Tags:
I
recently "upgraded" to an iPhone 4 running iOS4 and felt it was
something of a downgrade for me. The problem was that most of my
favorite jailbreak apps didn't work. Some of them seem to be dead
products, too. One of my most important apps was AutoSilent, which
I used to automatically silence email after 6 PM and text messages and
all other sounds except phone calls after 9 PM, then turn it all back on
at 7:30. To my dismay, AutoSilent didn't work on my new iPhone. Maybe
a blessing in disguise, though, because while searching for an alternative
I found Mirror Profile, also available on Cydia.
Mirror Profile is a little more complicated
to set up but it also has more features. Once you get to know it
some (by playing around with it or reading this blog post, since there
is no documentation!) it actually makes quite a bit of sense. You
can create multiple profiles that mirror the Settings>Sounds screen.
If you know how to modify that screen, you know how to set up profiles.
The nice thing is that you can add whatever you want to that screen,
customizing what the profile controls. Then you can set each item
on or off, just like the Settings screen. After you set up your profiles
you can set up Scheduling. This allows you to automatically change
profiles at scheduled times on scheduled days, the real power of the application
(so why doesn't Apple include this in the base OS??)
So the way I have things set up is with
3 profiles, All On, Phone & Text, and Phone Only. The descriptions
pretty much describe what they do. I have a couple of schedules set
up. The first switches me to Phone & Text at 6 PM. My goal
there is basically NOT to be notified of new email messages after 6 PM,
but I still want texts and phone calls to come through. Then, after
9 PM I switch to Phone Only, which pretty much shuts off all sounds, even
Lock Sounds, except for phone calls. At 7:30 AM I automatically switch
back to All On.
As far as I know, this is the ONLY way
to easily shut off everything except phone calls overnight, which is pretty
important to me in the event of an emergency or one of my kids calling.
Oh, one more bit of killer functionality - sometimes I get up early
and would like the sounds back on early than scheduled. No problem,
simply tap on the profile you want to use (in this case, All On) and you're
in business. And my iPhone is working the way I need it to again.
Tags:
iPhone
Yesterday
news came out that Apple was going to release a patch to fix the latest
jailbreak, a web-based jailbreak at jailbreakme.com. I have been
holding off upgrading, even though I am eligible to get the subsidized
price plus $18 but this was the final straw. Obviously if you've
read this blog you know that I jailbreak my iPhone (and hack just about
everything I have) so that was important to me. It looks like I can
sell my 3GS on eBay for about $400 so I'll be making almost $200 by going
to an iPhone 4. So I swung by the Apple Store on the way back to
my office yesterday and picked one up.
The iPhone 4 has a brilliant, beautiful
screen. It looks brighter and sharper than my 3GS and is a little
easier to read. Everything feels just a little faster and pinching
and zooming feel a bit better, a bit more accurate. I like the ease
of setting up new folders, although I like the unlimited apps you can put
in the jailbreak app Categories (which still works on iOS4.) That's
about all the good stuff I can think of on the iPhone 4. But...
The case isn't rounded in the back like
the 3GS so it's not quite as comfortable, but obviously not a big deal.
A bigger deal to me are the killer jailbreak apps I used to use that
just don't work any more:
5-Row QWERTY Keyboard (I LOVED this!)
AutoSilent
Notifier
Battery Control Premium
MyWi
QuickLock
Orbit
Safari Download Manager
Weathericon
On top of the missing apps, email isn't
getting pushed regularly like it used to (I use Lotus Traveler to get my
Lotus Notes email.) And I've dropped about half of my calls (this
thing is still a phone, right?) Just sudden, random drops unrelated
to "antennagate" which hasn't been a problem for me yet.
Really, it feels like a huge, disappointing
downgrade. I guess that's what happens when you get $200 back for
something. But I'm taking such a hit on apps and functionality that
I use EVERY DAY that I think I'm going to have to return the 4. I'll
give it a few more days, though, just to make sure.
Tags:
Ed
Brill posted this very cool video from the opening general session of Lotusphere
2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXeKQP1Nyv8
Tags:
iPhone
Anyone
who has been around me when a call has come into my iPhone has heard the
old fashioned "brrrring!" sound I've been using as a ringtone
for many years now (long before I had an iPhone actually.) Well,
now I have the dialer to go with it, complete with full sound and motion.
Why do I like this weird, retro dialer? Who knows... It's not
like I actually use the iPhone for phone calls (much) anyway. And
next time my Dad needs to borrow my phone maybe he won't look at it with
a blank stare, wondering how to use it. iRetroPhone
is available on iTunes for $0.99.
Tags:
I
wanted to take a couple minutes to review my Help
Desk, which has
now been in operation for four months with great success.
The Help Desk, which can
be reached by my website, www.goodcomputerguy.com,
is the fastest, best way to get in touch with me and report a problem.
Once on the web site, click on Help Desk in the top menu.
There are two choices on that screen, Submit a new ticket
and Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail, which I will explain below.
If you have any technical
issues at all, please submit a ticket with as much information as possible
about the problem. At the bottom of the ticket is a place to attach
up to 2 files. Most of the time these will probably be used for screen
shots, which can greatly help diagnose a problem, but it can be anything
you think you need to attach.
After you click Submit Request
you'll immediately get an email with your ticket number and a link back
to the ticket. You can use that link to check on the progress and
add more details as necessary. When your ticket is updated, with
either questions from me or a resolution, you'll get another email with
a link back to the ticket so you can read the response.
The last response from me
might just be some documentation on the technical issue - there's no need
to respond with "thanks" or anything like that, in fact that
would just reopen a closed ticket. Also, please limit each ticket
to just one issue. If you have multiple things to report you can
submit multiple tickets.
If you lose one of your ticket
numbers just click on the Resend existing ticket(s) via e-mail link
at the bottom of that first page. You'll immediately get an email
with links to ALL of your tickets. (If you are a company owner or
administrator you also have access to the company Master Ticket, which
shows all the tickets submitted by everyone in your company.)
SCREEN SHOTS
A little aside about screen
shots: please don't paste a screen shot into a Word document. A much
better way to is to paste into Microsoft Paint, which is included with
every copy of Windows, then save that picture onto your desktop (or wherever
you want) and attach it to the ticket. To make a screen shot, hit
either ALT-Prt Scr to get just the window/program in question, or
CTRL-Prt Scr to get your entire screen. Once you have what
you want, simply paste into Paint. You can even use Paint to crop
down the screen shot to just what you want to show and annotate as necessary.
WHY USE THE HELP DESK
INSTEAD OF EMAIL?
Email is great for communication.
But email threads are disorganized and tend to get jumbled, confused,
and lost. There's no easy way to track issues and problems and look
back at history. Email threads also tend to creep into other topics.
With a help desk ticket, issues are well defined and both of us can
look at the same ticket to see the conversation, progress, and resolution.
Later on if a problem comes up again we'll have good history to look
back on. Even quick questions are better off as a ticket rather than
an email. More often than not, what starts out as a quick email question
end up going back and forth multiple times and morphing into something
bigger. It's better to just start as a ticket, with all the information
in it (please don't link a ticket back to an unrelated email.)
WHY NOT JUST CALL?
The Help Desk is the fastest
way to report a problem too me. Unfortunately I can be in only one
place at a time while juggling about 16 things, and that 17th one is a
doozy. When a new ticket comes in it's easy for me to quickly assess
the problem and get back to you as soon as I can, sometimes immediately.
Phone calls should be limited to only extremely critical issues or
Internet outages when you can't reach the help desk (common sense prevails.)
I'm often working with other people, and just like you wouldn't like
me to be interrupted while I'm working with you, they don't want me to
field phone calls while I'm working with them. If the phone rings
and I can't get it, it may be a while before I'm able to listen to a voicemail
and know what is going on. I can usually get to tickets in the help
desk much faster.
Finally, on both the phone
and email issue, I occasionally have colleagues cover for me. They
never have access to my voicemail or email, but do have access to the help
desk.
WHAT SHOULD I USE THE
HELP DESK FOR?
Everything. Really,
even if you have just a minor problem and you're pretty sure I'm going
to be there tomorrow anyway, go ahead and submit a ticket. It's very
helpful to me to know about everything that happens with your computer
or network. Also, there's a chance that some minor problem you're
seeing is also being reported by other people on your network - that can
be very helpful for me to quickly be aware of issues that could blossom
into something bigger. Or it may be possible that I just resolved
the same minor issue for someone else and can instantly fix your problem
too. A help desk ticket should be the first place you turn.
WHEN SHOULDN'T I CREATE
A NEW TICKET?
If there is already a ticket
for your problem please just update the existing ticket rather than creating
a new one. A new ticket on an existing problem just slows down my
response as I will need to combine the tickets and delete the extra ticket
first.
YOU WERE JUST AT MY DESK,
WHY SHOULD I CREATE A TICKET? Or, YOU'RE IN MY OFFICE TODAY,
CAN'T I JUST GRAB YOU WHEN YOU WALK BY?
See the juggling comment
up above - by the time I get across the office and 4 people have grabbed
me to ask about a new issue I've forgotten the first one and can't prioritize
(OK, OK, I know YOURS is the most important problem, but I still have to
deal with everyone else too!) After I resolve even a quick issue,
I'd still like a ticket in the system to track what's going on, what has
been done, what changes have been made, etc. It can help diagnose
future issues down the road, and also is a good record of what I've been
doing for you.
WHY DO YOU WRITE SO MUCH?
I think it's related to my
mother. Boy, that woman can talk. I set out to write a quick
reminder about the Help Desk and ended up with this. Sorry... extra
points if you actually made it this far. And I look forward to helping
you with any issues that come up! Ticket away....
Tags:
iPhone
I
can admit it now - I actually do sleep with my iPhone. I didn't in
the beginning, but my wife once caught us in bed together. I was
just reading a book with Stanza,
that's all. Then, while we don't watch TV in bed very often, we started
having trouble with our TiVo remote in the bedroom controlling the TiVo
downstairs so I bought DVR
Remote so I could control the
TiVo with my iPhone via my wireless network. So that was another
excuse for my iPhone and me to spend more time together.
The final straw, though, was this week
when I loaded up the Sleep
Cycle alarm clock. I generally
don't need an alarm clock but this thing tracks your sleep cycles and displays
them in a very cool graph so you can see how well you've slept (a bit more
accurately than just how you feel the next day.) It has been fascinating
to watch the effects of the stress of some major home renovations, client
issues, and the occasional glass of wine. Sleep Cycle works by sensing
motion in the bed with the very sensitive iPhone accelerometer. Of
course in order for it to work the iPhone has to sit on the corner of your
mattress by your pillow. It is amazing how accurate it seems to be.
So yes, I have been sleeping with my
iPhone. And I'm not going to stop!
Tags:
Computers
I
woke up around 5 AM this morning, which really isn't all that unusual.
After failing to fall back to sleep I grabbed my iPhone sitting on
my night table just to see if any interesting e-mail came in overnight.
Nothing much, but one of my clients' servers had a memory issue that
really could have used a reboot. This is a lumber yard and I knew
they open early on Saturday so I figured no time like the present. I
fired up LogMeIn
Ignition on my iPhone and tried
to connect to the server. As much as I love LogMeIn sometimes it
has issues and today it was still snoozing while my iPhone and I were awake.
Plan B was Mocha
Remote Desktop, another great
iPhone application. Plan C would have been secure VNC through SSH
tunneling with iSSH
but I didn't need to go there. Since plan B got me in I quickly rebooted
the server and tried to go back to sleep. Meanwhile my iPhone got
a couple alerts that the server was down and then back up 5 minutes later.
Then I remembered that sometimes one of the Spector
360 services doesn't always start
up, so I went back to plan A, LogMeIn, which worked this time, and quickly
scrolled through to start the sticky service. Then we went back to
sleep. Well, I did eventually. My iPhone got a few more e-mails.
That thing really needs to rest sometime.
Tags:
Hardware
A
few years ago I opened up a new bank account because I was annoyed at some
of my long-time bank's policies (but that's a whole 'nother story.) I
just happened to walk into the bank when they were giving away free 4GB
iPod Mini's (2nd generation.) My lucky day. At first I didn't
even know what to do with the thing, but eventually I ended up putting
all my MP3's and CDs on it and letting it live in my vehicle. It
worked great. For my current vehicle I bought a device that lets
me connect both the iPod and my Sirius satellite radio and even control
the iPod via my steering wheel controls. Bliss.
But eventually the iPod started having
trouble. It would be OK for a while, then suddenly it would reset
itself. Instead of picking up where it left off randomly playing
my songs it would start over at the beginning, playing them in artist order.
Unfortunately that meant I heard Lesson 1 of Pimsleur
Portuguese over and over. Yeah,
that got annoying. One fix seemed to be setting an alarm on the iPod
so it would wake up every day at 7 AM and not go into the "deep sleep"
that caused the reset. That worked for a while, then it started happening
again. I figured that it could be the battery finally giving out
and thought I'd need to get a new iPod.
Not so fast, though. While it
seemed that there was not a user-serviceable battery at first it turned
out that you actually CAN take the iPod apart and install an after-market
battery, which I was able to find online for only about $6. Nice!
It was a little tricky to take the iPod apart but with a little patience
and some very small screwdrivers I got it eventually, popped in the new
battery, and away we go. Or not...
Somewhere along the way I seem to have
broken the click wheel. Or the cable connecting the click wheel to
the motherboard. Not good - I couldn't control the iPod. And
even hooking up to the vehicle control wasn't enough. I could start
and stop, but I couldn't get the iPod to play all the songs randomly, which
is what I want. Occasionally I want to play a specific song, too,
and I couldn't do that. Rats.
Back to the Internet and I found people
selling click wheels and ribbon cables. It seems like a common part
to break when replacing the battery. Prices ranged from about $8
to $25, both new and used. I opted for the $8 new wheel.
And voila - after carefully taking everything
apart again (this being about the 5th or 6th time now!) I was able to install
the new click wheel, along with the new battery. And it worked! Now
I'll just have to see if I get Portuguese lessons on the way to a client
tomorrow morning...
Tags:
Software
So
yesterday a colleague of mine and I set out to build a couple of servers
- one for him, one for one of my clients. Pretty basic boxes with
Gigabyte motherboards, AMD processors, gobs of RAM and hard drive space.
We're using Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) as the host and VirtualBox
to run virtual servers.
So we get the machines built and start
installing Ubuntu with RAID1. It's not a straightforward install
but I've done it before and found some good resources. We're both
partitioning our drives and marking one bootable. Or rather, I am.
The text-based alternate installer just won't let Rob flip the bootable
flag on his. Mine works fine, his just won't go. We try 3 other
versions of Ubuntu, all with the same results.
OK, let's recap - similar (I know, not
EXACTLY the same but really close) hardware, same software, two completely
different results. Some web searches find one complaint with the
same problem but no solutions. Great. This is why we have grey
hair.
Ultimately he ended up installing the
LILO bootloader while I stuck with the more standard GRUB. Both of
our machines are working now and we'll probably never know why he had the
hiccup. Meanwhile, I have another machine that just won't take the
latest VirtualBox upgrade. The one that should fix the bug that's
plaguing one of my networks. Sigh...
Tags:
Avionics
Everything
aviation related is expensive. I once bought a flashlight worth over
$30. Except that I bought it from an astronomy website and paid only
about $12. When I bought my Grumman Tiger I invested in a lot of
new avionics. Very expensive, new avionics. The old stuff that
I ripped out of the plane has been sitting in a box in the attic ever since.
My wife wanted to throw the junk away but I kept it. And just
a few minutes ago I realized with some shock how much this old stuff is
worth on eBay - it's nuts. Sure, it pales in comparison to the cost
of the new avionics, but since my ELT apparently just gave up the ghost
all this old stuff may pay for a pretty good chunk of a new one. For
starters, the very old Narco NAV 121 that I pulled out to make room for
a $10,000+ GPS looks like it might still be worth almost $1000! Who
knew...? Gotta love eBay. I have some work to do now.
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