500 dollar brick March 28, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth, OSX, Castle, iPhone , add a comment
so i ended up bricking the iphone tonight. like bad bad.
[bricking is a term to describe where your iphone becomes so useless it has reached the level of a paperweight, or brick.]
first it was in this endless cycle of restarting, unusable from the touch screen, but it still had ssh access. to you none techies this means that i was able to access the files on the phone via a DOS like interface from my laptop over the wireless connection in my home.
this led me to start deleting some files that might have caused the problem… well in my panic i deleted the ssh loader, the part of the phone that lets me access it remotely. then i rebooted the phone from the remote connection.
now it just showed the boot loader silver apple logo. wasn’t even completely starting anymore. itunes didn’t detect it, other apps i have also were not able to see it.
the standard reset technique of holding down the power button and home button simultaneously had no effect.
a dozen searches were simultaneously happening for people who’ve done the same and recovery options. everyone i found either could still use their iphone in some crippled fashion and restore it with itunes. or they had admitted defeat - returning it to apple for repairs.
at this point i had transcended all senses of panic and loss.
i had accepted the brick.
i would not send it away to apple.
i began looking for papers to weigh down with it.
then as i was about to close my browser i found one of my keyword searches pulled up something new to try.
1 iphone connected to my computer
2 itunes running
3 hold down both buttons as you normally do when resetting, for approx 10 seconds.
4 then let go of the power button and hold the home button until itunes says an iphone in recovery mode is detected.
5 restore from backup.
6 happiness.
flock buggery & tricks March 28, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth, OSX, Web Design & Dev , 1 comment so fari should point out, since it took me a minute or two to figure out, that if you host your own blog as i do you need to deal with a bit of oopidity.
most of you probably use a service like wordpress or blogger and the setup is really as simple as the url to your blog, username and password.
if you host your own, its the same questions, but it always fails for some reason. looking at my server logs i see its getting a status 200 which means everyone should be happy, but for some reason not so much.
the key is to enter any url when it asks for your blog url. when it fails to find the api it’s looking for you can simply continue to do the setup manually.
all it really needs to know is where the api is, so in this manual configuration you’d enter something like http://myblog.domain.com/xmlrpc.php
then your username and password.
tada.
Tags: browserwars, social networking, flock
my flock March 28, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX, Web Design & Dev, Friends , add a commentlast week sometime i finally decided to give flock another shot. It’s based off of mozilla - runs on windows, macs and linux. it seems primarily focused with the social networking aspect of the internet and provides many built in tools to keep me up to date on the happenings of my friends and visa versa.
for starters it has a built in wysiwyg blog editor which i’m using now to compose this. i can save a draft, work offline and then upload it to one or more of my saved blog profiles [blogger, typepad, wordpress, et al]. since i tend to travel a lot having the ability to work offline is pretty handy.
it has a built in feed reader which also lets me define the layout (number of columns), allows me to mark posts or comments as viewed, blog about, save, or email a post with a click and so on.
i can easily upload pictures by drag and dropping them into the media sidebar, which ties into facebook, photobucket, youtube, picasa and flickr. since it knows who i am it can pull pictures to view from one of my accounts or about my friends too.
send and receive email with its tie in’s to gmail and yahoo mail without having to switch to my native email app.
perhaps one of the handiest things is just staying on top of what my friends are doing. it ties into twitter and facebook, you can see status, profile changes and even poke someone right from the sidebar.
i still use firefox as my primary browser for web development since it has my most useful extensions installed. but for my socializing and online recreation, flock has my attention.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: browser wars, social networking, multi-tasking
its still good, just give it a rinse. March 25, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels , add a commentOne of my favorite bloggers had this great post about a tea hunt and the discovery of reusable feminine products.
I laughed so hard I cried. Thanks Jeanna.
coach lyle March 24, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Castle, Fitness, Friends , 2commentsearly this morning i talked to my friend lyle about the grand idea of going to the gym. by this evening i was tired and had a headache. coach lyle would have none of that.
“quit being such a whiny little bitch or i’ll kick you in the baby maker!”
ok. well that’s what i heard, what she really said was something like,
“suck it up castle”.
in any case, i went. i swam laps. pushed myself too hard. almost drowned - twice. a guy about 70 was out lapping me 2 to 1. i can seriously barely move. i feel like such a slug.
i guess i shouldn’t have smoked on the way to the gym.
Project LOL Izzy: Purrito Party March 7, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels, Picture of the Day, TimeWaster, Izzy , 2commentsUgh. I’ve been sick for awhile, I’ve been sleepless and feeling worse. Izzy who’s been avoiding me for the most part during this last week of illness must be trying to cheer me up. She’s been feisty, biting my toes, nuzzling and trying to drink my juice.
So we decided it was time for another purrito party. I think she had even more fun this time.
Izzy doing her Keanu Reeves impersonation.
Izzy all snuggly
Izzy tries to do a little worm type slithering.
She looks upset, but she’s really not.
Izzy doing her, ‘keeping it real’ look.
