A tumblog by Zeno Crivelli

Dimming Safari Reader’s background

Sometimes, when I’m using Safari Reader, I get distracted by the webpage underneath because the Reader’s background is too transparent (particularly in cluttered websites with light background).

I did a simple hack that allows me to quickly reduce the background transparency hence making it “darker”. If you want to try it out:

Download Reader Background Dimmer 1.1

You need to copy the Reader.html file inside Safari.app/Contents/Resources (backup the original Reader.html before doing that, I personnally duplicated the original file and renamed it Reader.html.original)

The hack works with a mouse gesture:

1) Enter Reader mode, hold down the mouse on the background and drag it down (to make it darker) or up (to make it lighter)

2) Command-click on the background if you want reset to the default value

This is a hack, use it at your own risk. I think there’s no way right now to release this as a Safari Extension, if you think it’s possible, please drop me a line on Twitter.

Update v1.1: Reader restyling

I’m not a big fan of Palatino (the font used in Safari Reader), so in v1.1 I made a little addition that will replace Palatino with Georgia. It’ll also add a light paper-texture to the page background and use Helvetica Neue for the headings. You can temporarily test the new style by Command-Shift-clicking on the dark overlay. If you like it and want to use it by default, you’ll have to edit the Reader.html file, search for “restyle:false” and replace it with “restyle:true” (then quit and relaunch Safari).

Best iPad 3G data plan in Switzerland?

The iPad 3G will begin shipping in Europe and Switzerland next week (or the week after).

I got mine yesterday and made it work with what I believe is the best and cheapest data plan currently available in our country.

I’m talking about the Sunrise Go Prepaid SIM card with Surf option which costs 7.50CHF per month and includes 250MB of data.

Unfortunately Sunrise doesn’t currently sell a MicroSIM compatible with this plan. They’ll send you a standard SIM card and if you want to use it with your iPad 3G, you’ll need to cut it to turn it into a MicroSIM.

Cutting the card

A nice thing about iPads 3G sold in the US is that they come preloaded with an AT&T MicroSIM card. In the pictures below you can see how I used this card as “model” to cut the standard Sunrise SIM by aligning the chips on both cards and drawing a MicroSIM “mask” with a felt-tip pen. And finally used a pair of scissors to cut along the marked lines.

There are plenty of other articles and videos on YouTube that show you how to do this with similar or different techniques.

It’s really not that difficult. Yes, you need to be careful, but not extremely careful, if you’re off by a millimeter or two it’s no big deal, it’ll still work.

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Plug and Play

Cutting the SIM card is really the only thing you need to do. There’s no additional work involved. No need to change APN settings or anything, just stick the new SIM into the iPad 3G and it’ll work.

If after a minute or so the “3G” logo on the top-left corner disappears, don’t worry, you didn’t do anything wrong, you simply forgot to charge 7.50CHF on your card (at least, that’s what happened to me) ;-)

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UPDATE (May 28, 2010): Sunrise Go Prepaid MicroSIMs are now available! No more need to use your scissors!

Here is a 100 megapixels photo I took last September. The place is Lac du Vieux Emosson, in canton of Valais, Switzerland.

You can look and zoom into the photo from you browser via this link.

But to really enjoy the 100mpx details you should get the full-size jpg:
http://zenoapps.com/photos/LacEmosson100mpx.jpg.zip (22MB)

Btw, my iPhone is also hidden somewhere in the picture, can you spot it? ;-)

A shot of the moon I took yesterday night, in Begnins, Switzerland.

Having a brother is important, particularly when you can borrow his Canon EF 100-400mm L IS ;-)

Flickr photo page here.

Also, here’s a video of the moon. Realtime. Unaccelerated. You can actually see the moon’s movement (let the video load entirely, then grab the progress indicator and scroll through it)

A Haliaeetus Vocifer (aka Fish Eagle) I just shot in Château de Kintzheim, France. There are eagles, falcons and all kind of other birds of prey around this castle. Pretty neat place for taking such close-ups of beautiful birds.

UPDATE: Flickr photo page with access to hi-res version (if you’re logged-in)

If you’ll ever want to take picture of monkeys, the Montagne des Singes near Kintzheim (France) is the perfect place.

Another photo here.

Just got my brand new iPhone. 16GB. I’ll give my original 8GB iPhone to my girlfriend.

If you have a friend visiting the US, you can ask her to bring you 2 iPhones. But when your brother is visiting the US, well, you can ask him to bring 10 iPhones.

God bless the guy who invented the SHIFT key ;-)

This is a 1896 Smith Premier No. 4 typewriter I’ve just seen at the Swiss National Museum in Prangins.

At Ski World Cup ‘08 in Chamonix, France.

Other photos here.

Invited friends for dinner.
4 couples in total.
All the men with they (jailbroken) iPhones ;-)
Clear separation of discussion during dinner: 4 girls talking about female-stuff and 4 geeks at the other end of the table in a non-stop conversation about the iPhone.

Testing the latest version of Apollo IM (v1.0) and admiring its new UI (which is amazing compared to the previous one)

I’m at RailsConf Europe 2007 in Berlin, watching DHH keynote (and photographing his fancy shoes ;-)

Blown away by Term-vt100 and its amazing “commands wheel”