I’ve been using Fring to make SkypeOut calls over WiFi. Not only does this shave billed minutes off of my phone bill, but what with the iPhone’s 3G chipset being unreliable as all hell, I honestly prefer to make some of my calls via Skype anyways as long as I know I’m going to be in WiFi range for the duration of the call.
Here’s how to get Fring to work with SkypeOut: prepend the call number a + followed by the country code of the recipient of the call. For example, when calling a phone in the U.S. add +1; (800) 867-5309 then becomes +18008675309. To get the +, I simply press and hold the 0 key on the dial pad in Fring.
I’m not sure that this was always required, as I could have sworn that Fring used to ‘just work’ most of the time, but maybe I’m mistaken. Either way, I’m glad to have it working again!
Since I got the new iPhone 3G, I’ve been getting a whole ton of dropped calls. Not just the normal amount that I used to get on the old iPhone’s crappy reception, but even more weirdly so, calls would drop immediately without any warning — no silence on the other end, no garbled sound, no period of inactivity, nothing other than three maddening beeps and a “Call Failed” message on the phone. It seems that others on the Apple support forums are having the same issue and provide some insight as to what might cause it.
Continue reading ‘Dropped Calls, the New iPhone, and 3G’
For bandwidth shaping reasons, I wanted to be able to allow access to my FTP disk (mounted at /var/ftp) only via FTP (hosted by ProFTPd). As it turns out, this is quite easy to do using a couple of UNIX permissions tricks and some ProFTPd voodoo. Read on for the basic description of how I’ve done it. Continue reading ‘Allowing Access to FTP Disk Only Via FTP’
Since I’m now back on Comcast as my backbone to the great intertubes, I’m able to re-enable the FTP server. I’m proud to announce that the FTP server is back and is available for immediate consumption. This should provide an added benefit over SFTP/SCP in that resuming transfers is easier; especially helpful since I get a great deal of dropped connections (Comcast, are you listening?) on long-lived and/or heavy-traffic sockets. Continue reading ‘FTP Server Back!’
When trying to install some software updates deployed using iPatch, I found that the updater(s) would display their license/readme sheet and then exit as soon as the sheet was closed, presenting only for a second the usual ’select application’ dialog that we’re all used to. It turns out that NuclearMouse was to blame – as soon as I disabled it, iPatch applications worked again!
So, a hint to those with similar issues: disable (or uninstall) NuclearMouse before running iPatch update programs. To do so, simply drag the NuclearMouse.bundle out of your SIMBL plugins directory.
I use VideoDB to keep track of my movie collection. When I’m looking for something to watch out of the collection, often I like to perform a search over the database with some advanced criteria. It’s no secret that the current search features built in to VideoDB are simple at best: you select some search fields and provide some search terms, optionally narrowing by category in addition to said terms and fields. What I wanted was something a little bit more advanced in order to answer queries such as “show me all of my movies from last year that I haven’t seen yet.” With my new advanced search, I can. Continue reading ‘Smarter Searching with VideoDB’
It seems that any developer I ask tells me that it’s currently not possible to play back 1080p H.264 video in Linux. In this post, I respond loud and clear to anyone who has said that: They Are Wrong. But there has to be a catch, right? Of course there is; there’s always a catch. Yes, I can play back some 1080p H.264 video flawlessly in Linux. Yes, I have watched entire movies in this fashion. Yes, there are some clips that I just can’t play back with my setup. Read on for the details of said setup, how I do it, and what the limitations are.
Continue reading ‘HD Video Playback in Linux’
I recently stumbled upon some information on an increased speed offering from Comcast for its high speed internet customers. The plan was referred to as ‘Comcast Blast!’ and is available in some areas already. I read that Comcast is even offering it for free to some of its high speed internet customers for six months, giving them speeds up to 16Mbps down and 2Mbps up. Note that this is quite different from Comcast’s ‘PowerBoost’ which gives customers a temporary surge in maximum speed; Comcast’s Blast! service is supposed to be a fixed constant speed increase.
Last night I called Comcast to get a better idea for the situation and to check if Blast! is available in the Boston area. When I finally got through to Someone Who Knows™ — a kind woman who identified herself as Joy at the Boston Comcast High Speed Internet call center — I was told that Comcast does indeed have a Blast! plan but unfortunately it is not available in the Boston area yet. She told me that they are actively rolling it out to all locations and that ‘within a few months, towards fall, winter and the first of the new year’ I should receive an announcement of the new service in my bill.
Until then, PowerBoost will have to cut it.
Yup, SafariStand is (somewhat) compatible with Safari 3.0! But since there are tons of SafariStand features that I don’t use, your milage may vary. To be honest, the #1 reason I use SafariStand is for the tab sidebar, which works flawlessly save for the close buttons within. More importantly, SafariStand does not seem to impede upon any of Safari 3’s built-in features. A full detail of working and non-working portions of SafariStand follows.
Continue reading ‘SafariStand + Safari 3.0 Beta = Love? (Updated x 3)’
In order to accommodate wider content, I have made the blog slightly wider. Now weighing in at 880 pixels wide, everything should still fit nicely on those of you still on a 1024 pixel screen width, assuming your browser window hogs a sufficient amount of screen real estate. On a larger horizontal resolution? Well, a little whitespace never hurt anyone.
Continue reading ‘Minor Layout Changes (Updated)’
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