RoamingGecko

Earlier this week I decided to get rid of the forums here on the site. I think there are still uses for forums on the web but I think the death of the traditional forum is drawing near. So in that vein I have opened up a community site here on the site.

It’s an open source social networking software package, think Facebook or MySpace, that gives users of RoamingGecko more tools and ways to get involved here at the site. The software is still in its infancy and I still have some tweaking to do but the site is up and operational and ready for users. With the new site you can add and maintain friend’s lists, create groups, share files, upload pictures and videos, carry on group discussions. I am planning on adding more features over the coming weeks so stay tuned. I recommend that you join the New Users Group once you register. If you have any questions on how to use the new site you can post your questions there.

Enjoy the new features of the site!

Anyone care to venture a guess what day I could be driving a 7 ton vehicle at speed?

Well, I haven’t posted something on here is quite some time. Life got a little away from me there for a bit. It does that. Well, just to summerize, have been busy with things and haven’t been on the site much. Had to take some time off work because of too much time built up and spent that playing with the Christmas presents. Widescreen HD TV, BluRay player (inside the PS3) and Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour. Yes, I have both of them. Picked up Rock Band 2 first but then wanted another guitar. A second guitar for Rock Band 2 was about $72 and GH:WT with guitar that was compatible with RB2 was $78. I sprang for the extra 6 bucks and wound up with both games. Have to be honest here, they are extremely fun. I prefer RB2 to GH:WT but playing Steve Miller’s “Joker” on GH is too much damn fun.

Of course, with the addition on the PS3 to the living room I also spent some time with a few games for that system as well.

All told I played a lot of games over the holidays. On the PS3 side; Metal Gear Solid 4. LittleBigPlanet, Resistance, Resistance 2, Ratchet and Clank. On the Xbox360; Gears 2, Bad Company, Fable 2, Banjo & Kazooie: N&B, The Orange Box, Kameo, Lost Odyessy, Civilization: Revolution, Call of Duty: World at War.

The gamefest had as much to do with having so much time off as it did the new wide screen HD TV. Yes, 1080p gaming is where it’s at.

My character in RB2

(This image was taken from the Rock Band web site after I linked my Xbox Live! account to my profile there. You can pose your character for pics there once you have your account linked.)

Maybe it’s the pessimist in me but I am rarely completely happy with anything in life. There always seems to be at least a little room for improvement. In that vain, I wanted to make a list of things I would like to see added to the iPhone in order to make it the perfect mobile device. At least for me. I am sure your idea of perfect will vary greatly from mine.

The first thing I would want is a way to customize the SMS tone. This is a huge oversight by Apple in my opinion and it seems others feel the same considering the fact that most everyone seems to be using the same SMS tone I use, Electronic. The only decent tone in the group. Besides, I miss my Monty Python “Message for you Sir!” sound effect!

The next thing would be canned SMS messages. I miss the ability to shoot off a quick SMS message from some templates stored on my phone. Didn’t realize how much I missed them until I had to type the same inane message about 50 times on my iPhone.

For my next wish, I would like the ability to place a phone link on the home page from a contact. Just like you can place a link to a URL on the home screen from the browser, I want to be able to do that from a contact so I can have one button calling from the home screen. If I have a picture associated with that contact, that is the image it would use for the icon. This seems an easy add for Apple since the mechanism for adding URL’s the home screen is already in place.

One last thing is blue tooth file transfer. Since the iPhone has blue tooth, it would be nice to be able to transfer files between my Mac and my iPhone as well as between other iPhones.

That’s my list for now but I would love you hear what you guys would like to see in the next update to the iPhone’s software. Please leave you suggestions in the comment section of this post or feel free to start a discussion on the forums.

Until next time, may all your class connect and your iPhone reboot!

Edit: I can’t believe I forgot to mention video. I don’t want anything grand. Just the ability to record video at a quality good enough to post to YouTube and I’ll be happy. There are a couple of smucks on campus I want to video parking in handicap spaces and I think the world should know their names.

Well, I am still managing to chug along with my iPhone 3G. The crashes are coming more and more infrequently now. I can only attribute this to the updates Apple has been putting out as I have not really changed my behavior with respect to how I use the phone. I can tell you I always hold my breath a little when I restart the phone (I still think there is a memory leak some where as it tends to get slower the longer it runs) expecting it not to boot back up.

I have now gone naked. Ok, more like partial nudity as every thing but the glass is covered. I was using a screen protector but I have become more and more convinced that the glass is nearly, if not completely, impossible to scratch.

Back ups do in fact seem to be a faster with 2.1. I am wondering if Apple if now using an incremental back up strategy now as compared to before. It seems like before 2.1 it was backing up the entire phone each time even after the smallest of changes. Still takes far too long with the measly 180 megs I am carrying on my phone.

That’s about it for now. I will leave you with this one last tip that I have found to be helpful. Until the next post,

Cheers!

iPhone Tip: Airplane mode

This setting has several uses that have come to light over the last couple of months. First when you are backing up your iPhone or syncing with iTunes, turn Airplane mode on to keep from receiving calls or texts that might interrupt the process. Second, if you go inside and find you have lost your cell signal when you return to the great outdoors, switch Airplane mode on and then back off again to force your iPhone to acquire a signal a little faster than normal. Also, if you are traveling and want to use the phone as an alarm but do not want phone calls or text messages to wake you up, yes you guessed it, turn Airplane mode on.

For me the nightmare began last night. I was on duty at the station and I looked down and the App Store application informed me there was an update to one of my apps. Since it was late at night and I was unlikely to get a call I decided to go ahead and update through the iPhone. When the application looked to be about 90% percent or more installed the iPhone suddenly rebooted. I got to the Apple logo and that was a far as it got. I let it sit there for about a half hour and then gave up on the phone making it through the boot process. I tried a hard reboot but again, the phone would not make it through the boot process.

My next thought was to get it hooked up to my Mac and see if I perform a restore. No go on that. iTunes would not recognize it. So, I took the last resort and that was to do a DFU restore (Information on how to do this will be at the bottom of this page). Soon I got the image of a USB cable and the iTunes logo and iTunes recognized the phone and offered to do a firmware/software restore. At this point I thought my troubles were over. After the restore the phone would boot and all my apps, music, video and contacts were back and the phone started to operate normally. Wishful thinking, the phone soon locked up again and would not respond so it was back to the DFU restore process. I did this a total of three times before I decided I needed to do a little net investigating. Well, in my search I came across a post in Apple’s own discussion forums. Seems I’m not the only one with this issue.

Forum Thread

So, where am I at now? After doing some reading online I have decided not to sync my applications through iTunes and I am not going to download anything through the App Store on the iPhone that isn’t produced by a major software developer, ie. Apple, EA, Sega, Vivendi. I will also do this slowly. Download an app or group of apps and then run the phone through it’s normal use to determine if it is going to lock up before moving on.

I will posts updates for anyone reading about the pitfalls or triumphs I encounter in this long and tedious process. Of course, Apple could save me the trouble of having to do this by releasing a firmware or software update but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

To Perform a hard reboot of your iPhone, do the following;

Hold the Power button and the Home button down until the phone reboots.

When the phone shuts off, release the buttons.

Turn the phone on as you normally would.

To place the phone in Recovery Mode;

Turn your phone off.

While holding down the Home button, plug your iPhone into your computer via your USB cable.

Continue hold the Home button until an iTunes dialog informs you the phone is in recovery mode.

Follow the on screen instructions to reformat and restore your phone.

To place the phone in DFU Recovery Mode;

Plug your iPhone into your computer via your USB cable.

Turn your phone off.

Hold the power button and the home button, after ~ 7 seconds release the power button but continue to hold the home button. Your phone’s display should not turn on.

iTunes should pop up a dialog box once it detects your phone.

Follow the on screen instructions to reformat and restore your phone.

Note – This method more or less bypasses your phone’s normal boot process allowing your to do a more through restore that is very useful with downgrading or upgrading your phone’s firmware.

This blog post has generated a lot of interest as well as hits and I would like to hear more about your iPhone woes. I believe getting your troubles with the iPhone out there in the open for the public to read helps make Apple aware of any shortcomings this phone has and prompts them to fix them as soon as possible. It’s in their best interest to ensure the public’s opinion of this device is a positive one. Please consider clicking the link below and posting your story in our forums for others to read. Thanks!

Well, I learned a couple of always valuable lessons today. Always, always, back up your WP tables. Second lesson learned, while posting from your iPhone may be convenient, managing your WP blog from your iPhone not so much. While attempting to get the WP iPhone app to work I made a test post. After a few unsuccessful tries and a little tweaking, I got it to post to the blog. However, when I tried to deleted this test post from my blog using the browser on my iPhone, I deleted all the blog entries I have made since the end of June.

How did I manage to do this you ask? Well, when you’re not zoomed in on the page on your iPhone and try to click a link, you’re liable to click just about any link. First I inadvertently clicked the “select all” radio button and then when I attempted to uncheck it I hit the delete button that is just above that. It then deleted all the posts there were checked. Typically delete conformation buttons annoy the hell out of me but this one time I think I wouldn’t have minded it.

At first I was extremely irritated but then I tried to remember what I had blogged about in the last three weeks and other than the post I made yesterday I couldn’t remember any of them and figured if they weren’t that memorable then I didn’t really lose any thing now did I? If I don’t remember them then whom ever might be reading this blog surely wouldn’t so the world was no better off than before.

Lessons re-learned.