Mike Brittain

CNN’s “Unedited” and “Unfiltered” news site, iReport, is showing a false story this morning about Steve Jobs being rushed to the ER.  Apple’s stock price showed a volatile reaction to the news following a pretty decent climb after the market opened this morning.  Someone made money on this — criminal.  I’m all for citizen reporting, but CNN sends mixed signals by attaching its brand to false news and rumors.

I’ve been working on learning Japanese over the last two years, and have been making a better stab at it recently. What I realized would be helpful is a quick translation tool on my phone from English to Japanese. I tried whipping one up with the Google Language API.

Try out this iPhone Translator in your browser or on your iPhone.

1. Open http://m.mikebrittain.com/tr in your iPhone.
   
2. Select a combination of languages you want to translate between, e.g. from English to Japanese.
3. Bookmark the translation page for quick access when your out on the run.

I have a trip planned to Vienna later this year, and it would be really nice to have a quick German to English translation tool on hand. This would be promising if only I had an international data plan.

Other supported languages include Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese.

Please try it out and leave feedback in the comments section below.

(Thanks to DryIcons for the icon I’m using on the site for iPhone and iPod Touch home screens.)

This YouTube video for the Salesforce and Google Apps Integration uses the MacBook Air as the hardware platform that demonstrates the new applications.  The cool thing is that this is where we could be in a few years as more and more data resides online, and not on your hard drive — lightweight, mobile, thin-clients.

According to this post at Jungle Disk, my SSH connections to some servers are stalling (for nearly a minute) because of changes in the DNS resolution in OS X Leopard.  The root cause it probably in my router, which I need to dig into.  In the short-term, I added OpenDNS to my list of DNS servers and that seems to speed things up considerably.

I just called AppleCare for some help with my MacBook. Seems that my DVD/CD drive has shit the bed. The response I got from the phone line was, “Due to an overwhelming demand for our products and services … you’ll have to call back later.” Now, I don’t know what’s worse, being told “the average time on hold is 48 minutes,” or “please, just go away.” I feel like I should at least get to take a number or something. I think there’s something else that burned me about this message (and I love Apple products), the tone in the guy’s voice came across as, “our products are so in demand, that we don’t have time to deal with your crumby issues.”

Hmmm… thumbs down, I think.

Oh well, what can you expect. There’s always something around the corner. I had a lot of reasons that I wanted to wait before buying an iPhone, but in the end, I blame Howie… and the Installer app.

Since I “upgraded” my iPod, it seems that it eats up its battery faster every day. I was pretty certain when I replaced the 20 GB drive with a 30 GB drive that the power consumption would also grow. Additionally, lithium ion batteries are known to have a limited lifespan, as charge capacity dissipates over time. By last week, my iPod’s battery seemed to hold about enough charge to get me to work and would die shortly after that. Moreover, if I changed course in my playlist (e.g. changing artists or songs in mid-stream) more than once or twice in an hour, the added seeks on the hard drive would cause the batter to expire even faster.

The battery meter was never quite right, either. Directly after charging the battery, the meter might read less than 1/4 full. As music played, the meter would rise for a bit. Or, sometimes when the meter was at about 1/2 full, the battery would suddenly quit.

I named my iPod Lazarus. When I replaced the broken hard drive, it got a 2nd life. (No that doesn’t make me Jesus, that’s not where I’m going.) It was time to revive this little guy one more time.

I bought a new battery on eBay. There are a number of suppliers who sell new batteries that fit all varieties of iPods. These come with plastic tools that are useful for prying open the case. I only paid about $12 for this battery, including shipping.

It took only about 10 minutes to open the case and replace the old battery. The new battery actually has close to 50% more capacity than the original battery. It easily holds a charge through 8 hours of play. Good as new… more or less.

My iPod is just over 2 1/2 years old. It’s now had 2 major surgeries and purrs like a kitten. As far as I’m concerned, this thing could easily last another 3 years with regularly scheduled “maintenance”.

Who needs video, anyway?

I’ve been running Parallels on my MacBook so I can boot up a few of the Windows applications I still rely on… which I can tell you is a dwindling number. I noticed a few weeks ago that the clock in Windows XP had gone out of sync on the machine. Basically, if the virtual machine was not running, the Windows clock was completely asleep.

For the first few weeks of running Parallels, I solved this by writing a very simple .bat file that would execute at startup of Windows XP. It ran the Windows time manager and told it to check one of the time servers on the Internet and reset the time on my laptop. I don’t run on a domain or any fancy network at home, so I don’t have a local server I can use for syncing the time.

Anyway, here’s how to set that up:

1. Open a new text file in Notepad
2. Paste the following command (without the quotes) into the file: “w32tm /resync /rediscover”
3. Save the file as synctime.bat. You may find that Notepad automatically helps you by adding on the default .txt extension. If that happens, just rename the file and take off that extension.
4. Put the file somewhere in your path, maybe c:\Windows\system32.
5. Create a shortcut to the synctime.bat file and put it into your Startup folder.

When the operating system is restarted, a command prompt will briefly appear showing the w32tm process running, and then it should go away after your clock has been updated.

Voila!

Well… not exactly. After running this for a few weeks with no trouble, I found that the clock was no longer updating. I opened the command prompt today and entered the w32tm command manually and found the following error:

The computer did not resync because the required time change was too big.

A quick Google search landed me at Microsoft’s TechNet article for Windows Time Service Tools and Settings, which provides in-depth detail on the switches and parameters for using the w32tm utility. Since I’m not running my own time server, most of it was irrelevant to me. I found a couple of registry settings that would correct the issue. These are MaxNegPhaseCorrection and MaxPosPhaseCorrection, and they are found in the registry at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config

The default (decimal) value for both of these keys was 54,000, which is 15 hours. This means that if your local clock and the Internet clock that you are syncing to are within 15 hours of each other, the time on your PC will be updated. If they are more than 15 hours apart, forget it.

The TechNet article highlighted a special case for this setting: “0xFFFFFFFF means always make time correction.” So fixing this issue is just a matter of editing a couple of Registry keys.

1. Open up the Registry Editor. (From your Start Menu, select “run” and enter “regedit”.)
2. Browse down to the “config” key to find the phase correction settings.
3. Double-click on MaxNegPhaseCorrection to edit the value. It will read “d2f0″ in the hexidecimal value, or 54000 in the decimal value. Select “hexidecimal” and enter “ffffffff” in the field.
4. Click “OK”.
5. Make the same change for MaxPosPhaseCorrection.
6. Close the Registry Editor

Re-run the synctime.bat file and you should fine that the time in Windows has been updated.

If there is a better way to do this, or a different setting that should be used, I’m happy to hear about it. This seems to have fixed my problem with time syncing in Windows, but I’m also pretty new to how Windows manages time syncing on a local network or on a managed domain.

If you have a better suggestion, please post it in the comments area below.

I’ve been reading about network problems with the AirPort Express recently. I just bought one two weeks ago and was finding that the wireless connection between iTunes and my stereo would drop intermittently. The same problem has been reported in a number of other forums, including Mac OS X Hints and MacFixIt.

When I started looking into the network problem, I figured that it was not specific to iTunes. The issue didn’t only affect iTunes, and was problematic even when iTunes was not running. It seems that playing iTunes over your wireless network is the best way to notice the issue, however. If you’re just surfing around or checking your email and your network drops, it may just look like a temporary latency issue. But if you’re playing music and it suddently stops mid-song, that really seems to get your attention.

So there have been a few things I’ve looked at, and I’m writing them up here because I feel they could all be at fault. I seem to have ironed out my own problems with the AirPort Express. Hopefully this will help if you are having similar problems.

First of all, I will mention that I’m running a Windows XP laptop on the wireless network — not a Macintosh. Initially, I wondered if there were inherent network issues due to that. However, these products seem to be completely compatible. Within minutes of plugging in the AirPort Express, I had my connection to the Internet up and running, wireless printing (USB to the AirPort Express), and wireless music (audio plugged into my stereo).

My AirPort Express is also configured with some default settings, allowing both 802.11 B and G networking. Some have suggested that turning this to one or the other might resolve network drops, but will also reduce compatibility. The network channel is also set to auto, which should help with reliability.

Also note that while I am striving for the widest compatibility and range on this network, in practice I am using a single Windows XP laptop that is parked about four and a half feet away from the wireless hub. Not much in the way. I live in an apartment building in Manhattan, however, and am subject to interference from neighbors next door, upstairs, and downstairs from me. When searching for wireless networks, I typically see a listing of at least six or seven that I can pick up — though all are dutifully secured to prevent hitchhikers.

On to the fix(es)…

1. I initially had setup the AirPort Express using WEP network security. It was listed as being “more compatible”, and since I really don’t know much about the differences between WEP and WPA I went with what sounded easiest for my first stab at setting up the network. When I ran into network trouble, I tried changing this over to WPA2. I don’t know whether this is inherently more stable or not, but it seems to be fully compatible, and supposedly much more secure.

2. There is a setting in the AirPort Express for “interference robustness”. Figuring that was a simple checkbox, I selected it when I was having network trouble. Before taking anymore steps, I noted that this didn’t fix anything on its own — there were still network drops, whether they were less frequent was difficult to tell. After further testing, I turned off that setting, as it is supposedly reduces your network range. Again, note that my laptop practically sits on top of the hub, so this really shouldn’t be an issue.

3. My last test, which I think really did the trick, was to unplug my wireless home phone and replace it with a standard corded phone. Since I rarely use my home phone in this age of cell phones, it doesn’t bother me that it’s not wireless. In fact, the main reason my wife and I have a home phone is only as a backup to our cell phones. If we take more than five calls on that phone is a month, I’d be surprised.

This issue with wireless 2.4 GHz phones was mentioned by Apple, and was also repeated in other forums online. Another suggestion is to avoid certain microwave ovens — something I have not tested.

Since turning off the wireless phone, my network drops seem to have disappeared almost completely. Living in a New York apartment, I can only assume that other interference will strike from time to time. As long as that is minimal, I’m not going to complain.

I’m strongly considering heading over the the opening of the new Apple Store tonight in Manhattan. I’ve been watching Flickr for photos that are being submitted of the store, somewhat as a webcam of the madness (a la Shack Watchers). It seems that this guy is making a pilgrimage to the grand opening tonight, and documenting it from his phone. Nice. Well, considering the madness, maybe not so nice.