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Archive for June, 2009
@macgeekpro (Yohannes Wijaya) reminded me that I need to disable my Mac’s sudden motion sensor. I have two SSDs in my MacBook Pro, so the sudden motion sensor isn’t so useful for me. I’m not even sure if SSDs respond to the command to disengage drive heads, since there are no drive heads.
Anyway, here’s how to disable it in Mac OS 10.4/10.5 (from Apple’s support page):
In Terminal, type the following command:
Disable: sudo pmset -a sms 0
Enable: sudo pmset -a sms 1
I don’t think this is going to work, but it was worth a try. :)
Pam: My manager asked if you’re a Sea Shepherd!
Pam: He saw your shirt!
Pam: He loves Whale Wars.
Me: Awesome
Me: Ask for a raise
Pam: Perhaps if I give him a crew shirt… :)
Me: The last publicly available crew shirt sold for $1,000
Me: Does he have that in cash? ;)
First time in at least 7 years…
I’ve recently started having a problem with Firefox 3.5RC2 (on Mac OS 10.5.7): it hangs and stops loading pages after awhile. Sometimes, it’s after an hour, and sometimes, it’s after 2 minutes. What’s strange is that I can then launch Safari and access any page, and then Firefox will resume loading pages.
I’ve disabled all my add-ons, and it hasn’t resolved the problem. The next step for debugging will be to trash ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox and start a completely new profile.
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090616 Firefox/3.5
At 9:36pm, I got an email stating that Clear lanes would no longer be available as of 11:00pm. 84 minutes of notice! That’s pretty impressive. I’m glad my year’s membership was almost up (early August termination).
Clear to Cease Operations
Dear Eric Cheng,
At 11:00 p.m. PST today, Clear will cease operations. Clear’s parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been unable to negotiate an agreement with its senior creditor to continue operations.
After today, Clear lanes will be unavailable.
Sincerely,
Clear Customer Support
Verified Identity Pass
600 Third Avenue
10th Floor
New York, NY 10016
I installed the demo version of Color Eyes Pro v1.52 on my 17″ unibody MacBook Pro running Mac OS 10.5.7. At the end of the installation, I received the following error:
The error text reads:
System extension cannot be used
The system extension “/System/Library/Extensions/MonitorControl_drv.kext” was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the product’s vendor for an update.
It doesn’t seem to be a common problem because a Google search for “MonitorControl_drv.kext” currently returns exactly one result (so rare!).
Color Eyes Pro seems to be working just fine on the MacBook Pro, and installing the software package on my Mac Pro proceeded smoothly without any errors.
I recently upgraded to an iPhone 3GS, and now need to sell my original 16GB iPhone (2G). On eBay, a mint-condition jailbroken 16GB iPhone 2G sells for $300-$350, while iPhones that look used are going between $200-$300. Assuming I managed to get $300 for mine (unlikely, even though the screen is perfect — it looks used), I would pay approximately $21 in fees, plus at least $10 insured shipping, netting me around $269.
For my phone, FlipSwap offers $235 in the form of an Amazon gift certificate, or around $223 in cash. I’ve decided to sell via FlipSwap / Amazon gift certificate because the $34 difference isn’t enough to make me go through the effort of listing on eBay and risking a sale price lower than $263, which the break-even price at eBay after fees. I’d also risk an international sale, which comes with its own set of issues, like risk, and time to actually go to a post office. Also, I’d have to either wait for a 3.0 jailbreak tool or downgrade the firmware from 3.0 to 2.2.1 for jailbreaking before selling it on eBay. More effort.
FlipSwap seems like the best deal, that is, unless someone reading this wants to buy my iPhone for more than $235 + shipping. :)
I just profiled my unibody MacBook Pro 17″ using a Monaco Optix XR Pro (with included Monaco OPTIX software), and it doesn’t seem to work well. I profiled the display at full brightness targeting both native display white balance and D65. While the D65 results produced a white that was very pleasing to me (warmer than the default “Color LCD” profile that ships with the Mac), a quick look at a grayscale chart showed browns creeping in to many values of gray. In the grayscale chart linked to above, there was a noticeable brown tinge in probably 30-40% of the 26 grayscale values, in both the D65 and native target profiles.
I used Mac OS’s calibration tool in the Displays preference pane, and it produces a different-looking profile with the same brown contamination in the grays.
This is a very difficult thing to show on the web. The only way I can think of to show visuals of what I’m talking about is to set manual white balance on a digital camera and photograph the screen — perhaps a task for another night. My conclusion is that neither the Monaco Optix XR Pro nor Mac OS X’s built-in display calibration is effective at profiling the unibody MacBook Pro’s glossy screen.
Also, I posted an update to my post on calibrating a Dell 3008WFP (at the end of the post).
UPDATE: I just did another calibration using the Optix XR Pro with the Color Eyes Pro software demo instead of the bundled Monaco software, and it looks promising so far!
iPhone 3GS, iPhone 2G, iPod Touches (2), Blackberry Bold and Newton
Things get out of hand when I visit Adam Tow!
I’ve really enjoyed the first two episodes of Whale Wars, Season 2. It’s nice to get to laugh at some of the things that didn’t seem to be funny at the time. :)
From Episode 1: I totally nailed this photo of Paul
More photos… (read more »)
Even though iPhone 3.0 supports CalDAV, there still doesn’t appear to be an easy way to get the “Birthdays” calendar to sync to iPhone over MobileMe. Enter Dates to iCal, by John Maisey, a background script that creates and maintains a new calendar in iCal containing all of your birthdays and anniversaries. Because iCal sees the new calendar as a standard calendar, it syncs effortlessly using MobileMe.
Within 60 seconds of turning on Dates to iCal, I could see all of my contacts’ birthdays on my iPhone and on my two Macs running iCal. I then published the new Birthdays calendar to Google using BusySync, and my Blackberry Bold now also sees the calendar after syncing with Google Sync.
General notes on syncing Macs to Google to iPhone to Blackberry: I have been a loyal user of BusySync for some time now; it allows me to sync my iCal calendars to and from Google.
My calendar sync looks something like this:
iPhone <-MobileMe-> Mac <-BusySync-> Google Calendar <-Google Sync-> Blackberry
Even I’m amazed that it works.
iPhone’s new CalDAV support means that I could probably start hosting my calendars in Google and subscribing to them via CalDAV in iCal and on the iPhone, but it’s all working well right now and I don’t have the energy to re-think things, especially when it all seems to work.
It looks like Kim is attempting a hi-five instead of a hand strike, doesn’t it?
Adam Lau and I spent the last 5 days at Sea Shepherd headquarters in Friday Harbor, Washington, visiting Kim and the rest of the crew. We lucked out and had absolutely beautiful weather for all 5 days — it only started raining when I stepped foot into the little Cessna Caravan on my way back to Seattle. The San Juan Islands are some of the most beautiful islands I’ve ever seen, and those of you who are close to Sea Shepherd know how appropriate it is that their headquarters are surrounded by nature (in contrast to what is shown on TV, I mean).
A bonus: Julie Andersen was also in Friday Harbor while we were there! It was great to get to spend some time with Julie, as it had been far too long since our last meeting. Unfortunately, I missed Simeon Houtman by mere hours, and Laurens de Groot by a bit longer. (read more »)
This is an interesting read, I’m told. I’ve just emailed it to my Kindle and will try to read it on the plane.
ECO-TERRORISM AND PIRACY ON THE HIGH SEAS: JAPANESE WHALING AND THE RIGHTS OF PRIVATE GROUPS TO ENFORCE INTERNATIONAL CONSERVATION LAW IN NEUTRAL WATERS
2009, Joseph Elliott Roeschke, The Villanova Environmental Law Journal, Volume XX, Issue 1, pages 99-136.
Abstract:
This Comment examines the various sources of international law on whaling, which attempt to wrestle with the convoluted area of international environmental conservation law on the high seas. Specifically, this Comment analyzes whether, and to what extent, private groups like Sea Shepherd have legal authority to protect endangered whales in neutral waters outside the jurisdiction of any nation. Section II explains the history of whaling, including a synopsis of whaling in Japanese culture and a history of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Section III outlines the relevant areas of international law that regulate whaling and environmental activism, which take place in the neutral coastal waters off of Antarctica. Section IV details the Japanese exploitation of the scientific research exception and provides a critical analysis of how the relevant regulations apply to individuals and private groups who enforce international conservation laws. Finally, Section V focuses on the effect Sea Shepherd has had on the Japanese scientific whaling program and suggests that Sea Shepherd should be allowed to continue enforcing international conservation law, but through less controversial means . . . [Download PDF, 184 KB]
All must bow down to the disembodied camel head of Friday Harbor.
(Mona, the camel. 1/250 seconds @ f/11, ISO 160. Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, Canon 15mm/2.8 fisheye lens, Canon Speedlite 580EX II @ +1/3 EV)
Lau says Whaaaaaa?
I was recently complaining about Skype’s deteriorating service (as is routine these days), and one of my friends on Facebook suggested that I try out SightSpeed, a service owned by Logitech. I downloaded the Mac client, installed it, and was instantly confused when I launched the application. Why did my camera just turn on, and why does it look like I just started up AOL? Seriously, it looks like a fake interface that you might see on an infomercial for turbo charging your internet access. (read more »)
Me and Mona in Friday Harbor
I’ll always remember Mona as the first camel to rest her head on my shoulder…
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