Category → techie
The new iphone WordPress app
I saw the WordPress iPhone app come up on the iPhone applications unofficial feed. I grabbed it right away and started this post. Setting up a new blog is easy, you just add the URL and username and password. Once setup, you can see the last 30 posts (configurable), or create a new one. Each post has tags, categories, the title, and the content. All HTML had to be entered manually, so you definitely won’t be doing anything too complicated. Maybe there are plans for some tag shortcuts in the future. And with no cut an paste on the iPhone, you will be doing all the typing in your post.
The preview function works great. I also tried the picture link and took a new picture using the built in camera. The app then crashed, but the post was still intact in the drafts folder. Of course I’ve had lots of apps crashing with the new 2.0 firmware, so who knows whose fault that is.
The big benefit over using your browser is the fact you can now create posts offline, which should encourage more writing. You do this by saving it as a local draft. Once it is moved to draft, it shows up in your blog interface.
This app is also a quicker way to do a quick edit of an existing post because of the simple interface and lower data transfer needed. Best of all, it’s open source just like WordPress. Get it now.
iPhone 2.0
Like many iPhone owners I couldn’t wait to try the new 2.0 firmware. So when macrumors reported it was available early, I downloaded and installed it against my better judgment. You have to download the file separately and then use option click on the “Check for update” button in iTunes to install the firmware.
First, I thought I bricked my iPhone when it wouldn’t install. iTunes then recognized the iPhone was in recovery mode, but a restore failed with the error “iphone could not be restored (20)”. Turns out you can also use option click on the “Restore” button to get another attempt to install the firmware. The second try worked.
The new firmware is great – the app store is nice. I put twitterific, facebook, and a few more apps on right away. Now I’m finding my first synch will not get past the “Syncing contacts” step. This may be an adventure.
I think a lot of geeks will be pretty worthless at work tomorrow.
Book Review: Managing Humans
I was first exposed to Michael Lopp’s writing from his blog, Rands in Repose. Rands is his pen name, and the blog deals with issues around managing technology professionals, from a Silicon Valley perspective. When I heard that he had published a book, I knew I had to read it. Managing Humans is 34 chapters divided into three parts: The Management Quiver, The Process is the Product, and Versions of You. Each chapter reads like a short essay, some of them have already been published in some form on his blog. Since I am not a manager, the first part was not as relevant for me in my day-to-day work, but really helped me to better understand my current and past managers. Just like watching Office Space, this book will give you so many “That’s so true!” moments. I’m sure anyone reading read the book will have the same experience, even if they have not worked in technology in any capacity – just being in an organization with more than one layer would suffice. I am going to make sure my manager reads this book, especially the first section. The second section is very helpful for anyone involved in software or technology projects. The third section has some great chapters on resumes, interviews, starting a new job, and navigating meetings.
I think having my wife read the chapter on N.A.D.D. (Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder) and A Nerd in a Cave will do more to help her understand me than hours of conversation on the subjects covered there. For example, N.A.D.D. is essentially that condition that enables a nerd to listen to music, read through 5 blog posts a minute in Google Reader, carry on 5 IM conversations, and write code all at the same time. Any Nerd will read these chapters and find themselves nodding and agreeing with the way the topic has been dealt with.
I also appreciated the chapter on outsourcing. There is some really good career advice in this book, especially for those of us in technical jobs. The book is also a quick read, in N.A.D.D.-friendly 5 page chapters. I found I could digest a few chapters on the commute home with no trouble. Take a look at the blog, and if you like the writing, pick up the book.
Leopard and new MacBook
I got a new MacBook (white 2.2 GHz CPU) on November 3rd, just after the update to the new Santa Rosa chipset. It has been quite nice, especially since I updated the memory to 4 GB using third party memory. Apple wanted $850 for a 4 GB upgrade, I did it for $150. The extra RAM came in really handy using VMware Fusion. Leopard has for the most part been stable and impressive with most of the new features working great.
I have had some problems with the keyboard freezing occasionally. I found that if I closed the lid and reopened it a few times, the keyboard would sometimes come back. The trackpad works fine the entire time, but the keyboard would completely stop working. Looking around a bit, it appears this is possibly a major issue with Leopard on MacBooks and MacBook Pros. I installed the 10.5.1 update about three days ago and haven’t had the problem since, but it appears that some people are still having the issue after the update. Apple better get to the bottom of this quickly, or word will continue to get out and the mainstream press may stop fawning all over them. The story hit techmeme today, so I guess the word is getting out.
I hate phones
In the 11 years that Laura and I have been married, we have owned countless phones. Does anyone else have this problem? Think back to when you were young, how many phones did your parents buy during your childhood?
I can remember owning the following phones:
- a GE phone with a digital answering machine and a windy cord
- our first cordless phone, forget the model
- a GE cordless phone, I think we still have this one (900 MHZ)
- a Panasonic cordless phone with a base station. Forget the specifics.
- a set of Motorola cordless phones with a single base station (2.4 GHZ)
- a set of GE cordless phones with a single base station (2.4 GHZ)
- a set of V-Tech cordless phones with a single base station with answering system (2.4 GHZ)
- and our final system, a Uniden DECT6.0
All of these phones except the original GE cordless phone have stopped working. The Motorola’s buttons stopped working. The GE made a terrible noise 5 seconds into every call. The V-Tech made a terrible noise every time the caller id was activated during a call. This final system is supposed to take care of WiFi interference, we’ll see about that. All we wanted was a phone that would have an extender base station (no plug in the kitchen), no answering system (we have voice mail), no interference with our WiFi, a speakerphone, easy to use caller ID callback, and a message waiting indicator. It seems all phones are missing at least one feature, usually the message waiting indicator for the voicemail.
Now, how about cell phones?
- my first cell phone, for work, a Motorola TAC with Cellular ONE
- Laura’s first cell phone, a Qualcomm with PrimeCo
- my second cell phone, a Nokia 5100 with Cingular
- Laura’s second cell phone, a Nokia 5200 with Cingular
- my third cell phone, some crappy flip phone from a Korean manufacturer with U.S. Cellular
- Laura’s third cell phone, a Sony/Ericson that looked like a fluke worm with U.S. Cellular
- my fourth cell phone, a Motorola flip phone with U.S. Cellular
- my fifth cell phone, a Nokia candy bar model with T-Mobile
- Laura’s fourth cell phone, a Nokia with TracFone
- my sixth cell phone, a Sidekick II with T-Mobile
So that’s 8 land phones and 10 cell phones in 11 years. Yikes. I guess our demand for the latest technology drives the manufacturers to make disposable electronics with lots of features, none of them done right. Maybe we should have an old Ma Bell rotary phone in the basement for when the power goes out.
Fixing your iPod with a 3×5 card
My iPod died this weekend, and while googling for ideas I came across this site. I gave it a try and used a 3×5 card instead of a business card, and it seems to be working.
Let’s see if it holds up, but it saved me plunking down some cash for a new one, hopefully until the next generation of iPods come out.
Computer repairs not for the faint of heart
My PowerBook 80GB drive died the other day. Luckily, I was able to pull off all my stuff (I think) before it really stopped working.
I looked on the internet for some good tips on how to open up the powerbook. Both xlr8yourmac and ifixit don’t quite get it right. I want to find the guy (or girl) at Apple who designed the tabs above the optical drive and punch them in the mouth. Figuratively, of course. It is so much harder than they say in the guide – and when it finally came apart, I think I now know how to do it. But it can’t be explained. So if you think I’ll be able to tell you, forget it. If your 15” PowerBook Aluminum 1.0 to 1.5GHz with Bluetooth 1.1 hard drive dies, you are going to have to enter this rite of passage on your own. Or hire a professional. Sorry.
Technorati Tip
Update: The trailing slash problem in Apache is a well known issue that I was also dealing with. Basically, if you went to http://wrighters.org/blog you would get a 404/Page Not Found because Apache would be looking for a file called blog. Well, everyone on the net says this can be fixed by doing something like this in your .htaccess file:
RewriteCond %{HTTPHOST} wrighters.org$
RewriteCond %{REQUESTURI} !blog/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ blog/$1
That’s fine, but if you use symlinks (which Site5 uses when it creates a blog for you, and which I used as well when I did my update… and most rails apps deployed using Capistrano will do as well), you need to enable symlinks for Apache. So add this in your .htaccess file above the RewriteCond and RewriteRule lines:
RewriteEngine On
Options +FollowSymlinks
End of Update
I know this is in the Technorati Support FAQ, but I figured out why I couldn’t find any of my posts in Technorati. Even though I could claim my blog (which this FAQ deals with), posts never showed up. Turns out I had a temporary redirect from http://wrighters.org to http://wrighters.org/blog/. When I made this a permanent (301), then magically my pings worked and posts showed up in searches.
Now, we’ll see if that solved Google blogsearch as well. Funny, I can see the Google bot crawling the page, but not for blog searches.
BTW, the Typo 4.0.x built-in Pinging is nice – another reason to upgrade from 2.6.