Eve's wireless is playing up June 28, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : computers, eve , add a commentI have a wireless AP/router that I connect to (WRT54G v2 running DD-WRT v23 SP1). Recently my MacBook Pro has been disconnecting from the wireless network. If I sleep/wake or even just select the entry in the airport menu it connects again. I’m sitting close to the AP so it’s not like there’s no signal there. It’s like the MBP loses the connection for some reason and never bothers to reconnect like it should.
Strangely, my wife’s iBook (running 10.3.9) has no problems at all.
I did update the firmware on the router recently but since the iBook has no problems I’m not so sure it’s the cause. However, it does seem that setting the router to select a channel automatically makes it worse (because the channel changes and the MBP doesn’t switch too?).
Also, I have left the machine downloading stuff overnight and the connection doesn’t seem to drop then. It’s got AC then instead of battery so perhaps this only happens when running on battery.
I have had speedit loaded (for CoreDuoTemp). I’ll disable it for a while to see if it’s the cause. It’s a low-level kernel extension so it wouldn’t surprise me.
Update 7 July 2006
I’ve tried everything and the only thing I have left is the router. I don’t know what changed in the firmware but it doesn’t agree with my Mac. Bree has been complaining about Safari problems lately so perhaps it’s affecting her too, just not as obviously. I’ve reverted to the older firmware. Hopefully that’ll fix it.
Supernatural disappointed me June 28, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentIt’s been a 6 month slog but Supernatural finally finished. However, I’m disappointed. For starters, the show was mostly made up of shallow episodes. The saving grace was the season-long plot lines that tied the whole thing together.
It’s ironic that I recently saw a documentary on how the TV series is replacing movies. It mentioned how much of a cash cow a good show can be. Milking the cash cow is why most shows go bad before they stop. As far as I’m concerned, Supernatural should have ended. Instead, they’ve left major plot lines unresolved so they can do another season. I’m extremely sceptical that they’ll be able to come up with enough “regular” content to fill out another season though. I predict that it will tank part-way through the next season leaving major plot lines hanging. Unlike Firefly, I don’t expect a movie to be made to resolve the plot lines either.
Emily gets a phone June 22, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentI was watching Emily play on one of those play areas at a shopping centre the other day. Some people next to me had raided the demo phones from a nearby store and were looking at them. I said how much Emily liked phones and they gave me one. It’s a Motorola flip phone that looks like mine. Of course, Emily just loves it. It’s got a picture of a guitar on it so she keeps saying “poppy” since my dad (pop) plays guitar.
Emily also seems to finally understand that phones let you talk to someone that’s not there. Previously she would listen to you talking but that was about it. She got on the phone to me the other day and laughed and said “that’s daddy” to Bree. The only problem is that she thinks my face will be on the screen so she pulls the phone away from her face to look at it.
UniMotion updates June 13, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : programs , 4commentsI’ve posted UniMotion 0.3. It comes with a crappy little commandline app to set the calibration values so that the real (floating point) stuff can work. This should end up being a nice API because it protects developers from any changes in precision on future models. Even now, there are several different scales to be found and each machine seems to be somewhat unique too.
I tried to open a sourceforge project to hold UniMotion but it hasn’t happened yet. 9 days in the queue (they say a max of 14) so hopefully that can get setup sometime next week.
If you’re a user, try out the calibration stuff to see if it works ok for you. If you’re a developer, let me know if the API does what you need. Off the top of my head, there may be “polarity” issues still (ie. one machine might consider the left side +x while another uses -x). Applying a negative scale factor might work to resolve that but I’m not sure. Certainly there isn’t (yet) a standard for developers to work from.
I might try to code up a few example apps that use UniMotion now (or even refit it in place of amstracker/motion for any open source apps I find out there). Don’t expect stuff to happen too quickly from here on because I really don’t have the time to maintain a project :(
Car door shenanigans June 13, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentI opened the rear car door on Friday afternoon after work. I drove home and the door no longer worked. Lovely. I think it’s just the outside handle but of course, we have the child lock on so the inside handle doesn’t work either. We spent the next few days putting Emily in and out via the window. The car was at the mechanic’s today. It took him an hour to get the door open. He had to destroy the handle to do it. The door is currently sealed with duct tape and it’ll get fixed in a week’s time when we get it serviced (should be enough time for the part to come in).
I missed the end of Funland! June 6, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentOf all the times to do something bad, my PVR just *had* to choose the last episode of Funland didn’t it?
It recorded exactly 0 seconds. Nothing at all. Of course, it’s never done this before so I wasn’t even up when Funland was on.
Even worse, it seems that there isn’t yet the option to buy a DVD (and the pre-orders are for a region 2 disk). My DVD player isn’t multi-region either. I looked around to see if there was any “illegal” downloads available but came up empty.
HOW DOES IT END???
I fear that I’ll have to wait years to find out. Maybe I can get SBS to re-run the last episode.
Update 7 June 2006
I know how it ends! It seems many people have had the same problem as me (both here an in the UK). I found a spoiler post on the IMDB forum. I still want to see the episode but I’ll survive if I don’t.
Hacking my Bank (revisited) June 5, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : heritage, programs , add a commentI found a way to bypass the onscreen keyboard at my online bank. However both the AJAX and PHP versions I came up with had problems. The AJAX one doesn’t work from a web server. The PHP one works nicely on my Linux machine at work but it seems that PHP on Mac OS X can’t open SSL connections, so it doesn’t work at home. Both solutions also fail to handle the “pay anyone” keyboard, which comes up when you try to do a “pay anyone” operation. I went and looked at my solution again and came up with this javascriptlet. Save that link as a bookmark and then open it when you get an on-screen keyboard (it works with both the login and “pay anyone” keyboards).
Update 10 July 2006
While I was sleeping, most browsers stopped supporting javasciptlets. Luckily, there’s Greasemonkey for Firefox. I’ve adapted the javascript to run in this environment. Once you’ve installed Greasemonkey, click on Heritage Keyboard Killer and install it.
Similar environments exist for Safari (Creammonkey) and IE (Trixie) but I haven’t tested the code with them. Unfortunately, my primary browser at work (Konqueror) doesn’t do Greasemonkey or javascriptlets. I might just move back to Firefox.
Update 2 July 2007
As a result on an interesting phone call the links have been removed.
Something is stealing my CPU June 1, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , 3commentsIt seems that processes can steal CPU time without appearing in top or Activity Monitor. Frankly I find this unacceptable. Eve has been attacked by a rogue process recently (40% load when idle) yet I’m not able to determine what it is.
I initially suspected spotlight. I had installed a game (NeverWinter Nights) on my Windows partition and I figured it was indexing it. My suspicions moved to the distributed network build client in XCode 2.3. It could even be an interaction between one of Personal File Sharing, Windows Sharing, Personal Web Sharing (PHP enabled) and distributed builds.
Turning off all of spotlight, distributed builds (manual kill required) and sharing lets the machine idle properly. I’m currently uninstalling XCode 2.3 to see if it is the cause of my problems (it is a recent problem and I only recently installed XCode 2.3).
Update 1 June 2006
It is definitely something in XCode 2.3. I noticed some daemons relating to distributed network building. They don’t even stop running when you turn off distributed building in XCode. It’s probably something to do with my network setup. I really hate crap like this. I left feedback so hopefully Apple will fix this for the next XCode release.