Archive for the 'Apple' Category
Songbird Equalizer
Awhile back (years) I tried out Songbird (a media player based on the same technology as Firefox and Exch), but was disappointed that it did not have an equalizer built in. More recently however, after downloading the 1.3.x nightly build I was pleasantly surprised by its progress. Much lighter weight than the likes of iTunes, and supporting awesome features like Amarok, it is turning out to be quite the app.
I suppose after a few more revisions and hopeful changes, it will be all that I had hoped it would. Things I would like to see added in the near term are, easier streaming media and playlist manipulation, as well as being able to save equalizer settings.
Check out some of the screenshots I took:
Posted by Karl Herrick on June 12th, 2009 in Apple, XUL, Exch, Firefox | No Comments »
iPhone 3G Repair
So on a different broken iPhone that I have come across (where the LCD is not also broken… only the glass is cracked) we have decided to go with a repair service. While there are a lot of parts sites (welovemacs.com (need a zoom lens?), rapidrepair.com, ifixit.com, among others), the fix operation will probably be best done by people that do it all the time.
I tried calling two places:
www.ipodjuice.com (Milliamp LTD) didn’t answer their phone… I emailed. We’ll see if they return information… Missionrepair.com says, $115.00 for the glass and digitizer repair. Turn around was explained that “they ship it back within 24 hours of receiving it.” Next day shipping from them is $9.00. Not bad!
Posted by Karl Herrick on March 31st, 2009 in Apple | 1 Comment »
iPhone Glass Cracked
So today I removed the broken glass from an iPhone 3g that was inadvertently dropped. These little wonder pieces of equipment are quite fragile. See the front panel removal guide at iFixit to see how I did it.
Posted by Karl Herrick on March 26th, 2009 in Apple | 1 Comment »
iUI and the iPhone
My employer recently purchased a set of iPhones from AT&T for those in the workforce that have a need for such a thing. One of our first priorities was getting our rolodex accessible (read only) from the road. The main problem is that the data is in a restrictive, old school database. Until we can find time to move it into a more open platform I did the following:
- Set up a routine for dumping the rolodex into a flat xml file monthly
- Coded the searching of the the data using PHP and SimpleXML
- Coded the cookie management (sessions) and most important, a “remember me” feature (because Safari doesn’t remember passwords on the iPhone)
- Found this lovely library for creating iPhone compatible user intarfaces via the web (read, looks like a native app): iUI (User Interface Library for Safari development on iPhone)
Checkout the screenshots:
It’s pretty cool, because if the contact in the rolodex has a telephone number, address, email address, or webpage associated with them, the data will be displayed and linked to iPhone friendly functions… For example, the telephone number, when clicked on will provide a call button. An address clicked on will link to the built in maps app. Email links open up directly in the built in mail app. Finally, of course, webpages openup in Safari.
So here’s for getting the world more connected… one app at at time.
Posted by Karl Herrick on December 8th, 2008 in Javascript, Apple, PHP | 1 Comment »
DD Backups over SSH
To perform backups of a local workstation’s hard disk over a network, perform the following procedures (adjusted to your particular situation of course):
- Download and boot from a live Linux distro
- Become “root” within a shell
- Run “fdisk -l” (”mac-fdisk -l” I know works on SystemRescueCD 0.2.0 (PPC) for PPC/Macs (what about Intel Macs?)) and note the internal hard disk partition to backup (ex: ‘/dev/hda’)
The rest assumes that (in short, you will probably have to substitute some numbers or devices and you have ssh access somewhere):
- You have network access
- You have access to an SSH server
- Your network is configured with private addresses and you are not assigning one that conflicts with another local IP address
- Your netmask is the same as the one supplied in the following commands
Give an IP address to the workstation you have just booted the live Linux disc on, set the netmask, and bring the network interface up:
Set the default gateway (if you need to reach outside of the LAN that is… normally this is your router’s IP address):
Set a DNS server (if you are in the habit of not strictly using IP addresses):
Execute the backup command:
Obviously, most of the previous is getting the network up… try running “dhclient” if the live Linux disc has it installed, and your network has DHCP setup. 
UPDATE (2010-02-09): I just thought I would mention, that Clonezilla Live is a fantastic piece of software that makes this all a little more automated. Their site says, “For [supported] file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.” Essentially, this translates into much smaller image sizes for the majority of files systems that people work with. See a basic how-to at http://www.howtoforge.com/back-up-restore-hard-drives-and-partitions-with-clonezilla-live.
Posted by Karl Herrick on September 12th, 2008 in Apple, Linux, Bash | 4 Comments »