The Adventures of Systems Boy!

OGG Theora Converter

July 3, 2009 – 10:54 AM

John Gruber today opines that there is no GUI interface for the command-line tool for converting Quicktime movies into the OGG Theora format — a very handy thing to be able to do if you want to serve video to Firefox-type browsers using HTML 5’s <video> and <audio> tags.

Since this is something I do a lot — wrap command-line tools in Automator wrappers, that is — I thought I’d whip up a GUI method for doing this. So here it is.

The OGG Theora converter

It’s a Finder workflow, so download it, unstuff it and put it in:
~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder

Placing the workflow there will add the item to the Finder’s right-click contextual menu. To use the workflow, simply right-click a video you want to convert, navigate to More->Automator and choose “Convert To OGG” from the menu.

Ogg Converter Workflow

While this crunches you’ll see a badge in your menubar:

Progress

Wait a few minutes and you’ll see the OGG version appear right alongside your original movie.

Completed OGG File

And remember, you must first install the OGG Theora converter tool, ffmpeg2theora, for all this to work.

I’ve made a droplet-style version of this as well. Place this version anywhere — your Desktop, the Applications folder, your Dock — and when you want to convert a video, simply drag the video onto the droplet.

Enjoy!

UPDATE:
Folks, for those of you having trouble installing the workflow version, here’s a tip, as mentioned in the comments: Double-clicking the unstuffed workflow will open it in Automator. From here you can choose File->Save As Plug-in…

Installing Workflows the Easy Way

Make sure it’s a Plug-in for: Finder, and hit the Save button. It should now show up as an option in the Finder’s contextual menu.

And remember, there is a Droplet Version as well whose installation is drag-and-drop. To anywhere!

Hope that helps!

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Interface, Internet, ScriptSharing, Video | Comments (12)

Drives Die

June 29, 2009 – 10:00 AM

So we had yet another calamity in the Systems Boy household last week: A hard drive failure in a four year old, 15″ PowerBook. Oddly, a workmate had the exact same thing happen to him within days of our catastrophe. In fact, there’s been all manner of hardware failure in recent days. I know that drives are prone to dying after a number of years, but geez! It sure seems like lately there’s been a steady shit stream aimed squarely at the tech fan. Makes me ponder the more cosmic aspect of this biz.

[Gazes dreamily off into space for a moment. Then abruptly snaps to.]

The trigger for this failure, ironically, was our attempt to make a backup. (Oh, technology gods, thou art a riot!) See, our original goal was to update the OS to Leopard, but with all the craziness going on these days we decided to clone the drive before we proceeded with said update. But in the course of cloning, it would appear in retrospect, we hit a bad block and triggered the first of what would be many, many disk errors. Unable to pull a backup, we began our descent into drive repair hell in our latest heroic attempt to salvage that ever-important thing contained on and lost from drives: the data.

File-Level Attempts
Our first try was with Disk Utility, which consistently reported, in all red text, that it could neither verify nor repair the file system. Right. On to attempt number two.

Disk Warrior is my go-to utility for any sort of file system damage that Disk Utility is unable to repair. I’ve rarely seen a disk that one of these two apps couldn’t fix. Today would be one of those rare days. After mounting the drive on a known good system using Target Disk Mode, we let Disk Warrior perform its initial scan of the drive. What we found was decidedly ugly. Disk Warrior told us that it was unable to replace the borked directory with its shiny new, replacement directory because of a “disk malfunction.”

That’s when we knew the drive was fried.

Disk Warrior Report: Bad News

When a hard drive has problems, 99% of the time those problems are directory related. That is, the hard drive contains data about the files on disk — where they belong, how many there are, how the disk is partitioned and so on. And usually, when there is a problem with a drive, it is because this information has been corrupted somehow. These days there are numerous utilities that can easily and accurately repair these sorts of problems, Apple’s included Disk Utility among them. Sometimes the damage is too extensive, though, so we turn to something a bit more drastic, like Disk Warrior. Disk Warrior forgoes the repair, and instead scans the disk and creates a brand-spankin’ new directory, replacing the broken one with its new one once you’ve made sure everything is cool, and perhaps made a backup. Now, when Disk Warrior is unable to do this it’s indicative of a much more serious problem. When this happens it is very likely that the drive hardware is beginning to fail.

Time for a new drive.

What Disk Warrior does in these instances is it shows you the best picture it can muster of the drive’s contents in a read-only preview, and then advises you to backup as much as you can before total failure. So that’s what we did. You’re never sure how much time you have in these situations, so we went through folder by folder trying to locate and backup the most important files first. With each successive copy the drive became slower and slower. Luckily, we were able to pull the most recent, most important files. Most everything else was backed up or able to be easily reconstructed.

Block-Level Attempts
Once we had gotten the most important stuff we decided to see what else we could get. I tried running some rsync commands and got some stuff that way, but not much, and it was taking forever. Once I’d given up trying things at the file level, I decided to make my last ditch effort with a well-worn but powerful little UNIX command called, simply, dd. (No, it does not stand for “Drives Die,” though maybe it should.)

The dd command reads data from a disk at the block level and copies it from standard input to standard output which can then be written to a file of your choosing. I use dd by running it on the /dev entry of the drive in question and writing the output to a disk image file (DMG):

sudo dd bs=512 if=/dev/disk3s3 of=/Volumes/Work/LastDitch-DD-01.dmg conv=noerror,sync

The good thing about dd is that you can instruct it to skip damaged sections of the disk. That’s what the “noerror” option is for. The downside to dd is that it wants to read the entire disk, and that makes it very slow. In this instance I was not able to rescue any data, mainly because, as I soon discovered from my dd runs, the disk was just too far gone. I did learn some interesting strategies for using dd to recover data though.

The first thing you can try if dd is running slowly is to increase the block size. This is how much data dd will consider before moving to the next read. The default is 512 bytes. I’ve read upping that to 51200 will sometimes yield speedier results:

sudo dd bs=51200 if=/dev/disk3s3 of=/Volumes/Work/LastDitch-DD-02.dmg conv=noerror,sync

In my case it did not, primarily, I believe, because there was a problem in the beginning of the drive, and dd was having trouble moving past that spot. So another thing you can tell dd to do is to skip a certain portion of the drive, say the first 2 GBs:

sudo dd bs=51200 if=/dev/disk3s3 skip=2000000 of=/Volumes/Work/LastDitch-DD-03.dmg conv=noerror,sync

Finally, you can also tell dd to only write in 1 GB chunks, using the count option:

sudo dd bs=51200 if=/dev/disk3s3 count=1000000 skip=2000000 of=/Volumes/Work/LastDitch-DD-03.dmg conv=noerror,sync

I was getting some good results after having skipped the first 2 GBs — apparently they were really damaged — so I decided to write a script that would skip the first 2 GBs and then begin writing out 1 GB chunks of data. It would’ve looked something like this:

sudo dd bs=51200 if=/dev/disk3s3 count=1000000 skip=2000000 of=/Volumes/Work/LastDitch-DD-Chunck-01.dmg conv=noerror,sync
sudo dd bs=51200 if=/dev/disk3s3 count=1000000 skip=3000000 of=/Volumes/Work/LastDitch-DD-Chunck-02.dmg conv=noerror,sync
sudo dd bs=51200 if=/dev/disk3s3 count=1000000 skip=4000000 of=/Volumes/Work/LastDitch-DD-Chunck-03.dmg conv=noerror,sync
...

Etc, etc, up to the 40 GBs needed to scour the drive. I never got to write the script, though, because the last dd command seized up and the drive began making the clicking, knocking and whirring sounds of its agonized and tortured death. It was quickly dying. We could do no more.

At this point, mainly for my own edification, I decided to see what could be done outside the confines of my home office. I decided to get a quote from Drive Savers.

Hardware-Level Attempt
Drive Savers, perhaps wisely, does not list prices for their services on their website. To get an estimate you have to give them a call. When I called them I was greeted by a very friendly and helpful service person — yes, person — which was really nice. The last thing you want to deal with when you’re having a mechanical failure is a machine. The person on the other end of the line asked me a few basic questions to gauge what state the drive was currently in, things like what attempts I had made to rescue the data, would the drive mount, and the like. After entering this info into her systems she directed me the “Tips, Techniques and Solutions” page on their website (very useful — love the drive sound audio samples), stressing above all that in order to have the best chance of recovery at this point the drive should not be powered on again. She also offered up some information about the company and what they do: For one, they started with Mac data recovery and are an all-Mac shop, which surprised me a little. She also pointed me to information on the Drive Savers clean room, a vital part of data recovery at the hardware level. She then took my email and contact info and gave me both a written and verbal estimate of how much I could expect to spend should I decide to go ahead and have Drive Savers attempt to save my data (I don’t think they’ll actually save the drive). All in all it was a very pleasant and informative experience. Normally I am loathe to use the phone for business, but Drive Savers really seems to know what they’re doing, at least when it comes to pre-sales customer service, and that counts for a lot in my book.

This is, of course, all prep for the fact that, if you do want to make the attempt at data recovery, you’ll be expected to drop a significant amount of money. This is hardly surprising. Those clean rooms don’t look particularly cheap to build or maintain. And if data recovery at the hardware level is anything like it is at the software level, it is a laborious and time consuming process. I was given a range of prices ($500-$2700 dollars) and told that the cheapest I could expect to get away with — the economy plan, which isn’t as fast as some of the other, more expensive plans — was $500 dollars. But it was likely I’d pay somewhere closer to the upper third of the range, more like $1500 to $2000 dollars. It all depended, of course, on how much data Drive Savers could recover.

I didn’t really find these prices particularly surprising. I’d long heard how much such a recovery could cost. That it would be pricey. I was glad that I was not in a situation that required me to fork out this amount of money. I’m glad such a service exists for the odd catastrophe, though I hope never to have to use it. Drive Savers’ website offers advice on keeping backups:

“Backup strategies:
* Invest in redundant backup systems
* Establish a structured backup procedure to make copies of all critical data files, using software compatible with the operating system and applications
* Periodically test the backups to verify that data, especially databases and other critical files, are being backed up properly
* Keep at least one verified copy of critical data offsite”

Sage advice, all. Take it from those who know all too well.

The Belly of the Beast
Once we’d decided not to use a hardware data recovery service the only thing left to do was spec out, buy and install a new hard drive. This wasn’t terribly difficult, but as is so often the case, there was the odd snag or two.

Before we even bought a drive, I wanted to see how hard it would be to open the PowerBook for servicing. If it was going to be a bear — and some PowerBooks are certainly easier to crack than others — I’d let the fine technicians at Tekserve do the job. So I went in search of manuals and instructions for this particular model of PowerBook. Without too much trouble I was able to locate, at Apple’s site, the manual for our 1.67 MHz, 15″ Aluminum PowerBook. It contained no instructions for hard drive replacement, which is generally a sign that Apple would rather you not attempt the repair yourself. That got me a little worried.

Finally, however, I found instructions — great instructions, no less — at the venerable — awesome, actually iFixit.com. iFixit, for those of you who don’t know, provides step-by-step, illustrated guides on taking apart and performing repairs on Apple hardware. For free. They’re amazing. I feel guilty not buying anything from their site. Oh yeah, they also sell parts, tools and service as well. I love them. And from what I could see, the repair would be tedious — lots of screws — and would require a trip to the hardware store — blasted tiny hex screws! — but it would be doable. Still, taking things one step at a time, I thought I’d perform the teardown before buying the drive. Just in case.

And perform I did. Using iFixit’s excellent guide, I was able to crack the PowerBook in short order. I was ready to buy a drive.

Buying a Drive
There are two things SysAdmins typically are, particularly when it comes to technology: cheap and lazy. Hunting for a replacement drive brought both of these qualities in my personality to bear. I was looking for the cheapest replacement I could find, at the location closest to my house, a SysAdmin’s dream hunt. The closest proper computer tech shop to me is Tekserve, with Best Buy a close second. Tekserve doesn’t list what bare drives they carry, if any. But Best Buy seems to have the goods. But Best Buy is still a good half hour train ride, so I did some physical recon at my nearest Radio Shack, which happens to be right around the corner. They informed me that, though they did not have any bare drives in stock, they did have portable USB drive on sale. Drives from which I could pull and the internal component and install it in the now drive-less PowerBook. In fact, they had a 160 GB Iomega Prestige for less than a bare drive would have run me at Best Buy — a mere $75 clams post-sales-tax. Not bad. I took it.

I’d like to pause here and see if anyone can guess why this didn’t work out for me. You have pretty much all the data you need in this article to figure it out. But don’t feel bad if you can’t. The good lord knows I surely didn’t. I’ll wait a minute… Pretend there’s Jeopardy countdown music playing… Aaand…

Okay. Did you guess it?

I got the drive home, popped it out of its case and went to put it in the open PowerBook. But it didn’t fit. (Have you guessed it yet?) Here’s the thing: PowerBooks use 2.5″ ATA drives (Parallel ATA, or PATA), but drives in today’s externals are all now SATA (Serial ATA) drives. Blast!

Oh well. At least it was cheap.

Another quick look at the web revealed that all the bare drives at Best Buy were SATA as well. Blast again!

The nearest ATA drive I could find was at J&R, which is all the way downtown, almost at the very tippy-tip of Manhattan — far. So that’s where we went.

Once we got back, we installed the drive and — the very first thing to go right all day — it worked. Perfectly. Things were finally looking up.

Once we had installed the drive it was simply a matter of formatting it, installing the latest version of Leopard (which is all we ever wanted to do in the first place) and copying over the rescued and reconstructed data. Oh, did I mention that the reason the client wanted Leopard was for Time Machine? Yup. Backups. Great timing. So we set up Time Machine as well. All that went exceedingly smoothly and our repair is, at last, complete. Whew! What an ordeal!

But, man, did I ever learn a lot.

The Life and Death of Hard Drives
So yes, drives die. How they die, though, is almost as important as how they lived, and certainly as interesting. It’s somewhat comforting to know that this drive, while quite dead indeed, did not die in vain. Rarely have I had the opportunity to learn so much about practical drive recovery. I have that PowerBook drive — specifically its death, in fact — to thank for my lesson.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Hardware, NIX, Systems | Comments (3)

Experimenting with DokuWiki

June 26, 2009 – 10:00 AM

Wikis are just one more thing I’ve always wanted to play around with. And my job has, once again, afforded me the opportunity to do just that. We’re currently using an engine called DokuWiki, so I decided to kick its tires and see what it — and wikis in general — are all about.

DokuWiki’s front page describes it thusly:

“DokuWiki is a standards compliant, simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation of any kind. It is targeted at developer teams, workgroups and small companies. It has a simple but powerful syntax which makes sure the datafiles remain readable outside the Wiki and eases the creation of structured texts. All data is stored in plain text files – no database is required.”

No Database
That last little bit — the lack of a database — is actually one of the things that makes DokuWiki unique. It is both its strength and its weakness, and one of its defining characteristics.

DokuWiki

If you are looking to install a documentation engine for a small to medium-sized workgroup, it’s true: DokuWiki is great. It’s very easy to install and only requires Apache and PHP be running on your server. This means it can be installed on any Mac OS X machine without having to install or configure much beyond Personal Web Sharing. I say, “much” because you will have to activate (not install) PHP, which isn’t too hard for savvy users, but isn’t exactly mom-friendly either. Still, it beats having to also install and enable a database application like MySQL, which most other wikis require. So DokuWiki is relatively easy to setup.

That lack of a database is nice, in that it makes installation quick and easy. But it’s also DokuWiki’s weakness. DokuWiki writes entries to flat files, which is much slower than writing to a database. For small to mid-sized sites, DokuWiki will be fine, but it’s important to keep in mind that the flat-file model only scales to a certain point. If you’re worried your wiki might need to grow very large some day, DokuWiki may not be for you.

Wherefore Wiki?
That said, once installed, DokuWiki is very easy to use. It does use its own markup for page layout, but that markup is exceedingly sensible and easy to learn. My biggest stumbling block was getting started: How do you create a page? Well, once you know, it’s pretty simple, but figuring it out took me a minute. The easiest way to create a page, is to navigate to that page. If the page doesn’t exist, DokuWiki allows you to create it. See? Easy! Maybe too easy!

So what’s it for? Well, I’ll tell you, TASB was almost a wiki rather than a blog. While both are types of Content Management Systems (CMSes), and essentially do the same thing — allow a person to easily and rapidly build and read a structured store of text and media data — the difference is intent.

Blogs — and therefore blog engines — are geared toward personal, diaristic, periodic writing. They’re usually organized chronologically, like a diary, and require no special markup when creating entries. Entries, once made, are rarely revised. One of the things I enjoy about writing this blog is that it’s a bit more personal. It’s a record of personal experience as much as, if not more than, documentation. So I stuck with using the blog format. I like to be chatty.

Wikis, on the other hand, are made to be accessed like a reference, like an encyclopedia, for instance. They’re not chronological, but are usually ordered and read alphabetically; and wiki articles are made to be maintained and updated as information changes. Wikipedia is a great example of this. There is also a blog called the Tao of Mac that uses a wiki engine for content management, showing that, in the end, the two types of engines do essentially the same thing. They simply present different capabilities to their users based largely on the purpose of the site.

Conclusion
If you’re looking for a quick, easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain storehouse of information (either for yourself, or for use with others), a wiki is a great thing to have. Need to document a procedure for your workgroup? Put it on the wiki. Need to let everyone know where that essential file is? Put it on the wiki. Just want to jot down some notes for the general use? Put ‘em on the wiki.

After using one for a few days I can already see just how damn handy a wiki is to have. And DokuWiki is super-easy both to install and learn. If you just need something small to document procedures or productions — or if you’re just looking to dip your toe into the world of wikis — DokuWiki is very nice indeed.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Internet, Lab, Server | Comments (9)

Voice Control Surprise

June 24, 2009 – 10:00 AM

I think the Voice Control screen on my new iPhone is damn pretty. I doubt I’ll use it much as it tends not to work as well in noisy areas, and I live in one of the noisiest areas on the planet. But there’s one nice touch that might make the feature that much more worth trying.

Voice Control

Holding the Home button on the phone for a few seconds produces the Voice Control interface. The nice thing is, it works even when the screen is locked. So it’s pretty hands-free.

This may be obvious to some, but I, for one, was pleasantly surprised.

You may now go about your regular business.

Go on now. Scoot!

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Hardware, Interface, iPhone | Comments (2)

Voice Memos Cuteness

June 23, 2009 – 10:00 AM

Here’s a fun one: Tap the microphone image in the Voice Memos application in iPhone OS 3.0 and the virtual VU meter will respond.

Voice Memos Touch Response

The peak light will even flash red, just like a real recorder attached to a real mic.

Blowing into the screen will do nothing, however.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Hardware, Humor, Interface, iPhone | Comments (1)

On Vacation

June 23, 2009 – 9:00 AM

Beginning Tuesday (Hey! That’s today!) I’ll be on vacation for the week. But don’t worry! You’ll still get your regular, US Recommended Daily (well, not quite daily) Allowance of systemsy goodness while I’m gone. How, you say? Well, through the magic of scheduling, of course.

See ya! Woudn't Wanna Be Ya!

Never trust a blog engine that doesn’t allow you to schedule posts in advance, I always say. And since Wordpress certainly has such a feature, I’ve queued up a delightful peppering of articles to amuse, inform and entertain you throughout the week.

Feel free to comment (I know how you love to comment), but bear in mind, I won’t be responding until after I return. So expect delays.

Okay! Off I go!

Whee!

By systemsboy | Posted in TheBlog | Comments (5)

iPhone Compass Confusion

June 22, 2009 – 12:36 PM

Taking the iPhone 3GS on the subway will repeatedly get its compass all out of whack. It sits and spins in all directions. Eventually it produces this screen:

Compass Interference

I don’t know how the compass works in the phone. But I’d venture a guess that the big, giant electrified track might have something to do with the “Interference” referenced in the alert.

Fun stuff. Love the figure 8. Very classy.

Is that, like, a nautical thing?

By systemsboy | Posted in Hardware, Interface, iPhone | Comments (4)

Upgrading from the 1st Gen iPhone to the 3GS

June 21, 2009 – 10:00 AM

Much of the press surrounding the iPhone 3GS deals with whether or not this is a compelling upgrade to the 3G iPhone. No one is really comparing it much to the 1st Generation iPhone, which is what I’m upgrading from.

Some write-ups are describing the iPhone 3GS as “evolutionary, but not revolutionary.” Funny, ’cause that was how I felt (and what a lot of people wrote) when the 3G came out. It didn’t seem like a big, huge leap forward from my 1st Gen model, and in terms of battery life it was actually a step backwards. So I stuck it out and waited for the next, next version. And now it’s here.

The iPhone 3GS

While going from the 3G to the 3GS might seem like a mere evolutionary step, going from a 1st Gen iPhone to a 3GS feels like evolutionary leapfrog. Like when proto-humans discovered that big, black monolith and suddenly got the idea for tools and beating the tar out of each other. It’s big, my friends, for me anyway.

In addition to all the cool new stuff you’ve been reading about, new for me is also GPS and faster network access thanks to the addition of 3G, and the new (again, to me) case style, which I must admit I love the feel of despite preferring the look of the 1st Gen’s metal back. The plastic model feels almost perfect in your hand. The way the edges are tapered gives the phone a light, comfortable handling, and the texture of the plastic should keep me (and my mom) from dropping the damn thing so much. These models make the 1st Gens feel clumsy and awkward by comparison.

But the real reasons I’ve upgraded — the real evolutionary jumps for me, the things I’ve been longing for the most — are:

Improved call quality
Performance
Video

Two of these represent, to me, the most annoying things about my current iPhone — the crappy call quality and the glacial speed with which applications open. The last, video, is just something I’ve wanted for a long, long time. Just something cool. Let me just talk briefly about each.

Improved Call Quality

Though it didn’t bother me at first, so enamored of my iPhone was I, the call quality on my 1st Gen really leaves much to be desired. Which is a nice way of saying it sucks ass. Audio drops out as a matter of course on pretty much every call. And it seems to be more the phone’s issue than AT&T’s as it even happens during the ring period before the person I’m calling picks up. This makes simply ordering delivery torturous, and now I’m so instantly cranky whenever I’m on the phone that all my friends think I hate them. (I don’t hate you, friends, I promise!)

Call Quality Improvement? Maybe?

Results
So far I’d describe the improvement in call quality as marginal at best. The 3GS is a bit louder than my old phone, and that helps. But the dropouts still occur, and that’s disappointing. I was really hoping the call quality was appreciably better on the 3GS as it’s one of my least favorite things about my 1st Gen. This is something I’ll have to suss out more over time. But overall I’d say the gain here is only a slight one. Disappointing.

Performance

When the Notes application takes 20 seconds to launch, you know your computing device is slow. This may well be due to the fact that I have so many damned notes in there, sure. But that only underscores my need for speed. Maybe when the phone was new and not laden with data I could get away with the slower hardware. But it’s not so data-free now, and that’s not going to change. So it’s great that Apple’s focused on speed for this model. It’s been another big aggravation as my iPhone use has matured. And not just in Notes, but in Safari, Contacts and the Camera as well. These are apps in which a lack of speed gets annoying fast. I mean, uh, quickly.

Battery life is also a crucial part of performance (or I’ll lump it in with performance for lack of a better place), and a big reason I didn’t upgrade to the 3G. As I alluded to earlier, battery life in the 3G was actually inferior to the 1st Gen models. I can get by fine as long as my battery lasts a full day; I don’t mind charging every night. But the 3G, by most accounts, often needed charging before day’s end. And while I could get used to it, I’d rather not.

Notes: Immediate Access

Results
Well, again, it remains to be seen whether performance decreases as I continue to use the device. But so far I’m very pleased to report that the performance gains going from a 1st Gen iPhone to the 3GS are significant. I can begin editing notes now immediately after launching the application — I’d call zero seconds down from 20 a big gain. All my applications, in fact, launch much more quickly. And browsing the web in Safari is much faster than it used to be, both because of the hardware improvements and because I’m now on 3G. Many things that were just impractical before — like finding something in the Maps application, which used to be so slow I’d stopped using it unless I was on WiFi — are now acceptably fast. Sometimes even pleasantly speedy. Though I don’t need to reboot very often, it’s nice to see that even boot times are much faster — my phone boots in about 22 seconds. And, fortunately, as reported, the 3GS’s battery, like my trusty 1st Gen, seems to regularly make it to bedtime without much trouble. Overall, I’d say the performance gains are a huge win when comparing the 3GS to the 1st Gen model.

Video

Long ago I opined the iPhone’s lack of video capabilities (and then ran out and bought a Flip Mino HD). It always seemed like something Apple could have included as a software update. But as the updates have progressed this looks not to be the case (or at least not something that’s ever going to happen, for, I’m assuming, good reasons). Alas, in the end, video acquisition on the iPhone requires a hardware update. And now that it’s here I can finally leave the Flip at home from now on. Video’s become just one more thing I can do without the need for an extra device. My pockets are so empty these days!

Video Shooting and Editing

Results
The video produced by the iPhone 3GS is surprisingly good in my initial tests. Though it’s not HD, compared to the Flip the color is quite good. And it seems to handle both camera and subject movement — big problems on the Mino HD — pretty well. Don’t get me wrong. This is still a phone camera. But it’s easily the best phone camera for video I’ve ever seen. And the editing and upload capabilities make it all the more fun. But more than anything, it’s the convenience of having decent video in your pocket at all times that makes this a great feature. I’m pretty excited to start really shooting more with this thing. Its ubiquity may just make it my primary video camera. Another big win for the 3GS.

Anyone want to buy a Mino?

Other Upgrade Faves

CalDAV calendar access in iCal Mobile
I’ve been wanting this for a while. I’ve been using the sync function in iTunes in the interim. But CalDAV support on the phone — in fact, CalDAV support everywhere — is just the right way to do this.

CalDAV: The Way to Go

Search! Everywhere and Anywhere
This is one of those features that, after a while, you start wishing you had. You don’t notice it at first, but the more you start using your phone like the computing device it is, the more you start drawing comparisons to computers, not phones. That’s the point at which certain inequities become increasingly obvious and painful. So it is with Search. It was great when we got it in Contacts. But having it one place only made me crave it in others. Glad it’s finally here.

Search with Spotlight

Cut, Copy, Paste (of course)
I will say, I’ve been fine without this feature until fairly recently as well. In fact the timing of all this stuff is pretty good from where I sit. The 1st Gen iPhone was good enough to keep me busy and happy for the past two years, and only in the last few months of those two years have I really started to long for things like Search and Cut, Copy, Paste. Again, as I use my phone more and more like a computer, these things become more important.

Copy & Paste

Undo
What computer would be complete without an undo feature? Well, iPhones have been for some time now. But no longer. Undo is here and it’s even fun! Just shake to activate. (No, the phone, silly!)

Undo

Camera Roll
New to the Camera Roll, both when accessing it from the Camera or from the Photos app, is the ability to multiple-select items for sharing, deleting or copying. It’s a nice implementation, and something I turn out to be using a lot, especially as I write this article.

Camera Roll

Macro, Focus and Exposure Control
The camera in the iPhone 3GS now features focus and exposure control, which will really help make photos look a lot nicer and add to the types of photos you can take with the phone. And the macro ability adds a great deal of functionality. Ever try to take a close-up with the original iPhone camera? Blur city! Now you can take photos of printed text, computer monitors and yes, even bugs. Okay, maybe not tiny bugs. But probably big ol’ water bugs.

Focus & Depth of Field

Compass
Folks outside of New York might not appreciate the compass in and of itself, but if you ever have to take a subway in this town you know that disoriented feeling you get when you step out of the station into the daylight. “Okay,” you think to yourself, “Which way is north.” Any New Yorker can find her way with that simple piece of information, but sometimes getting it requires walking a block in the wrong direction, and if you’re anywhere south of Houston, god help you. Well, no more! From here on out, discombobulated commuters will simply activate the compass on their iPhones and be on their merry ways. And that’s all we ever really wanted.

Compass

Maps Reborn
Maps, combined with the new compass and the new (to me) 3G are a whole new, wonderful ballgame for me now. I’ve already used Maps a couple times now, both to find places and to orient myself. It’s fantastic!

Fast Directional Maps

What’s Old is New Again

So, am I happy with my new phone? Yes. Very.

Am I ecstatic?

Here’s the thing. On the whole, after transferring over all my apps and information, the iPhone 3GS is, in more ways than not, the same phone as my 1st Gen. I’d say 75-80 percent of what I do with my phone and how I use it will remain unchanged. I mean, there’s just not much that can compare to your first iPhone experience, right? After that, nothing seems radical. But least of all a phone that looks and feels almost identical to your last one, that has mainly the same set of features, and whose improvements are mostly on the inside. It does all the same stuff, it just does it a lot better.

Overall the iPhone 3GS is a big step up for me. And while call quality could still be a lot better, this upgrade addresses two of my biggest complaints about my last model with aplomb: the slowness and the lack of video. And that alone makes upgrading worthwhile to me. The other improvements, partly due to software updates I could have gotten on my old phone, are great and help make the entire experience very satisfying. It’s very much like getting a faster computer. It’s the same sort of feeling. It’s a refresh of a product you’ve know and loved for years.

It’s the same thing, only better. And it was already so good.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Hardware, iPhone | Comments (2)

Delivery

June 19, 2009 – 12:25 PM

There’s a commercial that depicts a school system as run by the courier companies. I forget what the commercial is for. In it a narrator asks, “What if the schools were run by courier companies?” A child is late. The lead delivery guy calls his agents in the field. And within minutes, the child is found and delivered to the school. The implication is that the courier companies are models of super-efficiency and organization.

Funny, but this has never been my experience.

For me, home delivery is an agonizingly worrisome affair. First I make my order, tentatively, gingerly, nervously. I’m then given either a range of dates, or an exact date, depending on my shipping method, when to expect my package. What follows is that, more often than not, on some day within that stated range, after returning home from work, I receive a notice on my door informing that an attempt has been made to deliver my package. From here on out I face an often major quandary.

On the notice it usually says that a signature is required for me to actually receive the package. This is New York, after all. It also states, now, a range of times when the courier will make a subsequent delivery attempt on the next business day. This is generally a range of about 4-8 hours, and those hours almost always occur during a period in which I will be at work. There is no way to negotiate this. If I am to receive a package via courier service, I must be home. I have missed days of work waiting for packages to be delivered. It’s harrowing.

Today I just happen to have the day off by virtue of my regular work schedule. And I just happen to be waiting for my iPhone 3GS to be delivered by FedEx. I’m nervous as a squirrel on crack, and so I keep obsessively checking the my tracking number on FedEx’s website, over and over again, for some sign that something’s gone wrong. I have not showered, nor have I moved my bowels for fear that I might miss the delivery. I am trapped in my apartment afraid to do much of anything. I’ve been waiting since 8 AM. It’s noon.

On my order tracking page I am given certain information about my shipment. Most important to me is the information regarding its whereabouts and the history thereof. Last night my package was in Pennsylvania. Then it was in New Jersey. This morning it made its way to The Bronx. And then, at 8:20 AM, was put on the truck for delivery. And so it’s stayed for nearly 4 hours.

At my order tracking page, with which I’m becoming quite familiar by now, I also see that FedEx has certain information about me. They have my address, of course. But they also have my phone number. I wonder if they have my email.

The tracking page also links to an “E-mail notifications” page, where you can actually set your account up to send emails about the status of your package to up to 5 addresses. You can have them email you about a problem with delivery, after the fact, when it’s to late to correct the problem; or they can email you when the package has been delivered, the one time I don’t need an email because the damn thing is in my hand; or they’ll email you detailed tracking info, which is already available at the tracking page I’ve been reloading all morning. Unfortunately, none of these notifications are useful to me.

See, what I need is the one piece of information that is conspicuously absent from my tracking page. What I want to know is where my package is once it’s on the truck. And, perhaps more importantly, I’d like to know when the driver is in my neighborhood, so that I can be ready for the delivery attempt within a more reasonable time frame.

Why is it that the most vital information is impossible to obtain?

I once had an experience in which I’d arranged to pick a package up from a UPS facility, as the driver refused to leave it at my door and I couldn’t miss work. But due to a communications snafu (or perhaps blind incompetence, I don’t know) when I arrived at the UPS building I was informed that my package was out for delivery. The nice people at the UPS facility tried their best to contact that driver and inform him of the situation, but they seemed unable to do so. Even UPS seems hard pressed to find your package once it’s out on the truck. And they’re in radio communication with the drivers.

If I, as a SysAdmin, were so hard to reach, I would be out of a job. Somehow, people always manage to get ahold of me when they need me. Such is the state of global communications these days.

I really don’t see why FedEx or UPS or DHL — hell, all of them — can’t implement a better notification system. They have methods to determine the exact time the package was delivered. They have my phone number. And the general availability of GPS should make locating the driver at any given time a snap. Is it too much to ask that an automatic text notification (or method of my choosing) be sent to my cell phone when the driver is within a certain range of my address?

This, after all, is the crucial moment for me, and I suspect for lots of folks. This is the time we have to be here, home and ready to answer the door. Why is it the blackout time when it comes to communication?

Shit! Was that the doorbell? Gotta go!

Funny, but this has never been my experience.

Why is it that the most vital information is impossible to obtain?

If I, as a SysAdmin, were so hard to reach, I would be out of a job. Somehow, people always manage to get ahold of me when they need me. Such is the state of global communications these days.

Shit! Was that the doorbell? Gotta go!

By systemsboy | Posted in Systems, iPhone | Comments (2)

Portable Home Directories Part 3: Keychain Oddities

June 18, 2009 – 10:00 AM

Hey, here’s a weird one: I finally got my home account back to working order after my experiment with PHDs only to find that iCal couldn’t open any of my online calendars. It kept saying the password was missing from Keychain, then refusing to let me add one, saying that the “Keychain could not be found.”

Keychain Not Found

The Keychain application also refused to read my keychains. The keychains were there, as they always had been, in ~/Library/Keychains. Keychain.app just refused to see them. Refused to add them — or anything else for that matter — as well. Keychain First Aid reported everything as fine, but the damn things just wouldn’t show up.

Suspecting some sort of weird, post-PHD permissions snafu, I copied the Keychain application to my Desktop and then launched it. This seemed to remedy the problem; the keychains became visible in Keychain.app. But upon re-launching iCal, my keychains became inaccessible again.

Mucking around in Keychain.app, everything looked fine. But I wanted to make sure that my “login” keychain was set to be the default. So I selected another keychain I have, right-clicked it and chose “Make keychain ’systemsboy’ Default,” then did the same to the login keychain, thus resetting it as the default keychain.

Remaking the Default

After doing this I launched iCal and the password complaints were gone; the calendars all loaded properly. Launching Keychain again, however, seemed to break everything. Again! WTF? No matter what I did, Keychain would eventually lose track of my keychains, and this would cause any application that relied on them to screw up. But I did eventually figure it out.

The solution? Well, it’s so simple and so idiotic it’s hardly worth a post. But here you go: I rebooted.

That’s right. A simple reboot and all my troubles were gone.

Remember, kids: reboot, reboot, reboot!

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Lab, Leopard, MacOSX, Server | Comments (0)