Five Best Mobile Fitness Apps?
I've blogged about RunKeeper before, which is on this top 5 list of "best mobile fitness apps" on Lifehacker.
Having recently joined an awesome new YMCA near my house, I've also been using iFitness a lot, too -- though it's kinda annoying that all the illustrations feature white men. And it feels pretty dorky to keep staring at my iPhone at the gym. Whatev.
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Tags: apps, fitness, iphone, Runkeepertech woes
Is it just me or do technology/computer problems usually happen in batches? Currently plaguing my productivity:
The trusty laser printer won't work. It refuses to show up on the home network. It's an 8-year-old HP LaserJet 2100M, with a brand new cartridge (which cost nearly $150, arghhhh), attached to a mini D-Link print server. It worked just fine 3 weeks ago... (Update: I went out and bought a parallel-to-USB cable for a whopping $56 at London Drugs. I was surprised they sold one, and the store clerk was also amused that someone actually needed this dinosaur cable. Well, the good news is that I plugged it into the USB port of the Time Capsule, and it worked perfectly. Bad news is that this is way too expensive of a solution for this aging setup. I'll need to keep looking for either a cheaper cable or...)
More annoying: I finally decided on a color laser printer model to buy: Brother HL-4070CDW with built-in wireless & duplex printing or the lower model 4040 without built-in wireless, both at fantastic sale prices at Office Depot and Best Buy. But it's out of stock at Office Depot and it's out of reach at Best Buy -- there's something wrong with the website and it won't let me buy it. It's probably out of stock, too. Now I really, really want it!
The iPhone won't sync with iTunes. Upgrade and restore won't work, and it won't complete a backup. Trying a bunch of options as suggested by this thread. And no, I'm not rushing out to buy the new iPhone. (Update: while I was writing this blog, the said iPhone successfully updated to the latest 4.0.1 when connected to a different computer. It still won't back up to my MacBook Pro, though.)
The Dell HackBook (Hackintosh) won't boot. I was trying to fix the sleep problem (where the lid will shut but the computer will stay on, run hot, and eventually run out of battery while sitting in my bag) before I left for Europe, but something went wrong. I don't even know where to begin. I might have to just reinstall the whole darn thing all over again.
To top it off? I took the Prius in for regular maintenance, and they found a nail embedded in the tire.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Tags: Tech, troubleshootingback to Letterbox in Mail.app
Update to an earlier post about WideMail. After a long overdue restart, several mail settings on my MacBook Pro somehow disappeared -- outgoing mail servers, font sizes, and plugins such as WideMail. I tried this tip from CNet but that didn't work.
So I installed Letterbox again, and all is well. Still had to re-enter outgoing mail servers and reset font settings, though.
Now, only if the goddamn printer server would start working again...
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Mac OS 10.6.4 and WideMail Fix
Mac OS X 10.6.4 Update a couple of days ago included an update to Mail.app which disabled my Letterbox plugin. I could have just updated to Letterbox 0.24b7, but what the hey, I decided to give WideMail 2.0pr2 a try this time. They appear to be about the same, in terms of features and stability. Just don't install them both -- they don't play together nicely.
But honestly, I can't believe Apple hasn't already integrated this into their Mail.app. The three-pane view (see below) is just not something I'm willing to live without anymore. (See my earlier woes around Mail plugins.)
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Time Capsule and VPN troubleshooting
My D-Link router started acting up recently (dropping connections, requiring reset), and it was time to upgrade to a larger hard drive anyway, so I bit the bullet and bought Apple's 2TB Time Capsule. It was expensive, and it wouldn't be worth it unless you needed both a new router and a new backup drive.
But I did, and after fiddling for days with a Linksys WRT610 that supposedly supported networked USB drives but in actuality: 1) it was super Windoze-centric and although I did eventually get the drive to work, I couldn't get Macs to stay connected; and 2) the user interface was so utterly, unbelievably hideous that I found it offensive. I mean, does Linksys not have dedicated staff to work on their router interface? Shudder.
So, I went from this D-Link 625 (worked for 2.5 solid years):
To this for a few days (which is quite a bit bigger than the D-Link, by the way):
And then finally to this beauty. Now we're officially an all-Mac household.
As expected, the setup was smooth and hassle-free for all devices -- an iMac G5, 2 MacBook Pros, 2 iPhones, and an 8-year-old (and still going strong) HP LaserJet 2100M via D-Link print server (DP-101P). And the Time Machine backup initiated without a hitch.
Actually, there was one hitch. I use a VPN connection to access the university library, and when I connected to the VPN, I found myself unable to access the Internet or the local network -- thus, no printing. Which is a big problem. There wasn't an easy way to reset this problem, either, but after Googling around, I found this helpful thread. The default was set to "Link-local only," and instead of changing it to "Tunnel" as some of the threads suggested (but didn't work for me), I changed it to "Router."
And voila! All is well in the world. Well, not really, given the oil spills and flotilla massacres and racist anti-immigrant legislations. But hey, one problem at a time, right?
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Handbrake, VLC and 64 bit problems
Don't you just love it when you google a problem you're experiencing, and you find the exact thing discussed and answered? Like this.
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Rotten Apple
Awesome, if not very subtle, illustration accompanying a very critical article about Apple and Steve Jobs.
It's written by Klaus Brinkbaumer and Thomas Schulz, for Der Spiegel, and a Portuguese translation is here. Can't find the link to the original German, for some reason.
With all the hoopla around iPhone 4, I wonder what would happen to the news of mounting worker suicides in Apple factories in China.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Google Chrome and 1Password
I've been running Google Chrome as my browser of choice lately, and in my unprofessional estimation, Chrome is about 3 times as fast as Safari and at least 200 times faster than Firefox. It's awesome. One downside is the lack of Chrome support (so far) for 1Password, probably one of the most essential Mac utilities ever. Ever.
After looking around, I followed these setup instructions: installed the developer version of Chrome and installed the alpha version of 1Password extension. So far? Wonderful. 
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Tags: browser, TechGoDaddy.com & paying for “free” stuff
One of my pet peeves: "free" stuff that isn't actually free. Like cell phone plans that advertise, "$50 monthly and get XXX minutes for free." This means that you pay $50 for the XXX minutes. There's nothing free there.
GoDaddy.com is one of the more popular and cheaper domain registrars. Despite the annoying name and weird NASCAR promo plastered throughout the site, I've used them over the years to register several domain names.
They advertise "$6.99 domain transfer plus FREE 1-year extension," like this:
I took this to mean that if I transferred my domain (set to expire on 4/5/2010), I pay $6.99 for 1 year and that would include a "free" extension for ANOTHER year, setting the new expiration for 2012. Doesn't that make sense?
Nope. Their customer service explained to me (in an email dated 3/28/2010):
The initial $6.99 charge is for the transfer of the domain itself, and a free year is given on top of this.
Hmm... So there's no FREE 1-year extension, folks. You pay $6.99 and you get 1 year registration.
I should have just stayed with NameCheap even if they're a little more expensive. 
At least they include WhoisGuard, which is good for protecting private registration information. But wait... they advertise that as "free," too.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: domain, geekMy hackintosh chronicles
It didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. It was more time consuming and frankly, scarier than I thought. I wouldn't be surprised if people just fry up a perfectly good netbook trying this. If you don't like following detailed instructions, forget about it.
- The easy part -- I bought a Dell Mini 10v from Amazon. I didn't get it refurbished from Dell Outlet because... I wanted a red one with a 6-cell battery.
- I don't really use a USB flash drive, and I didn't have one big enough for this purpose (8gb required). I luckily found a 16gb on sale for around $40 at Best Buy. I know, I know, I probably could have gotten a better deal elsewhere, but I didn't feel like looking around for too long. (I also ended up using an older 4gb flash drive for task #5 below.)
- I followed these detailed instructions (also here) to prepare the USB drive for installation. But as soon as I plugged it into the Dell and began the actual installation process, I was greeted with an error message: what I thought was a full version of Snow Leopard was in fact only an upgrade DVD. That sucked. I thought I bought a full version for J's Macbook Pro a few months ago. Had I known, I would have bought one when I bought the netbook a few days ago... SIGH.
- Anyway, after pouting and sulking for two days, I got my hands on a disk image of Snow Leopard, with my fingers crossed that this one wasn't an upgrade version. But when I tried to prepare the flash drive again in Disk Utility, I was greeted with another error message:
Restore Failure
Could not find any scan information. The source image needs to be imagescanned/scanned for restore - Luckily, I found this thread which fixed the problem. (What would I do without Google?)
- I was back on track, and hopeful. I downloaded NetbookBootMaker on an old 4gb flash drive, and was all ready to start installing again. But then I realized that the Dell 10v's BIOS version needs to be LOWER than A06 -- and I found out mine was A06. Another big, frustrated SIGH. A couple of commenters on the Dell mini forum said A06 worked just fine, but eh... I don't know.
- So then I had to go find out how to downgrade my BIOS to A04. Geez. They make it sound easy, but for a long-time Mac user like myself, this was reeeeeeeally not that easy. And I have to say, I really hate Windows, so I really hope this works. A netbook running Windows is useless to me. By the way, the guy who wrote the downgrade instructions wasn't kidding. The beeping is REALLY loud and annoying. I'd strongly suggest that you don't do it while your partner is in the same room trying to carry on a Skype conversation with a friend in South Africa. Shockingly, in spite of my bumbling fumbling ways, it worked and my BIOS showed up listed as A04!
- Now I boot from that other flash drive with OS X Install DVD, and so far so good. The Apple shows up on screen. And the pinwheel spinning, spinning, and spinning. Then finally -- voila! As I write this, the installation has finally begun...
- At last, my hackintosh is born! It took a few headaches and quite a bit of patience and finger-crossing, but what I have now is a tiny, pretty (!) and lightweight Mac netbook with a working webcam, and close to 8 hours of battery time (cuz I splurged on the 6-cell battery). It's perfect for quick trips to the library and conference travel, etc.
- By the way, I already found myself the perfect bag.
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Tags: geek, TechCategories
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