Tag archive for ‘howto’ at bioneural.net

Tag archive for 'howto'

iPhone 2G on O2 Simplicity contract

Published by Bruce on June 23, 2009 in Mobile. 19 responses

If you liked the concept of a new iPhone 3GS but found the contract tariffs and Pay & Go up-front costs unpalatable, now might be a good time to obtain a pre-loved iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G. I have an iPhone 2G which I previously unlocked and used on Vodafone UK, but found myself drawn to O2's offer of unlimited O2 to O2 calls—not to mention avoidance of the need to unlock the device and the hassle around firmware updates that doing so entails. I had to dig around the Interwebs and make a support phone call to discover all I needed to know to get up and running with O2 Simplicity; that knowledge is summarized below. Feel free to contribute any further tidbits!
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The dark art of AirPort networking

Published by Bruce on April 5, 2009 in Mac. 7 responses

Until recently I was using the dodgy BeBox supplied by my Internet access provider as both a DSL modem and wireless router. The ST585v6 could create a wireless distribution system (WDS) to extend my home LAN to the attic iMac, but only over insecure WEP. So we bought a new dual-band (2.4 and 5GHz, 802.11b/g/n) Apple Time Capsule, thinking it would simplify connecting to an AirPort Express and at the same time provide wireless Time Machine backups with shared network-attached storage (NAS). In the event fully integrating this new device consumed hours, with victory arriving only after the discovery of occult keystroke trickery—not at all the Apple experience I have come to expect.
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Share Twitter locations using Google Maps

Published by Bruce on March 15, 2009 in Internet. 6 responses

With my tweets integrated into WordPress the next challenge was to integrate my Twitter location with my custom Google Map. This recipe uses a WordPress theme functions.php file and the excellent Geo Mashup plug-in for WordPress. One advantage of this method is that you don't need to add custom location tags to each tweet (as you do for example here using Pipes). This method simply reads the location as set in your Twitter profile until you change it (and tweet again).
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Latest tweets using SimplePie

Published by Bruce on March 9, 2009 in Internet. 9 responses

It's taken me a while to warm to Twitter. I created the Quicklinks category on my blog for sharing things that didn't warrant a full post, but even that's too much effort sometimes—especially if it's just sharing a link. You might argue that's what bookmarking services like Digg and Delicious are for, but even then it's a multistep process. I've only recently become aware of just how well suited the Twitter API is to sharing links or updating your status message to multiple services with minimal effort. This post shares some PHP code to integrate your tweets within your WordPress blog, and code to simplify getting your WordPress posts into other people's tweets.
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Desktop refits with GeekTool and friends

Published by Bruce on March 1, 2009 in Mac. 9 responses

Further to my previous post on how to get BBC weather feeds on your desktop, this article collects together other scripts for GeekTool I've come across and customized (hat tip to the original sources, which I neglected to record). Who says the command line doesn't have equal status alongside the Mac OS X eye candy? Suggestions for optimization/ improvement or additional useful scripts most welcome.
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Live BBC weather using GeekTool

Published by Bruce on February 24, 2009 in Mac. 9 responses

GeekTool is great fun and seems an ideal means of occupying the mind while avoiding something else you should be doing. This Preference Pane for OS X basically lets you create a "live" desktop, auto-updating with data extracted using shell scripts (which can themselves call AppleScripts), image overlays, or log and other text files. I found many inspiring examples around the web to appropriate for my own desktop (see here; apologies for failing to note sources)—but one thing I had to work out by trial-and-error was bringing BBC Weather into the mix.
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