Not sure if anyone else has had this problem, but it looks like yesterday’s iOS 5.1 update turned off iMessage support, at least on my AT&T iPhone 4. A quick trip to Settings→Messages→iMessage was all that it took to get iMessages working again (they had somehow been turned off during the update).
Anyway, just posting in case someone else is trying to figure out why their iPhone suddenly stopped receiving iMessages.
Finally gave this old site something of a make-over. Most of my energy these days goes into research, art, and music, so I’ve made space for those topics and removed all of the old, long-unloved software projects. They were mostly just gathering bit-dust here, anyway—the successful ones found new homes years ago.
So, if you came here looking for something specific but keep hitting 404’s trying to find it, drop me a line. I’ll point you in the right direction.
This was a new one for me. Every time I tried to upload a photo to a WordPress site, I received a very informative “HTTP Error” message while the upload progress bar read “Crunching…”. Thanks in part to the stunningly generic error message, it took a while to figure out exactly what was going on. The problem, it turns out, was HTTP authentication; I had enabled Apache’s basic HTTP login for the site, but being a plugin, Adobe Flash was not similarly authenticated. So, trying to use the Flash-based image uploader kept silently failing because it couldn’t authenticate with the server. The fix is simple: just tell Apache not to use authentication for the script that handles Flash-based uploads. You can do this by modifying the .htaccess file in the root of your WordPress directory like so:
<FilesMatch "(async-upload.php)$">
Satisfy Any
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Deny from none
</FilesMatch>
After a long, long love affair with Logitech, I’ve finally finished a slow migration toward Apple’s input devices. Their aluminum keyboard took some getting used, but once I’d grown accustomed to it on my Macbook, I decided to get one for my Windows 7 desktop. It seemed like everything was working perfectly until I pressed the mute button; nothing happened. Volume down? No go. In fact, all of the media keys (volume up/down, mute, play/pause, etc.) refused to do anything. For whatever reason, SharpKeys and other keyboard mapping utilities don’t recognize Apple’s media keys. The solution, it turns out, is to install a pair of Bootcamp files from your Mac OS X installation DVD.
Here are the steps that worked for me. I’m running Windows 7 x64 with a 2010 Apple aluminum keyboard, and have a Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installation disc. As always, your mileage may vary:
April 2013 Update: I just tried this method using Windows 8 and the BootCamp drivers from Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Apple seems to be preventing the new BootCamp.msi (version 5) from installing on non-Apple hardware, so the above method will fail on Step 10. Luckily I had an old copy of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion BootCamp drivers (version 4) which worked perfectly on Windows 8.
August 2013 Update: Thanks to Tom in the comments section, who pointed out that Apple’s Bootcamp update will install on non-Apple hardware, so we can use the latest Bootcamp drivers on Windows 8! On my machine, however, these new Bootcamp drivers set the time incorrectly after each reboot. The fix is to open up regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation. Double-click the RealTimeIsUniversal key and set its value to 0. Reboot and enjoy!
Do you use MAMP as a web development testing environment on your Mac?
Do you need the PHP ZIP extension for dealing with archive files?
Are you running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard?
I do, and found making these tools play nice together to be far harder than it should have. If you need to fix a similar setup, here are the steps that finally worked for me (on Mac OS X 10.6.4 with MAMP 1.9):
cd ~/Downloads/php-5.3.2/sudo cp ext/pcre/pcrelib/pcre.h /usr/include/php/ext/pcre/CFLAGS="-arch i386" ./configurecd ext/zip; CFLAGS="-arch i386" ./configuremakecp modules/zip.so /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5.3/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20090626/I’ve been meaning to revamp the photography section of this site for a while now; this weekend, I finally found the time to do it. I registered a new domain, straylightphotography.com, and put together a portfolio consisting of my 20 favorite shots (<shamelessPlug>many of which are currently on display at Interzone through February 28th!</shamelessPlug>). I’m hoping to quickly expand the site with themed portfolios (portraits, urban decay, etc.), but… first things first.
Also, the new portfolio has been an excuse to play with CSS3 and jQuery 1.4. Visitors using Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or Opera should see a site that behaves like it was created with Adobe Flash, but is fully accessible and doesn’t require the proprietary Flash plug-in. Visitors using Internet Explorer… well… it at least degrades cleanly. Mostly.
Somewhere along the line, I picked up the habit of mapping the otherwise utterly useless caps lock key to act as another control key. If you’re an Emacs user, this is sort of critical to avoid the wrist strain of constant pinky-stretches to the lower-left corner of the keyboard. Its become second nature now, so when I recently found myself working on a Windows-based lab computer where caps lock actually performed as-advertised, the result was a lot of code THAT lOOKED LIKE thIS. Unpleasant, to be sure.
Linux and Mac OS X make remapping this key extremely easy. System Preferences on the Mac and the GNOME keyboard control panel on Linux include a simple option to enable. Tada! No more wasted space west of ‘A’. Windows, of course, is a different beast.
The good news: there’s a very simple registry hack to remap caps to control. Seriously, it’s floating all over the internet. Except, there’s a wrinkle–you need administrative access to edit the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE registry tree, which is what all of these hacks do. For whatever reason, our school has decided computer science graduate students aren’t to be trusted with administrative access to their own computers [another rant for another time], so what’s a wrist-strained user to do?
Muck around in the Windows registry, of course! It turned out to be pretty straight forward. There’s a duplicate of the keyboard mapping registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, which non-administrators can modify, and it appears to behave exactly like the key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. So, for anyone in a similar position, here’s the registry key to modify:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER→Keyboard Layout→Scancode Map = hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00
You can download a registry update file here. Save it to your computer, double-click it to update your registry, then reboot and enjoy your vastly-improved keyboard.
My two favorite [non-fiction] shows collide!
This just makes me sad: Incredible Hulks – Exploring the ruins of Detroit
Of all the Dance Hall Crashers tunes to not be transcribed, I can’t believe this is one. Was one. I worked out the album version the other day, still trying to put together a decent acoustic arrangement.
Intro: C G Dm x2 Verse: C G Dm It's morning two and you haven't called me C G Dm It's like a thorn burning in my side C G Dm Open the blinds, but something is different, can't put my finger on it C G Dm The bright clean air makes me wanna hide Am G F 'Cause now, oh now, this is how it ends Am G F Based on promises that we'll still be friends Chorus: C G Dm But ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, I know it'll never be the same C G Dm Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, now it's all been broken C G Dm Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, I know it'll never be the same C G Dm Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, you know I'd still do anything for you Verse: Where is the day you used to inspire me? Where is the time I used to depend? On the relief of your anchor I thought I'd never need Now that it's gone, will I slip away? So now, oh now, this is how it ends Based on promises that we'll still be friends Chorus: But ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, I know it'll never be the same Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, now it's all been broken Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, I know it'll never be the same Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, you know I'd still do anything Bridge: F C This is only a letter F C Jumbled words, no false pretense F C And it's not a true confession G 'Cause you've cost me much more than you'll ever guess F C But I'm not your fallen hero F C Someone who came to your defense F C And when it's all done and over G I'll make it, I'll make it, I'll make it, I'll make it make sense C G Dm x2 C G Know it'll never be Dm Know it'll never be C G Know it'll never be Dm Know it'll never be Chorus: Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, I know it'll never be the same Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, now it's all been broken Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, I know it'll never be the same Ba da, ba da, ba ba ba da, you know I'd throw it all away