Schinckel.net

I’ve had some serious issues with my iPod after updating to the latest iPod firmware (3.1.1). Basically, it keeps freezing, either when going into sleep mode, or coming out of sleep mode. It’s not possible to determine which of these it is, as there is nothing appearing on the screen when pressing any buttons, or plugging in the headphones. The only way to get the iPod back to normal is to do the two-finger reset: hold down _MENU _and _SELECT _for about 5 or so seconds. This then resets the iPod, and it boots up as normal. However, any information (like which songs and podcasts I listened to) is lost. Meaning I then need to remember which podcasts have been listened to, and remove them manually from the list. According to some web sources, this occurs only when having just listened to a podcast, but I don’t seem to be able to replicate that right now. I know it crashed last night after listening to an Audiobook, but I can’t recall if it ever happened after just plain music. However, I do know that this problem only reared it’s ugly head after updating to the 3.1.1 firmware. I wonder if it’s possible to downgrade iPod firmware? Apparently it’s just a matter of editing a value in iPod_Control/Device/Sysinfo, namely buildID, to a value less than the firmware you want to downgrade it to is. Of course, you’ll need the updater for that firmware version, too. If I keep having issues, I may have to try this. Update: This technique doesn’t work: or at least I couldn’t get it to work. I’ve just used Restore with an older updater, so I’ll see if that was the problem. I’m now using 3.1, but I’ve got to wait until all of my music re-syncs back to the iPod, as Restore ‘cleans’ the iPod.

Tonight on Channel 10 (the only commercial TV station in Australia not to yet align itself with a web portal: c.f. nineMSN, yahoo7), we saw the premiere of the intellectually stimulating Australia’s Brainiest Radio Star at 7:30pm. I only saw the last two minutes, enough to see the winner fluke the last question. What I want to know is: where were Dr Karl and Adam Spencer, of Triple J/ABC Local Radio? Surely they have to be amongst the smartest Radio personalities. And Dr Karl is hardly not a star! The first question I saw was something about a cricket ball vs. a pendulum, asking the question a cricket ball has more degrees of … freedom. The joker answering got this wrong, which I’m fairly sure both of my champions would not have. The determinant question asked What is the correct term for a group of 7 musicians? The contestant ummed and aahed, before shakily guessing (correctly) a septet.

Mr. Bojangles • Robbie Williams • Swing When You’re Winning ★★½

iTunes displays half-star ratings, and stores all ratings from 0-100, not just the full star value. However, if you Get Info on a file, and go into the Options tab, you will lose any non full-star rating information that is stored for this track.

Game Show Host • Lo-Tel • Planet Of The Stereos ★★★

In one of the PC pools at work, I am getting some pretty serious Autodesk Inventor crashes. Basically, the error is occurring randomly, every couple of minutes or so. The temporary file that the crash reporting program wants to send to AutoDesk indicates that it is a read error in the same memory location each time:

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    <Exceptions>
        <Exception code="C0000005" text="ACCESS_VIOLATION" address="0x77E7CA0B">
            <AccessViolation type="Read" address="0DB33888"/>
        </Exception>
    </Exceptions>

It’s annoying the hell out of me - as it’s only happening in one pool, not the other. I don’t think it’s a licensing issue, as it seemed to happen a few times when I was the only user on the system, not just when there were twenty other users upstairs in another pool. Things I’m going to try:

• Getting the software reinstalled. Each machine was ghosted from an image, so I’ll try a fresh installation.
• Running without others using the other pool.

Dunno what else to do at this stage. Update: an even more impressive crash, this time with an extra dialog box:

Boing Boing: Ridiculous product - toothbrush with replaceable bristle attachment I don’t see what is so ridiculous about it - I used to use a similar product about 5 years ago. It was great! I was really diappointed when Colgate discontinued them.

I’m trying to get some steel channel manufactured - I ordered some through Home Hardware (it was manufactured by Fielders), and when it arrived, not only was it the wrong amount, but one side had a horrible ripple, making it unsuitable for the purpose. The edge that was rippled needs to sit flush up against some timber, and the ripple would have stood out like “dog’s balls” (ironic, considering Home Hardware used a similar quote in an advertising campaign not too long ago). So, I returned the steel, and have been trying to find some other supplier. The guy from Home tells me “It always has a ripple like that,” which I think is a load of shit, considering the other side was perfect. Having done (and taught) sheetmetal fabricating, I know you can get bloody good results. So, I googled for some other suppliers. I’ve heard of TrueLocal (I’m refusing to link to it), which is a plan by News Limited to try and break into the local tradesperson market, and one of the hits came up. Eventually, I went back to this hit, and had a look. The first thing that annoyed me was that I needed to choose my local area. Surely, in the age of the internets, it is possible for a half decent search engine to figure out what my local area is. Google manages to do it well (and not just by pointing me at Google Oz, but also pinpointing where I am to within the state, if not city!). Still, I had to click “SA”, “Adelaide”, “Adelaide - City” before it even gave me a list. And then, what a list! I didn’t recognise most of the names, but was surprised that:

Your search for Sheet Metal Products Manufacturing in ADELAIDE, SA matches 200 businesses.

Wow! I didn’t realise there were so many manufacturers in Adelaide. Let’s have a look at a couple of them:

• Quality Value Constructions Pty Ltd 40 Franklin St, Adelaide, SA 5000 (08) 8221 5925
• Powell Bros 21 Owen St, Adelaide, SA 5000 (08) 8231 3823

Okay, they sound fine. But then, a little further down:

• Dimond’s Picture Framing 19 Adelaide Arc, Adelaide, SA 5000 (08) 8223 2034

Hmm. I suppose they could manufacture sheet metal photo frames. Maybe.

• Flash Coffee Gelateria 64 Hindley St, Adelaide, SA 5000 (08) 8231 5719

Okay. I’m fairly sure Flash don’t manufacture sheet metal. IIRC, they don’t even make that good of a coffee! Maybe their metal manufacturing plant is out the back. Oh wait, maybe TrueLocal is crap! Oh, and there were other stupid entries, so it wasn’t just like it’s Flash’s fault. Definitely something crazy going on there Mr. Murdoch. And I remember hearing a Podcast about how News Limited is getting ready to take on Google. My money is on the big G.

I set up a ‘fake’ domain to use as testing, I basically made up a word, Shotza, to use. So, I could use it as http://shotza/ in a podcast - it would remind me that it wasn’t really supposed to point to my computer, just as a temporary thing. Anyway, when online tonight, I tried it from within iTunes. It wasn’t working. So I tried it in Firefox. http://shotza/ worked fine, so I tried http://shotza/rn/ Imagine my surprise when I get transferred to the page: http://www.ilovedmypet.com/view.asp?id=11753&preview;=yes&warned;=yes How the hell does my browser get hijacked like this? I’ve never turned on a setting that allows for host names to be used to try and find out what I meant! Is this a Firefox setting somewhere? It doesn’t seem to happen in Safari…I wonder if it could be a hard-coded thing in FireFox? Update: It seems to have something to do with Google, as this site is the first hit for a search for Shotza. Hmm, how do I turn that off?

Boing Boing: New Line’s XXX web game demands your gov’t. ID As pointed out, you can use G.W. Bush’s details. Or surely, you could use your parent’s ID details? Most kids know these details of their parents, don’t they?

(This is a copy of the support request I sent through to MyDomain.com minutes ago) Dear MyDomain.com, I have noticed that emails sent through the email forwarding system do not always arrive, and often do not arrive promptly. Whilst the problem doesn’t seem to be occuring right now, earlier today I sent a test email, and it still has not arrived. I sent it at 2:14 pm (+1030 6 Feb 2006). It is now 6:18pm. My partner also has a different domain registered with you, and has noticed that a large amount of email is not delivered, or is delivered late. In some cases, up to a week late. The error in question for one particular email was:

After 3 days the following message could not be delivered to user@domain.com at host domain.com. The last attempt to send this message failed because no answer was returned by a DNS.

(Obviously, user@domain.com is replaced by a valid username and domain). This has occurred from mutliple senders, and is unnacceptable. The domains registered are used for business purposes, and not being able to have prompt delivery causes lost business. I moved my domain registration to mydomain.com because I thought they were a reliable service; I may reconsider renewing my domain (and other domains I am involved with) unless service provision improves. You FAQ page 873 is clearly out of date - there are problems with your servers at some point. Whether it is a DNS issue, or a mail forwarding issue, it is impacting on your providing of a service. This email requires a reply. Regards, Matthew Schinckel matt@schinckel.net (or matt.schinckel@gmail.com if the forwarding service is down again).

I noticed the following Comments, or rather Trackbacks, on a post to my blog today. As you can see from them, it is over a year since I posted the article, but the thing to note is that one comment seems to respond to the other: That’s all well and good, until you look at the post: It has nothing to do with the comments! That twigged me that it was Spam. And the fact that the URIs all point to the same domain. As does another Spam Trackback I received seconds after starting this post. techmp3.org is going into my Spam filter…