The BotBlog

Robots at DEMO

2011-09-13T19:11:00.001-04:00

Neat demo of a consumer music bot.

The Great Big Spreadsheet of All Known Android Devices Everywhere

2010-08-27T12:32:00.001-04:00

This is a very, very useful tool, especially if it's being kept up-to-date. It's currently a publicly-available Google Docs spreadsheet, which implies that it is a dynamic document being kept current. I took a quick look through it, and it seems pretty complete.

For anyone who tracks technology in general, mobility specifically, and Android as a specialty (me!), this is invaluable!

Posted via email from Posterbot

Verizon Droid line spec comparison

2010-08-12T16:37:00.001-04:00

Very useful chart. The only major device missing on this list is the Sprint/HTC EVO 4G.

Verizon Droid line spec comparison

via Android Central - Android Central by Phil Nickinson on 8/12/10

You want it, you got it -- a monster Verizon spec comparison between the original Motorola Droid, Droid 2, Droid Incredible and Droid X. Ease on past the break for the whole thing. And be sure to wait 15 minutes before swimming.

Posted originally at Android Central
Sponsored by Android Cases and Accessories

Posted via email from Posterbot

What will Apple say at the iPhone 4 Antenna Event on Friday?

2010-07-14T21:10:00.001-04:00

As recently announced by Engadget, Apple is holding a press conference this Friday, presumably to deal head-on with the iPhone 4 antenna issues that refuse to die.

(For the record, I have an iPhone 4 and yes, I can easily reproduce the "death grip" on mine, and I bought my $30 bumper to mitigate the issue).

So without further delay, here are my predictions for what I think will happen, in order of probability:

100%:

Apple is sorry people "feel inconvenienced".
Apple denies there is, in fact, a problem with the antenna design.
Apple bans all "Consumer Reports" testers from Apple stores.

95%:

Free bumpers for everyone. Refunds to suckers customers who bought one already.
Apple is "taking it seriously".

50%:

Apple acknowledges the positioning of the antenna is "unfortunate" but does not reduce the "revolutionary" design
Apple restates that people need to hold the phone in a way that does not block the antenna.

25%:

Apple issues a recall; redesigns phone with pre-installed covering over antenna array.

5%:

Apple issues a recall; completely redesigns the antenna array to avoid a single area of interference.

1%:

Apple hires a frakking RF/antenna engineer who could have told them that putting an antenna on the outside of the phone was a boneheaded move in the first place.

Posted via email from Posterbot

GMail and POP Auto-Retrieval

2010-06-04T09:50:00.002-04:00

Annoying!

A while back, I set up GMail to auto-pull mail from my old MobileMe account, setting it up as an automatic POP retrieval in settings. This worked fine, and I'd see the few remaining MobileMe mails showing up in a GMail tag automatically. Worked well.

After a while, due to problems getting GMail to sync with my iPhone and iPad properly (another adventure best saved for a later rant), I devided to switch back to using MobileMe (for mail, anyway), and deleted the auto-pull settings in GMail.

Thus, as of last night, there was and currently is no account listed in my Settings page for POP retrieval.

Sometime during the night between 1am and 7am, GMail automatically resurrected these settings and pulled down all mail from my MobileMe Inbox, deleting them from that account and placing them in my GMail inbox. When I checked my GMail account this morning, there are still no accounts set for automatic POP pull, so it's not something I can delete or change.

Many questions in my head:

Why did GMail decide to pull down mail last night?
Months ago, I deleted the account from GMail's POP importer, and it said it was deleted. But it obviously was not, and this means that I have a mail password floating around GMail's servers that I can't delete. And GMail could decide to do this at any time. That's alarming.
How can I be sure that GMail doesn't ever do this again?

I can answer #3: Change the password on my MobileMe account. And change all the devices that sync to it. A pain, and something I shouldn't have to do if Google wasn't storing my credentials without my permission.

Posted via web from Posterbot

Evoluce 47-inch HD multitouch display

2010-05-13T16:48:00.001-04:00

via engadget.com

So a few days ago I posted something about how many touchpoints a Surface has (as compared to an iPad)?

Check this out. Unlimited touchpoints. Gesture support.

Surface? You've met your match. :-)

Posted via web from Posterbot

iPad Multi-Touch Test

2010-05-11T14:01:00.001-04:00

via mattgemmell.com

I wondered, myself, what the maximum number of touch points is on the iPad. 10 (+1) is actually a pretty logical number. We're doing some work in my job with Microsoft Surface tables, I'll have to compare and see how many it tracks.

Posted via web from Posterbot

[TN#002] TimeMachine Warning

2010-04-11T23:19:00.001-04:00

In case you ever wonder what these messages in system.log mean:

Apr 2 13:12:34 mac com.apple.backupd[20052]: Warning: Destination /Volumes/Machine does not support Server Reply Cache

Apr 2 13:12:34 mac com.apple.backupd[20052]: Warning: Destination /Volumes/Machine does not support TM Lock Stealing

The OS X client correctly reports here, that the Netatalk AFP server is missing two AFP features:

via netafp.com

I was seeing this in my log when I switched Time Machine from a Time Capsule to a ReadyNAS to store my backups. This article explains what they mean and why you should -- or shouldn't -- be concerned.

Posted via web from Posterbot

Five Tremendous Apple vs. Adobe Flash Myths — RoughlyDrafted Magazine

2010-04-10T13:01:00.001-04:00

The truth is that it’s Adobe’s fault there’s no Flash on the majority of mobiles, because the company was completely happy just misleading the world of pundits while talking instead of doing. Well it’s not 2007 anymore, it’s 2010, and that’s three years of work that everyone else has put into HTML5.

via roughlydrafted.com

Seriously. I wondered when someone was going to bring up this obvious point. Everyone says Apple is being obstructionist in their strategy to ignore Flash on the iPhone (and, now, iPad), but the fact is, there was not, and still is no decent mobile version of Flash that Apple could have picked to run on the iPhone. And we still have yet to see a shipping mobile device that *can* do Flash, and we don't even know how compatible those devices will be with "desktop" Flash.

In short -- Sure, Apple's no saint. But Adobe is just as much to blame in this whole Flash mess.

Posted via web from Posterbot

Is Java's relevancy declining?

2010-04-04T13:07:00.001-04:00

http://infoworld.com/d/developer-world/geriatric-java-struggles-stay-relevant-700#

Seriously, Java compared to COBOL? I thought I'd never see the day..

Posted via email from Posterbot

In Defense of No Multitasking: Microsoft Edition - Windows phone 7 multitasking - Gizmodo

2010-03-17T13:23:00.001-04:00

via gizmodo.com

Windows Phone 7 follows the iPhone model of multitasking. The article here sounds very much like the reasoning behind the iPhone's implementation. Personally, I think they both have it wrong, and multitasking should be implemented but in a different way. Android is closer, IMO.

Now watch, iPhone 4.0 will include full preemptive multitasking and blow the doors off of WP7.. :-)

They also mentioned no copy/cut/paste. THAT is a huge mistake. Hopefully it won't take them two years to add the feature like it did Apple.

Posted via web from Posterbot

xkcd: Trimester

2010-02-24T12:52:00.001-05:00

via xkcd.com

Next time, check the credentials, too. :-)

Posted via web from Posterbot

Lyrics to "Star Trek: Voyager"

2010-02-23T19:07:00.001-05:00

We've been re-running through the various Star Trek series recently -- we're currently up to "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager".

Thanks to my friend Clambo, we can never skip through the title credits. Why? Because he came up with lyrics -- a long time ago -- that I posted on my Web site on a lark, and ever since, I haven't been able to get them out of my head.

This virus has spread to all members of the family, and now we all sit there through the opening credits, running through the lyrics that won't go away.

I post them here -- again, on my blog -- so that you, too, may be afflicted with this Voyager Virus. I defy you to ever watch the title credits of "Voyager" the same way again.

We're the starship Voy-a-ger / We're stuck out here / We can't get home / Please help us get home

Janeway is... our Ca-p-tain / She trapped us here / We can't get home / Please help us get back home

We'd really like to get home sometime soooon / But Janeway insists on seeing every moon.

We're the starship Voy-a-ger / We're stuck out here / We can't get home / We're lost

Will we ever get home?

And that, now as before, says it all.

Posted via web from Posterbot

Visit me at Posterous

2010-02-23T18:56:00.002-05:00

I've switched to Posterous for my blogging (not that I do *all* that much, anyway).

If all goes well, Posterous will continue to bring the content back into here, but I mostly will be interacting with the blog from that side of things. It seems to be a much better service.

Feel free to come along!

Stryde Hax: The Spy at Harriton High

2010-02-23T13:50:00.001-05:00

via strydehax.blogspot.com

Incredible analysis of the spyware tools used in the Harrington High case.

Posted via web from Posterbot

Google Android's self-destruction derby begins | Mobilize - InfoWorld

2010-02-23T12:53:00.002-05:00

February 22, 2010
Google Android's self-destruction derby begins
The dark side of the flood of new Android smartphones: versions run amok
By Galen Gruman
Share or Email
| Print |

-->

via infoworld.com

Interesting perspective, not sure I agree. However, the platform fragmentation on J2ME was really horrible, and I do see Android following down this path somewhat.. Will be interesting to see how/if Google addresses the potential for severe platform fragmentation, to the point where coding for Android becomes a nightmare..

Posted via web from Posterbot

New iMac Core i5/i7 Models: No Jumbo Frame Support

2009-12-29T23:05:00.001-05:00

Amazingly, the latest iMacs from Apple (the 27" Core i5/i7 models) do not support jumbo frames over Ethernet. This limitation is brought to you by the fact that the on-board Broadcom network controller does not support jumbo frames, therefore it is not a simple firmware fix to enable the feature -- these machines will never support it.

I'm thinking Apple's logic here was that consumer machines wouldn't be used by people who know what jumbo frames are, and therefore why not shave some money off the cost of the controller? I'm not sure I agree -- these are pretty high-end iMacs we're talking about here -- but I think anyone considering an iMac should be made aware of the limitation.

This generally means a hit to networking performance when using gigabit switches (more and more common these days), especially on write performance (say, to a NAS).

Perhaps this limitation is artificial to prop up sales of Mac Pros? Dunno.. Just be careful out there when considering an iMac.

What AT&T does..

2009-12-14T20:41:00.002-05:00

"[W]hen you’re lucky enough to create a smash hit product — when the stars align, and the hardware is great and the ecosystem is great and the apps are great and the whole experience is great, and everything you do just makes everything else better, and you’re totally on a roll and can do no wrong — when that happens, you do not go out and try to fuck it all up by discouraging people who love your product. What you do, instead, is you fix your fucking shitty ass network you fucking shit-eating-grin-wearing hillbilly ass clown!"

-- Fake Steve Jobs, in this article. Brilliant.

TiVo has lost its way

2009-05-08T18:02:00.002-04:00

Saw this post on ZatzNotFunny, referring to a Times ad, and it struck a chord. The comments to the entry are even more telling.

I was thinking about this anyway on my own. The last few updates to the TiVo service have done nothing but find new ways to shove ads in my face.

I am now shown an ad on my main menu, in the "Now Playing" section where my programs are listed, and in each grouped program, they shove "relevant" ads for other things into the GUI as if they were just another program that had been recorded. (So, I'll see three "Jeopardy" recordings and a "Want to get away to Aruba?" ad, as if there were four recordings made. That's so annoying..)

And finally, now every time I hit pause during a show, I get shown an ugly dialogue that offers me MORE ADS, blocking an entire bottom-third of the screen.

Oh, yes, you can dismiss the "Pause" menu, but it just reappears on the next program you watch. The onus is on you to make it go away. And you can't do anything about the other ads.

TiVo seems to care more about providing metrics to networks and advertisers, and find new ways to bring advertisers to me, than what they used to say was their mission. "TV, your way".

I would have NO problem with any of this if the service were free. But I'm paying TiVo a monthly fee for this, and they keep finding new ways to put ads back in my life. The reason I got my TiVo to begin with was to AVOID ADS!

Most other online services have a "free" or "lite" version (ad-supported), and if you pay, they will switch off the ads. Why not TiVo?

TiVo, do you hear the irony?

I can no longer recommend TiVo, and as soon as there is any viable alternative, I will be dumping my TiVo box. The only thing saving them right now is that the alternatives (Comcast's DVR, among others) really suck, and the streaming services don't quite have everything I need. But they will, one day, and on that day TiVo had better watch out.

It's a shame. The service really is fantastic, but I was paying for TV *my* way. This is not my way at all.

Pod FIESTA!

2009-05-08T08:45:00.002-04:00

If you're in the Pod Group (and you know who you are!), let's take up Rob on his offer to host a Fiesta this summer and participate in the "Let's attend the PodFiesta" poll to see when we can all make it!

The link to the poll is below.

Testing

2009-02-07T14:10:00.001-05:00

I'm now using Flock a lot more than I thought I would be.. especially since integrating all my various social networks has become critical, now that I'm on so very many of them.

Flock 2.x is a huge leap forward... I may just keep trying this out!

That's all for now.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

TiVo Desktop 2.7 Released

2009-02-07T14:08:00.001-05:00

I thought this announcement was pretty cool.. reposted from the TiVo Blog (original link down at the bottom):

TiVo Desktop 2.7 has hit the streets. This Windows software update packs several enhancements. On the TiVoToGo front, Desktop now functions more like TiVo itself by allowing you to specific the number of transferred shows that are kept on your PC. This long sought after feature is pretty critical if you have limited storage and a predilection for high def content. Another requested improvement has been partially implemented, by allowing you to browse previously transferred shows in folders back on the TiVo. For those who’ve paid for Plus ($25) functionality, the codec package appears to have been upgraded - additional file formats and containers (such as HD MKV) can be transcoded and transferred from PC to TiVo for playback. Although power users or those on a budget might prefer to continue using pyTiVo. (Thanks, Zeo!)

View Original Article

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Retrospect: Linux client keeps deferring

2008-12-18T21:43:00.000-05:00

I had a troublesome Linux client being backed up by Retrospect (Windows). This client kept automatically deferring each backup request, causing a never-ending loop of "backup.. request.. defer", and the client never got backed up.

Thanks to the thread linked above, the solution was relatively simple. For the proactive backup script, set the Countdown to 0, and it won't try to pop-up a window to tell the (non-existent, since this is a headless server) user that it's about to be backed up. No pop-up, no option to defer, no auto-defer.

I think this is because the server can't pop up a window to ask for deferral, so it auto-defers.

Another mystery solved.

Vista 32-bit versus 64-bit

2008-12-05T15:08:00.001-05:00

What is the maximum RAM that can be used by Vista 32-bit versus 64-bit?

I thought I knew the answer to this one. 4GB for 32-bit, higher for 64-bit (depending on the flavor of Vista 64-bit).

But recently I saw a screencap of a machine reporting 16GB RAM -- on 32-bit Vista. How is this possible?

Apparently, Vista Service Pack 1 changed the way Vista reports memory. It now reports the amount of RAM that is physically installed in the machine, versus how much is available to Vista.

Vista 32-bit can only address 4GB maximum, no more, even though it now reports more.

I found the answer at Microsoft's knowledgebase, here. The various limits for each version of Vista are listed elsewhere, but this article explained clearly why Vista 32-bit will report more memory is available than it can actually use.

Cleared it up for me, anyway. :-)

XServe Server Monitor crash - Fixed!

2008-12-02T14:45:00.000-05:00

I administer an XServe for our group at work, and like to keep the Server Monitor utility open every now and then to make sure the box is up and happy.

I guess I haven't tried running it in a while (since 11/5, in fact, which is when I installed a bunch of OS and Apple Remote Desktop updates), but when I launched it this morning, it just crashed to the desktop immediately on launch, with this message in the console:

12/2/08 2:31:48 PM [0x0-0x502502].com.apple.servermonitor[15273] dyld: Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PlatformHardwareManagement.framework/Versions/A/PlatformHardwareManagement
12/2/08 2:31:48 PM [0x0-0x502502].com.apple.servermonitor[15273] Referenced from: /Applications/Server/Server Monitor.app/Contents/MacOS/Server Monitor
12/2/08 2:31:48 PM [0x0-0x502502].com.apple.servermonitor[15273] Reason: Incompatible library version: Server Monitor requires version 1.2.0 or later, but PlatformHardwareManagement provides version 1.0.0

The last line was the key, I had a wrong version of a framework library.

Checking Time Machine, it turns out that an older version of the library was installed on my machine during the ARD update on 11/5. The link at the top of this post is a link to an Apple Discussion Forum posting that indicates this was a problem with Apple's updater for ARD, which dropped the old library in my Frameworks directory and broke Server Monitor.

Two clicks in Time Machine, and the old (newer) version of the library was back in place, and everything's happy again.

I hope this helps someone else who is having trouble getting their Server Monitor running.

MobileMe Contacts Blip

2008-11-26T09:56:00.000-05:00

After months of having pretty good luck with MobileMe Sync, between three Macs and my iPhone, I suddenly noticed that some contacts were not getting synced from my desktops to my "database in the cloud". I'd have, say, 302 contacts on my desktop, and 301 contacts in MobileMe (and thus, 301 contacts on my iPhone). The iPhone always agreed with MobileMe, those two stayed in sync perfectly well, so it was just the desktops that were confused.

I solved this at first by simply finding the contact that was not being sync'd, making a fake edit to the entry, and then forcing a MobileMe synchronization. That worked. But I found that I would have another blip pop up just a few days later (303 on desktop, 302 on MobileMe/iPhone), so this wasn't really a fix.

After searching around the forums at Apple's support site, I found others with the same problem, and a suggestion to fix the problem that worked for me.

Quit Address Book on the desktop in question. Then, remove this file:

~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Relaunch Address Book and force a MobileMe sync. All contacts should now be in sync.

I don't know how long this will last, but it was sure easier than finding the erroneous contact and making a fake edit. Hopefully this is a known issue and Apple will fix it in a MobileMe update later.

Google News is funny!

2008-11-16T18:58:00.001-05:00

Saw this on Google News today.

Who knew?

Sound bug in VMWare Fusion

2008-11-14T15:37:00.000-05:00

I was installing a fresh VM in my VMWare Fusion environment this morning, a nice new Windows XP SP3 install.

Everything was going along great until Windows said there was an update for my audio driver, so I accepted it without thinking.

Problem is, I had no audio after it was installed.

Got this problem? The solution is here .

Summary: Roll back to the previous Creative AudioPCI driver that was installed and you'll have your sound back. The updated driver does not work under VMWare.

Thanks to VMWare Forums for this solution.

Bridging in Linux

2008-11-10T08:16:00.000-05:00

For many reasons, mostly experimental, I wanted to set up a bridging interface in one of my Linux boxes. (The biggest reason was that I wanted to set up a transparent Squid proxy on a few of my machines on the internal network, and this seemed to be the best way if I didn't want to put the proxy on the firewall box, which I didn't.)

Setting up a bridge is pretty easy, on the command line:

ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0 promisc up

ifconfig eth1 0.0.0.0 promisc up

brctl addbr br0
brctl addif br0 eth0
brctl addif br0 eth1

The trick is doing this in the /etc/network/interfaces file (in Debian/Ubuntu). I was pretty sure the syntax was the same as doing a physical interface, and the documentation and Google searching I did confirmed that it should look like this:


auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual

auto br0
iface br0 inet static
        address 192.168.0.10
        network 192.168.0.0
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        broadcast 192.168.0.255
        gateway 192.168.0.1
        bridge_ports eth0
        bridge_fd 9
        bridge_hello 2
        bridge_maxage 12
        bridge_stp off

But it was those last few lines, the bridge_fd through bridge_stp that I didn't understand, and I went on a quest to discover what the extra bridging parameters meant.

Maybe I missed it, but the documentation on bridging parameters in the 'interfaces' file in Debian Linux is hard to find, or at least, hard to search for.

I came across a great reference here , though, and it told me:

bridge_fd is the bridge forward delay time, in seconds, default 15.

bridge_hello is the bridge hello time, in seconds, default 2.

bridge_maxage is the bridge's maximum message time, in seconds, default is 20.

bridge_stp controls the spanning tree protocol, on or off. Default is off, and is recommended to stay that way.

I hope this helps someone else looking to set up a Linux bridge. Thanks to this reference for getting the whole thing started, and to this reference for telling me how the bridge is configured in the interfaces file.

A Unicorn Chaser*

2008-10-12T15:49:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine at work mentioned to me that my last several entries in this blog have been universally negative. "You sound angry," she noted.

I am not normally an angry person, but I have to admit that of late, only the really negative technology stuff -- the stuff that has been really irritating me -- has made it to the blog, and when I look at it as a whole, it does seem rather intense.

So here's a change-of-mood post, because there are definitely some good tech things happening too.

MobileMe has really been settling down. I've used the iPhone, Web and Mac interfaces, and data seems to be pushing and synchronizing seamlessly and quickly. The most glaring flaws in the Web interface have been fixed, and I'm now finding the service to be pretty good. As Apple devotes intense cycles to fixing it, I'm thinking it will be even more reliable moving forward. Today, MobileMe is a very useful service for me.

I've had the opportunity to live with an Amazon Kindle for a while now, and I must say it's an impressive e-book reader. I hadn't really been all that impressed with e-readers up until this point, mostly because none of them impressed me from a usability standpoint. They all had their drawbacks, and it came down to easily getting content from the providers into the device in a way that doesn't make me wish I had just brought a conventional old "book" with me in the first place.

The Kindle's wireless connectivity is something you have to use for a while to "get it". The ubiquitous and free coverage makes getting content trivial. Access to an enormous catalog at Amazon, all available pretty much wherever you are, makes the Kindle a very compelling choice.

The first time I was on a trip and had forgotten to pack the sequel to the book I had finished on the plane really hit home. I searched for the book on the Kindle, found it, purchased it, and was reading it within minutes.

The Kindle also "just works". It hasn't crashed on me, hasn't lost content, hasn't decided to deactivate itself, and came shipped automatically connected to my Amazon account. Out of the box, I was searching, downloading and reading content within minutes.

Sure, there's areas that could be improved.. but right now, I'm very much enjoying the Kindle.

So, there. I hope this improves the overall mood of my blog. :-)

*Definition of "Unicorn Chaser" is here .

DEMOfall 2008

2008-09-08T17:29:00.001-04:00

I'm at DEMO 2008 this week. I'll post here with anything really cool.

Some great demos this morning, sitting in the afternoon still digesting all the presentations.

My web bookmarks for DEMO will be posted here:

http://www.delicious.com/mnc/demo08

More soon!

iPhone 3G: Another disaster

2008-08-21T10:25:00.007-04:00

I recently upgraded my old iPhone 2G into a snazzy new 3G model. The big new features for this device were the on-board GPS (instead of using cellular and WiFi signals to triangulate) and the fast 3G data capability.

So far, it's pretty much been a total bust.

Oh, the GPS works well enough. That's not the problem. It's the damn 3G data: It simply does not work.

I work in an area that has excellent AT&T coverage. Full-strength on all of my other devices on the same network. Excellent 3G capability on another HSPA phone sitting right next to the iPhone 3G.

But the iPhone 3G doesn't work. It can't connect to the network. 95% of the time, the browser reports "Safari could not open the page because the server stopped responding," which is a lie, because it's the iPhone that can't get on the network.

Streaming applications like Pandora stutter and cough, when they work at all.

Any of the native network applications fail. Being on a 3G iPhone means you have no connectivity.

Apple pushed a firmware update (2.0.2) this week that might have been aimed at addressing the connectivity issues. At least, the speculation is that 2.0.2 did something to address the signal/network issues, because Apple described the update as "Bug Fixes", with no further elaboration. The only reason we all assumed it was to fix the radio was because the one thing it actually seemed to affect was the radio -- but not in the way that Apple intended, I am sure.

Why? Because 2.0.2 made my iPhone 3G into a network-disabled brick. I now cannot use the 3G network side of things at all. Not to make calls, not to surf the Web, not to do anything that requires the 3G cellular network.

Not to worry, though -- Apple has a solution. Turn off 3G.

That's right.

Turn off the one major reason to even buy the 3G iPhone in the first place. Just flip the toggle switch in the Preferences pane and all your problems will go away.

Oh, I'll grant them this: It does solve the iPhone 3G's problems. The only problem it, it turns the device back into a 2G iPhone, basically indistinguishable from my old iPhone.

When I disable 3G, the iPhone does start working again and reports full signal strength, and the network comes back into being.

I am not alone. Many people are conjecturing about what the problem can possibly be, pointing fingers at the firmware, the iPhone's radio chipset and AT&T's network. Honestly, I'd be the first to point the finger at AT&T since I usually have pretty bad coverage and performance out of AT&T almost everywhere, but when I do some controlled testing against another HSPA-capable device, side-by-side with the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 3G always fails. It always reports lower signal strength and absolutely refuses to perform network operations in an area where other HSPA devices sing like a canary.

I really, really want my iPhone 3G to work. I really, really want to have faith in Apple again. Mostly, I just want to be able to use the product I paid for.

MobileMe: I give up.

2008-07-31T12:49:00.004-04:00

That's it, I've had it.

MobileMe just doesn't work. It's unreliable, unpredictable, and loses data.

Wake me up if Apple ever figures out what the hell they're doing with this service. I'll be using my Blackberry with Exchange, which actually works, as sad as that is for me to admit.

This hasn't been a good time for Apple.

More MobileMe Hilarity Ensues

2008-07-16T14:05:00.006-04:00

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

MobileMe is still very much a mess.

Today's fun: My MobileMe account reports that the credit card I have on file has a "problem". Yet, for the past few days, whenever I go in to try to fix this supposed problem, MobileMe either:

Hangs,
Tells me my credit card information is not valid,
Charges my card $1 and winds up getting it flagged for fraud.

Seriously. I had a card blocked by the issuer because Apple's "validation" looked like suspicious activity. Gee, thanks Apple! I didn't need that card anyway.

Further, synchronization is busted as of yesterday afternoon. Mail messages arrive twice on my iPhone (usually after I delete them on the phone, they'll just re-appear). Maybe it's a feature of MobileMe where it just knows I couldn't possibly have intended to delete a message, so it just restores it for me. Poof! The magic of MobileMe!

And finally, calendar synchronization isn't working. Changes on the desktop don't push up to the cloud (visibly), and don't push back down to my iPhone.

Unless I make a change on my iPhone. Then, everything synchronizes (visibly).

And so it goes..

iPhone 2.0 and MobileMe

2008-07-14T16:01:00.004-04:00

So I got my iPhone upgraded to the new 2.0 firmware and am (mostly) pleased. The App store is a fun wonderland of surprises both good and bad, but I'm enjoying the adventure in finding the really great apps and cutting away the crap.

Some of the ones that have earned a place on my iPhone are Apple's "Remote", AIM, Showtimes, Bloomberg, Shazam (which is amazing -- hold the iPhone up to music and it tells you what the song is, and even lets you go to the iTunes music store to buy it! This is a killer app!), Twitterific, WeatherBug, and the NY Times. Oh, and I do like Pandora.

I also was happy to see MobileMe roll out. Not so much because I was interested in the new features (which are nice, to be honest), but mostly because I hoped this meant that they finally rewrote the code that did synchronization and gave it some serious stability enhancements. As I've written about before, .Mac was essentially useless and only sporadically synchronized anything. Most of the time, it was a fun game of "Guess where your data is now?", and I was always the loser.

MobileMe has, so far, been rock-solid in the synchronization department. That is, data on my Mac manages to get to my iPhone, and back. However, it isn't truly "push", like Apple claimed: From the Mac to MobileMe, it's on a 15-minute timed schedule (at best), or you can push manually. Same from MobileMe back to the Mac. But the iPhone is, as far as I can tell, true Push in that if you make a change that affects the MobileMe cloud, the iPhone gets the update very quickly.

I'm just happy I've lost no data, and data seems to synchronize correctly. Even bookmarks, which has been a very contentious issue for me in the past.

One thing that persists from the .Mac days is that the Web interface sometimes has little resemblance to the actual state of your synchronized data. For instance, when I first synchronized my contacts, my iPhone and Mac had them properly in sync, but the Web MobileMe interface showed all sorts of incorrect and incomplete data. About a half-hour later, the Web interface had caught up. I suspect they do a ton of caching on the Web interface, and it does not truly show the state of your data until things have stopped synchronizing for a while and the webcache has a chance to catch up.

I'd like to see that fixed, but hey, I'm not complaining too much so far. My main gripes so far about MobileMe are:

MobileMe PC sync doesn't support the use of proxies. Proxies. As in, those things that corporations love to use to keep their employees safe from that bad-evil Internet. As in, the one place that I really need MobileMe to sync my Outlook calendar from, I can't. Because the client won't work behind my corporation's firewall. How utterly useless is that?
To-Dos on the Web calendar are completely broken. Oh, they sync from the desktop okay and all, but (1) it never remembers that I want to show the To-Do pane, and (2) Entering to-do's on the Web form is a hit-or-miss proposition: Sometimes, the To-Dos stick, sometimes they don't, and sometimes you get six "New ToDo" instead of the six things you really needed to remember. Welcome to Web 2.0, Apple-style.
And as long as we're talking about To-Dos, where are they on the iPhone? Still MIA. Seriously. My Blackberry has to-dos, so does my Windows Mobile device. But not on the iPhone. Only on your computer and on the Web, if it works at all.
It's not pushed to/from the PC/Mac. Why?
The Webapp is pretty busted, between not accurately reflecting your MobileMe data, to the To-Do issue above. Let's get stability on that, please.

And as long as I'm on a roll, some iPhone 2.0 complaints as well:

Stability! Apps crash, hang, act oddly and cause instability in other parts of the phone. My iPhone bogged down so badly after running Pandora that it finally needed a reboot. (I thought this whole Apple-controls-the-iPhone experience was to make the phone more stable, not less?)
Actually let's revisit that: STABILITY! Even if I don't run any third-party installed apps, I've noticed that the iPhone isn't as snappy or smooth as it once was. The slick zooms and wipes now stutter or just "pop" to full-screen, the input fields stagger to catch up with your typing, and so forth. I hope there's a 2.0.1 around the corner to address these issues.
No cut and paste. Is it that hard?
No background apps, but this is being remedied with the notification service
AT&T still sucks. This isn't an iPhone problem per se, except that when you are using such a generally awesome network-connected device, it really hits home whenever the network is unavailable or slow. With AT&T, you never really know when your phone is going to work, even if you have a signal. Most of the time, I know it isn't going to work, because it says "No network". I want a Verizon-connected iPhone...

Overall, though, there's a lot here, and I'm enjoying the new applications immensely. I also appreciate that MobileMe actually does synchronize data properly so far, and I'm ready to move to iCal now as my primary calendar.

If only I could use MobileMe from work through our firewall! I hope that upgrade happens quickly.

Indiana Jones 4: The Abridged Version

2008-06-24T15:13:00.002-04:00

I did go see "Indiana Jones 4", even though I swore I wouldn't. I knew it couldn't possibly be any good, especially after the abysmal showings that Indy 2 and 3 were. ("You cheat, docta Jones!" indeed. *shudder*)

But I figured maybe after 20 years, they'd write a script that was a decent homage to the original "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Maybe they'd remember the magic ingredients that made the first Indiana Jones adventure such a fun romp.

But no. Oh, no. Not by a long shot. Indy 4 was so obviously a money-grubbing, "we-can-put-anything-on-the-screen-and-make-a-ton-of-dough", "just-think-of-the-merchandising-deals!" slop-fest.

Shoddy script with plot holes you could drive a truck through (and they did). I mean, yeah, suspension of disbelief is important in a film like this, but when the writing is *this* bad, then it goes quickly from suspending disbelief to downright insulting.

That's what this was. Insulting. Insulting to the movie-going audience. The film feels like the producers had utter contempt for anyone who would be stupid enough to pony up $13 to go see it. Like me.

Anyway. An excellent rundown of the film, in just a few pages rather than two hours of your life, is posted at the-editing-room.com. Check it out for a good laugh, but of course there are **SPOILERS** all over it. So if you don't want the "surprise" ruined, don't read.

But trust me. Indy 4 has no surprises, you'll see everything coming from a mile away. And you won't care. It's that bad.

VZNavigator for Blackberry

2008-06-24T14:41:00.003-04:00

So I recently activated the VZNavigator service on my (old) Verizon Blackberry 8830 device, figuring I'd give it a try.

So now it's just a matter of finding out where to download the app from. Simple, right?

Not so. The instructions at Verizon's site at vznavigator.com show that you should be able to visit a pre-saved bookmark on your Blackberry's browser (the vzstart home page, basically), which is great if you have a brand-new Blackberry from Verizon.

But if you've happened to wipe/upgrade or otherwise blow away your Blackberry over the months, then it's very possible (indeed, likely) that the pre-populated bookmarks that Verizon provides will also be blown away.

Sure enough, I have no such bookmark in my Blackberry's browser.

So I had to do a little searching, but thanks to the kind folks at the crackberry.com forums, the actual URL to get to the VZNavigator software is here:

http://solutions.vzwshop.com/vzstart/bb/

Would it have been so damn hard for Verizon to put this URL up at their vznavigator site?

So there's the shortcut, hopefully this will save someone else some search time.

A test blog entry

2008-06-15T02:02:00.002-04:00

A test blog entry, from my mobile device. This picture was taken and edited on the phone, then sent via MMS to Blogger, and automatically posted. Pretty slick. I can now send pictures directly here, or to Flickr, or.. both!

Testing out Blogo

2008-05-23T00:14:00.001-04:00

This is a new blog entry using Blogo.

So I'm testing out a new blog editor called Blogo, which is a blog editor with integrated microblogging (i.e, Twitter).

There seem to be some spacing issues with certain lines, I'm not sure why.

This is a short entry, because it's late, and I just wanted to test out Blogo. I have another entry which will be, I assure you, very fascinating.

At JavaOne 2008 all week

2008-05-05T15:57:00.002-04:00

I'll be at JavaOne 08 this week. Saw an interesting new blog that aims to provide tips for JavaOne first-timers. (This is my fifth, if I'm counting correctly -- ironically I never got to go to JavaOne when I worked for Sun, they reserve spots for paying customers, which is understandable).

Anyway, the blog entry is here. If you're at JavaOne, the tip about having comfortable shoes is absolutely on the mark: This conference is *exhausting* and you will be walking a lot.

Especially now that the alumni lounge isn't in the Moscone itself anymore.. they seem to have moved it to a hotel next to the Moscone West (which otherwise is not in use by JavaOne). I used to love a little downtime between sessions at the Alumni Lounge, because it was so conveniently located near all the central activities at the conference. Now, it requires a hike over to Moscone West, then to the Intercontinental Hotel, 4th floor, which is pretty out of the way.

Just became a lot less useful. :-(

Oh well. JavaOne 08 begins!

Error 51 from Cisco VPN client under MacOS X

2008-05-04T23:16:00.003-04:00

Of late, I have been repeatedly getting an "Error 51" when starting up my VPN client on MacOS X Leopard. The complaint seems to be that the VPN subsystem can't bind to a network interface.

A quick Google search turned up this awesome blog entry, and from there, the workaround is pretty simple. Restart the VPN subsystem with:

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

Sadly, this does seem to be an annoyance with Cisco's VPN client under Leopard when interfaces are changing -- adding/dropping an Ethernet port, say. I agree with the aforementioned blog's opinion that, being that telecommuters are mostly the ones using this client, it's pretty sad that the client can't seem to deal with changes in the system's network configuration.

In any event, the fix works -- filing this away for future reference.

Update: Found another site with a pre-compiled AppleScript application you can just run from the dock/bar. Thanks so much for this!

EVDO with a MacBook Air

2008-05-02T13:37:00.002-04:00

This article over at EVDOInfo.com is a great reference for anyone with a MacBook Air who wants to use wireless data via EVDO. Having recently set up a bunch of Airs, and having acquired one myself recently, I was looking for a handy reference that would review all the different options out there and note the physical compatibility of each device with the Air's rather stringent space requirements.

I have personally used the 595U and it does, indeed, work well and fit well.

Thanks, EVDOInfo!

Squirrelmail and Courier IMAP

2008-04-02T19:21:00.004-04:00

I'm building a new server box running Fedora Core 7, mostly for home email serving to replace another VM that's getting outdated. One small problem I ran into with Squirrelmail was an error that appeared on the left-hand side whenever anyone logged in:

"ERROR: Could not complete request. Query: CREATE "Sent" Reason Given: Invalid mailbox name."

A little searching (okay, maybe a lot) and I got these posts, here and here, which led me to the Squirrelmail Wiki, which is where I probably should have started:

SquirrelMail Fedora package and Courier

If you use Courier and SquirrelMail Fedora RPM (1.4.4-2) - remove $default_folder_prefix override from /etc/squirrelmail/config_local.php.

Doing this fixed the problems.

TiVoToGo: Roxio's Solution

2008-03-24T16:36:00.002-04:00

So the answer from Roxio about whether or not Toast 9 (and, thus, Toast 8) fixes the issues that people were having with transferred files (out-of-sync sound, etc.)?

No.. actually they aren't fixed. But, they should have been, and they will be soon. I'll hold off my purchase of the software until these issues are resolved, but it's good to see that they are acknowledging there is a problem, and are working towards a fix.

I give up on .Mac Sync

2008-03-21T17:52:00.004-04:00

That's it, I've had it with .Mac Sync.

The service just doesn't work. It hasn't worked right since the first day I started using it years ago.

And it's the simple scenarios that fail miserably (say, one mac to the .Mac service). Bookmarks updated on my Mac won't show up on .Mac Sync. Bookmarks deleted months ago mysteriously reappear on either .Mac or on my Mac itself, randomly. Data is lost or corrupted. Resetting sync settings becomes a bi-weekly ritual, wasting more time than the "convenience" of the sync service in the first place.

And that's just syncing a single Mac! Attempting to do this with multiple Macs is just asking for trouble. Never, ever do all of my Macs get their data in sync. Something's always missing. And usually, it's the one time you really need that contact you just entered at home, oh no problem I'll just bring up my contacts here on my work Mac, and -- oh, not there. Odd, but no problem I'll just log in to .Mac's web service and check them there! Oh, not there either.. Hmm. Problem.

The straw that broke this camel's back was that my iPhone refused to sync my Mac Pro's bookmarks. Absolutely refused. I reset my bookmarks locally, reset my sync preferences and sync history, pushed bookmarks to .Mac, did everything I could think of. Then I noticed that my bookmarks on iPhone were always the ones that were on .Mac -- regardless of how that differed from my actual Mac sitting on my desk! No amount of convincing could make my bookmarks get updated on .Mac, so I assume that's why my iPhone also didn't want to update.

In disgust, I turned off .Mac sync and reset my sync history one last time. The iPhone suddenly started syncing to my local Safari bookmarks once again, and everything is in sync, albeit only locally and not over the network.

You know what? A sync service is even more of a pain when it doesn't work than just not having one. And that's what I've decided -- I'm dropping .Mac. Apple really, really blew it with this service, or they just don't care. Either way, I can't deal with the frustration any longer, which is a shame.. .Mac could really be excellent if it worked.

An update on TiVo transcoding

2008-03-18T22:44:00.001-04:00

I think something is busted with the way the .TiVo file is converted to MPEG2.

Using both TiVoDecode Manager, and the command-line TiVoDecode, I'm seeing artifacting appear at the top of the frame on all my transferred videos.

This is very distracting, and is making me look further for another solution. Stay tuned...

Transcoding videos for TiVo on a Mac

2008-03-18T22:20:00.006-04:00

So I've been meaning to start grabbing recorded shows off my TiVo and onto my Mac, ultimately to transfer to my iPod. I already knew that TiVo did not provide the transfer functionality (TivoToGo) for Mac themselves, but instead offloaded the responsibility to Roxio and embedded that function in Toast and Popcorn, two packages (for extra $) that will find your TiVo, transfer shows, and convert for the iPod.

I would have been fine paying for Toast and/or Popcorn, but seems that one of the latest TiVo software updates has broken the Roxio software and made it less-than-functional. TiVoCommunity has a thread here about this issue.

So I figured, rather than spend $49 on Popcorn 3 with no guarantee that it will work (Roxio does not let you try out their software for a limited time before purchase, you have to buy before you play), I examined home-grown solutions.

One option was SeasonPassGetter, which worked, but doesn't have the prettiest of interfaces. Being picky, I wanted to find something else that might be a little easier. Plus, SPG is mostly about giving it a show, and having it get every episode continually and automatically post them to iTunes. What if I just wanted to get one show specifically?

Second choice: TiVoDecode Manager. This gives you a TiVo-desktop-like interface, where you pick shows and transfer them to your Mac. The TiVo DRM is stripped off during the transfer, and you're left with an MPEG2 file that you then must convert to MPEG4 before getting to your iPod. That's easy, though (see below).

One last choice, the utterly manual option: Access your TiVo through https://tivo.name.or.IP, then enter "tivo" as the user, and your MAK as the password. You then get a list of programs which you can transfer right through the browser. This gives you a large .tivo file.

Next, strip the DRM with TiVoDecode, a command-line tool you download and build yourself. This takes the .tivo file as input, and spits out an MPEG2 file, which you then have to bring to MPEG4 just like before.

To get your MPEG4 file to your MPEG2/iPod compatible format, use ffmpegx, being careful to follow the instructions to get all the related binaries it needs, which have to be downloaded separately. Once installed, though, ffmpegx simply lets you drag a movie file (say, your MPEG2 file) to the ffmpegx window, then select the destination device (say, an iPod), then click one button to do the conversion. Easy enough.

All in all, though, the Mac is lacking a one-stop solution like Windows users have with TiVo Desktop, unless you look to Roxio. I'd love to buy their solution, but I need to be sure that it will actually work. I'll keep watching the TiVo forum to see when this particular problem is resolved.. but it's been a while so far, so I'm not holding much hope.

Trying out Flock

2008-03-15T11:39:00.001-04:00

So I've been hearing good things about Flock recently, saw a few of my Twitter friends twittering about it, and thought I'd give it (another) try.

I'd tried it a while back when it was barely out of beta (or so it felt that way), and didn't like it. At the time, I hadn't had all these different social networking sites to keep on top of, and didn't really do much with my blog, and Flock seemed like all this extra cruft on top of what I wanted, which was a good, fast browser.

Fast-forward, and now here I am with Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. etc. and Flock suddenly starts to make some sense. :-)

I just kicked it up, and immediately attached my Flickr, Twitter, Google, Blogger and Yahoo accounts to the browser. It's nice having a single place to check out all my networking sites in a sidebar. I may actually keep using this..

One bash, though -- The browser is not as fast as Firefox or Safari, but it's much better than I remember. Hopefully that will improve as Flock matures.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Binding Retrospect Client to a Specific IP

2008-03-09T13:04:00.003-04:00

So we had a power failure last night, which is annoying but it allows me to make sure our restart procedures (bringing up the home servers, etc.) are automatic. Seems like every time it happens, though, I discover one little thing I forgot since the last failure, and I still have to go in and restart something by hand.

This time, it was one of the Linux boxen's Retrospect client.

The client came up but it was confused since the VMWare instance had two network adapters, and it bound to both, thus seriously confusing the Retrospect server.

Simple solution, thanks to EMC/Dantz's Web forums, and "Gold Club" poster "waltr":

retroclient -ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

note that you'll want to put this in the RCL script so that it sticks across reboots, like this:

$CLIENTDIR/retroclient -daemon -ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Which I did, and all is good now! Hopefully this will be the last change I have to make for a fully automated restart next power outage, which, knowing PSNH, will be in a few days.

(Kidding! I kid! Please don't cut my power.. :-))

Lots of things today

2008-03-06T19:04:00.000-05:00

Well, two.

First: I was having trouble with Aperture 2.0.1 not applying white balance settings correctly when using the eyedropper. I'd click on the dropper, click on the neutral-grey in my picture, and blam -- the white balance would wind up massively wrong.

A blog entry here, though, pointed me in the right direction. See, Aperture 2 seems to have this bug where the first white balance change -- any change, be it a slider movement or the eyedropper -- causes this radical shift in white-balance values disproportionate to the change being made. That's what I was seeing, because the bug apparently also affected the automatic change done with the eyedropper tool.

So -- using that post's workaround (i.e., apply white balance settings manually by clicking the tick-mark enabling white balance adjustment, then apply the dropper change) worked great for me. And hopefully Aperture will get this fixed in the next rev.

Second.

iPhone! iPhone! The SDK was released today, and the firmware update coming (in June, though) will enable a ton of enterprise-class features. The two that have me jazzed are licensed support for Microsoft's Enterprise ActiveSync (direct to Exchange), and support for Cisco's VPN client so that it will work with my company's Cisco VPN concentrator.

A banner day for the iPhone! Can't wait for the update. Now I wish Apple's developer web site were capable of handling all the people trying to get the SDK; I haven't been able to get in all afternoon. Soon!

It's over!

2008-02-16T14:08:00.003-05:00

HD-DVD has lost the format war.

Finally. Now maybe we can get on with getting as much content as possible in a single format. The shame is that it took two years to get here!

Shipped!

2008-02-10T23:11:00.000-05:00

I'll stop ranting, now. My Mac shipped on Saturday, arriving Tuesday. Early.

Thanks, Apple. :-)

I WANT MY MAC!

2008-02-06T23:41:00.001-05:00

Allow me to vent.

On January 8, Apple announced the updated Mac Pro I've been waiting for. I ordered it that morning, 11am 1/8/08. I understood that, because I wanted the 8800 graphics card (a serious upgrade from the standard card), it was going to be a delay in shipping. 2/15 was the estimated ship date.

Today, according to this thread, people who ordered their Mac Pros WEEKS AFTER ME are already getting shipment notices and will have them Friday! I, on the other hand, have NOT received a ship notice, my Mac Pro is sitting in the "Not Shipped" status.

Apple, are you really trying to go out of your way to piss people off? Why wouldn't you ship in the sequence in which they were ordered? Why does some guy who ordered two weeks ago get priority over my January 8 order?

Okay, no, this isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and I'm sure my Mac will be on its way soon enough, but great way to punish the early adopter who's had this thing on order for over a month now.

Vent over. I feel better now. Really. I do.

Lynnae

2008-02-04T01:59:00.001-05:00

Just stumbled on a cool new service to generate auto-updated paperdolls of my WoW characters, and link easily to them in posts, forums, etc.

Lynnae, in all her Magely glory.

Data tethering with an XV6800

2008-02-01T14:04:00.000-05:00

I am constantly forgetting where the procedures are for setting up a data device (like the Verizon XV6800) for wireless DUN, which I'm trying to do today, so having this information would be nice.

As always, I have to search Verizon's web site until I stumble across the correct combination of links. And as always, I make a mental note to keep that information stored somewhere for my reference.

Well, this time I'm actually going to store that information someplace useful: Here. Hope it helps someone else, too.

There.

Speed!

2008-01-12T00:40:00.001-05:00

Fastest speedtest yet!

Leopard, DNS and NetInfo

2007-12-22T14:26:00.000-05:00

Today while trying to add a local host to my relatively-newly-upgraded Leopard laptop, I noticed that Leopard no longer has the NetInfo tools that I had been accustomed to using in the past. I also noticed that modifying /etc/hosts had no real effect on DNS resolution -- it still pulled from the nameserver. I suspected something had changed.

Correct! To add hosts (and other information) to the new NetInfo-equvalent on Leopard, you need to use dscl. As in:

sudo dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Hosts/enterprise.federation.org IPAddress 192.168.0.1

This works just fine, and I was able to use it to add a local host. Thanks to this posting for pointing in the right direction.

Also, I needed to purge the DNS cache for testing. A new Leopard command, dscacheutil -flushcache did the trick. Thanks to this post and this post for that one.

And now my Leopard networking issues are resolved. What did people do before the Internet existed? :-)

Apple updates XServe LOM

2007-11-28T23:33:00.000-05:00

To be fair, Apple did actually post a fix for the LOM problem I'd written about before, back on 11/20.

The issue I was having was that the XServe's LOM (Lights-out Management module) would only work for a few hours, then stop responding altogether to the system monitoring software, causing much alarm on our side thinking the machine had died. The only way to ressurect the LOM was to power-down the XServe, pull the power cords (both of them), let it sit for 30 seconds, then power-up. At which time, the LOM would only work for a few more hours, then die again.

The firmware update Apple posted today is supposed to resolve this issue, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I am installing it now, hopefully we'll be all set now.

Okay -- thanks, Apple. That was timely and appreciated.

VMWare Server 1.0.4 and FC 7/8

2007-11-25T21:24:00.001-05:00

Today I was trying to bring up a new Linux VM in my VMWare Server box, for running my SlimServer for the holidays (long story, don't ask).

So I'm trying to install Fedora Core 7 into VMWare Server 1.0.4, but I kept getting SCSI errors, and hangs during the install when trying to load a particular SCSI driver. It also complained about being unable to access the various SCSI devices during install, but I forged ahead.

After the install, the reboot brought me into a state where errors were being reported about the SCSI devices (as on install), but it takes 10-15 minutes to get through all the errors. They were of the type:

Asking for cache data failed
Assuming drive cache: write through
rejecting I/O to offline device

So -- some Google-ing, some Forum reads, turns out this is an issue with VMWare Server 1.0.4. Something's broken here.

Easy fix? Disable BusLogic and enable LSI Logic on the VM itself. The machine seems much happier now and the install is moving along.

Reference these links here (someone else having the same issue) and here, VMWare's forums.

Two random things

2007-11-20T13:36:00.000-05:00

Two things going on today.

First, Apple's enterprise support is "aware" of the issue I'm having with an XServe at work. Our LOM is flaky, it stops responding after about two hours of uptime. If you power down the XServe, pull the plug, and let it sit for 30 seconds, then reboot, it's fine again for about two hours. Then, it dies again. Apparently this is a widespread issue with XServes, and a fix is "coming". That's all Apple enterprise support could give me. No ETA. *sigh*

Second, Canon released the 1.0.5 firmware for the EOS 40D; this fixes an issue introduced in 1.0.4 that caused RAW files not to work with Adobe products (notably, Photoshop). Check the update here.

That's it for now. :-)

.Mac sync

2007-11-18T15:48:00.000-05:00

Okay, looks like .Mac sync is finally back up again. My synchronization seems to be working, both up to .Mac and to my other macintoshes on the same account. Goodness, that only took a month to get working.

One thing still isn't working, though, and that's the Dashboard synchronization. This promised to be pretty neat, you set up your dashboard all nice and pretty on one Mac, and that exact setup propagates to all the other Macs being synchronized. Sounds good, right?

Well, as usual, the fine print is always worth reading.

So you have to install the dashboard widgets on each machine; the synchronization is only for each widget's preferences and whether or not to show it on the dashboard.

I suppose that's still useful, just significantly less so. Would it have been that hard to store the widget code in the account as well? Maybe it's a security thing. I dunno. I just wish it worked that way.

Laura

2007-11-18T02:02:00.001-05:00

Laura
Originally uploaded by marc_cannava

While waiting in the Grand Californian (during our Big Trip to California for my friend Gregg's wedding), Laura was kind enough to pose for me. Thus, this picture.

I'm really, really late in posting this on the blog, tho. No particular reason it's coming out now, except that I can. :-)

Belkin UPS

2007-11-16T12:16:00.001-05:00

Today I started smelling something really awful coming from behind my desk, like a rotten-egg sulfur type smell. But it was tinged with a slight metallic burn, very hard to describe, something that made me think it was electrical in nature. But it was very hard to localize.

After a little sniffing around the office, I determined there was a corner of the room that definitely smelled worse than anywhere else, right where I had two UPSs and a power strip which provide power to that quarter of the office (driven off of two outlets).

So immediately, everything gets unplugged. I'm taking no chances. And I start sniffing the devices as I pull them off of the power.

The culprit? A Belkin UPS, barely a year old, which had started belching forth this horrible odor, and was getting worse even as I stood there holding it.

Fortunately, I was home today, and it didn't have a chance to really funkify the house (at best) or catch fire (at worst); I suspect the UPS was on the way to meltdown, and it was really lucky I was home.

Doing a little research on the Web, seems I'm not the only one to have issues with Belkin UPSs. This guy discusses a meltdown, but doesn't specifically talk about the odor, but someone in the comments says:

I came home this week to a strong sulfur odor in my house and traced it to the Belkin UPS F6C800. AFter allowing the unit to cool, I disassembled the unit and found the front battery melted and the rear battery deformed. So far I have received an email telling me to contact returns, and I have left a message with them. This battery was very close to catching on fire or exploding. There are no other surge suppressors plugged into the device.

That's exactlywhat happened to mine -- sans taking it apart. I'm not going to bother. It's already outside, and the next stop for it is the recycling center that can process dead batteries.

I will never, ever buy another Belkin UPS. I quite like my Nostromo keypad (which is made by Belkin), so I can't quite say I won't buy anything Belkin. Only things that have the potential to go up in flames. :-)

ObRec: I do like MGE UPSs, now acquired by APC, whom I've had mixed luck with in terms of reliability (but never had an APC unit emit foul odors!), so I'll stick with them from now on.

Summary

2007-11-03T12:46:00.000-04:00

So here's where I am after this week's adventures.

.Mac sync is still down. Since October 19th. 15 days and counting. Apple's really looking first-class on this one. And no significant updates, no apologies to their users, nothing. I could almost forgive the downtime if they were being communicative to the users, but they've ignored my help requests, they aren't posting on the forums. This is the worst customer service from anyone, much less from Apple. Incredible.

The Leopard Server issue I had was resolved, via a sneaky trick of pulling the MacOS X Server Utilities out of the 10.4 tools installer disc and modifying the version.plist file. Changing "CFBundleShortVersionString" from 10.4.7 to 10.6 seems to work. (Thanks to the Apple Discussion Forum "Administration Applications" for the help on this one.)

MarsEdit is the winner of my short-lived bake-off between two Mac blogging tools. However, I don't actually know if I'm going to use it. So there you go.

Still can't install Leopard on my G5 iMac. Not sure why, but to be honest I haven't really tried many more times. I'll get around to it.

Honestly, I'm so close to just bagging .mac and going to Foxmarks anyway, and sticking with Firefox on all my platforms. Maybe trying Plaxo for address book. Let's see how pissed off .Mac gets me. :-)

Courtney's letter at California Adventure

2007-11-02T07:19:00.001-04:00

Courtney's letter at California Adventure
Originally uploaded by marc_cannava

We were at "California Adventure" recently and decided to have each of the girls pose near "their" letter. C is for Courtney. :-)

(This is actually just the first test I've done with Flickr's Blog integration, yet another way of getting my blog posts done. Flickr's blog entry is, admittedly, rather spartan and devoid of features, but it works.)

And as a follow-up to the "Great Blog Editor Debate", I think I am settling on MarsEdit because it doesn't add tons of whitespace to my posts for no reason.

Another Leopard issue!

2007-10-31T14:09:00.001-04:00

Here's a beauty.

So I run an XServe at work, running MacOS 10.4.

I did a fresh install of Leopard on my client, a Mac Pro. So now it's running 10.5.

I tried to reinstall the 10.4-based server administration tools on my Mac Pro, but the installer barfs: Won't install on Leopard.

Fine, fine, so I'll install the Leopard-compatible administration tools. Well, that's great, but those tools won't administer a machine running 10.4, only 10.5 (Leopard Server).

But, you may recall, I am not running Leopard Server on my XServe.

Where's the Leopard client-compatible server admin tools, Apple?

My frustration list is growing daily here...

ecto

2007-10-31T13:09:00.000-04:00

This post comes from Ecto, which I think I like better than MarsEdit simply because it has a rich HTML editor that MarsEdit lacks (unless I've completely missed the train on MarsEdit, which is very possible after the whole ten minutes I've played with it!)

I like the tagging, too -- a nice list I can choose from.

We'll see, I'll play more.

"If someone says something interesting, it's easy to add it as a quotation block."

Like that.

UPDATE: What I like more about MarsEdit is the editor integration (i.e., BBEdit, among others) so you can actually fine-tune the HTML.. better than ecto's HTML live editor. I think now I like MarsEdit. Call me fickle.

This is not about Leopard.

2007-10-31T10:29:00.001-04:00

(Photo: Gil, outside Epcot's "Living Seas" pavilion, Canon EOS Rebel XT)

So after having a conversation with a friend of mine about sucky web interfaces to blogs, I'm trying out "MarsEdit", to see if it is better than using the Web interface to blogger.

So far, it's nice, having access to the raw text being posted (and I like the ability to embed pictures automatically). I'll probably play with it during the 30-day trial and see how I like it.

No more complaints about Leopard yet. :-)

Yet more Leopard issues

2007-10-31T00:24:00.000-04:00

And now, I can't even boot my older G5 iMac off the Leopard install DVD. I can insert it while the system is running, and it is recognized, and I can launch the installer which says it needs to restart. Which I do.

Then, on restart, the iMac just sits at the grey Apple screen, spinning the wheel. Fans come on full-blast, which is a real treat.

That's as far as it's gotten.

And I'm not alone, the Apple discussions have plenty of threads of people who can't boot off the Leopard install DVD.

Another wonderful problem..

More Apple bugs

2007-10-30T22:18:00.000-04:00

Well, not really a bug, but a missing service.

.Mac (which I subscribe to, a premium service) Sync (which lets you synchronize various bits of data from mac-to-mac via the Internet, via Apple's servers) has not worked since the 19th. It really blew up badly, causing lots of my data to be duplicated and/or not synchronized properly (some data on some machines, some on others, but none of them complete).

I figured, let Leopard get released and see if they can finally get the sync service going again.

As of today, 10/30, it is still not working. Apple's .Mac status even says it's still not operating properly. None of my data pushes up to the servers, even though the sync says it's working fine on my Leopard-enabled Mac.

Common wisdom on the Forums? "Just stop using it until Apple gives the all-clear."

For the yearly cost of this service, I expected better. There's a fantastic bookmark synchronizer for Firefox that's free, and works flawlessly.

Isn't Apple supposed to get the little things right?

Apple, iPod, Aperture oddity

2007-10-29T19:36:00.001-04:00

Here's an odd bug I just discovered.

Take an iPod classic (80GB), an iMac, Leopard, and Aperture 1.5.6 (the latest, updated for Leopard support).

Tell iTunes to sync photos to the iPod, select the Aperture library as the source for the pictures.

iTunes will sync the pictures to the iPod fine, but every single picture will be dated "February 6, 2040". I have no idea why, but I've discovered that there are a few others who noticed this oddity, as this posting on Apple's support boards shows.

No response from Apple, I'll probably submit it as a bug and see what they say.

For now -- no workaround or solution. Anyone else seeing this?

UPDATE: Submitted this as a bug (bugreport.apple.com), received bugid #5566750. Let's see what happens.

UPDATE: Apple fixed this, and sent email asking me to verify that the fix did in fact address my bug. Good job, Apple! They do listen to their bug reporting system! Issue resolved.

Apple to open the iPhone for developers

2007-10-16T10:48:00.000-04:00

This, if true, is fantastic news. According to Business Week, the iPhone is going to be made open to developers to write native applications. From the article:

"Sources familiar with the company's plans tell BusinessWeek.com that Apple will release a software-development kit for the iPhone in early 2008, enabling programmers to create games, business-productivity tools, and countless other applications for the device. Few details are known, but sources say an announcement will come in January, which suggests it may be slated for Jan. 15, when Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs takes the stage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco."

Well this is great. And, about time. Now let's see them sanction carrier-unlocking, as well. But I won't hold my breath on that last one.

The HiDef Disc "format war". Silly!

2007-08-21T13:47:00.000-04:00

I just saw this in the CEA SmartBrief in my inbox today: HD-DVD and BluRay are still fighting! The idiocy of these two headlines appearing together is staggering:

First, we have:

HD-DVD scores major victory!

Toshiba's HD DVD technology scored a major victory as both Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation announced that they would now release future titles exclusively in the HD DVD format. Previously, both studios had released titles in both HD DVD and rival Sony's Blu-ray formats. Yahoo! (8/21) , The Boston Globe/Bloomberg (8/21)

Then, right below it..

Fox, MGM show Blu-ray support

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment has announced plans to release 29 new titles in the Blu-ray format by year's end. "Given that Blu-ray has consistently outsold HD DVD all year ... we believe that the time is right for us to accelerate our activities and help convert the nearly 60 million high-definition households worldwide into Blu-ray households," said Mike Dunn, president worldwide, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. IGN.com (8/20)

My take?

When are the studios and the technology companies going to realize that this "war" is not helping sell anything at all. I am a target consumer for this technology. I would be buying high-definition discs today if I knew there was a standard format that wouldn't be disappearing anytime soon. But this constant back-and-forth between the two means that I shouldn't make any purchasing decisions until one side wins -- or they both lose, when Internet distribution kills them both.

HDTV Overscan suport in nVidia 8800-series cards

2007-08-18T12:18:00.000-04:00

So I've upgraded my home theater PC (HTPC) to Vista last week, and for the most part it's working fine, even the drivers for my Auzentech X-Plosion DTS 7.1 card (which is a GREAT card, btw, and has worked flawlessly under XP as well).

The only thing NOT working was the overscan support in nVidia's drivers. The option is listed, but whenever I would select it and resize my desktop to fit my Samsung's DLP rear-projection screen, the desktop would just snap back to the normal full resolution regardless.

The solution -- thanks to the posters over at nvnews.net -- is in nVidia's fix for this problem, located here. Thanks, nvnews!

UPDATE: Not so fast.. this update only applies to Windows XP. Anyone have a solution for getting the 8800-series cards to support overscan on Vista? This is pretty basic stuff, I can't believe the drivers still don't support it..

Speed Test

2007-08-11T09:07:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I know I'm obsessing, but wow! :-)

Speed steady, got a Nuvi!

2007-07-28T00:41:00.000-04:00

My speeds with Comcast are rock-steady and very, very fast. I thought the first day that I had done the speed test might be a fluke, and the speeds would drop back down. Well, after a few weeks with the PowerBoost addition, I'm still testing incredibly fast speeds:

Also, I decided to get one of the new Garmin Nuvi 680 GPS units to replace a cranky, under-updated, under-appreciated built-in GPS system in our van. The built-in is an Alpine, which worked well enough, but Alpine never ever published a single updated mapset since we bought the unit more than four years ago. They have produced updates for the OEM versions (i.e., the Alpine nav system sold with Hondas and Acuras), but have left us full-price-paying standalone nav system owners in the cold. I think that's pretty rotten of Alpine, and I will now make sure to tell people to steer clear.

The Nuvi is very nice indeed, and is capable of pulling in weather, movies, traffic and gas price data from MSN Direct. So far, the unit seems to be receiving the data slowly as I drive, but it usually shows "No Coverage" in many areas that MSN claims are covered. I suspect this is actually a user interface issue, showing no coverage when in fact the unit is receiving MSN data, because it does seem to get traffic alerts in a timely fashion even when the GUI displays "no signal". I'll investigate more as I play with the unit.

However -- the screen is large, colorful, and the unit is as fast as my older 2720 (also Garmin). And, I've already gotten a map update (the 2008 City Navigator maps), that's one more than I've gotten in FOUR YEARS with the Alpine!

One gotcha: Garmin's "official" policy about providing updated maps for those who have recently purchased a Nuvi which may have shipped with outdated maps is that they must pay for the update -- which is a pretty raw deal, if you ask me. Garmin used to give 30-60 day grace periods for people who were unlucky enough to get a new unit with older maps.

To be fair, I called and complained and they are sending me the map update, free of charge. Otherwise, I would have returned the unit to Amazon and possibly checked out the competition.. but Garmin did right by me, so I'm keeping (and enjoying) my Nuvi.

Powerboost Up!

2007-07-12T01:16:00.000-04:00

Looks like our region got the PowerBoost upgrade from Comcast that we were expecting.. The download PB was already enabled a few months ago (hence the 18-20Mbps downstream rate), but this morning I noticed the upstream is also looking excellent:

Not too shabby at all!

Lynnae (Human Mage)

2007-07-09T01:36:00.000-04:00

Lynnae made level 46 tonight! Woo!

It's late and now time for bed, but I wanted to get her leveled. Success!

Connectivity and iPhones and WoW -- Oh My!

2007-07-08T12:29:00.000-04:00

The speedtests for my Comcast connection still continue to be amazing. 18.3 on the downlink is really fast stuff. I've gotten over 20 in some tests but the steady state seems to be around what you see here.

On the gaming front, made level 45 a few nights ago with my Human Mage in Warcraft. Hopefully she'll make it up to 50 soon enough -- I want that portal to Darnassus!

And yes, got an iPhone, even though I swore I wouldn't, and even though I said in this very blog that the announcement of an iPhone was uninteresting. And yes, it's amazing and I'm loving it.

Joined XBOX Live!

2007-06-29T15:08:00.000-04:00

Yes, we broke down and bought an XBOX 360 to go along with the Wii.

Now, the kids have the Wii, and we have our grown-up, high-def, Dolby 5.1-surround games. :-)

Just starting to get familiar with it, but I did post my gamer card on the blog..

Also put down a deposit for Halo 3. If you had asked me a year ago whether I'd have a PS3 or an XBOX, I'd have said a PS3.. but.. well, the missteps Sony has had with the PS3 made me reconsider the purchase.

And I am quite enjoying the XBOX.

Call me!

2007-06-27T08:52:00.001-04:00

Grand Central provides a "one number" service I'm playing with, so now if you need to get in touch, you can use this button.

I love my Cable Modem!

2007-04-16T09:48:00.000-04:00

Latest speedtest:

Last Result:
Download Speed: 22820 kbps (2852.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 734 kbps (91.8 KB/sec transfer rate)

It just keeps getting better. No problems with Comcast here.

Tor

2007-02-12T10:13:00.001-05:00

The Onion Router, an interesting system of anonymizing Internet access:

http://tor.eff.org/

2007-02-08T18:21:00.000-05:00

So this is an image of Windows Mobile 6, announced yesterday.

More information forthcoming

A Web-based post

2007-01-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

So I saw this at Apple's home page now. I wonder what it could mean....

EDIT: It means the iPhone.. which is not as exciting as I'd hoped.

This is a side note in OneNote.

2007-01-03T20:19:00.000-05:00

This is a side note in OneNote. I can update this at any time.

BotBlog Test

2006-01-23T16:26:00.000-05:00

This is my first external blog, to see if it even works.

My new home

2006-01-23T16:23:00.000-05:00

This is a test of my new blog. Compared to LiveJournal, this seems nicer.