These are my links for August 14th through September 4th:

• Downloads (2010-2011 Fall) | CS 193P iPhone Application Development –
• UIPickerView – Creating a simple picker view | iPhone SDK Articles –
• Steve Jobs: Jerry Pournelle Reflects –
• Dreamstime – Stock Photography
• Fotolia.com – Royalty Free Stock Photos
• Evernote software company plans new studio, aggressive hiring in Austin –
• Five Ways to Speed Up Lightroom – O’Reilly Digital Media Blog –
• Does the 1796-97 Treaty with Tripoli Matter to Church/State Separation? –
• Python documentation –
• Why most people don’t finish video games –
• Tracking the Trackers: To Catch a History Thief | Stanford Center for Internet and Society –
• Violet Crown Trail | Hill Country Conservancy –
• South Austin Medical Clinic –
• World War II in Photos – Alan Taylor – In Focus – The Atlantic –
• Understanding & Using Ansel Adam’s Zone System –

These are my links for April 1st through April 9th:

• Unlock Your Vonage Cisco ATA 186 –
• Squirrel fishing at Univeristy of Texas – There used to be an old albino squirrel at the University of Texas when I went there in the 90's.  I accidentally found this picture of him on a "squirrel fishing" website.
• How Slavery Really Ended in America – NYTimes.com –
• How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me) – Austin Kleon – And there is nothing new under the sun
• Trunk Club Men’s Outfitters: A clothing service for men –
• Metamaterial Reveals Nature of Time and the Impossibility of Time Machines –
• W3Schools Online Web Tutorials –
• TinEye Reverse Image Search –
• Glen’s story…. a cautionary tale for shooters –
• TSA: Traveling with Special Items –
• Underwater Sculptures Help Save the World’s Oceans –
• why the gun is civilization –
• Army Artwork & Images –
• iPad2Tracker – Find which local Targets, BestBuys, Walmarts, RadioShacks and Sam’s Clubs have the iPad 2 in stock and available. –
• Apple iPad 2 Stock Tracking: How to Find One –

These are my links for September 9th through September 12th:

• Tractor beam one step closer to reality –
• Four Deformations of the Apocalypse – from David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan
• Apple App Store Review Guidelines –

These are my links for August 22nd through August 24th:

• Your First iOS Application –
• digitalphotographyconnection.com –
• PACMAN BIG SET of stickers for laptops macbooks macbook by apjam –
• U.S. Inaction Lets Look-Alike Tubes Kill Patients –

These are my links for August 21st through August 22nd:

• AppsAmuck – iPhone Development Tutorials and Examples
• Creating an iPhone Application – Tutorial One –
• Application Submission Feedback –
• Olivia Munn Interview on Collider – via Scott Wampler

These are my links for August 18th through August 19th:

• How to Interview a Programmer –
• Getting the Interview Phone Screen Right –
• Microsoft Interview Questions –
• Intel agrees to buy McAfee, decides that security matters –
• Steam Game Performance Improvements in Latest Mac OS X Update –

These are my links for August 16th through August 18th:

• Stanford on iTunes U –
• Apple’s App Store Director Sells His Own Fart Apps – Shoemaker, who has been frequently cited in news stories as one of the top decision makers enforcing rules when evaluating apps for approval or rejection, did not respond to a phone call or an e-mail requesting comment.
• The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing – th classic guide, although the author has a tendency to speak in absolutes
• iPhone Programming Tutorial –
• Your beautiful eyes – extremely sharp and detailed macro eye photography

Have some, on me!

(If this is your image, let me know so I can give you credit.)

I’ve already forgotten this tidbit once.  So now I am making this note both to myself, and to maybe help someone on the entirewebs.

If your iPhone refuses to sync or backup through iTunes, it is likely due to one of two causes:

1. The iPhone itself is actually having a problem.  (I have not encountered this, personally.)
2. There is something screwed up with the USB port you have it plugged into.

This can be a temporary software issue (as can happen when you unplug a device without officially removing it in Windows).  But can also be an actual problem with the physical USB port.  I have had both happen.

At first, after researching this problem with the knowledge floating around the web, I thought it was a problem with one of the applications, or of too many applications, etc.  While it is true that removing all your applications may make this problem go away, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the applications that had the problem, but that there was more data being transmitted through the USB port that was wonky, and therefore the issue had more chances to rear it’s ugly head.

My solution to you, is to first try to relocate the iPhone USB cable to a new USB port,  and then try again.  But most importantly, because it is usually my problem, and I always forget:

Use a USB port that is directly attached to your motherboard.

It seems the iTunes helper dlls or whatever, that regulate communication between your Apple wonder and your system, are prone to stutter at most any wonkiness.  Sometimes, if there is the smallest of hangups in your USB hub, it will simply kill the entire transaction and spit out error messages that make it sound to you as if your iPhone is kaput.  Thank you, Apple, for learning such descriptive error messages from Windows 3.1.

fin.

Well, the wife and I got iPhone 3G’s today.  But they really should be called iPhone 2.5G’s.

After Wired’s article about the survey they did of 3G users in various locales across North America, I was ready to discount the iPhone 3G’s troubles with the 3G network as mainly due to faulty local networks.

Then again, something didn’t sit right in that conclusion.  It all became crystal clear as the young, stoked Apple attendant was ringing up the phones.  We talked a bit about the Wired article, and I told him I was confident about the iPhone being ok here in Austin, because of the article and my current phone.  I have had a Samsung Sync SGH-A707 for almost 2 years now, and the one problem I have never had with it is bad reception.  I have 5 to 7 bars (which is max on the phone) on 3G almost the entire time I am in town.

Then he said, “look at it now”.  I did and it showed 5 bars of 3G on the Samsung.  It never wavered while my wife was getting her iPhone setup.  Then as my iPhone was setup, I saw that it has only one bar of 3G for a brief moment and then switches to 3 to 5 bars of Edge.  That was enough test for me.  The Apple store employee says they never get 3G at that store or around it on the iPhones.

I sit here now, in South Austin (the store was in North Austin) with the new iPhone showing 5 bars of Edge, reading this rebuttal to a rebuttal of the Wired article…  essentially saying it is ‘mostly’ still the network.

It’s not the network.

I remember that the Samsung Sync is known for its exceptionally high radio strength.  But Wired’s survey chart certainly shows Austin as solid green for network stability/strength.  And yet the phones we just purchased have a very hard time connecting anywhere in town with more than a couple bars, and drop to Edge a majority of the time.  It was a good theory, and I appreciate the survey, but unfortunately it isn’t backed up in reality.

Apple fanatics have one less tic mark to their list of all that is good.

Linux fanbois can continue their chest pumping, however.

Apple users tend to be a fanatical lot, often expressing their choice in pre-fabricated computing platforms as if it were a religious experience. There is no sense running down comparisons or arguing any points, it’d be just like arguing religion or politics.  This is really odd considering it is just an electronic device. Even if it comes in a pure white candy shell.

One of the common things to hear supporting the halo around Apple is that “Macs don’t have viruses”.  Apple even proclaims it in one of their Mac vs. PC ads, and on their website. Of course, this is false, but don’t try explaining that.  They also state that because they use a Unix base for Mac OS X, that there are little to no vulnerabilities.

But Thursday, in an international security conference called CanSecWest in Canada, there was a little hacking competition waged. The “PWN 2 OWN” competition featured a $10000 grand prize to hack into a laptop and steal a file. First one wins. Charlie Miller did it in 2 minutes.

The machine was running the latest Mac OS X version with all security patches. Due to agreements at the conference, the way he hacked it will not be revealed until after Apple has been fully notified of the breach. But the contest had stipulations that the contestant could only use software pre-installed on the system.  So, the likely vulnerability was Apple’s Safari web browser.

The thing is, he could have gone after any OS, as the three laptops offered for exploiting were one each of the Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Ubuntu Linux varieties. Why did Miller choose to target the Mac? Because it was the easiest.

This video is of a 7 year old back in 1982 talking about programming on some local access show. He demonstrates coding BASIC on an Apple ][.

This strikes a chord with me, because around the exact same time, at around the same age, I went to a summer camp for budding computer nerds in the deserts of southern California. It was the same scenario too, we were kids learning BASIC on Apple ][. Our imaginations were fueled by shows like Whiz Kids and movies like WarGames. Not to mention the explosion of science fiction novels at the time. I still have the binder I used to map out my programs and keep printouts of them some 25 years ago.

I’ve never shaken that love of computers and programming, and I’m glad I got to grow up with it. Now that computers are ubiquitous, “hackers” aren’t such special snowflakes, but I still feel the nostalgia of when it was a budding science and I was still a bud myself.

Man, this website really is turning into a blog. So be it.

Well, the new Video Ipod has piqued my interest. Soooo, another free site with good vibes has gone up.

YourFreeVideoIpods.com