Rick's World

Shipped!

A few minutes ago, I submitted my first application for sale in the iPhone App Store. I've been working on this app off and on for the last couple months. Now to wait for Apple to accept/reject it and put it up for sale. Let's see how this thing does.

Oh, what is the app that I submitted? It's called LOL Maker. It's used to make lolcats and failblog style pictures... (Yes, the web page is ugly. I plan on improving that...)

A week ago, I bought my first HDTV. I ended up buying a Samsung T240HD 24-Inch LCD HDTV Monitor. I bought this HDTV to put into my home office. This is NOT my main living room TV that I just replaced. Why did I end up buying a small HDTV for a side room instead of for the main living room? Let me explain.

I have DirecTV in my bedroom, living room, and home office. In other words, in pretty much every room in the house that I use. In the living room and bedroom, I have DVRs. The living room has an old DirecTV Tivo and the bedroom had a DirecTV+ DVR. All of my DirecTV receivers are fairly old. The newest one is the DrecTV+ DVR (about 2-3 years old). The oldest one is the bare minimum DirecTV tuner (non-DVR) that I had in the home office. A couple weeks ago, the DirecTV+ DVR in my bedroom started to act up. It was making a clicking noise, and I was seeing messages pop up on the screen very few seconds saying that it lost the satellite signal and was trying to re-find it. I thought it was odd, but I let it be and went off and did some other things that evening. I came back late in the evening and was getting ready for bed. So I turned the TV on in the bedroom for a few minutes to watch TV as I got ready for bed. The TV turns on, but I get nothing on the screen. I tried everything I could think of to get the picture to come back, but nothing. The DVR was dead.

As a temporary solution, I unplugged the DVR and moved the plain DirecTV tuner from the home office into the bedroom. I now had DirecTV in the bedroom again, but nothing in the home office. The following weekend, I took the DirecTV DVR apart and pulled out the hard drive. I plugged it into a PC and tried some programs to repair the hard drive without any luck. Since the DVR was gone, I called DirecTV to deactivate it, so that they wouldn't charge me for the dead DVR. While I was on the phone with them, I asked how much it would be to buy a cheap, very basic DirecTV tuner for the home office. I just wanted to get something cheap and very basic to last me through the rest of the year. I was planning on starting the HDTV upgrade of my house at around Christmas time of this year, by replacing the big TV in the living room. Of course doing this upgrade wouldn't be cheap. I would have to replace the TV in the living room (probably about $1,000), I'd have to get a new DirecTV satellite dish (basically free), I'd need a new stereo receiver for the living room (about $300), and I'd also need new DirecTV receivers for all the rooms. I certainly didn't want to spend much for a temporary solution that I'd only use for a few months. I'd also been waiting for DirecTV to come out with the new DirecTV Tivo that's supposed to come out some time this year. Usually, when you get a new receiver, you have to sign up for a new contract (I'm not currently in a contract with them.) The problem was, to get the basic, temporary receiver, I would have had to either spend $150 to get it without contract, or $50 with a 2 year contract. I'm not going to spend $150 for a temporary solution and I'm not signing up for a 2 year contract now, when I'll likely be doing that in a few months for the DirecTV Tivo. That means I am not going to get a new DirecTV receiver for the home office. I had to come up with an alternate solution.

Since DirecTV was clearly out of the question in the home office, the only other alternatives would have been cable TV (which I don't currently have) or over the air antenna. I wasn't about to bother getting cable TV. That left antenna. Of course with the whole upcoming digital TV transition on June 12th, that would have meant that anything I chose to do would have to work beyond that date. That pretty much means HDTV over antenna. So, I decided to buy a small HDTV TV, plug an antenna into it, and use that in the home office until I get around to the full HD conversion later in the year. I would leave the living room alone and use this lesser used home office setup as my test-bed for HDTV.

I went out that evening and shopped around for a 26" LCD HDTV. I found lots to choose from. All of these 26" HDTVs were around $300-400 and all ran at 720p (the low end, lesser-resolution HD standard). I considered these, but then I went into BestBuy to look at their TVs. They had the same 26" TVs, but they also had a 24" LCD computer monitor that doubled as an HDTV... This monitor/HDTV also ran at full HD (1080p). But this monitor/TV was $450. That's about $100 more than the 26" HDTV alone. So it was a choice between a cheaper, lower resolution HDTV or a slightly more expensive monitor/HDTV that had the advantage of being a full blown computer monitor and a full resolution HDTV. No contest. I sacrifice 2" of screen space, but gain full resolution HDTV and a 'backup' computer monitor to boot. I bought the monitor/HDTV.

This is my first HDTV, so I have a lot to learn regarding the whole HDTV world. I'll be blogging some of my discoveries about this in the future.

iPhone Development Blog: The blog of Jeff LaMarche, one of the two authors of the Beginning iPhone Development book. Lots of good stuff on iPhone programming. He's also on Twitter as @jeff_lamarche

iSmashPhone: This site contains various news articles related to the iPhone.

iCodeBlog: Various programming articles on the iPhone.

iPhoneKicks: This site is a kind of 'Digg for iPhone Programming'. It allows readers to submit links to articles on iPhone programming. These links are then voted up or voted down. The most popular links get moved to the top and the less popular ones get moved down. Lots of useful stuff here.

Mobile Orchard: Lots of articles on iPhone programming and news.

Cocoa Is My Girlfriend: Marcus S. Zarra's blog about Cocoa programming. He's also the author of the upcoming book: Core Data: Apple's API for Persisting Data under Mac OS X

Cocoa With Love: Matt Gallagher's blog on iPhone Programming.

iPhone Development Tips: Various quick tips related to XCode and iPhone Programming.

KATI: A blog on developing interfaces in Cocoa.

Planet Cocoa; Sort of a 'blog of blogs'. It contains links to articles on other blogs related to Cocoa programming.

iPhone Incubator: iPhone programming articles by an experienced iPhone programmer.

Cocoa category on Reddit: Reddit is another 'Digg-style' web site where readers submit and vote up/down articles on the web. This particular part of the site is devoted to articles about Cocoa.

iPhone Flow: More articles on iPhone development.

Yesterday evening, I left the office and walked downstairs to get in my car to leave. That's when things got interesting...

I walked up to my car and hit the button on my keychain to open the (locked) trunk. I open the trunk and am about to put all my stuff in the trunk when I notice something very odd. Inside my trunk I always have three things. The first thing is a large, fairly expensive amplifier bolted to the back seat. Connected to this amplifier is a 12" subwoofer inside a box connected by speaker cable. The third thing is a bag containing various car-related tools (small air pump, jumper cables etc.) However, today, there were some additional items in my trunk - items that I did NOT put there. And these were items in a closed, locked trunk! What did I discover?

On top of the speaker box was two items. An empty, styrofoam cup with a lid on it. (Clearly a piece of garbage.) This cup was intentionally placed on top of the speaker box. Next to the cup on top of the speaker box was a large rock. (probably around a 5-10 pound rock. This rock looked to be a piece of one of those parking space 'bumpers'. (We have a bunch of broken ones in our parking lot). The third thing, was yet another one of those big broken parking lot bumper rocks placed next to the speaker box. Nothing was missing from the trunk. Just several items added to it.

My best guess as to how these items appeared in my trunk is that when I got back from my lunch break, I must have bumped the button on my keychain that opens the trunk without realizing it. The reason I think it must have happened after lunch is because had it happened before lunch, that empty styrofoam cup would have fallen off the speaker box the first time the car moved. Clearly someone noticed my open trunk and put those items in there as a message to me that I had left the trunk open. Then, once they'd left their 'message', they closed the trunk (which locks it). I would guess this was one of my coworkers who did this. I don't know who it was though.

Whomever you are thanks for closing that trunk! I wouldn't want to get my car broken into. Our office isn't in the best neighborhood.

Sorry for being so quiet on the website lately. I've spent the last several weeks working like a maniac on a little iPhone app. It's coming along nicely and hopefully will be up for sale in the AppStore soon. As I've been working on this app, I've come across a bunch of books that have been a big help in developing iPhone apps, so I thought I'd share them.

The iPhone Developer's Cookbook by Erica Sadun

This was the first iPhone programming book that I bought. It was also the first iPhone programming book available after the NDA was finally lifted. While I did enjoy this book and it was full of lots of useful 'recipes' on how to do things using the iPhone SDK, I can't really recommend it, at least not as a first book on iPhone programming. Mrs. Sadun spends a lot of time talking about how to do things with the unpublished and unapproved APIs in the iPhone SDK. Use of these APIs can get your application refused for acceptance into the AppStore. She does make it clear that this could happen, but I find her heavy use of these 'illegal' APIs a bit concerning. Despite my misgivings about this, it is a VERY interesting book from a hacking point of view. It's very interesting to read some of her tips on how to explore the inner workings of the API. I'd suggest this book for the more advanced programmers out there who are interested in the hacking side of things more than just learning the basics of how to write iPhone applications.

Beginning iPhone Development by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche

This is the best book I've read so far on programing with the iPhone SDK. I would suggest this book as a good introduction to buy as an introduction to writing iPhone applications. It does a good job of covering all the basics areas you would need to know, including view controllers, using the GPS, using the camera, etc. An excellent book.

iPhone SDK Application Development by Jonathan Zdziarski.

I just started reading this book. It looks like it covers all the important areas of the iPhone SDK. It also covers a few areas that the previous book doesn't, such as layers, network programming and audio. I'd suggest this as the second book to read after the above 'Beginning iPhone Development'.

Programming in Objective-C 2.0 (2nd Edition) by Stephen G. Kochan

This is the only book of the bunch that I don't actually own. However, I have looked over the book and I can certainly recommend it as a good introduction to the Objective-C 2.0 language, which you use to write iPhone applications. The only reason I didn't buy it was that by the time this book came out, I had already learned enough about Objective-C 2.0 that i didn't really need the book. But if you are a beginner at Objective-C, this book will prove very useful. Note that since this book convers Objective-C 2.0 in general, it is also useful to read if you plan on writing applications for the Mac itself. The Mac (as of Leopard) uses the same Objective-C 2.0 language that the iPhone does.

Cocoa(R) Programming for Mac(R) OS X (3rd Edition) by Aaron Hillegass

While this book isn't technically about programming for the iPhone specifically, it is still very useful to read. This book is the 'Bible' of Mac programming. If you want to write a Mac application, this is the first book you should buy. The reason I recommend this book for learning the iPhone is that it covers a lot of the areas related to graphically designing user interfaces. These same techniques are used to design both Mac and iPhone applications, so learning them will still be quite useful.

Xcode 3 Unleashed by Fritz Anderson

While this book doesn't cover the iPhone SDK directly, it does cover the XCode development environment that you use to write iPhone applications with. As such, this book will help you learn how to use the tools at your disposal in order to write iPhone applications. It also contains an excellent section on setting up source control for your development projects in XCode. If you are going any form of development, it is critical that you use source control. This section alone is worth the cost of the book.

Another one i saw today:

Save the Ta-Tas!

This text was overlaid on a breat cancer awareness ribbon. I like it! Humorous and makes the point.

Saw this today:

I'll keep my guns,
freedom, & money...
YOU CAN KEEP THE "CHANGE!"

I couldn't agree more.

Two days ago, I happened to go by the car wash place to get my car washed. It's been needing a wash for months, and I finally got around to doing it. In the process of washing the car, I found out that a lot of the little spots of stuff that were all over the car were likely drops of tree sap. After finding this out, I suddenly figured out where those spots were coming from. There is a large palm tree in my next door neighbor's front yard that has several branches that hang over my driveway. Obviously, these branches have been dripping sap onto my car, making all those spots on it. It was time to trim those branches.

Yesterday, I decided to take care of this little problem, so I parked the car away from the driveway, got out my ladder and my pole saw and set to work. I'm there a couple feet up on the ladder sawing away at one of the branches trying to cut it down. After a few minutes of work, I manage to cut through the branch. The branch falls, and proceeds to fall right into my face. The trunk of the branch proceeds to fall and hit me square in my right eye. Like a dumbass, I wasn't wearing any eye protection. Ouch! That hurt like hell! I go inside, take out my contacts and survey the damage. Other than a cut on my lower eyelid, and my eyes being rather bloodshot, things looked OK. Of course my eye itched like hell. I just figured the itching was because I had some dirt or something from the tree in my eye. Being the typical macho male that I am, I didn't think this little injury was any big deal. No need to go to the doctor for this.

After several hours of this discomfort, I changed my mind and decided to get it checked out after all. So I hopped in my car and drove to the nearest 'Urgent Care' medical clinic. Closed on Sundays! Then I drove to the next urgent car clinic only to discover that one is closed on Sundays also. Well this is stupid! A medical clinic isn't much use if it's closed! Besides, I was trying to avoid doing too much driving with my injured eye. I could see fine out of the eye, but it was bothering me, so I didn't want to take the risk. Unfortunately, I didn't have much choice but to do some more driving. I knew of one urgent care clinic that would be open, but it was a good 15-20 miles away. Oh well, I guess I have no choice.

I drive down to this third urgent care clinic, and it's open (It's open 24 hours a day). I check myself in and sit down to wait. After an hour or so, they call me in and take me to the examination room. i then sat there for what seemed like another half hour. Thankfully, they had a little flat screen TV there that I could watch, so I watched TV while I waited. After about a half hour the doctor comes in and examines my eye up close and determines that I have a corneal abrasion (a scratch on the eye itself) as well as the scratch on the eyelid. She said that the eye would normally heal very fast, often within 24 hours, but you had to make sure that it doesn't get infected. So she prescribed some antibiotics in eyedrop form. They also gave me a tetanus shot to make sure i didn't get any problems from the exposure to the tree branch in my eye. Finally, after a lot more waiting, they let me go. They even gave me a note excusing me from work for the next two days, but telling me to make sure that I went to see my regular eye doctor this morning to have it checked out. Because of the fast healing of the eye, you have to check the eye within 24 hours. I went from the doctor's office to the only 24 hour pharmacy I could find and put in for the prescription. I then went home for the night.

This morning, I called in sick to work and made an appointment with my main eye doctor. I went to the doctor and they checked me out. Of course I forgot to bring the eye drops with me and I couldn't remember the name of the drug, so she had to call the pharmacy to get the type of drug it was. They checked it out and essentially diagnosed the same thing - superficial corneal abrasion... In other words, a minor cut on my eye. They told me to continue using the eye drops for the next week or so and to come back tomorrow morning for a quick check to see how the eye is healing.

I'm still using the drops and will continue to use them (every hour!) for the next week. I also can't wear my contacts for the next week (the only real downside). While technically I could take tomorrow off from work on doctor's advice as well, I'm going to go to work. The eye is feeling a lot better today. It still itches a little every once in a while, but is hardly noticeable. Tomorrow, I plan on going to the doctor, and then going to work from there. I'll likely be a little late to work, but I'll be there.

I got lucky and only ended up with a scratch. It could have been much worse. Always wear that eye protection when doing yard work!

A few months ago, I bought and downloaded season 4 of Lost in HD from iTunes. I've been on a serious Lost kick lately, trying to catch up to the fifth season, which just started a few days ago. I watched all the episodes (or so I thought) and finished the fourth season a while back. When the new season started a few days ago, I watched the premiere only to realize that I had missed part of the season finale of season 4. I checked my copies of the episodes in iTunes and noticed a minute or so of the last episode was missing. I thought this was all that I missed. After some checking online however, I realized I was missing the entire last episode of season 4! I didn't miss a few minutes, I missed an entire episode. I thought I hadn't downloaded it. I had backed up the entire season to DVD after I downloaded it a few months ago. So I looked back through my backups and found the missing episode. I copied the episode back only to discover that when I backed up the entire season, I'd only backed up the HD episodes. Whenever you buy an HD episode, you also get a SD (standard definition) episode 'for free'. For every episode except the last one, I had both an HD and an SD episode. Apparently when you backup HD episodes to a DVD from iTunes, it only backs up the HD episodes, and does NOT backup the SD episodes! So, essentially, when you back up HD, you only backup half of what you paid for.

The solution to this is to NOT backup HD episodes from iTunes. Instead, you need to backup the files manually. Right click on one of the episodes in iTunes and select 'Show in Finder'. From this folder make sure you back up both episodes, the regular and the HD episodes. The filenames will be named 'xxx.mp4' and 'xxx (HD).mp4' where 'xxx' is the name of the episode.

Luckily for me, I had my entire iTunes library backed up in Time Machine and was able to recover the missing SD version of that episode. Now I need to go back and re-backup both the SD and HD episodes of the series again. I have one of those problem Seagate 1.5TB hard drives as my Time Machine backup drive, and luckily I've had no problems with it, so I was able to recover the episode... I've since updated the firmware on that drive, so it shouldn't have any problems in the future.

Link: http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931

Recently, there have been some reports of problems with Seagate's new 1.5TB hard drive. Unfortunately, I bought one of these recently before I knew about this. Today I found a knowledge base article on their site that lists all the Seagate hard drive model numbers with this problem. To my surprise, I discovered that they have some 1TB hard drives that also have the problem. Unfortunately, I have one of the affected 1TB hard drives as well! So, now I have TWO hard drives with the problem.

I've had both of these affected hard drives in my Mac Pro for a while now, without any problems, but I figured I'd better call Seagate's customer service to see if it was possible to get the firmware update that fixes the problem with my two drives, just in case. The problem was, I needed a firmware update that would work on my Mac Pro and their knowledge base article only mentions Windows. I just got off the phone with their customer support and spoke with a very friendly and helpful person about the problem. He took my name, phone, email address and serial numbers of the two drives. He told me that he would email me a disk image that I could use to boot the Mac and update the firmware (as long as it's an Intel Mac). He would be emailing me the firmware update for the 1.5TB immediately and the one for the 1.0TB on about Tuesday (apparently that one isn't quite ready yet). I haven't tried the firmware update boot CD to see if it works yet, but once I do, I'll update this blog to verify that it works.

Thank you Seagate for providing good customer service!

You can contact Seagate Technical Support at 1-800-SEAGATE (1-800-732-4283)

You can find the knowledge base article here.

If you are on a Mac, you can find the serial numbers of the HDs by doing the following:

1. Click on the Apple menu at the upper left corner of the screen.
2. Choose the 'About This Mac' menu item.
3. On the resulting dialog, click the 'More Info...' button.
4. In the next window, click the 'Serial-ATA' item in the list on the left, under 'Hardware'.
5. Click each of the hard drive model numbers in the upper right list to view the information on that drive in the bottom right list.
6. In the bottom right list, the serial number is listed to the right of 'Serial Number:'

Update 1: January 24, 2009 2:36PM

It's taken them a week and they still haven't sent me that promised email, but it looks like they've updated the knowledge base article with links to the firmware for both of my Seagate hard drives with the problem. Once I finish backing up those drives, I'll apply the firmware and see what happens.

Update 2: January 24, 2009 5:23PM

Using both of the update CDs, I was able to update the firmware on the 1.0TB and 1.5TB hard drives successfully on my MacPro. Looks like it does work on Intel Macs.