It turns out that this will be more than a site redesign, it will be a whole new type of site. It won’t be run with WordPress, it’ll be run with Drupal. That will give you an idea of the scope of the changes that are going on. Watch here for more details.

-Mike

The game has been doing so well in Asia that it got MMORPG of the Year in Korea. NCSoft must have gotten the idea that localizing the game for North America and Europe would be a good idea and decided to start the port to other languages. On the Aion beta forums, I saw subforums for French and German, so it seems they’re going for more than just English at this point. With the game itself doing so well, it seems like the only thing that NCSoft had to change were the strings used to display text, and the voices of the characters. One thing I never really got used to from watching anime for so many years is the constant over-exaggeration that the voice actors make. The same holds true in the beta version I tested. Since the game has the original Asian voices, the characters have that overdone “karateeeeeeeeCHOP!” to their voice which I don’t think will fly in North America.

NCSoft started doing closed beta weekends in North America starting mid-June. Some people were able to get beta codes for specific weekends, but if you preorder the game you get into all the closed betas. I got the beta code for Aion from preordering the collector’s edition from my local Gamestop. I had to tell the (new) guy behind the counter that yes, you should have beta keys in the drawer behind you, and despite his reluctance to listen to someone that didn’t actually work there, he checked and was actually surprised I knew more about his store’s inventory than he did. I missed Closed Beta Event #2 by only a few hours and had to settle on waiting two weeks for CBE#3 July 2-6 to try the game for the first time. A note about this beta is that unlike some previous betas, this is actually a test of the 1.0.2 Aion client which was released in Korea a year ago. What’s really being tested are the translations, and although I couldn’t find anything official on the subject, I’m betting that NCSoft is testing the reaction to the North American and European markets.

The iPhone’s screen is 320×480 and has two tall banners on its home screen, one on the top and one on the bottom. What annoys me about slapped-together wallpapers is how they just resize images to fit the screen and don’t take the banners into account. If images are blindly resized, the result is cutting off heads or logos that look amateurish.

In these examples, the images are resized in such a way that Master Chief’s head is obscured by the top banner, as is the Ferrari logo. I’m betting these were desktop wallpapers that were resized without thought to what would be obscured.

When the iPhone was first released, one of the first things I did was put together an iPhone wallpaper Photoshop template so that people would have a guide to what their wallpapers would look like when set.

In the screenshot of the Photoshop guide above, I made the important areas different colors so that it would be easy to see where the borders of the areas are, and I put guides in so that tools such as Marquee will snap to the correct position when using it. I also made the top and bottom banners a separate layer so that you can switch them on and off easily.

I hope that this helps many of you crop and size your iPhone images properly.

Click here to download the iPhone Wallpaper Template for Photoshop.

I’ve had a pretty happy relationship with Windows XP, unlike the constant bluescreening from the Windows 9x family. In the beginning, there were some driver issues that had to be banged out with XP, but after a few months, it because quite stable and I can’t even remember the last time I saw a BSOD from it.

I also truly loved how you could customize it. I was a huge Object Desktop user, using everything I could to give XP a unique look. There was some heavy use of XP Customization on the neowin.net boards years ago. My favorite was creating icons for Y’z Dock which was a direct ripoff of the Mac OS X dock.

XP had its issues of burying certain features deep into control panels and advanced settings, but once you learned where they all were, you could make XP do what you wanted it to do.

When Vista was announced, I really didn’t care much. XP worked, and other than DirectX 10 which I didn’t really need, it offered nothing to me to want me to pay the ridiculous upgrade price for very little which I actually needed. Over time I found that Vista itself was plagued with problems and I felt I made the right decision to stay away from it.

Eight years later, I still use XP every day at work, and at home on my gaming rig. There isn’t anything that doesn’t run on it, and I really don’t feel that it’s old or antiquated, whereas the difference between System 6 and System 7 on the Mac were like night and day. System 7 made it obvious that it was light years ahead of its predecessor both under the hood and the body, but I don’t see that with Windows 7.

I played with Windows 7 and it’s cool and shiny, but I don’t get that feel that I need to have it like I did when System 7 came out for the Mac in 1991. When you install a new OS on any platform, the first thing I worry about is how much time it’s going to take before the drivers work properly, the games and apps are patched, and I don’t have to worry about how to jump through hoops to get something to work right. Currently, I see people using Windows 7 having driver problems which I know would drive me batty.

At the same time, I know that XP’s life is limited. Microsoft is going to drop support for it in 2014 which is a good five years away, but are app and gaming developers still sticking with XP? In my company they are. On gaming boxes you still see XP as a supported platform. I’m looking at the upgrade price at Amazon.com for the Windows 7 Professional version and I’m wondering if the $100 is worth it. Will I get eight years out of Windows 7? What technology’s coming to PCs that Microsoft could exploit in order to get people to pay for Windows 8 when it comes out? I think about how I upgrade Mac OS every two or three years for $129 without batting an eyelash, but now Mac OS X 10.6 has a $29 upgrade price, which makes me ponder the Windows 7 price even more.

In the end, I belive that upgrading after eight years probably isn’t a bad idea. I think I’ve squeezed enough blood from the XP stone that paying $99 isn’t going to bite me in the ass. So here, I go…

*click*

Since I have a launch day iPhone from 2006, I had never done a transfer of the contents of an iPhone before, so I researched a bit and realized that I had turned off the auto-backup feature of iTunes about a year ago. I reinstated it, and backed up my iPhone the night before.

I preordered my iPhone when they were first annouced, and it was delivered around 11am on Friday morning. I connected it to iTunes, which asked me if I wanted to set this up as a new phone, or restore it from the backup I had on the hard drive with my associated cell phone number. I told it to restore which it did, it transferred the phone number to the new phone almost immediately (my old iPhone now says “No Service”), and after about 30 minutes of backing up data, apps, music, SMS messages, and movies, I had my entire iPhone contents backed up to the new one. The only thing that was missing were my emails which I didn’t mind losing, and my voicemail password didn’t carry over, nor did my gmail password. Fixing my gmail password was simple since the iPhone asked for it immediately, but fixing my voicemail password was a little tricky. It asked me for my password the same way it would for email, but I didn’t know what it was. There was a little help “?” in the password field which sent me to AT&T’s voicemail system which reset my password immediately. The whole process took less than 60 seconds.

The first thing I wanted to do was try the compass to see how accurate it was. I realize that with all the other new features of the 3GS that the compass was probably the least favorite of some people, but since not many phones I know have one, I just wanted to play with it for a second. It was as accurate as I could tell, and if you go to maps and press the target icon twice, maps will show you which direction you’re facing.

Camera and video part 1

The second feature I wanted to try was the new camera. The new 3GS has a 3 megapixel camera which is a vast improvement over the nasty 1 megapixel camera the last iPhones had. The new camera also has an autofocus feature, and does video! I took my first video in portrait mode and tried to upload it to flickr. Flickr didn’t like the format of the video, so I posted it to youtube. Youtube properly pillarboxed the video by putting black bars on the side to fill the video out. I also posted the video to vimeo which told me I’d be in the encode queue for over an hour, and then it took almost 12 hours to encode a 14 second video. I think I’ll be sticking to youtube.

With my old iPhone now useless as a phone, I decided to wipe it to give to my daughter. The wipe procedure was going to take over and hour, so I went to Best Buy to get a windshield adapter for the iPhone since it’s now able to use GPS, and a new belt clip since my original one is starting to wear out. I found the Griffin Windowseat which works well if you keep the iPhone on the left side of the windshield. The problem with that is I also wanted to use the iPhone as my MP3 player, which means I would have to run the wire from the stereo in the middle of the car to the left side, over the steering column. I’m not very keen on this setup since it seems more work and mess than I want it to be, and if I need to plug the iPhone in to charge, that’s yet another cable to drape over the steering column.If I put the adapter in the middle, it’s designed in such a way that it takes up all the vertical space between my rear view mirror and the dashboard. I was hoping for something that would allow me to use it in the middle and not obstruct my view so much.
I got the Digital Lifestyle Outfitters HipCase since it’s the same one I bought with the original iPhone. It’s the same as before, but with a little patch of leather sewn into the back to compensate for the thinner 3G. It took some breaking in, but it’s working out very well.

Voice Control

With the original iPod still wiping, I decided to give Voice Control a try. This is exclusive to the iPhone 3GS, although I don’t see why you can’t use it in the 3G since third party apps deal with voice recognition just fine. This is great for driving, or when it would take you less time to find something embedded in your Contacts list than it would to say the person’s name.

What’s not in the video, is that the system will tell you if you have more than one person with the name you spoke in your Contacts list. For example, if you say “Call Bob”, it’ll tell you “There are multiple numbers with the name Bob”, and offer the suggestions. You can state the last name, and if there are multiple phone numbers for that person (home, cell), it’ll ask you which one you want to dial. Once you learn how to manage the Voice Control dialing this way, you can learn to say “Call Bob Johnson cell”. You can also dial by number (“call 1-973-555-1212″).
Voice Command will also control iTunes as you can see in the video. However, it’s tricky when it comes to artist’s names. For Jean-Michel Jarre, I had to pronounce it like a computer would read it: “Jeen Michele Jarray”. That worked.

Camera part 2

After getting my old iPhone set up for my daughter (who was ecstatic), I decided to try taking some pictures outside. The indoor ones were ok, but I wanted to see how well the camera too pictures in sunlight. I found that turning the camera 90 degrees for both picture and video produces better results.

Once AT&T turns on tethering and MMS, the iPhone will be an almost perfect digital companion. I say ‘almost’ because I’d still like the ability to use an external Bluetooth keyboard with it, and some other minor issues, but this will make other cell phone manufacturers look at the iPhone and realize they have a lot of catching up to do in the smartphone arena. I’m very happy with the iPhone 3GS and I’m sure I’ll be using it for a very long time.

Just a few minutes ago, Tweetdeck released their app for the iPhone. Tweetdeck’s been known for being the first desktop Twitter application to allow you to organize the people you follow into columns of your own choosing. It’s a great app, but I had issues with it since I could never get the devs to do one simple thing: notify you only if you got a reply or a DM. It either notified you on new tweets from everyone, or none at all. I found that to be extremely frustrating since I like to keep my Twitter app in the background when I’m busy and bring it to the front only if I have a reply. Since the devs never did this, I moved on to Twhirl and Seesmic Desktop.

Now Tweetdeck is out for the iPhone and already I’m in love with it. The app handles multiple accounts with ease, and also allows you to do Tweetdeck’s trademark feature of organizing people into separate columns.

When the app starts, you put in your Twitter credentials, but before you get started, you’re asked to create an account on tweetdeck’s servers. I hope this allows you to save your column settings between the iPhone ad the desktop app which is due later tonight. That would save an enormous amount of trouble setting up your app’s looks since all you’d have to do is sync them.

When you’re done with that, you’re shown a zoomed out look of your columns. You can zoom them into 100% view by tapping on it.

If you want to create a new group, just click “Add Column” in the middle. The app goes out and seems to get the people you follow, but unfortunately it did not get a complete list of friends and therefore I had to deal with a partial list. Once the list comes up, you simply tap their name to add them to your list. If a person is not on that list, you can add them manually.

When you have multiple columns, arrows appear in the bottom corners, telling you that you can move from one column to the other. I’d prefer simply swiping the iPhone to do this to save real estate.

A neat trick? Shake your iPhone to refresh!

I’m going to play with the app more, but I think I found my new favorite iPhone Twitter application.

Things I’d like to see:

A different color for replies to me.

Black text on white background. The black background is annoying my eyes.

At first I wanted to use the MobileMe calendar sharing, but to add her I have to pay $50 for additional accounts. Also, it seemed from what I researched that you cannot sync a calendar for collaboration among several people in your “family”, they can only subscribe read-only. No, thanks.

Since we both have Gmail accounts, I looked into using Google Calendar sharing instead. I didn’t want to because I was under the impression that by doing so you’d wipe your contacts out of your phone in favor of Google’s Exchange settings. It turns out that’s only if you set up your Exchange account to sync your contacts. You don’t have to, you can leave that option off.

By turning off Contacts, you keep your MobileMe contacts on your phone. I personally find this quite unsettling because I’m afraid that one swipe of my finger can wipe out my entire contacts list. I’m too afraid to try it to see if it at least warns you that it’s going to happen.

When you create a calendar on Google, one is created in your name (eg: starman.me@gmail.com). If you’re making a shared calendar, it’s probably best to create a new one with a better name for who you’re sharing it with. Once it’s created, you can add people to have access to the calendar, and set permissions for them. My wife has full read/write access to our family calendar.

However, you’d think that would be all you need to do, right? Unfortunately, no. I couldn’t figure out why the shared calendars weren’t showing up on my iPhone, only my own personal one. After doing a lot of digging, I finally figured out that you have to go to http://m.google.com/sync and there you tell Google which calendars you want Exchange to show you. Note: This should also help non-iPhone users as well.

Now everything’s synced and we have a shared calendar. Apparently I’m going to be very busy next week.

iChurn – This classic iPhone app will tell you exactly how many churns you need to make in order to finish making butter for that day.

Cheekcraft – Pick your side – Amish or Outworlder. Amish simply forgive their attackers, but Outworlders are armed with big boots and ice cream cones.

Zipper – Using the touchscreen, Amish can simulate zipping a virtual zipper.

CalcPower – Ever wonder how much energy your house consumes? Now you know! (hint: 0)

Clipper – Social media app that allows you to send out “clips” of what you’re doing at that moment.

SaveMySoul – Did you ever accidentally take a picture of an Amish person? Now you can blur their image and restore their soul to them.

Sundial – Using special reverse engineered technology, this will determine the position of the sun based on the shadow it casts and tell you what time it is.

Buggypedia – An encompassing wealth of information about the Amish.

Paperweight – Once you turn your Amish iPhone on, this app will brick your phone, turning it into a paperweight. Sorry, you can’t be using modern technology!

One of my favorite videogames of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I was very skeptical about it when it came out because I wasn’t sure if it would work in the 3D world of the Nintendo 64. I reserved a copy anyway and picked up the gold cartridge on launch day. I still have that gold cart; I’ll probably never get rid of it.

Since it came out in 1997, I’ve played it several times to the end. I never finished the Master Quest version, though. I thought the whole game was different only to find that it was just the dungeons that were and I was playing at a time when I had higher priorities so I put it down.

In the last twelve years, I found that every time I pick it up, I get better at it. I remember more off the top of my head and find that I can get farther in the game faster each time. So I got to wonder whether or not I could finish the game in a day. Start at 6am and play on until I finish. It’s supposed to take 12-15 hours to finish depending on how deep into the game you go which would put my finish at 6-8pm the same day.

Why do this? Curiosity, mostly. I don’t need to do this in a day, this isn’t a dream I’ve had, I just wondered if I could. I wouldn’t necessarily have to get every skulltula or do the minigames, just beat Ganon.

And then I got the idea of livestreaming it on ustream. Would anyone watch? Would anyone care? I know there are a lot of OoT fans out there that would be curious at best.

So tell me what you think. Am I crazy, or is this something people would be interested in?

This isn’t a post about how I had a bad day as much as it is a reminder that technology can fail at any time, for any reason. We live with it, and we depend on it, but all it takes is one bad line of code to ruin your day.

Things started at work. Our Clearcase source code management system decided to fail in the morning. What this meant was that we were locked out of editing our source code in place until our IT department could fix it. We could edit our files locally, but we tried everything we could to make the files writable so we could build our changes without having to tell Visual Studio “we want you to look for the files over THERE now. Yes, REALLY. Just do it” . We did eventually start changing to local copies to hobble around until IT fixed the problem. What caused this problem to manifest itself after working flawlessly for months? It turns out a broken alias prevented the Perl scripts from running, and reported back that nobody had access to the server. It only lasted a little while, but could have caused serious problems had it lasted longer since we’re so close to a code freeze for our project.

Later in the afternoon I had to run our web app for packaging up our apps into installers on a remote server. It was crucial this got out today so that someone could look at it in the morning. It turns out, the web app was broken for reasons that are still unknown. No error messages, nothing to say in a polite British tone “oh, I’m so sorry but we can’t do that for you right now”. Just…nothing.

While out after work, I decided to upgrade the software for my Sprint EVDO USB device. It’s been giving me tons of problems when starting up, stating the USB device isn’t connected (it was) or can’t see the network (it could). So I figured I’d download the new 2.2 version and it’ll make it all better. Unfortunately, it made things worse, and I couldn’t log onto Sprint’s network at all anymore because the software went from glitchy to downright broken, and got into this endless loop of “can’t find your device/oh there it is/oh there it went/oh there it is again/darn, lost it” ad nauseam. I figured I’ll just go home and grab the old 1.8 software and reinstall it.

In the meantime, the settings on my Cradlepoint PHS-300 reset again. It’s an uncommon problem with these devices, but seems to clairvoyantly know the very worst time it could happen, and does. Since I was running software 2.1, I decided to upgrade to 2.4. In the middle of upgrading the firmware, the PHS just…died. I left it alone for 10 minutes and it didn’t come back to life. No lights, nothing. I turned it off and turned it back on again to find no lights on. Strange, it had a full charge. Is the battery loose? Nope (the Cradlepoint batteries are VERY tight). Plug it in, turn it on – nothing. Not even a charge LED light. It was bricked. In all the years I’ve upgraded firmware, I never once bricked a device. So at this point I have no wireless internet. I could live without it, but with a trip coming up, I wanted to make sure I had it working when I left.

Knowing that Verizon just released their new MiFi devices, I wanted to compare plans with the Sprint plan I currently have. I tried logging onto their web site which I very rarely use, and I forgot my password. No problem, I’ll just use the “forgot my password” feature and have it emailed to me. Unfortunately, Sprint doesn’t email you your temporary password, they send it to your cell phone. The problem is, I don’t have a cell phone with Sprint since all I have is the EVDO device. It doesn’t receive text messages so I had no way to get into my account on sprint.com. I called their support line, only for them to tell me there’s nothing their department can do. Call someone else. Ok, so I call a different number. They can’t help me, I have to call tech support. Tech support can’t help me, I have to call another number. At this point, I put my headphones on while on hold, and went to the Verizon store and picked up a MiFi. In and out of the store in under 20 minutes. I had to activate it at home, but that didn’t take long.

I got so frustrated with Sprint and their lack of customer service that I cancelled my account. It wasn’t just this event that triggered it, I’ve been having problems with Sprint for a while now. They don’t put their phone number on their bill, they couldn’t charge me properly, they wouldn’t set me up for auto-pay until I paid with the same credit card three months in a row, and after today, I just had it with them. Adios.

So I’m left with a bricked Cradlepoint PHS-300, a Sprint EVDO device which I may be able to sell, and an unfinished installer at work. I wonder sometimes if people put as much effort into making sure things don’t fail as they do making sure they get out the door. Perhaps it should be someone’s job to look at an app or a system and come up with scenarios like “hmm, if you upgrade the firmware and it fails, is there a backup?”, or “why can’t we offer an option to email the password since their phone may be dead?”. Preventive maintenance is something I try to instill in people at work beyond a simple catch/try. People think I overreact until the time comes when a problem ticket comes in with the very same problem I warned them could happen.

Technology is a wonderful achievement, but it can be as flawed as the laziness that went into it.