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Chealion's LJ
Nov. 3rd, 2009
01:24 pm - Magic Mouse: Impressions
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
As many of you are aware, Apple released a new horribly named mouse, the Magic Mouse. On Saturday I had the opportunity (since I was in the mall anyway) to drop by the Market Mall Apple Store and give the mouse a whirl - it was comfortable, did not have the gum-up-every-5-seconds trackball, and was exceptionally responsive. On a whim I ended up purchasing one later that day.
The Good
The mouse is accurate, responsive and the multitouch feels intuitive and that with software updates it could become even more. Additionally the weight has just enough heft to feel solid but much lighter than most other wireless mice Definitely the best Bluetooth mouse I’ve ever used.
Scrolling without a wheel (and momentum on Snow Leopard) brings the best of scrolling on an iPhone/iPod touch to the desktop and for the reason alone is worth it. Instead of a tiny wheel that just spins the entire surface of the mouse is now you touchpad for scrolling, perfect for reading long PDFs and being able to lean back and just use one finger without having to clutch a mouse.
Of note the two finger swipe to go back in Safari hasn’t been an issue and actually useful on occassion.
The Bad
The mouse is smallish and does not offer the ability for a “middle click” (3rd button). If you are used to the Mighty Mouse the muscle memory of squeezing may take a little while to get used to not being able to do. The loss of being able to trigger Exposé in any form is definitely a large loss and the primary reason I normally prefer 5 or 6 buttons on my mice. Being forced to use a less than optimum layout for Exposé on the Aluminum keyboard makes using Exposé more and more of an afterthought without resorting to Dock Exposé in Snow Leopard. Apple’s hardware definitely is not very Exposé friendly at times.
The Ugly
The new mouse is quite cramped and not all that comfortable compared to full size mice like Logitech’s MX Revolution, 1000 or the Performance. This is a huge misnomer because the Magic mouse is surprisingly comfortable even for long periods of time - it’s that the MX line fits my hand more completely and feels nicer to hold at odd angles. That said, I always have a hand on the keyboard and avoid mousing unncessarily as keyboard shortcuts are nearly always faster then hunting for them in the menus.
Conclusion
Suffice to say, it’s an excellent Bluetooth mouse, it’s minimalistic and has all the features I want. For users who don’t require a middle button, those who want a solid mouse it’s perfect. I’ll definitely be keeping it - at least until the wife steals it and I upgrade to an MX Performance.
I highly recommmend the mouse so long as you’re not looking for a large or gaming mouse.
Aug. 28th, 2009
05:15 pm - Initial Snow Leopard Client Impressions
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
My initial impressions are that Snow Leopard is very much worth the upgrade if you can afford the time to do an operating system upgrade (in this case for me it was ~1.5 hours: 45 minute install, 45 minutes testing apps and seeing they still worked without any modification)
Pros:
- Speed
Awesome! - New Services Feature
My favourite feature - OpenCL
If you haven’t seen MacResearch’s Introduction to OpenCL check out 33:30 to 34:50 or so. (Rough timecodes - iCal Event Editing Gets a Window Again
- Spotlight Default Search Location Fix and Sortable Results I can finally search within a folder without holding a needle to my eye first!
- Enhanced Icon View Neat if I used icon view.
- Faster wakeup to password screen Hawt.
- Faster Time Machine Backup Hawt.
- Airport Menu Changes Neat animation, but more info when holding the option key as well.
- Gamma 2.2 Default No longer do I have to set this up each time.
- New Fonts Menlo is cool, but Chalkduster; Heiti SC and TC; and Hiragino Sans GB are all fonts I’ll never use.
- Safari Plug-ins are sandboxed Awesome - Flash won’t hurt as much even after ClickToFlash
- QuickTime Player New UI is great for viewing.
- Preview Faster and better scaling.
- Mail
Much faster.
- Set a time before the screen saver asks for a password. THANK YOU.
- Smaller footprint I liked the good thwack of disk space I got back (~6GB)
- Grand Dispatch Can’t wait to see the results on the Mac Pros at work.
- Screen Recording Neat, but I’ll stick with ScreenFlow.
- Revised Keyboard Shortcut / Services Preference Pane Much nicer to work with.
- Wake on Demand No more having to worry about whether the computer is asleep or not? Over wireless? Sweet (Airport Extreme only though)
Cons:
- Base 10 Counting
WTF. DO NOT LIKE. “Mac OS X can not count” Would prefer a preference to turn this off and/or proper suffixes (eg. MiB instead of MB) - QuickTime Player Absolutely neutered into being useless beyond viewing and “Sharing” your movie to MobileMe.
In summary, there is no one real feature in Snow Leopard worth upgrading for - no major consumer focused feature. It’s the sum of all the parts that make it worth much more than the $29 they are charging. Once installed you never want to go back.
Aug. 5th, 2009
12:51 pm - iCal Server Multiple / Sub Calendars and Sunbird
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
At my workplace we use iCal Server running on Mac OS X 10.5 Server to share several calendars all under our one staff group. With iCal, so long as the group is delegated to be shown on the user’s accounts you can see all the calendars but with Sunbird you only get to see the first calendar.
Before going further it’s worth noting how to delegate a group calendar so a user can view it without manually adding the group calendar as it’s own calendar (if using Delegates instead of multiple calendar “accounts” (same credentials, different calendars) is your aim). To do so you have to add the group calendar as a normal account in order to set it up, and then set up delegation as you would for a normal account. The important URL to know for using a group calendar is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/gr (as always replace http with https and 8008 with 8443 if you are using SSL).
Sunbird uses slightly different URLs than what you use in iCal to start with, where in iCal an example URL might be http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/us or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/principals/gr. The corresponding URL to use in Sunbird is http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/use or http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/gro
That’s great for adding a single calendar but what if a user or a group has multiple calendars under their one account? iCal will automatically show them as a group whereas Sunbird requires you to add each and everyone that you wish to have show up.
You can specify a “sub-calendar” to subscribe to in Mozilla Sunbird by specifying the unique ID of that calendar instead in the form of the url http://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8008/calendars/__u. Note the lack of calendar at the end of the URL. To determine the UIDs in question it’s easiest using iCal, if you click on a calendar and press Command-I (File -> Get Info) you can see part of the CalDAV URL at the bottom of the sheet that appears.
You will see calendars/__uids__/UNIQUE_ID/ONLY_PART_O because the label the text is placed into is not big enough to fit the URL. Because you can’t get the full URL from there it’s easiest to go to the iCal Server itself and navigate to /Library/CalendarServer/Documents/calend (you’ll need administrator privileges to view this). From there find the folder named the same as the UNIQUE_ID portion of the URL and open it to find a folder with the UNIQUE_ID of the “sub-calendar”. You can now put the URL together and use that in Sunbird to view that additional calendar.
Example URL of a sub-calendar in the group:
https://FQDN.OF.SERVER:8443/calendars/__
Sources Used:
May. 11th, 2009
03:37 pm - Quick Looking a .csv File
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
On ServerFault someone was asked a question why .csv files were unable to be viewed in Quick Look. For some reason .csv files are not defined as plain text by the operating system which leads to odd conflicts between applications that can deal with .csv files that causes QuickLook to report that it can’t find a generator for the file and just show the icon.
The one way to force it to work is to roll your own, with a bit of help after reading the QuickLook Programming Reference it was rather simple to roll together a proof of concept QuickLook generator for .csv files.
It’s not pretty, it may break at any time (if only because it’s using a dynamic UTI since one is not defined anywhere, however .csv files have been using the UTI “dyn.age80g650” for quite a while - as far back as prior to 10.0) but it works and forces the .csv to display properly.
The code and a download of CSVQL is available on GitHub:
Source: http://github.com/Chealion/chealion/tree/m
Download: http://cloud.github.com/downloads/Cheali
Check out Pascal’s comment for a much nicer looking version - actually puts the data into tables.
Feb. 17th, 2009
03:22 pm - Aborting On the Second Disk on a Restore
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
Scenario: Client attempts to restore their iMac using their Software Restore disks (10.4.10) but the second disk containing iLife for some reason refuses to be recognized. iLife is already installed and the OS has been installed but the Installer will come up everytime you attempt to start up the computer.
The workaround: Start up the computer in single user mode. Then use the following commands (not the ones with ## preceding them however)
## Mount the filesystem so you can read and write to it
mount -uw /
## The files we want live in /var/db
cd /var/db/
## Files that tell us it's a multi disk install
rm .AppleMultiInstall*
## File that tells us to pop up the registration dialog
rm .AppleCustomMac
## Something else to do with setup (Locale Setup?)
rm .locsetup.plist
I removed all 3 files because they looked like the most likely culprits but gut tells me the .AppleMultiInstall* files are the only ones that have to be removed but I wasn’t able to test it.
You’re now able to boot the computer just fine - it’s imperative however to be sure that you know what has been installed as you’re interrupting the installation. Because in this case I knew that only iLife was on the second disk (in terms of what had been selected to be installed) I didn’t go ahead with reinstalling the OS to be on the safe side.
This has been tested on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4, it should be identical for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 as well but I’m not 110% positive.
Feb. 6th, 2009
05:44 pm - Invisible Shield
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
When I got my iPhone I went looking for a case that ideally would not make the iPhone much more thicker than necessary, protected the screen from fingerprints and scratches and generally didn’t suck. It took a while but after reading reviews I settled on using the Invisible Shield by Zagg.
Good
The Invisible Shield protects my iPhone quite well against scratches against keys and well near anything that doesn’t actually slice the material itself. While often the scratch will be visible, running your thumb over the scratch or just giving the material time will have the scratch disappear like it never existed. It’s remarkably resilient to scuffs as well as often wiping away the offending scuff will cause it to disappear, or if dirty a little bit of water will work as well.
It’s also exceptionally thin and clear leaving the screen of the iPhone easy to see underneath it’s protective layer. Additionally dirt, dust, and other cosmetic annoyances can be easily washes or wiped off the screen just like the glass screen on the iPhone.
I prefer the slightly more tactile feel of the material (and if applied to the back as well if applied) as it gives a better sense of tactile feedback on the touch screen. It feels like you’re moving your finger across the screen a certain amount - much akin to using a scroll wheel on a mouse with grooves versus one that was completely smooth. The additional traction also makes the iPhone easier to hold - especially with your finger tips.
Bad
The suckers are hard to apply - compared to just slipping your iPhone into a case the initial time investment is pretty steep. However if you spend the 5 minutes reading the instructions and/or watching the video instructions on their website and then take your time applying it on the iPhone you’ll avoid the major issues of dust, air bubbles and streaks.
Between all the Invisible Shield’s I’ve installed I’ve seen all 3 major issues and all were my fault and thankfully if you’re paying attention can be avoided by taking the screen off and restarting the procedure over before it has time to start to set (according to the instructions). Having air bubbles or dust under the screen is really distracting but I find the streaks the most annoying if only because they aren’t obvious until you’re looking intently at the screen by watching a movie, reading text or something similar. I’ve found they happen when you pull the shield too taunt and are different then the streaks you get after installation.
After installation you will notice there are streaks on the screen that take a couple days to go away. These are normal and I’ve found will go in the direction that you used the squeegee to push out the excess liquid. So for the first couple days they can be a bit annoying as the streaks will distort the colour of some pixels making it seem as if there are razor thin lines of green or red at certain points. Thankfully after a while for the iPhone and the shield to get used to each other it disappears. I’ve also noticed that until this happens as well the quality of the iPhone screen will appear slightly fuzzy - not bad but as if the anti-alias filter was set a notch or two off optimum.
I’ve found that over time the screen likes to grab and hold onto oil and dust requiring wiping. The slight fuzzy appearance of elements on the iPhone comes back as well because of the oil but after cleaning it’s back to where it should be.
The biggest downside I’ve found is that they are not realistically reusable. For example each time I’ve had my iPhone replaced I’ve had to take the old one off and it would stick to itself creating a nice ball of Invisible Shield destined for the garbage requiring me to shell out another $25-$30 CAD for a new one. Be prepared to buy a new one if you have to replace your device.
Conclusion
So of all the faults with the Invisible Shield (which I find are more caveats than faults) I heartily recommend it because it’s unobtrusive and works exceptionally well. After having purchased 4 of them and applying them on 4 different iPhones I’ve still come back to the Invisible Shield every time.
04:57 pm - iPhone Restoration : Restoring Home Screen Layout (Pre 3.0)
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
After having gone through 3 iPhones and countless restores of different iPhones and iPod touches I had to get to the bottom of how to restore my layout of my apps on my home screens.
The Cause
When you restore your iPhone / iPod touch to it’s factory defaults the device is not connected to an iTunes account. When you restore it from your backup (to put your apps and info back on) it will load anything that does not require authorization through the iTunes store (with the exception of free apps - though purchased from the iTunes Store they seem to get loaded anyway). So when you finish a Restore From Backup the first time around it will not load any paid apps or music until it’s authorized. It does it’s authorizations seemingly right after you’ve restored it as it accesses the iTunes Store as if it was just plugged in. Why that has no effect on purchased music I’ve no idea.
In the end you’re left with a phone / iPod that has only part of the data it had on it before and requires you to press Sync again to put your paid applications and purchased music on to it. The biggest issue here is that if you have any data stored in that application, like say Things, or high scores from a game, or just find reorganizing your home layout frustrating you’re out of luck. The paid apps are installed anew, and placed one at a time into the earliest empty spot on your home screens. Frustrating. Thankfully there is a workaround.
The Workaround
- Perform a backup before you restore.
- After restoring your Phone to the whichever OS version
- Restore from your backup (you can cancel syncing music when this part finishes - it will start up again after the next step)
- Restore once more - you may see two backups to choose from as it would have created a backup after the restoring. Choose the one that would have a timestamp just before you do the restore.
Annoying because a restore from backup may take as long as 5 or 6 minutes but at least you aren’t stuck reorganizing your applications the way you wanted them again.
EDIT: From what I can gather 3.0 has fixed this issue.
Dec. 10th, 2008
03:21 pm - Alert: Flash Player 10.0.12.36 Installer Opens Up Root Home Folder
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
I updated the current installation of Adobe Flash Player at work today over ARD and had several people ask me odd questions about why there was a Finder window with the word root for a title when they came in to login this morning. Needless to say that raised warning bells all over the place for myself.
On checking the computers I noticed it occurred on every computer running Tiger and that every computer running Leopard did show the menu bar and said Finder was running but unlike Tiger it did not allow you to perform any actions beyond opening a menu. In Tiger you were essentially logged in as root into the Finder (and SystemUIServer) which gave you complete access to anything. The kicker is that the root user was not enabled on any of the computers.
Now in the big picture it’s mostly a non-issue because the following requirements have to be taken to see this edge case:
1) The workstation must be running 10.4.0-10.4.11 (Flash Player 10 doesn’t run on Mac OS X older than 10.4) 2) You must be using Apple Remote Desktop to install the package 3) You must ensure that you choose not to restart the computers in question. By default the package wants to restart the computer if no one is logged in (I assume it is to avoid this very situation). If someone is logged in however it doesn’t request a restart. The kicker is that if you select a group of machines and send it to install and one of them has a logged in user by default it does not ask you to restart.
If you check on the workstation you will see a Finder window open to root’s home folder - even if you don’t have the root user enabled (which I am of the opinion you shouldn’t especially with sudo available). Anything then opened via the Finder then runs as root as well (including Terminal).
So it’s easy to work around - either restart them all, or do it when you have users logged in (not ideal). If you do choose the username for the action to be done in ARD; the Finder window will open up as that user (quite possibly a local administrator account) so filing in a username there is not a workaround but much less dangerous than root access. Once the computer is restarted or someone logs in the issue goes away.
Sep. 27th, 2008
12:58 am - build_hd_index
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
I came across a process running on my iMac at home tonight that was consuming a fair chunk of RAM, and a consistent 40-50% of my CPU while accessing each and every hard drive I have hooked up. The process in question is called build_hd_index and is part of Apple’s built in Remote Management software in OS X.
The specific file can be found in /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManag
A quick Google search on build_hd_index showed several other people having issues with it suggesting ways to neuter the process (which would break System updates) or other attempts to disable it.
To turn it off, on every computer running Remote Desktop Admin you need to tell it to stop collecting data (Get Info on the computer) or you can force this by removing the plist file in charge of ARDAgent at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ARDAgent.p
So as of a result, since my work computer is a laptop and is not on, let alone at work at midnight I’ve turned off uploading information at scheduled intervals - however I still want my work computers to cache the data as the information is useful to debugging why something may be happening.
Sep. 20th, 2008
01:27 am - iPhone After Two Months
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
After seeing D’arcy’s post today I felt the motivation to get off my butt and finish my iPhone review / showcase of my increasingly cluttered screens. First my screen setup followed up by short reviews of each application.
My first screen is my main screen which I reserve for applications I use most or are what I deem critical to the phone.
My second screen was originally influenced that on my iPod touch I placed all Internet using appliations on the second page. However with the iPhone this has changed significantly, and the second screen is roughly my photography/utility/Web screen.
My third screen is relatively simple and is exclusively devoted to games.
My fourth screen is a catchall screen for apps I use very infrequently and web bookmarks I really should delete.
On my layout I try and keep the bottom row clear if possible - it feels considerably cleaner and swiping with my digit doesn’t blot out any information (say a badge on an icon). The information in question doesn’t actually matter but I am not a fan of blotting out my viewing window unless necessary. The bottom row gives me a safe place to swipe without fear of opening an app. (Had this happen with 1.1.4 on my iPod touch but not since 2.0.)
“Home Row”
Phone: I like the app and keep it here because double taping my home button takes me to the iPod application. Biggest complaint was fixed in 2.1 as the contacts lag was fixed.
Calendar: I’ve got the time at the top, and the date at the bottom. I don’t use the calendar a lot but appreciate having the date visible at all times. It does it job and gets out of your way.
Safari: Best mobile browser availble. Only wish is that I could use newer versions of Webkit. Don’t miss not having flash ads all over the place. I never really use Java anyway.
Settings: Easy access to turn WiFi on or off among other things. It means I don’t have to go digging when wanting to change a setting.
“Screen 0”
iPod: No review needed. In 2.1 much nicer than 2.0.
Mail: For what I want Mail is an excellent Mail application reading and composing my email. Biggest annoyance is that I can’t mark items as unread. Having used POP accounts on my iPod touch I must say IMAP or death - I will archive older mail on my desktop to keep my mailbox down in size.
Maps: The GPS built into the iPhone 3G makes using this app even more enjoyable. It just works and works well.
Weather: A bookmark to Environment Canada’s website on the weather for Calgary. I like the view of Apple’s provided application but the accuracy is even more atrocious than Environment Canada. I’ll take the lesser but uliet if two evils.
Contacts: No review needed.
Notes: Useless because it can’t sync with anything but good for when you need to jot something down temporarily.
Calculator: No review needed. It works.
NetNewsWire: The first third party application on my iPhone - is very, very well designed and syncs with a subset of my NewsGator feeds. Excellent way to stay informed when killing time on an hour long commute on public transit.
SMS: It works. No review needed.
Spend: I have fallen out of using this application (which thankfully now has a non ugly logo) due to issues in iPhone OS 2.0.2. I lost data twice and had the iPhone uninstall everything once as well. Now after 2.1 as someone who hates to keep receipts it makes recording transactions easy so I can input them into Quicken at home.
Twitterrific Premium: Hands down one of the best designed applications on the App Store. It just works, allows you to view webpages without leaving the application, and with the premium version gives a version I find much more readable. It’s light, fast and exceptionally well designed. Best Twitter client IMNSHO.
Things: This application rivals Twitterrific for best design in an iPhone application. With 1.1 they introcued syncing allowing me to keep snippets of what needed to be done with me wherever I was. Super highly recommended as it’s super intuative - if you like the desktop version you’ll LOVE the phone version as well.
1Password: The latest addition to my iPhone I am presently trying out using a passwrd manager and need access to a subset of passwords on the go. Won’t be stating on the front page as I don’t use it all that often.
“Screen 2”
There is no screen one.
Camera: It works and the quality is what you would expect from such a small camera.
Photos: Dont use this as often as I should. But it dies the dusplay of photos exceptionally well.
Exposure Premium: Also one of the first applications I installed on my iPhone - this would be akin to Photos but for Flickr with more features. My favourite feature is the Near Me feature that will use the location services to show pictures taken close to your location.
WordPress: Used to type the large majority of this post, it’s a great little piece of software to create posts from your iPhone. Not perfect but faster and more screen friendly than using the WP-admin UI in Safari.
Remote: One of Apple’s add on programs - it’s awesome controlling your computer that is downstairs to play to the Airport Express in the room beside you so you can have some music playing without having to navigate floors.
iTunes: No review needed but my credit card is quite fit. Only wish it wasn’t WiFi only.
App Store: Like the iTunes store, no review needed but my credit card is quite fit.
Shazam: While my personal use for this application has been limited and when it first hit the App Store a couple songs I threw at it were spotty it’s a great tool to have around. I can never remember the names of songs and it’s works very nicely all things considered.
PhotoCalc: An application I use quite infrequently but very much worth the money I spent for it the times I do have to use the program. The reference, sunrise, sunset, and moon phase section is worth it’s weight in gold. (At least for me)
Seismometer: This is a recent application. It was recommended to me and for $0.99 it’s very much entertaining for seeing how much vibration and such is occurring. As I type this section on my iMac, I can see the seismometer jiggle as I type faster and harder versus softer and/or slower.
pTerm: This was the first shh client available for the iPhone, and it works well enough. When it first came out there were some serious issues: namely no arrow keys, escape key, etc. making some commands impossible. However in a pinch when I need to log onto one of my servers to check the status of something it does work. Personally I’d rather get to a computer if possible, but it does handle a regular sized Terminal window well on the iPhone screen (allows moving it like a webpage) despite the keyboard consuming the majority of the screen.
Mocha VNC: I had first tried the light version and was impressed that it worked causing me to pay for the full version to support the development of a VNC application for the iPhone. Very much like pTerm - it’s great in a pinch and all that’s available but if I could I’d rather get onto a computer as scrolling around a large screen gets very cumbersome very fast. (But is the best solution to showing a large screen on a small screen and making it actually usable).
“Screen 3”
reMovem free: I was recommended this application as well but have yet to get around to playing it.
Koi Pond: The water effects are amazing, and if anything the application is perfect for showing off what the iPhone can do. It’s mostly useless but fun and entertaining in brief short 30-60 seconds stints.
Cro-Mag Rally: One of the first applications I got for my iPhone - the game brings back many of the memories I had of playing Cro-Mag Rally back in OS 9. The super loose controls, the decent and entertaining graphics, and the sheer amount of hate I forgot about because of said controls. While I don’t play the game anymore I know several people who don’t mind it. It’s the only application I regret buying on the App Store.
Aurora Feint: A highly popular free game - the puzzles have been very entertaining but I have not devoted enough time to actually delve into the game deeper and start exploring much past the first 5 minutes. A shame really because it’s a very well designed game.
3-Tuple: Doesn’t seem to be available on the store anymore - but another app I was recommended but have yet to play.
Sudoku Unlimited: One of the only games I actually play with some regularity (say once a week). I like the inputs and how well it’s put together. Of course there are 9 million other Sudoku games on the AppStore but I like this one best.
Othello: It’s the game of Othello and I forgot just how out of shape I was on this game as the computer is schooling me even on easy mode. Fun game however.
Tris: No longer on the App Store because of a Cease and Desist - but it’s Tetris and it’s great. It has some bugs but I like it a lot more than the official Tetris game by EA (which is just bloat - I want to get to my game fast not 2 minutes later).
Spinner Free: Another game I have to show off what the iPhone can do - it’s easy and I don’t play it often but it shows off the accelerometer well as you just have to rotate the phone (landscape) around your arrow to lead it to the goal. Easy, and a great casual game for killing time.
Spore: Owning Spore itself, the cell stage was a lot of fun and I wasn’t sure how closely it would resemble it when looking at the screenshots and reviews. It’s not much like it at all in terms of gameplay. You tilt to control your character and I must say it’s a lot of fun and thankfully is nice and casual allowing me to get to my game and out real quickly if I need to.
CarriesDots: Another free game. Simple, casual, fun. That’s all I wanted and it’s perfect. It is a two player game however.
Brain Challenge: Like Brain Age but for the iPhone with more games. It’s fun although the loading times are a bit frustrating at times. Don’t regret buying this application one bit.
“Screen 4”
Empire: Bookmark to CalgaryMovies.com for the Empire Studio 16 theatre. HORRIBLE theatre, but it’s close.
Chinook: Another bookmark to CalgaryMovies.com but for Chinook.
Flickr: A holdout from my iPod touch this is just a link to my Flickr page - I really just use Exposure or flip to Safari instead from now on. I should get around to removing it.
YouTube: Only use it when people send me links to YouTube. It plays Rick Astley very nicely.
Stocks: Never use it.
Weather: Pretty but a PITA. See why I have the Environment Canada bookmark on my front page.
Clock: I never use the other features in Clock, so the time in the bar up top works great.
Banner Free: Scrolls words across your iPhone screen as if it was a large LED sign. Fun to send small messages by showing it off.
Instapaper: I use Instapaper on my desktops quite a bit, but the iPhone version leaves me wanting quite a bit. It’s slow - since I understand it caches a text version on the iPhone itself - but it’s not apparent it does it. It only lists 10 items at a time and requires you to update it which is a 60-120 second operation to get the next 10 items. I like to be able to flip through my Instapaper items (which number about 200) to see which things that had interested me I’d like to read and see if they’re actually worth bookmarking. I won’t be upgrading to the pro version.
Flixshop: “Grocery Gadget” in the iTunes Store. Flixshop on the iPhone? Huh? Glad I didn’t pay for it - I haven’t got around to trying it out yet.
Air Sharing: Another application waiting to be tried given I got it for free during the big buzz that it’s a great application.
Bible: It just works. ‘Nuff said.
Last.fm: I don’t use this often but the couple of times I’ve used it, it means I can listen to radio on the go at times. It’s been spotty for me on cell service however - and since my iPhone has music I want I don’t pay it much heed.
Conclusion
So after two months I still have to say the iPhone is the best phone I’ve owned by FAR. Except for some hiccups under 2.0.2, namely when I switched computers it decided to nuke items, and the occasional requirement to restart it every couple of days which still exists under 2.1 I have enjoyed using my iPhone tremendously. My data usage is also considerably lower than I expected. When Rogers announced the 400MB data on the lowest plan I thought I’d blow past that amount very easily - in reality the first month was 198 MB whereas the second month increased to 240.5MB, whereas this month I’m only on track to use 300MB.
Jul. 10th, 2008
11:27 pm - kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork: 302
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
After seeing this error popping up a lot while having issues with my internet connection dropping packets left and right I searched CFNetworkErrors.h for what the error code meant (since Google didn’t say much other than it appeared in 10.5.3). The line in question is: kCFErrorHTTPConnectionLost = 302,
So if you get kCFErrorDomainCFNetwork: 302 errors, it’s because the HTTP connection was lost somewhere along the way. As to what causes it can really definitely seem like voodoo.
Mar. 27th, 2007
12:00 pm - launchd Caveats: StartCalendarInterval and Sleeping
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
After a couple hours of testing, and searching on Google I’ve come to the realization (and subsequent confirmation) that the reason my launchd periodic task doesn’t always run on time (but sometimes hours late) is that the process is tied to a timer and not a specific time of the day like you specify in the plist.
So if your computer is asleep for 3 hours, the process will run 3 hours later unless you restart your computer which will fix the timer issue, until the next time you sleep.
I really hope this is fixed in Leopard, and have subsequently filed a bug report. (Radar 5091911 - link will only work for Apple employees)
So in summary, don’t depend on StartCalendarInterval to run your launchd process at the time you’ve said unless you know the computer has restarted since the last time it was put to sleep.
Note: This was fixed in Leopard. Unsure if it was fixed in 10.4.11 as I don’t use Tiger anymore.
Mar. 20th, 2007
12:00 pm - launchd : cron with less suck?
Originally published at Chealion.ca. Please leave any comments there.
So while figuring out launchd I came across the revelation that launchd will run any tasks it is given at it’s prescribed time, or the next time available (eg. the computer is asleep or turned off). I now remember hearing that when 10.4 Tiger was first released but had completely forgot it. Since Apple has the periodic tasks running in launchd instead of cron in Tiger, this makes the often touted reason to run Onyx moot and useless.
The system runs the scripts when it can (when it’s supposed to, or when you turn your computer on next), and doesn’t just “not run them” as cron would.
Running the periodic scripts sounds just as helpful as “Repairing Permissions” now, but I may be underestimating the value of the placebo effect.
Source: man launchd.plist
StartCalendarInterval <dictionary of integers>
This optional key causes the job to be started every calendar interval as specified. Missing arguments are considered to be wildcard. The semantics are much like crontab(5).
Unlike cron which skips job invocations when the computer is asleep, launchd will start the job the next time the computer wakes up.
If multiple intervals transpire before the computer is woken, those events will be coalesced into one event upon wake from sleep.
So for replacing cron? launchd kicks ass. I’m disappointed it took me until 10.4.9’s release for me to truly start finding out the power of launchd.