the feature improvements and benefits to our workflow.

As last time, this is a rather large expense for me (£285 for the upgrade, which is still better than £810 for the full version) – however Premiere is a fascinating powerful programme and I know how helpful it is.

My old version has made its money back many times over so I’m sure this version won’t disappoint me either. In fact, I’m quite excited about the new options in version 5.5 and the idea of having it on my laptop.

Here are my hands-on notes, my first impressions and my two cents about Adobe’s rival to Final Cut Pro.

For the geeks: I’m using Premiere on a MacBook Pro with 8GB of Ram, 64 bit OS (Lion) and an Intel Dual Core i7 processor at 2.7 GHz.

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Dancing Robot Splash Screen

I thought I’d share a couple of Splash Screens I created for my (since rejected) iPhone Apps. Splash Screens are loading screens which are shown while the sometimes lengthy startup process would show a black screen – unless you provide an image. Makes for a much nicer user experience.

Dancing Robot (above) is lovely cartoon figure called Klank by 3D Universe – I absolutely love their style! I have a couple of other figures made by them and I’ll show you some pre-production artwork a bit later.

As you may have guessed, Dancing Robot is essentially the same app as Dancing Alien with a different character, an animated background and different music. Guess I won’t be submitting that one to Apple…

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