Over the next couple of days thinks will start to change around here. If you've been a registered commentor you might find your username no longer works. Don't worry everything should be fine and I hope the migration goes the way I hope.
Also, you can always find me on twitter @yardie. WHile I'm posting here less frequently I'm pushing tweets constantly there.
]]>In addition to watching videos, viewing photos, and listening to music you can also view some of your files. Because the iOS includes the foundations of the MacOS there are some files that can be read natively like txt, pdf, doc, rtf. I haven't gone through all of them. Because reading all of that on such a small screen is futile. But it is nice the capability is there.
One of my favorite features is the ability to encode and download videos to your iOS device. I've already done one, the documentary "Gasland". I have queued up a few episodes of the third season of the Boondocks and eventually I'll see if it can also download songs and integrate them into the iTunes library. Something I've wanted to do but not able to try because the Mac was off.
So if you are like me and have lots of media and a few iPods, iPhones, and other devices around the house give Zumocast a try.
]]>I gently knock on my neighbors door and ask her if I can walk through her apartment and her garden to get into my apartment, again. No, this isn't the first time I've been locked out of our place. The last time wasn't my fault either. So I gently shimmy through the bushes and walk up to our window which I locked. Good thing I didn't put the shutters down because we'd be seriously screwed. So I choose the oldest, most beat up window in our apartment and try to pry it open, and I almost make it inside until CRASH! the window broke.
So now there is glass and debris all over the floor and me and a big gapping whole where a window used to be. For now, the shutters are down until I can get a replacement. Good thing this happened in the summer, if it was the winter time this would be a different story, indeed.
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Stretched Hummer, Range Rover, a fleet of BMWs, Mercedes, and an Audi RS8.
And they blocked up traffic for blocks.
Like something out of a music video they broke out in a dance, popping champagne, and video tapping a celebration that will end up on youtube I assume. I find it fascinating and great that celebrations like this happen from time to time and no one got arrested.
]]>The trip was incredibly long but the cabin crew on Air France and American Airlines were great. I did have some complications while waiting for the LAX-HNL leg. American cancelled one of the earlier flights and there was a standby list of 15. Me and a couple from Australia were the last on the standby list (both of us traveling on staff concessions) and just as they were about to close the gate they let us on. And put us in First Class to boot.
The return flight was even longer due to the fact that Hawaii is 12 hours behind my homebase, and I had a 8 hour layover in LA. With such a large amount of free time on my hands I decided to take a trip to the beach.
(To be continued...)
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If you’ve already bought some of the games from outside the Steam store (in my case I have Tales of Monkey Island I bought through the last MacHeist nanobundle. You can enter your license key and it will be included in the steam menu. I haven’t tested the to see how it deals with Mac to PC and vice versa gaming. But all will be done in due time. Until then, I’m going to take this time to enjoy Portal. A game I’ve been curious for a long time that I didn’t work up the nerve into purchasing.
As for my PS3? It’s still dead to me until Sony gets off their high horse. With the price of quieter blu ray players coming down constantly that also have standard remote IR functionality. This device “that only does everything” has gotten less useful as more capable devices in my apartment have replaced it. It does less than my HTPC, it does less than my region-free DVD player, it doesn’t seem to connect to my ReadyNAS. I’m a little unhappy with it frankly.
To get started, create a new entry by clicking on "New Entry" in the toolbar or choosing "New Entry" from the File menu. You can also drag files from the Finder in to the Sidebar or the Entries list to import them as an entry. Show the Inspector from the View menu to see settings for the current entry, journal, and document.
What's new in version 5?
I've downloaded MacJournal and linked it to my blog. So I'll never need to log directly into the system through the portal. This should make it more convenient for me. Instead of having to open a browser, enter the URL, login, and password. Then make a new entry, upload photos, and create the appropriate links. This system should do fine. I'll have to see on how it handles different image sizes. MT has a good system of creating clickable thumbnails for large images. This has been on my 'things to do' for a while, just never got around to downloading and registering MacJournal. Now I see why people like it.
Shout out to MacHeist who made it possible. I didn't really think about this program until it arrived in my bundle.
]]>I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of jailbreaking the iPhone. There are plenty of tutorials on the net to do exactly that. If you are in over your head at this point you should probably bail now, shit is definitely not going to get easier from here on out.
Creating a certificateYou'll need your own self-signed certificate. iPhone OS will check for it, jailbreaking will tell it that it's good, regardless of who it came from. So crack open Keychain access and create one for yourself. It's in /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app. From the menu choose Certificate Assistant > Create Certificate.
Give it the name "iPhone Developer" and check overide defaults.
Give yourself enough time. 10 years sounds about right. And change the type to Code Signing.
Add as much or little information as you want to the personal information screen.
After here, click next until the end. It should be shown in your Keychain Access application list.
Update the Developer stack
We'll need to make a modification to the Info.plist of the SDK. Go to /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform. Create a backup of Info.plist and open the original in Property List Editor. Change all instancese of XCiPhoneOSCodeSignContext to XCCodeSignContext. There are 3 instances of them in SDK 3.1.2. There might be more or less in future versions.
Back to XCode
In XCode open your project and change the Active SDK to iPhone Device - 3.1.2. Run the build command with Command-B. Go to the Directory with your project, open the build folder and into the Release-iphoneos or the Debug-iphoneos folder you'll find the executable. We're going to need to get this file into the iPhone.
Copy your application to iPhone
You won't be able to get your application onto the phone using the normal channels. iTunes won't allow it. So the alternative is to copy it to the phone using SSH or iPhone Explorer. As with all things Mac, iPhone Explorer provides a GUI. And a GUI is always handy. Using iPhone Explorer go to the /Applications folder on the device. And upload your app folder. When complete it should appear like this. In some cases the app won't be set to executable. If this is the case you'll need to run the "chmod a+x" on the app folder to allow it to run.
Your application won't be present on the springboard. For that you'll need to restart the springboard. There are jailbreak applications that allow for this. You can also install the UIKitTools and run uicache from the commandline to update the springboard without restarting it.
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BIOS reports no drive 3. Hmm. Take it out again, slowly rotate the drive listening closely for grinding noises, nothing. Well this is slightly better than terrible. You see Watson, this disk has fallen for the Sector 0 error, commonly known as the "click of death". The read head tries to find Sector 0, and slides right past it, slamming the head into the spindle. So technically my data is still on the drive, I just have no possible way of getting it off.
Using my years of expertise, I know I can hopefully calibrate Sector 0 by freezing the drive and reading the data before the platter gets too warm. Into the freezer she goes. This hard drive has been sitting there while I order another hard drive and a NAS. I'm taking this opportunity to do something I know I should have done from a long time and formulate a real backup plan.
You see, the Free people came by and installed fibre to the apartment building. They assured me the units would be lit after the new year. Well that was 3 months ago and no fibre yet. My backup scheme sort of hinges on it, because pushing 60GB of data over 800kbit/s (that's 100KB/s) aDSL is mindfuckingly slow.
So the scheme is use the ReadyNAS Duo 
as the local NAS. And have it push my backups to an offsite point. In my case, Amazon S3. That way I can use the NAS as a local storage pool, torrentclient, and DLNA server. My energy sucking workstation Q6600/HD3870 doesn't have to be running continuously. And if the hard drives die in the next year or 2 (the dead drive lasted 3 years) I can restore the data using 100Mbit/s fibre.
If it sounds good to you, it sounds good to me.
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One of the things I especially like it about it that it automatically downloads all the show data, images, and season artwork. There is very little you have to do. Once Media Browser finds it it scans the filename to retrieve the internet data. This is great for those that don't like the overhead of having to manage your files, like mymovies. And it definitely is more informative than the default mediacenter browser. I've been looking into replacing my PC with a cheaper device, like PS3 or popcorn hour. The thing that keeps me staying is the interface of mediabrowser. Nothing else, I've seen, compares
Don't take my word for it download it yourself and give it a try.
]]>Unlike the author of the other blog. I don't think its the biggest news since Apple released the iPad.
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THe following next days were spent trying to get my computer to boot. The hackintosh is failing hard since the last chameleon update and the problem doesn't seem solvable. The quickest option would be to backup our data and build a new install but I'm all out of capacity and need a new hard drive.
]]>Since this isn't a brand new install I'm taking a different track than most other redmine installs. And I've found upgrading to be more fraught with problems than a clean install. This is a production machine so in addition to normal backups I have to be cautious of breaking shit irreparably.
So let's get to work:
After logging in the update your gems
gem update --system
Depending on the version of redmine you are using you will need to update your rails accordingly.
bash#: rails --version
Rails 2.2.2
gems update
cd /var/redmine/
svn update
If it isn't done so you should install passenger
gem install passenger
As I mentioned before, redmine was running through a rails mongrel cluster. Now I'm moving it to passenger and apache. After passenger is installed it is time to build it into apache
bash: redmine# passenger-install-apache2-module
Welcome to the Phusion Passenger Apache 2 module insaller, v2.2.8.
This installer will guide you through the entire installation process. It shouldn't take
more than 3 minutes in total.
...
At the end it will ask you to add the module to the apache configuration file. We won't be doing that. Instead we will make a module file and use the a2enmod.
bash:redmine# nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.loadLoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.8/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.8
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8
bash: redmine# a2enmod passenger
Module passenger installed; run /etc/init.d/apache force-reload to enable.
Finally, update your redmine database:
bash: redmine# RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate
bash: redmine# RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate_plugins
Modify your vhost.conf file to point the DocumentRoot to the redmine/public folder (mine was just pointing to the redmine root) and then run the apache force-reload command.
If you have anything like webrick or mongrels running it is alright to terminate them now. Point your browser to your redmine site and bask in your awesomeness :-)
]]>Mono
I've downloaded, installed and used the Mono project IDE on my Mac. Compared to the last time I tried it many years ago it's not so bad. I created a small Windows application and the debugger was able to start and display the window. I'm not sure how much support for Windows Forms it provides but this would be to develop cross-platform applications.
Favicon from Pics
It's a site that you upload a picture and it creates a favicon for your site. I'm not a graphic designer or artist so this is great for taking some photos and graphics I have and make it into something useful.
Pictory Magazine
An online photo magazine with user submitted photos and stories.
Simplebits
A blog that I found while googling for something else and has impressed me with the content and usefullness of the posts.
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