It boggles the mind that, they would spend vast amounts of money to get rid of people and now have to rehire other people.

Oh well again thanks for the holiday and I’ll see you again around the office.

Lol hahahha. Oh btw thanks for the car as well. And the laptop, PC and the new laptop I shall be getting soon. Oh I forgot as well for the iPad 3 I shall be getting. All paid by you know who.

New job new person.

Oh the fun this little thing is. Fully sick.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

From his Stanford Commencement Address in 2005. Not a bad motto to go by.

The router can do dual channel and dual frequency and it has gigabit Ethernet ports so it should a lot faster syncing the iTunes library between the laptop and the pc.

I will be able to connect the printer(via USB) to it so I can do printing from the laptop without the need to have the pc turned on.

For $199 and free delivery its a no brainer :).

Hopefully it should arrive before the weekend.

Yeah as of tomorrow I will be officially looking for another job. I have been made redundant on my current job. Tomorrow I will be getting my termination letter with a dollar value on it.

How do I feel? To tell you the truth I don’t really know. As I’m typing this post I’m trying to find how I feel but I’m drawing a blank. Elated? Angry? Confused? Scared?

There is no animosity towards them in anyway as I understand they had to do what they had to do in order to survive. I might not like it but I understand. I am elated that I have been given this opportunity to do something which I want to do.

While I’m looking for new work I will be concentrating 100% on my iOS development activities and generally learning the language and maybe making a couple apps. As a software engineer by trade, I don’t see any issues with picking up the language. I have the internet to help me out if I get stuck. Right?

It will be good to get out of my comfort zone and live life differently for a while.

Hopefully now that I have some free time and Internet that is not blocked by websense I will be able to update this blog more frequently and maybe talk about how I go with my iOS adventures.

John.

A few hours ago before I updated the site to wordpress 3.1 I made sure I backup the site just in case.

Well the just in case occurred. While updating the site to 3.1, it got stuck on updating. There was nothing I could do. The site was stuck on maintenance mode, and the back end administration stuff wasn’t accessible.

I just restored the back up and I was up and running again, with very minimal down time. The update to 3.1 also worked the second time which was surprising :).

So the moral of the story? Back up before you do anything drastic to any site. It minimises the down time dramatically.

Trapster sent out an email that their

The Trapster team has recently learned that our website has been the target of a hacking attempt, and it is possible that your email address and password were compromised,”.

“We have taken, and continue to take, preventative measures to avoid future incidents, but we are recommending that you change your Trapster password”

So the past couple days I’ve changed all the password so all the accounts now have different passwords. Would have been a headache keeping track of them if it wasn’t for 1password.

1password is a password tracker that is available on the mac, pc, iphone and ipad. Using dropbox as the storage location I can keep all my passwords synced across all my devices which is a real bonus.

So no more password hassles.

John.

As the iOS wasn’t out yet, I downloaded DVD Profiler on Windows. It works like a treat. You can add DVD/Blu-rays either by the UPC (Universal Product Code) or by the movie title. Click “Add DVD to Now Owned” and you are done. The program takes care of everything else.

I was able to do my entire collection of blu-rays in a couple of hours.

As the iOS DVD Profiler was released I downloaded and then synced it to the PC and I got my entire collection on my phone. I can see which blu-rays have been loaned out and which are overdue.

What I was surprised with tho was the fact that I had to put the ip address of the computer so the iOS DVD Profiler could sync with Windows DVD Profiler. That’s the first time I had to put an ip address for an iOS app to sync back to main PC.

I started looking into why, and it’s because the DVD Profiler does not use Bonjour. Bonjour is a zero configuration networking, which is used to to identify devices, computers and services on ip networks. Bonjour works on Windows and a number of applications use it to find their iOS counterpart, like AirVideo server broadcasts it’s services for the iOS app to find and connect regardless on what ip the server is running.

So if my ip changes on the PC(due to DHCP) I will have to edit the settings on the DVD Profiler iOS app to put in the new ip information :(.

Why couldn’t stuff like the above just work on windows as they do on a mac?

The second solution would have been a lot easier on the long run as I wouldn’t have to connect any wires and I would have the laptop anywhere in the house and still be able to back up.

I had been looking for a while around the Internet for anything going cheap and I have subscribed to catchoftheday.com.au which offers good low price items that only are on the website for a day.

Well as luck would have it, I received a email about the wireless N router from belkin for only $39.95 http://www.belkin.com/au/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=476948#.

I thought I couldn’t go wrong with that price, and if it didn’t work for me, I could sell the router for like $50 :P. Today I received the package and the installation was a breeze.

I activated the wireless N only, with dual channel support which is supposed to reach 300Mbits. Well that’s the theoretical limit anyway, but from most reviews on the Internet, say that you should reach about the 10MB/s. 10Mb/s is equivalent to 100Mbit network cable so by spending a  bit more money I made my house capable of normal cat5 network with out the need to deploy any wires.

So I activated WPA/WPA2+ protection with MAC address filtering and I was ready to go. I made the new router into an access point(it uses the DHCP from the router it connects to) and I was ready to go. Made the laptop search the new network and after putting the key, I was able to connect to the Internet from the new access point.

I think I spent more time trying to open the box, then it took me to connect to the Internet :).

Yep it works. I was able to see the iTunes PC library on my laptop and via versa with Home Sharing. iTunes started transferring the music and videos across and I was able to see the transfer rates from the laptop were hitting the 10MB mark. That all I need. Now I don’t have to wait for iTunes to finish.

Hopefully the neighbors won’t complain about me drowning out any wireless signal around the neighborhood :D.

I say geeky because with any technical gadget, ATV being no exception, there a few technical hurdles that need to be overcome. To use ATV to its full potential you need either wired or wireless connection to the Internet and then being able to connect the ATV near the TV, you need a free HDMI connection. NO HDMI no go :(.
Once you have done all the above, then you need to have an apple ID and an iTunes account to be able to rent and watch movies.

Which then raises the next issue. You need to have iTunes installed on your PC/laptop, otherwise the only thing you will be able to do with the ATV is watch youtube videos. Nothing wrong with that but to pay $129 and only watch youtube videos is a bit of overkill. I think what ATV has going for it is Airplay.

Airplay, previously called airtunes(Apple proprietary service) , it only allowed you to transfer audio via wifi. Not anymore as it now supports audio,video and pictures. The current generation of ATV does not have enough space to hold your iTunes library and it leverages on airplay to access and play stuff from your library.

Airplay is used by the iPhone and iPad devices as well, to connect and play their content on the ATV. At the moment only in-house Apple apps are allowed to send video over Airplay and as John Gruber at daring fireball.com has indicated Apple brought Airplay a bit early as the very same Airplay APIs are not available to 3rd party developers. Steve Jobs has indicated however, the APIs and Airplay in general will be available to 3rd party developers sometime in 2011. Lets hope its early 2011.

Which raises the last issue. At the moment, to be able to use your library of movies on ATV, they need to be in iTunes. Which means a lot of time converting for people that don’t use iTunes.

So does ATV have a place next to the TV in every Australian geeky house? Well I say yes, provided your library of content is in iTunes. The price of $129 helps as well :D.

Personally it was a no brainer as all of my library is in iTunes. I have both an iPhone and iPad and Airplay works a treat. I started watching Star Trek on my iPhone 3GS and then I Airplayed(catchy word :P) on the ATV. Took about 10 seconds it started playing on the TV. It just worked. Also using the remote app from the iPhone or iPad makes controlling ATV a treat.

While I don’t call my self an Apple fanboi, I can’t imagine Microsoft or any other company coming up with up with anything like the ATV. Especially something that just works :P.

So while I’m writing this on the iPad via my Apple wireless keyboard, I’m Airplaying the A-team on my TV and all it just works :D.

Just a quick update. Airplay is not available on the iPhone 3G. It might not be powerful enough to handle the extra processing load. So this might be an incentive for people to buy the iPhone 4 and the iPad.

Here is the unboxing of the Apple TV but that’s how far it got 2. I’ve run out of HDMI cables so the ATV is just sitting in the lounge in the box ready to be used once I get a HDMI cable.

HDMI cable has arrived and tonight I’m going to connect it to the AV Receiver and the TV. Will post more when I have it connected.

One word. Wow, awesome, amazing, remarkable. The Apple TV is more than I imagined. Plugged in and it just worked. I put it my apple id and it found my library. If you don’t like using the physical remote, you can use the remote app, within iPhone. I can control the Apple TV directly from the phone and there is no lag at all.

The best feature I have to say is AirPlay. I started playing Star Trek(the new one) on my iPhone and then I transferred on the Apple TV. It started buffering and withing 10 seconds the video was playing on my TV. It just works.

I can’t wait for the AirPlay APIs to become available to the 3rd party developers.

Totally awesome.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qzmRFu1pRw&feature=player_embedded

The video shows the use of Airplay on 3rd party apps. While the APIs are private at the moment, which means the app won’t pass the app store review, it shows how much Airplay can be used if Apple decide to make the APIs public. I mean come on, sitting on your couch streaming video from your PC/Mac to your TV via your iPhone/iPad. It’s the ultimate couch potato dream :).

At the moment Airplay video streaming is only allowed from the Apple in house apps, which means iPod, Videos(iPad) and YouTube apps. 3rd party apps get Airplay but only audio streaming. That’s cool with me because all of my music and videos are in iTunes anyway.

The Apple TV runs on the same hardware as the iPhone 4 and the iPad, and it even uses a variation of the iOS system as well. After iOS 4.2 was released the ATV was also updated to the latest iOS 4.2 software.

Also lastly as the Apple TV outputs to HDMI and my old AV receiver does not take HDMI I decided to buy this home theatre package from Yamaha. Yamaha YHT 394 AU.

To enable the Mobile Me feature on an iDevice (iPhone or iPad), you need to create a new email account and put in your Mobile Me email and password. Then in the options you can turn email, calendar, notes,  Find my iPhone ON/OFF or delete the account all together.

So potentially if my phone gets stolen from a technically savvy thief (do they exist?) they could go to the options and then either delete the account, or turn Find my iPhone OFF. They could also turn off the notifications, which tells the phone to not give its position. After that might as well give up in trying to track the phone.Well not anymore, I was reading on Whirlpool on their iPhone section, and someone made an off comment about turning the restrictions on for extra security. Well they were right. Turning restrictions on, I’ve disabled any changes to the email accounts, and any changes to notifications. Also now the restrictions menu is password protected. So now if phone is stolen I will be able to track it no matter what.

John 1 thief 0 :D.

Apple has just released(actually it was about 5am this morning :)), their latest iOS version 4.2.1. It’s supposed to bring together both iPhone and iPad, with both having the same features like, multitasking, folders, airprint and air play.

They also decided to make Find My iPhone for free. If you have an iPhone 4, iPad or a fourth gen iPod Touch you can get Find My iPhone you can get it for free. For the rest of the people with older devices you have to pay for MobileMe, which gives you Find My iPhone amongst the other features.

Time to get cracking and download the update.

Just a quick update. It appears that the new sms tones will not be available on the 3GS. I’m very disappointed by this move by Apple. I totally understand not including features(like airplay or multitasking) on older hardware because they can’t handle it, but ringtones? I would think the 3GS to be powerful enough the handle the extra ringtones.

Seriously, Apple WTF??

Well anyhow,I’ve started to download both iOSes.

The iPad version is 551.4MB while the iPhone is 401.4MB.

Ok, I’ve downloaded both and wow. Both iPhone and iPad are running very smoothly. iPad feels different and better. Folders(20 apps per folder), multitasking, unified mail box, push notification of MobileMe calendar(provided you have MobileMe).

One thing I did encounter and if I didn’t know the easy fix, I would had to spend about an hour putting my music back on the iPhone. So what happened? Once I updated to the latest 4.2.1 release for the iPhone, I tried to play some music, and the iPod app, told me that I had no music.

The solution is to connect the iPhone to iTunes and then play a song from the iPhone, and then sync. Problem fixed. I did that and I opened the iPod app and it said “upgrading library” and magically found all of my songs.

Here is were it becomes a funny. According to Apple iPhone SIM card plan thwarted article from the telegraph

A senior source at a mobile operator said: “Apple has long been trying to build closer and closer relationships and cut out the operators. But this time they have been sent back to the drawing board with their tails between their legs.”

 And yet the GSM association is looking into integrated sims for mobile devices. GSMA launches embedded sim initiative to support the connected future which

The GSMA today announced the formation of a task force of mobile operators to explore the development of an embedded SIM that can be remotely activated.

I guess the mentioned mobile operator is not part of GSM association, which seems highly unlikely as

The GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators

Personally I think that’s where we are going to be moving, and if the GSMA starts looking into it, it won’t be long until all phones have an integrated sim.

If you haven’t watched the movie don’t read the rest as it contains spoilers.

Overall the movie is sticking to the book pretty much throughout it’s duration but there are a few scenes that stray from the book.

Book version
Harry, Ron and Hermione escape the burrows after the ministry had fallen, they apparate in London. They change clothes and Harry has to wear the invisibility cloak when they go to the cafe. Two people walk in and Harry recognises one of them as a death eater from the death eater raid on Hogwarts at the end of book 6. Harry proceeds to stupefy the death eater.

Movie version
Harry, Ron and Hermione escape the burrows after the ministry had fallen, they apparate in London. They change clothes and Harry is visible when they go to the cafe. Two people walk in and Harry recognises one of them as a death eater from the death eater raid on Hogwarts at the end of book 6. Harry proceeds to stupefy the death eater after seeing the death eater take out his wands.

Book version
While at the ministry and searching umbridge’s office Harry removes from the door “Mad Eye” Moody’s magical eye causing the alarm to be raised after it was discovered it was missing. Harry uses the invisibility cloak to stupefy umbridge and steal the locket.

Movie version
Harry does not remove “Mad Eye” Moody’s magical eye from the door and confronts umbridge with the line “I must not tell lies” and proceeds to stupefy her.

While the above might seem inconsequential with some minor differences from the book to the movie in my opinion it detracts from the feel of Harry barely hanging on against all odds and trying to avoid direct conflict via the use of the invinsibility cloak and other means to a Harry ready to stupefy everyone in sight.

It could be that the invisibility cloak raised the budget of the movie too much and they had to cut it :P.

The last two differences deviate from the book a lot more than any other.

Book version
During the fight with Nagini in Godric’s Hollow(birthplace of Harry) Voldermort apparated in the house and tried to kill Harry. Harry escaped with Hermione at the very last second.

Movie version
Voldermort is no where to be seen during the fight.

The book communicated the frustration of Voldermort being unable to kill Harry. It showed the most powerful wizard being outsmarted by a boy that hadn’t even finished Hogwarts school. It showed that Voldermort didn’t trust anyone to do his bidding and had to do it himself.

The last one is with Peter Pettigrew aka Wormtail in the Malfoy’s mansion after Harry, Ron and hermione have been captured.

Book version
After Harry and Ron tackled Wormtail to the ground, Wormtail trys to choke Harry. Harry says “You’re going to kill me? After I saved your life? You owe me, Wormtail!” Wormtail hesitated for a second and the magical hand that Voldermort created, out of it’s own volition starts choking him instead. Wormtail dies from his own hand.

Movie version
Dobby the elf fired a spell at Wormtail which either rendered him unconscious or dead. Which one is not known.

The book version shows how insecure and mistrusting Voldermort is. It doesn’t matter if you are in the death eater squad or in the inner sanctum, if you step out of line or displease Voldermort you will face his full wrath.

Well that’s it for now so here is the trailer for the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EC2tmFVNNE

I’m off to read the book again :D.

After much searching the Internet and trying to avoid the most drastic solutions, like resetting the device back to factory defaults, I eventually found a post that described the exact problem and the solution was very simple. I just had to restart the device.

I thought I had restarted the device by holding the power switch all the way to the right for more than 5 seconds but I found out, you need to hold the power switch for 15 seconds. Incidentally I found out that my going to menu->settings and menu->restart you can restart the kindle that way.

After the restart the book was downloaded with no problems. The book in question is called The red king. It’s a star trek book and I guess they had a few issues with their transport tubes :P.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgMip96ugvI

Make sure you turn HTTP Authentication ON in the settings and put it your username and password, click Save and THEN put in the URL Username and password and it will work first time.

Also you will need to enable the XML-RPC under Settings -> Writing.

Pity you can’t write any comments using the WordPress app :(.