Josh Highland’s Blog

In my last blog post I talked about how my computer had a system drive failure. I am waiting for Western Digital to send me a new 10,000 rpm drive to replace the broken one, so in the meantime, I thought I would screw around with trying to put Mac OS X on my desktop.

My friend Luis Majano is a great software developer and swears by his Mac Book Pro. At work I run Windows XP, at home it Windows Vista. I have Ubuntu on my laptop and run CentOS on my web servers, so I’m not a die hard about one OS or another, they all have their place.

I love Linux operating systems, so learning from Luis that Mac OS X sits on top of BSD made me more interested in switching (Apple don’t tell you that in their cute commercials). The price of Mac computers is insane though, and not something I’m blindly going to jump into.

So to the point… a broken PC a spare harddrive, and the want to try Mac OS X, whats a geek to do? A few google searches, and a torrent download later, I had in hand, Leo4All.

Leo4All is an awesome distribution of the hacked apple OS to run on none genuine apple hardware. They even have a great wiki (http://osx86leo4all.wikidot.com)

I dropped the DVD into my drive, booted up and a few minutes later I was in the OS X installer. Formatted the drive into an apple format, clicked install and 10 minutes later I was working inside of OS X! everything was there, even time machine! check out the screen shot below…

I had trouble with my network card, as OS X doesnt seem to like a lot of on-mother-board devices. I fixed that by powering down, and installing an old pci NIC. Booted back up and it was there!

I had no audio, but after a few minutes of googeling around, and following likes from the Leo4All wiki, I had it going.

I still havent had any luck getting my dual monitors to work. OS X doesnt seem to like nVidia cards with 512 megs of ram. Oh well, one monitor is fine with me for now.

The USB ports work, and recognize my iPod and iPhone just fine.

So it looks like I’m set. If the experience goes well, who knows, I just might become a switcher! If you know of some sweet mac software I need to try out, let me know.

This afternoon I upgraded my blog to the latest version of wordpress, 2.5. The install went great and it was simple to do. I didn’t realize that I had any problems until I went to make a blog post and upload an image. When I tried to upload, I was greeted with the following:

Something was for sure messed it. I tried it in several browsers, but had the same results. no luck. I started to go some searching online but since wordpress 2.5 is so new, there was little info to be found. After about an hour of stumbeling around I came across a post on a forum where someone said they got the image upload to work by adjusting their .htaccess file on thier site with the following code.

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

I made the change to my .htaccess file, and like magic the image upload feature started to work again!

I am making this post in the hopes that other people with similar problems will stumble across this post and be able to fix their problem with out having to wade through all the pages of people trying to diagnose what the problem is when the solution is super easy.

A guy I know, “dave”, had an iPod that was acting up. On top of that, his warranty was was almost up, and he was worried that the iPod would live just long enough to go out of warranty before fully breaking, leaving him with out an iPod.

He was looking for a way help to speed up the failure process of his iPod, so he could make use of the warranty. Knowing that I have a back ground in working on the inside of iPods he hit me up for advice… advice that got him a new iPod

Based on the experiments and hundreds of comments I have received on my previous blog posts (here and here), its clear to see that when an iPod hard drive comes loose, the entire iPod goes nuts, and doesnt work (it cant read the music, so there is no music to play!).

1. I suggested to Dave that he take a guitar pick (This is an old photo I am reusing where I used a screw driver for my example.. DONT USE A SCREW DRIVER you will scratch the metal part of the case!), and force the pick between the metal and the plastic, being careful not to scratch either surface.

   

2. Once the guitar pick (NOT SCREWDRIVER) is in between the case halves, twist the pick and move it slowly along the seam to release the internal latches. Take your time, so you don’t mark up the case, or Apple will know you were up to something.

   

3. Once you get the case apart, be careful and move the case halves a part, keeping the plastic side down. Be sure not to break the ribbon cable joining the halves.

   
   

4. Next, find the hard drive, it should be easy to see. At the top, it is attached with a large ribbon connection. This is where the magic happens! We need to unplug this cable from the drive, but still leave it semi attached. Pull the cable straight out, unhooking it completely. gently push it back on. enough to hold it in place, but not make a complete connection.

   

   We are trying to simulate what happens when some ipods are dropped. In some cases, the hard drive shifts and the cable becomes unplugged, creating a messed up iPod.

   To test this, gently pick up the iPod and press the scroll wheel. If you can see your songs, you pushed the cable back in to far, unhook it and try again. If you get an error, you did everything just right!

5. To put it back together, flip the metal side over the top and gently squeeze it all together. The case will snap back into place.

   

6. Your iPod should not play, and it looks completely broken.

   

If you return it to Apple under warranty, they should give you a new one. If they wont replace it, open it back up, re attach the hard drive cable and enjoy the dying days of your old iPod.

I haven’t tried doing this this, and I don’t really suggest doing it. I’m posting this for educational purposes, and because it is both an interesting hardware and social hack. I’m guessing that Apple might change their policy if they see a lot of this happening. You probably should just buy a new one. (I hope that covers me legally!)

While we are talking about iPods, subscribe to my podcast!

Last June, I got a new (used) Toshiba M55 laptop.

I got it for an awesome deal because the hard drive was broken, and the screen flickered a lot. I figured for the price it was worth the gamble, even if I had to replace the screen it was still a bargain price.

The hard drive was DOA, and was replaced immediately. I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Gusty as the main OS with windows as the second OS. Easy enough to do.

The screen flickered a bit, but if i messed with the lid enough, moving it back and forth, I could get a good picture. Over time the picture just got worse and worse. It was time to do something about it. I did a quick google search and found a Toshiba M55 LCD replacement guide.

I figured it had to be something with the connections on to the screen or board because when the screen was working, it was working good. The image was great, but it took a bit to get it there.

I followed the guide exactly. I powered it on when I had it torn apart and it worked! It seems that there was to much stress on the LCD cable connection, causing it to freak out when the lid was in specific positions.

I followed this guide to open up the keyboard. (steps 6 - 8 only). I was able to give the cable a bit more slack, and every thing started working like it should! I put it all together and it’s like I have a new laptop, and all it took was an hour of my time and the guts to do it. I should have cracked this thing open 6 months ago if i knew it was going to be this easy!

I hope this helps someone else with a similar problem.

I like my iPhone, and I like Flickr, I also like to blog and photoBlog.

The iPhone has a really good camera and a constant internet connection and real web browser. It sounds like the ultimate photo Blogging tool, right?

Problems

1. There is not file access to iPhones pictures through the web browser, so forget uploading pictures directly to Flickr
2. It’s possible to email pictures to Flickr, but AT&T has a hidden back door charge of $0.50 for ever picture emailed via the iPhone, so uploading 20 pictures would cost me $10 extra! forget that!

I modified my iPhone a while back, and there are two applications currently that get around both of these problems, iFlickr and Pushr

iFlickr sucks because you have to take the picture using their application, and you cant upload any existing pictures on your IPhone.

Pushr is closer to what I want. You take pictures with the default camera application, then fire up Pushr. Pushr will push ALL the pictures you have on your phone to Flickr. This sounds good in theory, but what if you don’t want to push all your pictures to Flickr? You have the option to de-select the pictures you don’t want to send. So if you have 100 pictures, and you only want to upload one, you will have to de-select the 99 you don’t want to send. The whole de-select process seems counter intuitive. I think you should be able to select the pictures you want to send and just push those.

Because of the current limitations of both iPhone Flickr related apps, I am with out a good way to send my pics to Flickr.

I decided to send an email to Chris Lee the creator of Pushr and ask for a change in the software…

Josh Highland to Chris Lee:
Is there a way to make Pushr work in such a way that a user selects what pictures they want to send to flickr, rather then picking the photos they dont want to send?

example : I have 100 photos on my iphone, and i only want to send one of them to flickr. I would liek to select that one photo to send, instead of removing the 99 photos to not send

Chris Lee to Josh Highland
Hi Josh,
Currently, there is no way to do that. However, it’s a feature request
I’ve gotten, so I may add a preference for it in a future version.
Thanks for using Pushr!

So at least a change like that is on the radar of the developer of Pushr. I hope it gets implemented soon. Until then I’m stuck having to wait until I get to a computer to upload all my cool pics to my photo blog.

If you know of a good solution to my iPhone + Flickr problem, please let me know!

If you looked through my permanent record, you would see that in the past my friends and I have been known to do dangerous things with fireworks.

When it comes to safe fireworks, sparklers are cool until you learn how to make the other fireworks explode. This year I found out how to make sparklers cool again by making them explode!

I guess you take a bundle of sparklers, wrap them all in electrical tape really tightly, leave one out for a fuse. light and run. amazing! This is for sure something that I’m going to add to my bag of tricks!

Here is the video on how it all works:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/697373/more_bang_for_your_buck/

Over the last weekend, I overhauled a “broken” laptop that I got of craigs list for a steal. Its a Toshiba m55. 1.6 ghz pentium M, 1 gig of ram, wide 15in glossy screen, 2 batteries, charger, needed a hard drive, $200… stoked! (I replaced the hard drive with a 120 gig western digital)

I’ve been wanting a laptop more and more recently because I feel like I could be getting things when I am away from the notPop Labs (aka my computer room). I end up spending a lot of time on my cell phone (t-mobile mda … http://www.mdaTweak.com), but never really getting anything accomplished. Now I can use my phone as a cellular modem, and use my laptop to get some work done.

I think having a decent laptop also opens me up to the world of coffee shops. I always seemed to do my best school work in a coffee shop, lets see if that holds true when it comes to working on my personal websites.

Look out world, Josh Highland is computing wirelessly now again (this is my 4th laptop in 10 years)!

update: On top of getting the laptop for a great price, my friend Luis Majano just hooked me up with a super sweet laptop bag for it. woo woo!

Last Saturday, Massive mat and I stood inline with a bunch of other geeks to get Nintendo Wiis. I will write a blog post about that, and about how fun the Wii is to play, but for now, im going to bitch about it for a minute…

One of the big reasons that I wanted to get a Wii was the fact that you are able to play EVERY nintendo game format on it. NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and now Wii games! To play the old games you have to join their version of XBox Live, and buy them.

The Wii is so futuristic, that it doesnt have an ethernet port on it, no no, wifi is the way nintendo wii rolls!

I wanted to buy some of these old games and play them, but you have to connect to a wifi connection first. Not a problem, I have a Linksys WRT54GL router upstairs serving out some 802.11g love.

The Wii would see the access point, I would enter the WPA password, then the Wii would think about connecting then spit back and error, "ERROR 52230 contact support.nintendo.com". SUCK!

Ok, so I go to the nintendo site, search forever and then find a place to enter my error code. It returns something stupid about trying changing the channel that the router broadcasts on. Weird, but I try it… no LUCK.

I searched up and down the web seeing people with similar problems to mine. I couldnt figure it out for the life of me. All my other wifi gear worked fine.

I did a little research on what was actually inside the Wii as far as a wireless card. Thats when I found this site,
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=677908&seqNum=2&rl=1 where they actually took a Wii apart.
I found my answer there in the form of a simple statement "The 802.11 card only operates in the 2412-2462GHz range. In 802.11b mode"

802.11b MODE! WTF!

I dont own any 802.11b equipment, only 802.11g. 802.11b is shitty and slow compared to G. NO WHERE IN THE NINTENDO MANUALS OR ON THE NINTENTDO SITE DOES IT SAY THAT IT ONLY OPERATES AT 802.11b.

Why would nintendo do such a stupid thing? B is 5 times slower then G! Who the hell rund 802.11b equipment? My Damn cell phone has 802.11G support in it! Im more pissed that they didnt print it anywhere in the manual. They talk about WEP and WPA, but not the fucking protocol they use for the connection!

So I logged into my router and put it on Mixed (B/G) Mode, and what do you know, the Wii was able to connect to the nintendo server and get the updates that I needed to connect to their store.

So if you are having problems connecting your Wii to some WiFi. make sure that the router is set to mixed mode.

Nintendo, thank you for a great machine. Screw you for putting in a slow wifi card and not telling people more details about it.

I hope someone else can finally get their Wii online after reading this post.

Its not a secret that I have "burning wrist hurt disease". My doctor likes to refer to it as carpel tunnel syndrome.

Lately my wrists have been killing me. At work, I have a dell standard style type of keyboard, and a standard dell mouse with a scroll wheel. My index finger on my right hand is shot from the scrolling motion, and my hands are jacked from typing. I needed some thing better. Enter the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000.

After I did a little research I decided that the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000 was for me. The interesting thing about the keyboard is that it has a "zoom slider". The zoom slider is a cool idea but executed poorly. Who wants a "zoom" slider to change the font size of the screen?

It would be so much better if it was a slider for scrolling. I hit the web and found out there was a hack to do just this over at pain in the tech. In a few steps I was able to change the zoom slider into a scroll slider.

I was happy, but I found that a lot of applications still zoomed in on the text instead of scrolling, like outlook. I decided to hack the commands a bit more, and remove the zoom functionality all together, and replace it with scrolling.

To make things better, Here is a copy of the commands.xml file that I am running, so you can share in my joy also.

To change the zoom into a scroll, using my patched commands.xml file:

1. Navigate to the your Intelitype Pro directory, mine is "C:Program FilesMicrosoft IntelliType Pro"
2. Rename the existing commands.xml to commands.xml_OLD
3. Place the new commands.xml into that directory
4. Reboot the computer

With the scroll hack in place, I can scroll a window without having to take my hands off the keyboard. Thanks Miscrosoft for making a sweet keyboard, but no thanks for not making it a scroll slider in the first place. A zoom slider is just a stupid idea.

Alot of people I know dont like firefox because its slow. after following my insteructions here, firefox will be anything but slow:

1. Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
   
   network.http.pipelining
   
   network.http.proxy.pipelining
   
   network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

   Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

   Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
   
   Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
   
   Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
   

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
   
   If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!"