Computers

More about the iPhone dying

/ hsoi

I mentioned how on Sunday my iPhone died, apparently of sudden and complete battery drain.

I’m still mystified as to why, but a friend read my blog posting and said he knew of two similar experiences. He said he believed the culprit at the time was a game called “Stick Wars Lite“. Funny he should mention that!

I was going to pick up foo.c to take him to the IPSC match but I arrived very early and didn’t know if he’d be up and about yet, so I pulled into a nearby strip mall parking lot and started to fiddle on my iPhone. To my surprise, foo.c pulled in next to me because he wa coming to grab some breakfast. I got out of the car and went into the shop with him. All this time the iPhone was in my hands. I heard some faint music and looked at my hand and noticed that the iPhone was still on and the screen must have been touched because it had brough up a game.

Stick Wars Lite.

I distinctly remember that game being active.

I then just hit the power button to put the phone to sleep.

Three people experiencing this? Might be more than a coincidence. However, I’m not sure that is the problem because I’ve attempted to reproduce it and it won’t happen (of course).

Nevertheless, I believe the phone did die because the battery was drained by something not playing nice and thus consumed all the power. One recommendation given was to never put your iPhone to sleep with an application active, to always go back to the Home screen before sleeping it. IMHO that should not be a requirement, or if it is then the iPhone ought to handle it automatically when you hit the power button.

I’ll keep an eye on things and if I can reproduce it, certainly I’ll report it to the developer. Being a developer myself, I appreciate it when people file (useful) bug reports, so I make sure to do the same for my fellow developer. Need a reproducible case first. 🙂

Learning to Program

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I learned to program on my Apple //e a long long ago.

But I did take a class in undergrad that was a sort of introduction to programming for non-programmers (now that I think about it, I don’t know why I took the class as it was well below my knowledge level). It used a neat book called Karel The Robot. You can Google on “Karel the Robot” and all sorts of stuff comes up, including a lot of love and praise for it. It’s really a good way to learn how to program because it’s simple and friendly. It doesn’t focus upon a particular language, which is part of the simplicity and appeal. It allows people to learn about general programming concepts and constructs, and how to use them as building blocks to solve problems. After you grok the concepts, then you can get yourself caught up in the semantics of a particular language… trying to do both at once is just too much to focus on.

So I’m writing this blog entry as a bookmark to myself. I’ve been wanting to teach my kids how to program and wanting to use Karel to do it. So I found Karel on SourceForge. I also found RUR-PLE (history of it here) which is a Karel-like approach that uses Python. There’s also Guido van Robot. I really like Python as a language (tho I don’t get to use it often enough), and feel it’d be a great first language for my kids.

Anyway there you go. Karel.

The plutil command obeys no one’s rules but its own.

/ hsoi

I love stumbling across little bits of programmer humor.

I just looked at the man page for plutil (“man 1 plutil“):

STANDARDS

The plutil command obeys no one’s rules but its own.

Heh heh.

WordPress 2 for iPhone

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Seems that the WordPress for iPhone application has been updated.

Apparently they rewrote things, so it doesn’t come off as an update to the original WordPress app but as a totally separate app. Thus you have to manually go looking for it and manually download it, instead of just triggering an update.

Initial reviews aren’t that good either, with lots of problems out of the box.

I’ll upgrade, eventually. At least wait for 2.0.1 to come out, I guess.

Updated: WP’s official announcement.

Good Apple Store Experience

/ hsoi

So the “T” key on my MacBook Pro’s keyboard died. I just got it back and I wanted to recount the positive experience I had.

First, the MacBook is still covered by AppleCare, so all of this is covered under warranty.

I did my own troubleshooting, I called AppleCare, they suggested a few things that I already tried and so an appointment was scheduled for the Genius Bar at the local Apple Store.

I must admit. I don’t like the Genius Bar. I’ve had some irritating experiences in the past, mostly with young kids working there that think they know more than me. Look, I write software for a living, I know a little something about computers. If you’re talking down to me like this, then you talk down like that to all your customers. That’s not right nor good. But I must admit that experience was in the early days of the store. They seem to have really improved, and this experience is witness to that.

When I first took it in they did an examination and agreed the T was dead and keyboard replacement was necessary. They didn’t have one in stock and it would have to be ordered. Fair enough, as I could plug in an external keyboard and get by. I really can’t be without this machine — there’s money to be made and I can’t make it without the machine. They said so long as I was willing to work with them on scheduling the repair, they’d do what they could. Fair enough. I got the call over the weekend the keyboard came in. I called to schedule and they said the best they could do would be to bring it in as early as possible to maximize chances of a same-day turnaround.

So early today I went in and dropped it off. And I waited. While using my iPhone got me by on a lot of things today I must say that it eventually drove me nuts. Too small a screen, too small a keyboard, and without question the lack of tactile feedback does make typing difficult. Sure you get used to it and you can still type pretty well, but tactile feedback is so important. Anyway….

I later called them because the phone number I left them wasn’t going to work so I wanted to update the callback number. Whomever answered the phone was courteous, took my info down, and said he’d hand it to the right people and have them call me with status. I expected that if I got a call it would have been sometime later, but instead within a couple minutes my phone rang and it was the actual repair tech with an update. They gave me the skinny, answered my questions, and were very kind and understanding about the urgency of it all. Sure enough withing an hour after that callback I received THE call that the MacBook was ready for pickup. Pickup was a breeze.

All in all, I was very happy with how everything went. Sure it’s a bummer the key broke, but these things happen. The whole process went pretty smoothly all things considered. Everyone was cheerful, polite, and desired to help as much as possible. You know they get all sorts of stories and of course to everyone their situation is urgent. They did a great job at making the turnaround as fast as possible. I’m very pleased with the customer service that I received.

To boot, they cleaned the machine too. It was all shiny and slick. A little touch, certainly wasn’t necessary to do, but it was done and was a little cherry on top.

 

Off she goes for repair

/ hsoi

The local Apple Store has obtained a replacement keyboard. I take my MacBook Pro in this morning to get it repaired.  When will I get it back? I don’t know, but the hope is by bringing it in this morning I’ll get it back later today.

I shall be living off my iPhone today. That should be… interesting.

A “T”, a “T”, my kingdom for a keyboard wiht a working “”.

/ hsoi

You don’t realize how often you type the letter “T” until the key stops working.

The “T” key on my laptop is acting strange. There is a noticeable delay between when you press the key and when the “t” actually is processed. I can type over 100 wpm, so this is really irritating. To type this, I have to either slow down or press the delete key a lot because the “T” came through at the wrong time. It even sometimes comes through multiple times.

Now, allow me to retype the above at normal speed with no corrections.

The “T” key on my laptop is acting srange. there is a noticeable delay between when you press he key and when hte “t” actually is processed. I can type over 100 wpm, so this is really irritating. o ypte his, I have to eiher slow down or press he delee key a lo because he “” came hrough a he wrong imte. I teven someimes comes hrough muliple imes.

*sigh*

Going o disassemble he machine and see if i migh jus be a diryt contact or some such. If not, a leas i’s sill under AppleCare (tho only a few more monhts lef in i).

Updaetd: the disassembly guides at iFixIt were helpful, but it didn’ tpan out. Did all he usual hings oo, like PRAM zapping and so on. Blew air under he keys, nohting. Se tup a call wiht AppleCare, went htrough a few phone htings, and now I have a Genius Bar appoinmen se tup. We shall see wha comes of i.

Amazing ho how you can sill read and undersatnd all of htis… a leas, so I hope. 😉

Updated 2: Took the computer to the Genius Bar at the local  Apple Store. Confirmed keyboard problem. They don’t have one in stock so it has to be ordered and they’ll call me when it comes in. Meantime, I have an external keyboard hooked up and will get by with that for now.

Working on a smaller machine

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

As a software developer I appreciate having good hardware. In fact, I appreciate having lots of good hardware as that best facilitates getting work done in a day.

Over my career I have evolved what I prefer to have for optimal work. I like to have a laptop on which I do “communication” work. So the laptop does email, web browsing, instant messaging, and whatever other administrata or time wasting I wish to do. Having it on a laptop is good because often such tasks require portability. I do set up the machine to also do development work, but it is not meant to be a primary dev machine.

I then like to have a very beefy machine for dev work. For instance, these days something like an 8-core Mac Pro with 10 GB of RAM and multiple internal hard drives works very nice. I also like to have multiple monitors attached to the machine because lots of screen real estate is good. Furthermore, it works better to have multiple monitors instead of one big monitor because there is often different logic that can be done based upon “screen 1” or “screen 2”, especially when doing things like debugging and needing to cope with the menubar and screen redraws.

Finally, I like having extra machines for whatever needs. These are often sandbox machines of various configurations that I can nuke and pave and do what I need to to help test, reproduce bugs, and so on.

So as you can see, I’ve found surrounding myself with a lot of machines is a daily necessity for getting my job done.

What happens when I’m forced to use a little machine for everything?

I’ve been temporarily reassigned to another group in the company that needs some help with their projects. Due to the nature of the products and the fact I like to keep very clean machines (sorry Unsanity; no Input Manager hacks here), plus given the nature of the work may require working in other locations, I requested they provide me with a laptop for dedicated use for this work.

I received one. A recent MacBook Pro.

15″.

Man, that’s small. Well, to me at least. 🙂

Compounding that is Apple changed some things in Snow Leopard to make stuff bigger. For instance, the default font in Xcode is Menlo Regular 11, instead of old Monaco 9 or 10.  I played with it some trying to pick other fonts or make things smaller, but I have to say, after I got over the initial shock my eyes do like the Menlo 11 better. But with bigger font means less content on the already smaller scren.

Then when I need to run Xcode for dev work, TextWrangler for notes and other things, Firefox to get into the bug database, and a few other apps… gah. Too many windows on that little screen. Sure I love Exposé and use it all the time, but it’s still a lot for that little screen.

So I started to use Spaces.

I toyed with Spaces before, but I just haven’t had a compelling need for it. I think it’s neat. I’m glad Mac OS X has it. But I haven’t been able to successfully put it into my workflow…. until today.

Turned it on, 4 spaces. Xcode on the main, TextWrangler “below”, Firefox “to the right” and since I prefer to use the keyboard I know the shortcuts to navigate around. Man… everything worked pretty slick. A few things were annoying, such as being on the non-Xcode space and then Xcode’s build window popping open on that space; it makes sense in a way, but it’s not what I want… I want to keep that app’s windows on that space. I wonder if there’s a way to force that.

I don’t know if I’d need to use Spaces on my big dev machine with the 2 monitors and lots of screen space. But on the little machine yeah, what a help it was.

Snow Leopard mini-gripes

/ hsoi

OK…. I did finally upgrade to Snow Leopard and mostly I’m happy with things. But, some small gripes so far.

My biggest gripe? The loss of the ability to control how desktop pictures are handled. That is, it’s now “just a picture”. There’s no more ability to tile. Long ago I collected a bunch of small tilable images (a distribution called Propaganda) and I love using those as my desktop pictures but they do require being able to tile. I can’t do that any more. *sigh*

I do not like how Activity Monitor always launches with its window visible. It did not do this in prior OS versions. I like to have the Activity Monitor always running and showing the CPU history in the Dock icon, so the app is set to launch upon login. To have it always launch and the window display is not sound. I reported this as a bug to Apple (RADAR 7158817) but they came back and said this is not a bug but is consistent with the interface guidelines (I’m curious just which guideline this is). To cope with the window? Apple says to set the app to be hidden upon launch. Of course, that then makes the Dock tile dimmed, which isn’t ideal either.

I do like that finally, after all these years, you can show the date in the menubar next to the clock. Finally.

I need to get my contextual menu plugins updated to function in Snow Leopard. Apple changed the architecture so they have to be fully rewritten. I don’t blame them for changing things, just until I get the time to rewrite them I will miss them.

Finally Upgraded to Snow Leopard

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Finally was able to upgrade all of my Macs to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6).

You see, as a software developer I can’t always jump on the latest bandwagon. Sure I might have new OS versions running on partitions of other machines, maybe even pre-release versions. But I can’t primarily change things around because we might be in the middle of something. If I’m working on a release, to change things like the OS or the toolset could bring about big delays or other troubles. The rule is to settle on the toolset and environment, make the release, then you can upgrade stuff. And so finally I can upgrade, tho I have been using Snow Leopard in various capacities for some time.

I am enjoying the little refinements in the OS. I’m glad Apple took the approach they did with this OS and working on refining what they already have instead of having to cram a gazillion new features in. Make what you have really good.

One thing I got the most kick out of was seeing a lot of disk space reappear. My MacBook Pro was down to only a couple GB free and I was starting to look at buying a bigger replacement hard drive. After installing Snow Leopard, I regained almost 20 GB of disk space. Of course, I know exactly why this change came about, but that doesn’t make it any less wonderful. 🙂