Baiduspider grab the bandwidth plug? April 22, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth, OSX, Castle , add a commentThis spider from Baidu (translated by google - hence the blog title) crawls my site religiously and feverishly from a dozen different IP’s. I really doubt anyone in China cares about what I have to say. They should, especially with the Olympics coming up, but I know they don’t.
So with that I’m blocking you Baidu. I’m not editing my robots.txt, no not for you. All your various IPs will reach nothingness as my firewall goes ninja on you - mexi style.
字
(Chinese for “word”).
iPhone running AFP April 20, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX, Picture of the Day, Castle, iPhone , add a commentA screenshot of my Macbook Pro connected via AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) to my iPhone with a ClamXav scanning the files for giggles.
See this post at Modmyifone for more information on doing this.
bellingham public library audiobooks block ipod users April 20, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth, Must Listen, OSX, Travel, Web Design & Dev, iPhone , 1 comment so farThis evening I finished reading a book and was investigating whether the next book I’d like to read is available from the Whatcom County Library. I notice on their horrifically designed and sluggish website a blurb about audio books, now available. It is with some joy that I follow the link to Northwest Anytime and read more. Then the let down comes crashing down like a Bengal tiger to the groin.
At this time, OverDrive Media files cannot be used on iPods or Mac computers.
Our media titles, provided by OverDrive, Inc., use DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection technology from Microsoft Corporation. Unfortunately the iPod (and Mac) currently support neither DRM-protected Windows Media Audio (.wma) files nor Windows Media Video (.wmv) files.
OverDrive, along with hundreds of online media providers, is hopeful that Apple and Microsoft can reach an agreement that would enable support for Microsoft-based DRM-protected materials on the iPod/Mac.
To review a list of devices that are compatible with OverDrive Media, click here.
You may also want to check device documentation to determine if a device supports DRM-protected Windows Media content.
Reading through their FAQ…dear god. This wonderful software that you are required to use supports everything from Windows 98 on up. Oh, and in case you didn’t catch it, the company/product name for this wonderfully backward media software is called OverDrive. Is this a joke? Someone has to be playing an elaborate joke on me.
OverDrive has this tidbit on its website.
The OverDrive Team is a group of innovative, passionate masterminds who build and distribute technology solutions for the real world.
What twisted dimension did these guys crawl out of? Ok, I’m straying a little here. Back to the Library and its suckiness.
Ah here we go, apparently iPods are far too modern. Lets support the Palm!
Can I use OverDrive Audio Book titles with my Palm device? OverDrive Audio Book titles may be transferred to certain Palm devices with the help of a third party application called Pocket Tunes….
The iPod (& iTouch, iPhone, Shuffle) is decidedly the most prevalent portable music listening device on the market. Why then is the Bellingham Public Library, choosing to use a Windows Media Audio format and DRM solution that locks out the most widely used device for Mac and Windows users?
Yes, I would agree that Windows is what is running on the majority of desktops, but who really listens to audio books at their desktop? In your car and on your mp3 player are the more likely of places. Why the sites main blurb contains this statement.
Transfer audiobooks to your MP3 player or burn selected titles to a CD for listening on the go.
The press release for this service has this mention.
“This service is great for travelers, commuters, and for those who like to listen to books while they exercise,” said Joan Airoldi, Director of Whatcom County Library System. “With so many best-selling titles available, there’s sure to be something for every listener.”
Again, the majority of people are using iPod family products. The release goes onto say,
Beth Farley, Head of Information and Reader’s Services at the Bellingham Public Library, listens to audiobooks when she goes on vacation. “No more piles of CDs to keep track of on the airplane,” she enthuses, “I’ll be able to fit several entire novels on one tiny MP3 player.”
Alright, what the hell? I fly a lot and I’ve never seen anyone with a stack of CDs on a plane. And please tell me Ms Farley what sort of MP3 player do you have? Sounds to me like most bureaucratic organizations and companies, someone out of touch with the market and technology is making the decisions.
I really wish I wasn’t so agitated and it wasn’t so late. Otherwise I’d write a more coherent piece on why not only this is a very poor implementation of great idea, but also on the correct course of action the library, publishers, and most importantly authors should have taken.
Add Your Wireless Node To Expand Skyhook Wireless April 18, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX, Castle, Travel, iPhone , add a comment
Update: See the cool screen shot I took from my iPhone, using Capture. The pin represents the coordinates given by LocateMe to Maps. And the blue circle is the best Skyhook could do. Good thing I wasn’t really lost. At the time of the shot I was traveling north on the Guide at about 60 mph. Locate was a few blocks off to the west, but not too bad.
For those of us with iPhones and no GPS I tend to use the iPhone Maps built-in “Find Me” feature quite a bit. Although in some areas, especially north Whatcom County, it’s positioning is rather weak, usually providing a giant 10 mile radius that I might not even be in. Here’s a map of their coverage area.
I ended up installing an app called LocateMe on my iPhone which attempts to triangulate based solely upon cell towers. I can then hit the “Map It” button to have it load the longitude and latitude in Maps. This is usually closer, but provides only a specific map point and not an area.
As most iPhone users may know, Apple partnered with Skyhook Wireless for this positioning information which uses a combination of cell tower and mapped wireless access points (AP) to return results. Well now it appears you can submit your wireless access point for acceptance into their database.
I just submitted mine and received an automated reply.
Thank you for submitting a Wireless Access Point to Skyhook Wireless. The following information has been received and will be processed shortly:
MAC Address:
…blah….
Lat/Lon:blah, -blahIt can take up to a few weeks before you see your Access Point in some of our production systems. In the mean time you can download Loki to start using Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System on your laptop or desktop. Go to http://loki.com/download to start using Loki today.
Happy Mapping!
The Skyhook Team
I downloaded the Loki extension into Flock and after asking for permission to find my location it came up with nada. Instead asking me to enter my address, which it then displayed on a Google Map. That was big help.
Loki has a few demos and an API, none of the demos worked for me, but there was an embedded chat widget to speak with support. See screenshot. They never responded. So I’m uninstalling the Loki extension.
However, adding your wireless access points to their database will still help me out so have at it.
More Info On The Black App April 16, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Squirrels, gnash-teeth, OSX, TimeWaster, Marketing, Castle, Web Design & Dev, iPhone , add a commentThe Black App - A possible iPhone application of unknown coolness. For more info, you could go to the website. That was a joke.
They Hype::
All the references and blubs are essentially the same, I’m guessing it’s by their own people digging themselves and such. Since they hit dig, twitter and a few other places, it’s been syndicated and quoted all over the place.
No one knows anything though.
The Companies ::
Epic Apps is the company producing this and purchased the “theblackapp.com” domain via proxy in an effort to hide. They’re hosting at Media Temple, Inc. who provides services to big names and high traffic sites.
theblackapp.com was registered for only one year on Mar 31st 08
epicapps.com was also only registered for one year, 7 days later on Apr 6th 08 - redirects to theblackapp.com
epicapps.com ping responses come from godaddy.com though.
The Code ::
Since the web page is really simple there’s nothing to gleam from the markup accept that they are using google analytics. I’m sure they’re collecting a lot of good marketing data.
The registration page, now this is interesting, is posting to theblackapp.wufoo.com
Related ? ::
wufoo.com was registered Jan 16th 06 to Chris Campbell - http://wufoo.com/about/
So three guys with an idea and venture money from Ycombinator started Infinity Box Inc. and built wufoo.
What is wufoo?
Wufoo is an Internet application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun. Because we host everything, all you need is a browser, an Internet connection and a few minutes to build a form and start using it right away.
Chris also has a site called particletree.com, which is hosted and links to mediatemple and their venture backers.
Chris Campbell is too common of a name. I’ve yet to find anything relating him to even owning an iphone. I’ve also yet to dig around about his two other partners. So we’ll prematurely jump to the conclusion that this is probably just a tangent.
Or they were simply hired to setup the whole site. Which could mean that Ycombinator (the venture company) is also working with Epic Apps and recommended wufoo to them.
————
This is all from wee hours digging last night. I did find a few articles about social networking apps for the iPhone, nothing too exciting. As you can tell I’ve lost interest.
Let me know if I’ve got something wrong, you have more information or if Chris actually does own an iPhone.
Macports - make not found April 13, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth, OSX , 1 comment so farTechy tidbit for those that run across this. I have the latest Xcode 3.0 installed on this Macbook Pro along with the latest Macports but when trying to issue a
sudo ports -v install php5
I received
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command ” cd “/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_archivers_bzip2/work/bzip2-1.0.5″ && make all PREFIX=”/opt/local” ” returned error 127
Command output: sh: make: command not found
My environment path was correct [ echo $PATH ] and the make, gcc, files were all where they were supposed to be, but yet there was still unhappiness.
I ended up reinstalling Xcode 3.0 and whatever was broken is now fixed.
Tags: macports, osx, xcode, ports php5, make
official iphone & itouch unthreaded blog icon April 2, 2008
Posted by Al Castle in : Puter Stuff, OSX, Techy, Castle, Web Design & Dev, iPhone , add a comment
tada!
ok no i didn’t create it the icon. it’s from the tango icon gallery and published under the creative commons attribution-share alike license.
from your apple iphone or itouch, visit my blog and then tap the + (plus icon), then “Add to Home Screen”. You’ll now have a quick link to my very unthreaded ramblings marked with this wonderful castlemonkey icon.
———-
To create your own simply upload a png image to your root web directory and name it apple-touch-icon.png. If you’d like this image to also be the bookmark (favicon.ico) for your site, you can easily use one of these sites to turn your apple icon into one.
Tags: tango, icons, creative commons, unthreaded, castlemonkey, iphone, apple-touch-icon.png, favicon.ico
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
