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iPhone 2G on O2 Simplicity contract

Bruce — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:09:37 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

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! Know the limitations of your phone As a glance at this chart from Apple will show, tethering and MMS are not supported on 2G iPhones: © Apple Despite the implications of this chart, you can receive picture messages on 2G iPhones, in a roundabout way (see below). Incidentally, MMS will apparently work fine on iPhone 3G but tethering requires purchase of a bolt-on plan from O2, although can be enabled without easily enough—but doing so risks disconnection. Know the limitations of your tariff A Simplicity tariff isn't the same as an iPhone tariff; O2 couldn't really make the former too attractive or they'd cannibalise sales of iPhones on contract. For the clear benefit of a month-by-month contract at a lesser price, you have to give something up. Not a lot, to be ...

The dark art of AirPort networking

Bruce — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:29:23 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

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. Bridging WAN and LAN The first step was to get my BeBox working in bridge mode, functioning as a DSL modem only and handing over my public IP address to the Time Capsule. For the record (in case I need to repeat the exercise), Be sent me this advice: If you would like to, you could switch the BeBox into bridged mode, it would then behave entirely as a modem without routing function. To do this, please follow this procedure: Access the SpeedTouch configuration page by opening a web browser and typing in the Address Bar 192.168.1.254; Click on SpeedTouch > Set up; Click Next, then choose Multi IP 3 Data Ports; Click Next, then Start. After that your BeBox will no longer be accessible through the web interface and telnet server. This will set your be box in bridge mode. Things actually proved more ...

Share Twitter locations using Google Maps

Bruce — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 13:44:25 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

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). The code given here tested on Geo Mashup 1.1.3 and WordPress 2.7.1. Setting your location in Twitter You can manually update the text of your Twitter profile location on the web via Settings > Account > Location, but an easier way to do this is via a location-aware client such as Tweetie or Twitterrific for iPhone, either of which can optionally update your profile location in conjunction with a tweet: Alternatively if you want to update your location without tweeting use a client such as Sparrow for iPhone (which will simultaneously update Fire Eagle to the same location): Note, however, that the following code extracts your location from the Twitter user timeline so you do need to tweet before this method will reflect your new location. You should be aware of the potential privacy issues around real-time location sharing via services such as Twitter, Yahoo!'s Fire Eagle, and Google's Latitude. Best to keep your location approximate if you publish it at all. A function to get your location from Twitter Create the following function in the functions.php ...

Latest tweets using SimplePie

Bruce — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:17:14 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

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. The interconnectedness of tweeting A few examples: I use the Twitter updater plug-in to notify Twitter of new posts on my WordPress blog. Darkslide on my iPhone can post a Flickr image link via the iPhone Twitterrific app. Most of my links are discovered in my preferred RSS reader NetNewsWire, which can send these to desktop Twitterrific (News menu). The Twitter app for Facebook will update your Facebook status using your tweets. Twitter offer an RSS feed which can be used in conjunction with the SimplePie PHP library to bring tweets to your WordPress blog. This last example is the focus of this post. I will assume that you have already downloaded and correctly installed SimplePie for WordPress from here. A SimplePie template for Twitter Create a text file called tweets.tmpl containing the following: {IF_ERROR_BEGIN}{ERROR_MESSAGE}{IF_ERROR_END} {ITEM_LOOP_BEGIN} {ITEM_DATE_UTC}{ITEM_DESCRIPTION}# {ITEM_LOOP_END} Upload this file to the following directory on your server: /wp-content/plugins/simplepie-plugin-for-wordpress/templates/ Now for a little ...

Desktop refits with GeekTool and friends

Bruce — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:53:12 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

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. Creating headings Create headings using an echo shell command, just as when using PHP. For example: echo " //UPTIME:" Within GeekTool you can specify a custom font face, colour and opacity, text alignment, accompanying icon, refresh time, and whether the output should be "on top" of other windows—as for any of the following shell commands: Reporting system uptime The following shell command will report system uptime: uptime | awk '{sub(":", "h ", $3); sub(",", "min", $3); print "Time since last system boot: " $3}' Monitoring memory usage Does you Photoshop work or toying in Parallels merit investment in additional RAM? The following shell command will allow you to monitor memory usage, showing the total RAM in use and top running processes (the window is sized so that the top 10 are visible): uptime | top -l 1 | awk '/PhysMem/ {print "RAM in use: " $8 " \n"}'; top -ocpu -FR -l2 -n20 | grep '^....[1234567890] ' | grep -v ' 0.0% ..:' | cut -c 1-24,33-42,64-77 Identifying CPU hogs Why is that non-essential utility app you just installed consuming 97% of your CPU cycles? The following shell command will allow you to monitor how much of ...

Live BBC weather using GeekTool

Bruce — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:33:00 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

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. Assuming you already have GeekTool installed (free), go download and install Lynx, a command-line web browser available for OS X here (free). Now enter your town, city, country or UK post code on the BBC Weather website. Look for the "latest observations feed" link. For example, for Chesterfield the feed link is: http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/rss/obs/id/3282.xml In GeekTool create a new shell script with the following command: lynx -dump http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/weather/feeds/rss/obs/id/3282.xml This will show you the text file that we will be working with, created from the RSS feed. Alternatively you might open the same URL in Lynx itself from the Terminal: In a TextEdit window (for editing convenience) we now write AWK commands to search for and pull out the bits we want. I found these articles served as a useful AWK primer. You can also search-and-replace text as in the following code to remove redundant commas: {gsub(/,/,"")}; Find a unique word on each line from which you want to extract text. For example, to refer to the line containing ...

Geo Mashup implementation guide

Bruce — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:06:46 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Geo Mashup is one of my favourite WordPress plug-ins (and no, that's not just because it adopted the Geotag Icon). It neatly integrates geographically-relevant blog posts with a custom Google Map displayed within your own site. The Maps API in turn allows those willing to dirty their hands with a little JavaScript the option to pull in geotagged content from external sources, including photos (e.g. from Flickr, Panoramio, Picasa Web Albums), content from other blogs (via GeoRSS feeds), and placemarks from Google Earth (uploaded KML/ KMZ files, even with network links). What follows is an implementation guide, sharing some usage tips and the code used on bioneural.net. The code given here applies to Geo Mashup 1.1.1 and WordPress 2.6.2. Geo Mashup 1.2 was released on 19.03.09. Some of the code here may require modification. Installing the plugin Download Geo Mashup here, expand the ZIP archive and upload the geo-mashup directory to /wp-content/plugins/ on your web server. Log in to WordPress as Administrator and activate Geo Mashup from the Plugins tab. Once active there will be a new Geo Mashup tab under Settings, and you'll need to visit this to enter your Google Maps API key (if you don't yet have one, click the Get yours here link). Don't worry about the other options at this stage. Creating a map page The tag reference gives you the choice of two types of tag to use with Geo Mashup. Shortcode tags are added to posts or pages on a case-by-case basis. Template tags on the other hand involve adding ...

Gearing up for SSL to WordPress with Safari

Bruce — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:19:01 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

A friend brought an impending WordPress security exploit to my attention, in the form of a CookieMonster. Your data might be at risk if you administer your blog from a public Internet connection (e.g. WiFi in a café). Securing your authentication cookies with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provides a defensive countermeasure for your admin loggins, and WordPress.com users now have a checkbox to "Always use HTTPS when visiting administration pages". That checkbox is absent in self-hosted WordPress 2.6.2, but here's how to enable HTTPS and accelerate your admin sessions using Google Gears via Safari. Lock up all your cookies with a secret key You may have already defined a SECRET_KEY to secure the cookies that store information about your visitors, a feature introduced in WordPress 2.5. If you didn't do this visit key generator 1.0 and copy the output into your wp-config.php file after the opening PHP tag, so it looks something like this (don't use this one):

Know your waypoints from your track points

Bruce — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:23:05 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

Geotagging photos can be done manually or automatically. When using a GPS data logger in automatic mode your position at each point in time (intervals vary) is recorded as a track point. The collection of track points recorded during a logging session is called a track log. Some devices (e.g. GlobalSat DG-100, Holux M-241) feature a button for manual entry of a specific GPS location as a waypoint, which you can match to the corresponding photo(s) by hand. That all sounds pretty straight forward doesn't it? Well it's not, because some GPS devices can't tell their waypoints from their track points. Thankfully the aptly-named GPSBabel can translate us a way out of this misunderstanding for the DG-100, and an update to BT747 means you can now download waypoints from the M-241 to your Mac. It's not merely a question of semantics Contiguous track points illustrate a very clear path on a map: you can see exactly where you went and, at a pinch, use a pre-recorded track to follow in someone else's footsteps. What you can't do is readily identify particular locations, because when plotted on a map track points are indistinguishable from one another. Specific locations (waypoints) have a variety of uses, including manual geotagging of photos, mapping points-of-interest, indicating landmarks for direction-finding, or marking cache locations in geocaching. If you're looking to providing instructions you want others to be able to follow, an ordered set of waypoints (describing a route) is what you need. Lets look at some simple examples with ...

Publicizing WordPress post revisions

Bruce — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:26:22 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net doi:tSglPpAB7a8nfM :

WordPress 2.6 introduced post revisions, a form of version control that allows you to review or revert to previous editions of a post or page on your WordPress blog. The value of this feature has generated some debate, largely because it's "on by default" with no easy toggle to disable it. The thing is notification of post revisions is private, within the admin interface. So how do you make the date of last editing public? One of my pet hates is undated web content; if there's no date I'll often move on without reading the page content. Sometimes you can glean the date of first publication from a post permalink, as in this example (day and name, in Settings > Permalinks): http://www.bioneural.net/2008/08/02/first-track-logger-for-iphone-released/ There are two problems with relying on this method alone: Did you first publish on August 2 or February 8? There are different ways of interpreting dates; It's only the date of first publication, not the date the post was last revised. Clarifying the date of publication One option is to time stamp the publication date in your theme (as many WordPress themes do), which introduces a little more flexibility to deal with the first issue by specifying the name of the month to combat ambiguity: A simple code snippet for this would be: Published by on Consult the Codex for options that allow you to customize the display of date and time formats in your theme. Showing "last modified" dates I've searched the Codex and the Forums for a means of getting the date of the last ...