[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]
The lack of tinsel, which I love, is due to our cats adoring all things glittery and we have enough trouble keeping Lana from knocking all the balls off the lower branches without enticing her to go higher on the tree.
Now if the slushy freezing rain will just change to snow, it might be a white Christmas. At least my parents home in NY seems to be getting a seanal coating of fluffy white :-).
Merry Pre-Christmas to ALL!!!!!
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A night shot of the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island. It was a 30 sec exposure to get the star detail and we "light painted" the building itself to get the illuminated effect. Unlike my other photographs that night, I combine two using HDR (Photomatix) and then tone-mapped the result to get what you see here.
Interesting! ;-)
That is especially true for anything iPhone related, as I am a self professed iPhone Guru and have hacked, jailbroken, restored, erased, copied, and basically tried ALL the cool things you can do with an iPhone. I had third party apps running as soon as a command line jailbreak was available and have used/tried every utility that jailbreaks iPhones ever since it could be done. On all firmware versions... you get the picture.
In any case, while I do adore my glossy white iPhone 3G, since iTunes 7.7.1 and firmware 2.0.1, I have been PLAGUED with mysterious freezes and startups that suddenly cause all my App Store applications to suddenly stop working and for my iPod to suddenly say it is empty of content! Please note that all the default iPhone apps still work fine, as do any apps installed via Cydia. Heck, at one point I checked out some of the hacked store apps and even They continued to work, but not my Hundreds of $ worth of paid-for apps and all my music and video content. Interestingly enough, the music and video content still showed in iTunes on my Macbook Pro and could even be played by the computer. The only solution so far has been a complete Restore and then a clean install of all my applications again. HOURS worth of work, just to be repeated again within 24 hours.
Here is a link to some discussions at Apple:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1644828&tstart=0
After having tried all the "quick fixes" and all the other "solutions", I finally found one that has seemed to WORK! At least for me it does. I downgraded my iTunes from 7.7.1 to 7.7 and have had all my problems above DISAPPEAR! Hooray! (does Snoopy Dance for those that remember what it is). While I am certainly happy that it seems to have solved my spontaneous crash and "lose all my apps" issue, I am disturbed that I had to revert to an older version of iTunes. That is Severely disappointing to me. Certainly a "downgrade" should never be an acceptable solution and it irks me to have done so. But I am a Happy iPhone user again! :-)
I would also like to note, as rumor has it, that Steve Jobs commented internally at Apple regarding my issues above and stated that the "bugs" (apps crash and media disappears from ipod on iphone) are known and should be addressed in an upcoming September firmware update. FINALLY! But that means the 2.0.2 firmware update will not help me :-(. I guess I will be staying at iTunes 7.7 until September then.
]]>So what to do? I searched and search but found no direct answer in third party forums or Codeweaver's site (they make Crossover for Mac and Crossover Games). What I wanted to do was use my external USB drive for the install, but the program defaults to your main drive. You can use "hooks" I think to make some startup scripts but that seemed too involved and I was looking for a quicker fix ;-).
What I finally figured out from bits of other solutions, was this: The program does not like aliases to directories when created in the Finder. I had tried this and by linking several directories to folders on my external drive but all failed at some point. (more after the break, as they say at TUAW, my favorite blog)
]]> However, the answer lay in Terminal. I just opened Terminal became root and made a sym-link/hard-link to my "Crossover Games" folder in ~/Library/Application Support/ that pointed to my actual preferred "Crossover Games" folder on the external USB drive using the ln -s command and Voila! It worked! The system sees this form of "alias" as viable and allowed me to install the entire suite of Orange Box games without further problems.External drive spaces abound! Hooray! :-0
]]>Now that I have been testing/trying Twinkle (a Twitter client) on my iPhone for a bit, I think I am ready to add it to my blog. AT least that way there will be more "new" content, if brief, and it should also inspire me to write more lengthy posts such as this one.
I know, I know... so WTF does anyone want to hear More form Me? Well maybe they don't, but I am not here for the 'nay sayers' :-). My true purpose? Well now, that is yet to be determined I think....
]]>In any case, this post is being made while en route to my parents' house for Easter. No, I am not driving too ;-)
]]>So, where am I now? I have updated to the latest firmware version 1.1.2, soon to be surpassed by the rumored 1.1.3 version coming any week now. I have jailbroken my iPhone again (did this as soon as there was one available for version 1.1.2 - I didn't have to wait too long) and added all my favorite third party applications again (voice notes, NES, Netflix, DropCopy, Blackjack, etc.). The iPhone is still my all-time favorite phone and iPod.
Of course Steve Jobs did Finally give in to the obvious necessity of allowing third party applications and development on the iPhone, with an official SDK expected in February of 2008. It doesn't mean that all the apps my fellow jailbreakers and I have enjoyed will be safe from the next update, but perhaps by the Next one after that they will be. Happy Days! (does a snoopy dance)
In any case, I just wanted to let me regular readers (ha ha!) know that I am still a devoted iPhone addicted and Apple geek. My second favorite device of 2007 was and is my MacBook Pro with Boot Camp. Nothing like having the fastest Mac laptop and fastest PC laptop all in one box!
]]>That's right folks, the people who regulate what we can and can not bring on planes have decided that using lithium batteries on airplanes is too big a fire risk. What??? I didn't even know that a lithium battery had EVER caught fire on a plane. Sure, we hear about one catching fire once in a long while ( say 1 out of every billion or so sold - just speculating here) but seriously how often do you hear about this type of thing, much less on an plane?
I learned of it first on Thom Hogan's Nikon site, which has a link to the article on the new travel regulations.
What I can't believe is that No one is making a stink about this! Doesn't anyone realize what this means? No ipod playing or watching movies on your laptop when traveling across the country, across the ocean or around the World! Good bye to working while you fly for business travelers. Good bye casual ipod listeners who enjoyed tuning out to their favorites bands on a flight. Say "Hello" to bad in-flight movies, pay-for-play airline alternatives, and hanging with your fellow crowded, bored passengers twiddling their thumbs and drumming their fingers on their now useless laptops and mp3 players.
Yes, this was a stellar move by people putting our tax dollars to work. Nice one guys! Thanks for protecting us from something incredibly rare and potentially pointless so we can be further inconvenienced because you all had nothing Better to do with your time....
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Can you tell that I am 'addicted' to my iPhone? (huge grin)
Well I am, and I love it. It is still my best and favorite new gadget/toy/phone/ipod and techno-device even though Apple, its maker, would try to stymie my joy and micromanage how I choose to enjoy this device. Kinda like how Radiohead wants to force us to "enjoy" their music only as an Album and never by the individual songs. Geez, what does that say about the songs if they can't stand on their own or needs Other songs to 'complete them' and the experience? But I digress... iPhones!
That's right, Apple has again taken a fairly nasty stance and let loose the long awaited update that includes the WiFi Music store, which even *I* thought would be cool! Word! But it comes at the cost of my "harmless" and yet Very Useful, unsupported by Apple, 3rd party apps. Do I really want to give up my NES games, Black Jack, TapTapRevolution(TTR) and other games just so I can make an impulsive iTunes purchase? Should I trade the ability to have custom FREE Ringtones of my own creation, a Terminal that I can use to check my servers, and Voice Notes for the ability to have some iPod controls on my screen without unlocking it every time?(hey, the headphone skip and pause/play function will suffice for now and when I use Good headphones I can cope)
No. See Erica Sudan's article on tuaw.com for useful info before YOU upgrade.
I have lived with these "limitations" since the beginning and Apple's small enhancements are not worth trashing the hard work and inventiveness that the 3rd party hackers and developers have done on our behalf. Why Apple choose to do so, and with no real legitimate explanation I might add, is a mystery to me and sadly an indication that my always adored Apple, maker of my favorite computers and tech equipment, is becoming warped and twisted and corrupted by their own size (greed?) and perhaps the "new friends" they seem to be making in the corporate and international world.
Having a Soul is now too costly Steve? Did you loose your Daemon?
Sure, I understand about having to honor the agreements with your phone carriers and making sure only they can provide service for you phone, but that should not mean f*cking over the 3rd party developers. Hell, WTF didn't you give us all an SDK in the first place? Is the iPhone software just Beta still? Or even Alpha? And you aren't done tweaking it enough to issue a supportable SDK? Then SAY so. At least you would alienate less of your devoted fans. WE would understand. And don't think that this new found "Fame & Fortune" means you can forget your "roots". Shun us and it will be your own demise. Read your Ancient Literature!
So, what does it mean for me? I won't be updating any time soon. Not until Someone has re-jailbreaked the iPhone and allowed me to customize it again with Summerboard and other cool apps. Either that, or Apple will continue to pull Microsoftian moves like updating iTunes so that only iPhones running the latest firmware will sync properly... Don't do it Apple! Just don't go there!
In the words and voice of Luke Skywalker, "I know there is still some Good in you!"
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