Jan 28, 2010

Generic errors. Gotta love ‘em.

It’s widely known that I enjoy mobile blogging, and for the iPhone, there’s one of two options; the official WordPress app for iPhone, or blogging via email with a service like Posterous and it’s “Post Everywhere” integration.

While the WordPress app is unbeatable for purely text posts, I’m not a huge fan of the way it handles pictures, placing them at the bottom of the post, right after all the text commentary. That would be okay if there was an option to edit how the final post will look, but as far as I can tell, there isn’t.

Sometimes though, the app itself does weird things – as you can see in the screenshot above. I’m not sure whether the error describes an issue with the app, or the data connection (not dissimilar to Tweetie’s “secure connection failed” messages [which could also be attributed to Twitter itself, but that's another story]).

There’s also another interesting story regarding the error itself – but I’ll save that for another time.

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Jan 28, 2010

The end of IPv4 is nigh…

Counting down the days before we run out of IPv4 address space? Yes, there’s an app for that.

The app itself isn’t ver impressive – while it continually updates the numbers you see above, I *highly* doubt it’s in real time, and I’m also a little suspiscious of it’s accuracy.

If this app is to be believed, the end of IPv4 address space really is nigh…

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Jan 27, 2010

A clear inch of dust!

Cleaned out my room a month or so ago, and up against the window-sill I had a stack of PC User magazines (heresy, I know).

They must have been there a while, because as soon as I removed them I noticed a clear and distinct line of dust where the edge of the magazines once sat.

Scary stuff – needless to say, my room is now pretty clean. Actually, scratch that; a set of 4.1 Logitech speakers (no I didnt lose a speaker, they’re branded as 4.1), and a gigabit PCI network card that I bought of PC Case Gear because I thought the gigabit ports on my motherboard were stuffed. Turns out they weren’t – some residual power issue was running rampant, and leaving my PC unplugged for a while seems to have fixed the issue. /shrugs.

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Jan 27, 2010

Put real blog entry title here.

First things first – Tweetie 2 for iPhone is a Twitter client. Twitter has these things called trending topics, which can be supplemented by hashtags. Usually trending topics give a (fairly) good indication about “what’s hot” on Twitter at the moment.

I say fairly, because sometimes it’s possible to manipulate the trending topics list – and, if you’re unlucky enough, you’ll get your hashtag blocked from appearing in the trending topics list, as happened to the #hottest100 hashtag.

I don’t really care for trending topics on Twitter, mainly because they’re mostly spam-fests, and somewhat dominated by African Americans (who seem to tweet mostly crap, if I do say so myself).

Anyway, Tweetie 2 for iPhone has a feature where it will define trending topics for you. I’m not sure where it gets it’s info from, but it’s almost comparable to Brizzly’s trending topic definitions. Actually, it’s not. Brizzly’s definition service for trending topics is excellent.

The point is, somewhere along the line someone stuffed up – and, for want of a real definition, #witchaweakass doesn’t have a definition.

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Jan 25, 2010

Pot Luck Pies

The thing about luck is that it’s always unexpected. No one ever expects good luck to happen to them, and if you’re the kind of person who does, you’re certainly bucking the trend.

A food that is found perhaps a little more often than strictly necessary, but certainly welcome during the holiday period in my house is pies. Yes, pies. Mainly beef pies, but sometimes chicken/vegetable pies also make an appearance as well. That’s all well and good – there’s nothing wrong with pies, and they make an excellent lunch when combined with a couple slices of toast or similar – but sometimes my dad will cook a whole batch of pies at once, eat some, and then refridgerate the rest. Which is cool, fine, I can deal with that.

I should point out at this stage that the pies mentioned above are almost always store-bought – while homemade pies have ocassionally been spotted in the Ling household, they’re usually too much effort to bother with on a regular basis. But damn, they are tasty.

Anyway, the point I tried to make is that these pies all look the same. Combine that fact that my dad likes to cook a whole batch at a time for later consumption, throw in the fact that he mixes different varieties of pies (beef, other assorted meat, vegetable, chicken etc), and you get: pot luck pies. There’s no way to distinguish between them when they’re in the fridge, short of taking their tops off and inspecting them manually. There’s just no way to know what flavoured pie you’ll get before you eat it, hence, pot luck pies.

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Jan 24, 2010

Sweden. It doesn’t get better than this.

via YOU MIGHT FIND YOURSELF.

Jan 23, 2010

The Freshness

freshness

A milk carton that changes its color to indicate the freshness of its content.

The world needs this more than it does many things that currently exist.

via The freshness – ReflectionOf.Me.

Jan 22, 2010

iPhone bug/glitch screenshots – the “right up my alley” edition

Yay! I love it when people send me awesome stuff, especially after they’ve read something on my blog, or been intrigued by one of my shared items in Google Reader.

The above screenshot was sent in by @wmyeoh, and depicts, as far ad I can tell, a strange bug where the iPhone’s keyboard has somehow managed to completely bugger itself while switching from landscape to portrait view. Such an error (keyboard glitches and/or UI issues after switching from portrait to landscape or vice versa) certainly isn’t unheard of, and just goes to show that no matter how awesome we think Apple is, they’re still human :)

Well, maybe not you-and-I human, but human nonetheless :p

Oh – and by the way, if you’re looking for a GTD client for the iPhone, I highly recommend Things by Cultured Code. It’s certainly one of the most polished and dare I say, overhyped GTD app – but it deserves all the credit it gets, it’s that good. While I’ve played with 2Do on a short term basis (read: not in everyday use), it seemed a little complex for what I wanted. Then again, maybe complex is good, especially when compared to an app like Put Things Off, which is still good, but maybe a little too simplistic in areas…

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Jan 22, 2010

Crayola’s Law

crayons

To create the chart, Velo gently scraped Wikipedia’s list of Crayola colors, corrected a few hues, and added the standard 16-count School Crayon box available in 1935.

Except for the dayglow-ski-jacket-inspired burst of neon magentas at the end of the ’80s, the official color set has remained remarkably faithful to its roots!

Ever industrious, Velo also calculated the average growth rate: 2.56% annually. For maximum understandability, he reformulated it as “Crayola’s Law,” which states:

The number of colors doubles every 28 years!

If the Law holds true, Crayola’s gonna need a bigger box, because by the year 2050, there’ll be 330 different crayons! Shortly thereafter, frazzled packaging designers rejoice, for to the rescue comes a revolution in household appliances: the new-fangled Replicator-Dissociator! Load it with the Crayola plugin, and you’re seconds away from every shade in the rainbow – no boxes required!

via crayons « Weather Sealed.

Jan 21, 2010

Have a solid colour background in Windows 7? Enjoy your delayed boot-up!

The Welcome screen may be displayed for 30 seconds during the logon process after you set a solid color as the desktop background in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2

via The Welcome screen may be displayed for 30 seconds during the logon process after you set a solid color as the desktop background in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2.

You know what, in this day and age, this is ridiculous. How was this even necessary in the first place? Why was it necessary? Who let this code ship?

…at least there’s a hotfix. /sigh

Jan 20, 2010

Fun at Work, Part XXVI

Ah yes, diagnosing machines in the service centre…

One helpful colleague decided a hilarious thing to do would be to put 4 keys from a keyboard on the machine that I was working on, 4 letters that spelled the word “tool”.

Yes. Indeed.

Posted via email from Benny’s randomly-updated Posterous

Jan 20, 2010

Google Android Personal Thoughts /via Boy Genius Report

Other issues that I can’t live with day to day? How do I copy text from non-editable field like an email, webpage, or SMS, or even a 3rd party application? Oh, I can’t. Say what you want about the iPhone not having copy and paste for two years — a joke — it’s the single best implementation on the planet for a smartphone and Google’s approach is almost as bad as RIM’s with the Storm-series.

via Google Android Personal Thoughts « Boy Genius Report.

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