Hot Potatoes! August 31, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : bree, emily , add a commentWe’re going to see the Wiggles!
Emily loves them so much and they’re doing a concert in Brisbane so I booked us tickets. I would have booked this when it was first released but Bree seemed to think they’d sell out in hours. I guess that didn’t happen :)
Today was Emily’s second day at her new kindy. When I picked her up she told me that she liked kindy and that it was cool. I asked her if it was better than her old kindy and she said yes.
In the last week or two she’s been stringing more and more words together (and for that matter, using more new words). Tonight she wanted me to get in the shower with her and instead of a short “daddy shower” like she used to do, she said “daddy have a shower with me”.
Bree’s contract was extended till the end of the year. She’s still working at the special pre-school 5 days a fortnight. She’s hoping to get a permanent position next year since that guarantees three years of work.
ROKR E2 August 29, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : computers, v220 , add a commentI suppose I should mention this phone before it goes away…
My mother in law’s phone died and Bree let her use her phone. I gave Bree my phone and borrowed one from work. We tend to have phones hanging around doing not much these days.
Since the last time I borrowed a phone, the ZTE models have become useful for testing so I couldn’t have one of them. In fact all the non-Qtopia phones seemed to be dead, there was just one available. It was a Motorola ROKR E2.
The phone is actually rather significant since it’s a linux-based mid-teir phone. That’s the market we’d like to hit, so it’s good to know the hardware is ready for us. The ROKR is based on a mainstone board and runs Motorola’s EZX with a new GUI called Chameleon which uses Qtopia Core. The Chameleon interface is quite similar to the P2K interface but it’s also similar to the Nokia Series 60 interface (as seen on the N70). Motorola even changed the hardware buttons around to make them match Nokia’s phones which will be good for switchers but annoying for Motorola veterans like me. Actually, the button layout matches the greenphone so using the ROKR has prepared me for that.
I think the phone I got has been used. The SD slot won’t keep cards in and the battery only lasts for 2 days (instead of the 9 claimed in reviews).
I have used bluetooth to copy my old ring tones onto the phone. I finally took a new photo of my desk as the wall paper (the old picture was from my previous office). Bluetooth is easy enough to do (but turning it on/off takes about 20 clicks!) but uploading really kills the battery (I guess the flash is power-hungry).
The camera is awesome compared to my V220. It’s got better resolution but the most significant thing is the quality of the picture and the light that gets in. I can take pictures in low light conditions that don’t look totally crap now. I haven’t tried taking full-size photos and comparing them to my real camera but I imagine the ROKR would come out ok.
The one problem I’ve had is GPRS. I can’t get it to talk at all. This means I can’t send/receive MMS messages too. This phone came from China so perhaps it’s something special about it.
It took me so long to write this that the broken phone is now ready so I’ll have my V220 back tomorrow. I thought I’d end up using it until my greenphone arrived but it looks like that’s not the case.
Kid Update August 28, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac , 1 comment so farIt’s been a while so here’s an update on the kids.
Isaac can stand quite confidently now but it doesn’t look to me like he’s close to walking yet. He’s really responding well to “no”, we just need to get him thinking about what he’s doing before he does it now :)
I saw Isaac clapping at the Wiggles the other day.
Isaac really like being held and really hates being dumped somewhere. I think it’s partly because all the problems we had with reflux meant he got held a lot more. We had a birthday dinner the other night and he was fine, even though he stayed up several hours after his bed time. Of course, the whole time he was being held by various people. He’s starting to tantrum less when we put him down. The port-a-cot/playpen/room time he gets is probably helping. He’s still prone to tantrums though. The usual one is when he gets hungry. He can handle movement in his eating time but once he decides he’s hungry he’ll just scream at you until you feed him. I’m a little concerned with the tantrums but the other night he managed to calm himself down (without help) after screaming at us for food so I think we just need to work on it. It’s definitely more tempting to just silence him than it was with Emily but that won’t help out in the long term.
Emily has learned a bunch of words off the Wiggles. Not too surprising since she watches so much of it. She’s even learned a bunch of the dances. Her favourite song is “Quack, Quack, Quack, Cock-a-doodle-doo” (actually, it’s called “CAPTAIN FEATHERSWORD FELL ASLEEP ON HIS PIRATE SHIP” but that’s not how the chorus goes). She sings the chorus and does the actions. She’ll drive Bree nuts going “Quack, Quack, Quack” all day long. Her other favourite is “Hot Potato”. I’ve only heard her say “hot potato” but she can do the actions for “cold spagetti” and “mashed banana” too, as well as the jumping during the chorus (and she loves it when I do the high-pitched chorus voice).
I’ve been recording the Wiggles in the morning. That gives her 50 minutes of new Wiggles each week (but then, for example, she watched the whole lot 3 times last weekend). Unfortunately the Wiggles ends next week. They did the same things with High Five just as Emily was getting into it. I hope they’ll come back. My PVR doesn’t have a big enough disk to keep shows like that around for a long time so without new shows, Emily misses out. At least we’ve got Wiggles season 1 on DVD, plus “Top of the tots” and 2 CDs, if she needs a fix :)
Emily still seems to have problems understanding the white lines. She knows she can go into the toilet but I think that’s a special case for her, not related to the lack of a white line. We marked a path to her chair at the table but she doesn’t walk down it unless we tell her to and when she does, she’s likely to walk outside the lines. Since it’s not stopping her from going to the toilet and getting her to the table isn’t that important, I think we’ll just leave the lines there and hope that she starts to recognise what they are. Perhaps it will start making sense to her when we let her go in and out of her room.
Blog changes August 27, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : site , add a commentI’ve been making some changes to my blog today. Some are simple, some are quite involved.
I moved the sidebar to the right again. I prefer it there and I think I may have figured out how to make it work on IE (I’ll test but that means rebooting into Windows).
Both the Atom and RSS feeds are linked from the sidebar.
Archives are now in a menu (there’s so many of them).
The archive pages are now just groups of links to the post pages.
The blogger controls are back on the end of the sidebar.
I’m using javascript a bit to do various magic things. I’ve put in enough code that people without JS should get a decent experience too. I need to test that though…
I’m moving some of my static pages into blogger. I’m putting all of them into 1 day, before all the other posts on my blog (to group them together). Some stuff might take a while to move. Some stuff probably won’t move.
I’m playing with categorisation. I’m currently using a javascript-based system that I rolled myself. The inspiration came from this page, or more correctly, the inspiration came after trying out that system and realising it could be done without a cumbersome sidebar component.
Update 29 August 2006
I’ve got to ensure all my posts are on the front page when updating categories so for a while the front page will be very long.
I’ve implemented a Javascript-based navigation system which (IMHO) rocks. Click on a date (main or item pages) and it’ll take you to the month view (archive page), which contains links to the next and previous months. It also lists chronologically, rather than in reverse. It even checks that the next/prev month exists before creating the link.
Between this new navigation and the keywords thing, getting around my blog should be a snap.
Games, lovely games August 24, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : eve , add a commentI’ve missed playing games. I just had my first gaming session and it was good. Even better, the new drivers in Boot Camp 1.1 make the video card run better than it used to do so I’m getting smoother graphics in Quake 4 (the most demanding game I have). The PowerPlay settings let me go with “optimal” settings only when plugged into the wall. I had “balanced” settings on battery and “low” settings when the battery was below 25%. That happened while playing Quake and it visibly slowed the game, not to mention the visible glitches that started appearing. I don’t think game engines are designed with cards that change performance characteristics in mind. I bumped the low battery settings up to “balanced” so it doesn’t happen again. The previous “low battery” notification (Windows going to sleep) is good enough for me :)
Of course, now I’m interested in knowing just how much better the graphics will be when I run while plugged into the wall. I can’t think why PowerPlay won’t let me use “optimal” settings on battery. It must really chew power.
Just can't stop hacking my bank August 23, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : heritage, programs , add a commentSo writing a javascriptlet and converting it to a Greasemonkey script wasn’t enough. I finally installed Creammonkey and ported the script to it. Just for completeness, I also ported it to Trixie.
Observations:
- Greasemonkey loads the script in a separate context, before the page loads
- Creammonkey loads the script in the same context, after the page loads
- Trixie loads the script in the same context, before the page loads
That’s 3 different behaviours for the three tools (which are supposed to be compatible with each other). On top of that is the browser incompatibilities. Cross-browser scripting sucks :(
I’ve used some crappy (but apparently working) browser detection code to enable all three versions to live in the same script. I’ve tested that this works in Safari 2.0.4/Creammonkey 0.7, Firefox 1.5.x/Greasemonkey 0.6.5.x and IE (XPSP2)/Trixie 0.2.3.
Now all I need is for someone to make a Konqmonkey…
Update 2 July 2007
As a result on an interesting phone call the links have been removed.
Battery Exchange August 23, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : eve , add a commentWhen I filled out the battery exchange program form the last page didn’t finish loading. I figured the server had processed it but 2 weeks later, I’m thinking otherwise. I did the form again yesterday and this time I got an email when I finished.
I got the battery today. I put it in, put the old one in the box, called up DHL and they just collected it. I wonder if those poor Dell-owning people are going to have it this easy… ;)
I ran coconutBattery after charging the new battery but before unplugging it. It shows I’m on charge cycle -1 and my capacity is 5536mAh but the original capacity is only 5500mAh :)
coconutBattery has been confused about the age of my Mac recently. It was showing large values before the new logic board and is currently showing 24,430 months. That’s over 2 centuries! Maybe the clock was reset to the epoch at some point and coconutBattery thinks that’s when I got my Mac.
Eve version 2.0 August 22, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : eve , add a commentI picked up Eve today. I was told 2 weeks and it was (actually, one day more but there was a public holiday in there).
First impressions are a bit mixed. The CPU runs hotter than the last one did at 80 degrees when loaded (73 for the old one). I notice that the serial number no longer displays in System Profiler (I just see “SystemSerialNumb”). I didn’t get a new install DVD. The service dude said that not all the new logic boards require 10.4.6. Does that mean I’ve got a recycled pre-”new logic board” board that just doesn’t happen to have the whine? Windows didn’t boot. I’ll try booting to safe mode and install the Boot Camp 1.1 drivers.
Of course, the big question is, does it fix the whine? YES. Mind you at $2090.66 AUD (non-warranty replacement cost) for a new logic board, you’d want to hope something got fixed :)
Update 22 August 2006
I managed to boot Windows ok this time but ran into troubles when I installed the new drivers. I now have a bluetooth-enabled phone (more on that later) so I wanted to get bluetooth running but Apple’s driver update killed bluetooth. Finally, after much searching, I came across this page which contains the solution (forcing the use of Apple’s unsigned drivers). I also had to re-install Input Remapper because the Boot Camp drivers blew away it’s driver. Boot Camp 1.1 contains some of the functionality of Input Remapper but not all of it. Right click is just painful with Apple’s solution (Right-apple-key click? Ugh).
Update 23 August 2006
The system boots from my original install DVD. My conspiracy theory is that I have a recycled non-whining logic board, not a “new” logic board. Who knows, maybe some part was changed so there’s two lots of “new” logic boards but only half of them require 10.4.6.
The serial number thing is normal. The number is “burned” into the firmware at construction time but for replacement parts, the service centre would need to burn in the new number which takes time and effort and apparently doesn’t do anything except let you see your serial number from within Mac OS X.
I was a bit scared when I ran Apple Hardware Test and it said I had an error. I didn’t have a pen handy so I didn’t write the error down and it doesn’t give the error today. I’m still a bit concerned… I’ll keep an eye on things and run the hardware test every now and then to see if the problem comes back.
Time to do the PVR shuffle again August 14, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : pvr , 6commentsSigh. Just when I was starting to think they wouldn’t release any more, OpenTel has released firmware v2.27 (29/7/06 Auto Tuner A-B) for my ODT4200PVR. I can’t even remember what I’m running now. I think it’s 2.04 because the hard disk sleeps and that didn’t happen in the original firmware. That must also mean that the corruption bugs I suspected aren’t present. At least, I haven’t seen them. Must have been a bad signal or something.
The problem with trying new firmware is that (according to the manufacturer) you need to completely reset the device. This means you lose all your channel defs, your recording info and any recorded movies. Worse, each time I upgrade, I seem to find really annoying bugs within a few days that make me want to downgrade again.
I’ll probably aim for a sunday afternoon upgrade. I might end up throwing out some shows but these days I never seem to “catch up” with my viewing. All the good shows seem to be on at the beginning of the week. Most importantly, Bree and the kids won’t be here so I can drag computers and cords around with impunity.
The usual place I get firmware from is still listing the 2.04 changes but the opentel site seems to have finally become more than a placeholder and lists these changes:
1. This is new Australila ODT4200PVR s/w (Terrestrial PVR).
2. Main Version :
3. release date : 2006.05.03Improvements of this version (ver 2.27)
1) Add the Daylight Saving Option : AUTO/ON/OFF
2) Volume level adjustment
3) Solved the rewind problem
4) Fixed some OSD bugThis software is for Austrailia only.
It’s always seemed odd to me that they don’t use a single software build for all countries. I wonder if they really have solved the rewind problem (it’s been in every change list so far).
A mixed bag of updates August 7, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : computers, emily, eve, isaac , add a commentIt could be a coincidence but since we got somewhere with Isaac’s feeding, he’s transformed into a totally different child. He’s progressed in leaps and bounds from where he was. He was caught today taking his first unaided but supported steps (holding onto a glass door). He’s extremely happy and chatters quite a bit. He sleeps really well and tolerates changes to his feeds much more readily. He’s even getting the hang of the red lines, though he does generally need a verbal reminder.
Emily now has white lines. Apparently red lines are easier for a child to process but we let Emily into the toilet and we’ve given her a pathway to the table. The separate colour is a bit confusing for her. She understands that the red lines are for Isaac and the white ones are for her but when she’s not consciously thinking about it she gets it wrong, usually walking over both sets of lines.
I backed up Eve and sent her in. I’ve been told to expect around 2 weeks before I get her back.
I was briefly excited by the prospect of using Eve’s backup (a clone of the disk) to boot another machine here. I read about it on the web and I even tried booting from the backup on Eve. Despite what Apple (still) claims, you can boot an Intel-powered Mac from an APM-partitioned disk just fine (I had to use APM because none of my other machines run Tiger so they can’t read GPT). Of course, all my excitement came crashing down when I realised that none of my other machines had Intel processors and it’s not possible to make a Universal install.
So I’m typing this on Max, using the hard disk from Luksusdyret (running pretty much the same as it was before I moved over to Eve). Luksusdyret’s monitor doesn’t work well and is in the garage but Max’s small size means it can move up to the house.
I even installed a bunch of games for the kids but Emily isn’t quite old enough to understand how to interact with them. She does love watching movies on it. I think she considers it some kind of “personal TV”.
Update 8 August 2006
I stumbled across radmind. It seems this free set of tools can be used to create a truly universal Mac OS X system. I could have used this a few days ago! I guess I’ll have to wait until Eve gets back to try this now.