Personal

Reflashing a Teagueduino

I got my teagueduino last week and the included software is pretty cool. A real time language where you can modify it and see all input/output/variables in real time. It's very simple and ideal to introduce kids to this kind of thing.

Of course, me being me, I wanted to try it out as an arduino so I downloaded Arduino, the teensyarduino plugin and wrote some arduino programs for it. They worked.

The problem now is the Teagueduino software wouldn't work with it anymore. It expects the thing to be programmed with their software. It's a system, the mac based desktop software and the interpreter on the device itself and I've removed the software on the device.

Fortunately, easy enough to remedy. It's all open source. You can download the arduino sketch for the device software from here. I just compiled it using the arduino software and then reflashed. That fixed it.

 

You tube review of my first commercial video game, Phantom Fighter for the Commodore Amiga

This was a cool machine to write games on if all you have before were 8 bit home computers. It was a fun time at Emerald Software developing this over a summer. Paul Mc did the graphics for it.

 

Replacing the glass/screen on an iPhone 4

My wifes iPhone 4 dropped getting out of the car about a year ago and the screen broke. At the time, it was 150 bucks for a glass screen/display. You can't just do the glass like an iPhone 3G. So, I figured it was cheaper to wait and buy a phone when she can upgrade.

However, I saw at the office that you can now get the glass/screen for 35 bucks delivered on Amazon. So, I bought that. It came today and I sat down to do the job. I've done about 3 iPhone 3s before so I have a little experience. But, the iPhone 4 basically requires taking the phone apart. You have to remove the insides of it to remove the front screen assembly. Most of the screws are different sizes so you need to take a lot more care when disassembling if you want to put it back together.

The biggest problems I had were:

1. Screw sizes being different and I didn't take enough care remember which ones were which.
2. There are small fingers on the speaker assembly for EMI and 2 of the 4 broke off just by touching them. They are very fragile.
3. The coaxial connection for the antenna is very tricky to reattach. There are two tiny clips on it that need to be lined up. You don't just push it on, you need to align it and then it clips on. I had no 3G signal when I reassembled the first time so until I got the antenna back on my phone wasn't a phone.

It's back together now. I have 4 screws left on the desk that are not in the phone. Everything seems to work though, the phone makes calls/receives them, sound works, screen works, all looks good except for the screws left over and the 2 metal fingers that broke off.

The rear glass is literally a 5 minute job. Very easy, the front glass is about an hour easy. The good news is that unlike the iPhone 3G, you don't need a heat gun and all the messing about with adhesive to move components from the old glass to the new one. But, there seems a lot more disassembly and more care needs to be taken. It's probably easier than a 3G but you need to remember which screws go where and be very careful with the antenna and metal clips around it.

 

RealNetworks Rinse application, rinses more than it should

My daughter asked me to clean up her iTunes library. There were lots of duplicate entries in it. So, I googled and found the rinse application by real networks. It claims to eliminate duplicates. Unfortunately, it needs a little work.

My daughter had duplicates of the same file in iTunes. Two entries, one song on the disk. It looks like Rinse doesn't check this. It sees two identical songs and then moves the single song on disk to a duplicates folder.

We had a problem because we share the iTunes folder on our iMac. So, my iTunes now had just 900 songs rather than 5000. Luckily, I went back to my daughters account and reimported the songs from her duplicates folder and everything went back the way it was but it's kind of a silly mistake for the rinse application.

Given all that happened, it's hard to recommend with such obvious flaws.

Ordered an iPhone 4S today

Well,

My daughter trying to text me while I was driving to pick her up was basically the trigger to upgrade. I couldn't respond to her texts while I was driving. A bluetooth headset doesn't work with texts, something kids (who don't drive) clearly haven't figured out yet (CALL ME!).

Anyways, I didn't get an iPad 2 because I didn't see the value. Faster processor and graphics didn't sell me. My original iPad is fast enough. Now, the iPad 3 with a rumored retina display would push me to buy. The iPhone 4S would have met the same response except for the SIRI feature which is what pushed me to buy.

I don't see where the next big innovation is going to be in the phone space. The screen is already as hi-res as anyone needs. Faster CPU/graphics will enable more software features and it's here where the innovation will come, not on the hardware side I think. I'm hoping I'll get two gens out of the 4S. You figure the iPhone 5 will still be using a dual-core chip and probably the same GPU. The screen may be a little larger but I don't need a larger phone thank you.

So, I bought an iPhone 4S for the software and hoping that with the new CPU/GPU, it'll run iOS 6 decently. Something that is worrying me is linking the software to the hardware. SIRI looks to only run on the 4S. Will future revisions require a 5? I'm hoping a lot of the SIRI is running on Apples cloud and hopefully, this will take the pressure off requiring faster and faster phones to run it.

As for the case staying the same, HURRAY! I already have an external case, and so on. A new case would just force more spending and waste throwing away the old cases.

I'm hoping the phone will soon just become a dumb terminal with voice preprocessing/screen and connectivity and most of the 'firmware' will be running on the cloud where it belongs...

HP Photosmart C5240 OSX Lion problems

I recently upgraded my iMac to 10.7 or OSX Lion. I'm having intermittent problems scanning with my Photosmart C5240 all in one printer/scanner. It works sometimes but more often that I want it to, it hangs when trying to scan the page. All Apple software updates are applied. This worked flawlessly under Snow Leopard. No idea what to do to fix it so far. I'll update here if I learn anything.

SeaGate GoFlex 1.5TB external drive review

I bought a Seagate GoFlex 1.5TB 2.5" external drive to backup my home iMac because of an impending house move. I also bought the fire wire 800 cable as it's a lot faster than USB. Once its initial use as a backup drive of my iMac has passed then I'm also looking at using it for a drive with my MacBook Air which has a thunderbolt port. The cost for me was 140 bucks for the drive and 20 for the fire wire cable.

I'm using Superduper to image my iMac hard disk, I'm getting 45MB/sec doing that which is respectable over fire wire 800.

Overall, I like this, I'm hoping I can at least reuse the cables with newer drives as they come out but we'll see. Standards in this space are usually too short lived to be really useful.

Nook 2nd edition doesn't support WEP on Snow Leopard

I bought my daughter a Nook today to read on. I bought a Nook over a kindle because the book selection is better on Nook. I paid 140 for one at Staples.

I tried to set it up in my hotel room using my macbook as a wifi router for the wired internet in the room. My macbook running Snow Leopard only supports WEP encryption when used to share the internet like this.

The nook saw the macbook and noticed it was WEP, let me type in the password but would not connect using it at all. When I turned off WEP (no security), it connected and completed registration, downloaded her existing books (she was using an iPod Touch to read before, hard on eyes) and all was good.

It won't be a problem in the house where everything is WPA/WPA2 anyway so it's not really a problem but I see enough posts on the web that wifi doesn't work on the nook to make posting this account worthwhile.

I contacted BN about this using their chat support and the gentleman basically confirmed that WEP isn't supported and that you need to use WPA/WPA2 if you want security.

UPDATE:

I just upgraded my MacBook to Lion and WEP now works so it looks like a bug on the MacOS side in their internet sharing thats been fixed in Lion. So, it looks like WEP does work on a Nook despite their tech supports claims otherwise, it was a Snow Leopard bug.

Registering your kids for the Tenafly NJ School System

We're moving to Tenafly NJ. It has a great school system. But, registering our kids in to the system has been a bit of a hassle.

The Tenafly web site has a list of required documents. Once you have these then you visit the board of education in Tenafly and they process the paper work. Once you have the paper work then you go to the school to register the children.

The first thing to realize is that you NEED a utility bill to register. Don't bother going without it. They will not process the paper work at the Board of Education. Given most utilities bill quarterly this can be challenging. A work order with your name and Tenafly address from any utility OR a delivery document from the moving company are acceptable.

We worried about registering late (we moved during August) and the classes our kids wanted being full. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about it. Once you register then you see a guidance counsellor at the end of August and then they decide on classes. You have to wait until the end of August whether you register aug 1 or aug 31, it makes no difference. It's all decided when you visit the guidance counsellor and not before.

You need to be living there in Tenafly before registering. They will not take the documents at the Board of education until you are moved in. We were not moving in until Aug 15th so Aug 15th was the earliest they would process the paper work. We should be able to get the moving companies receipt when they drop of the furniture OR the cable will be getting hooked up. We used the optimus cable company for internet/TV but they will not provide any paper work until the equipment is installed.

Our landlord (we're renting) said he might need to sign a Form L for us in addition to having the lease but the BOE said that Form L is only needed when re-registering your kids. If you're moving there for the first time then you don't need it.

Anyways, hopefully, once Aug 15th arrives then I'll post some updates on what happens once you register.

Airport wifi speeds

I just upgraded my AirPort eXtreme base station to a 5th generation model. The old one was a 2nd generation. I'm using both now with the old one on the upper floor as an extender. It seems pretty seamless so far.

My iMac (7,1) gets a 130Mb/sec rating in the network utility and my MacBook gets a 300mbit/sec. I'm seeing this also in the transfer speeds. The iMac gets abut 1.5MB/sec maximum while I can get nearly 3MB/sec on the MacBook.

This is probably as good as I'll get on the iMac, I don't know of a way to upgrade the airport card on it to a better one. The new MacBooks can get 450Mbit/sec apparently so I'll see when I get one.