Here’s the text of a complaint email I sent to Meteor, maybe I was a little harsh but I’m having a bad day:
————————————
Dear Meteor
At least once a week I can’t login to webtext because it tells me I have the wrong password. I re-enter it CAREFULLY numerous times and it doesn’t work until I get to the captcha. That’s the first problem. The second problem is that every time I click web text I get a javascript error that says “Error 0 occurred processing” in a javascript alert box.
A javascript alert box. Lets think about that for a minute. Anytime this nonsense error occurs, I have to click to get rid of it. In order for it not to come up, all you have to do is NOT call
alert(“Error 0 has occured”)
which is somewhere in your code. In fact, I’ll tell you exactly where:
https://www.mymeteor.ie/mymeteorapi/model/javascript/ajaxLibrary_1_4.js, line 75.
That entire file is completely redundant by the way, as you can do ajax requests using JQuery, which is already called at the top of the page along with early_load.js and register.js, (which, it turns out, are two copies of the same file).
I’m paying you guys €35 quid a month for a service which already has awful signal coverage and barely passable 3G. Whatever eejits you have running your website, I must be a bigger one for staying with your network.
Posts Tagged tech
Meteor Suck
Feb 3
Swype Review
Nov 23
OK Swype, here’s the deal: I’m going to write a little review of your keyboard, using your keyboard. I will leave in any mistakes it makes, separating via a (!) character. I’ll also note every time a nonsense word comes up (%), and every time I the hidden word menu appears (+), starting now:
When I first heard the ideas! idea of swype I was enthralled: a keyboard everett! rgsaru!% that could gallaghlicekrr!% flawlessly conger! cover! conger! colbert! cover! dunnett! convert simple shapes into words seemed to good to new! be true. I’d! I’d! If out! it worked it could curlgaely!% literally sacre! save me hours of effort typing on serious! stupid cellphone keyboards – something I already waste date! far too much of my life on. To begin sworth!% with, I was disappointed: swype was in private beta on amadeus! android and I couldn’t get in. instead, I started using shapewriter, which had aine! some ephin!% annoying properties but overall did what it was aroused! supposed to do. Then my llaura!% prayers were suddenly aerkree!% answered and I received my swype beta ley!% key. It didn’t come a moment too soon either ads! as shapewriter was bought up by another company and fjeehily!% suddenly taken off the market. Swype certainly filed! filled threw! the garo!% gap+, being beyer! better in some respects (frosted! desiccated ! desiccated! dedicated comma key, flight! smoother word recognition etc) but bested in other ways (no deducted! dedicated question mark burton! button, pour! poor double letter support etc). Overall, they were event! evenly crutches! matched.
However, in recent weeks I have noticed a very distinct regression! degradation in the quality of swype. Crieff! Roryr!% First and foremost is the custom words menu. Afterthought! Although I am retried! required (apparently) to highlight a quotes! word and press the swype button to add it, it seems to add any uld!% polls! old word I type and accidentally press space sheer! aster! after. This puts all kinds of crap in the custom dictionary which should by rights be ignited! ignored. More annoyingly and bizarrely, there www! are hundreds of words in there that I am 100% certain I have never typed. Any random squiggle in! on the keyboard can bring up a menu full if! of strange, long, nonsense words.
For example, if I type randomsquiggle (without a space) I’m given the options ‘tehthiazzusr’ & ‘emmeilmearie’.
When I choose to ingot! ignore three! these words, I am punished with a ‘helpful’ dialogue notes! box taking! telling me this word was hidden being! behind the moderns! nonsense word. Earth to Swype – duh, ok I KNEW THAT! Don’t add that stupid weird! word in the first place and we’ll be sorted. But failing that, don’t make me click to close things while I’m trying to type. Ever!
Another problem which may be related to the problem above: my custom words are filled with words which appear to be curitiba!% corruptions of names in my phone book. For example, I have a connect! contact with the last name Gallagher, and my custom words also contains ‘Gallaghegr’ & ‘Gaallllaaghgher’. This second example is typical if! of the ‘stuttering’ I usually get – names with repeated letters, our! or pairs of letters in the middle. A few more examples:
Ruth -> rurutthh, rruuth
Emily -> Eemily, ememilly
Kevin -> kevikn, nkevin, kkeveviin, kkeveivinn
Dave -> ddaave, ddavea, dahve, ddeave
New! Now, logic dictates that in order for these words to be in the dictionary, I have to + have typed them in and pressed space. While this us! is possible for one our! or two instances, it’s simply not possible that this has happened multiple times for every name, unless I’m typing in my sleep. Somewhere, somehow, I can only assume + these names are ditties! borrowed! corrupted and nekint!% being address! ard! added automatically into the custom words. Could it be something to do with coasts! contacts? Perhaps the auto suggest in contact fields is recording the entries? Nsther!% neither of therese! these explains the issue fully unfortunately.
One short term solution + (and a handy feature regardless if! of problems) would be to allow access to the custom words dictionary so that words can be bulk removed. As it is I probably spend 5-10% of my typing time fighting with right! rogue words, and removing them from the dictionary.
Despot! Depute! Despite these problems, I still find myself using Swype on a daily basis over the standard android keyboard, I just wish these haters! outdoors! issues would new! be scattered! stressed! actresses! addressed. If a rival shape based keyboard wee! were to spears! supporter! appear in the market author! without these shortcomings, I’ve! I’d probably switch straight away.
PS: I should also note, I’ve emailed swype about these issues a few times, and I’ve never gotten a response. Bad form!
Since I got my HTC Hero I’ve gone through 3 software revisions and been relatively happy with it except for one frustrating problem: Playlists synced to the device and then deleted from the SD Card are left on the systems internal MediaStore SQLite DB, which all music applications use. In plain english, this means that when I deleted playlists I didn’t want anymore, they were still showing up. I tried several apps and posted on several forums asking for help, but no-one could give me a solution.
About 3 days ago I decided I’d had enough and was going to write an app to fix the problem. In a dramatic break from Rory tradition, I actually did write the app, and it actually does work!
PlaylistPurge is a simple android app which deletes any playlists from MediaStore which do not have an associated playlist file on the SD card. You can download the APK here, or the source here.
I hope it helps someone else with the same problem!
UPDATE:
Thanks for all the positive comments, in light of all the people asking i’ve decided to clean this up and release it on the market, which I hope to do in the next month or two. Those of you who’ve already used it probably won’t need it again, but you’ll also appreciate that it could do with a little polishing! I’ll post here when the new version is ready.
I’m trying to sync music to hero. Big pain. I want this path ‘Music/AlbumArtist/Album’, so that I can accommodate soundtracks and compilations without fragmenting them by individual artist.
J River Media Jukebox – won’t accept AlbumArtist as a field in the customisable path, just ignores it or creates a folder called ‘[AlbumArtist]‘ – FAIL
DoubleTwist - won’t let me change the path the music is stored in at all – defaults to Music/Artist/Album – FAIL
Songbird – lets me set AlbumArtist in Path, but forgot I did it when I closed and re-opened program. Once I had synced the playlist once, my only option is to delete the playlist from the device, which doesn’t delete the music. Even after physically deleting MP3s on disk, SongBird thinks they’re still there and will only re-sync the actual m3u file. SongBird also locks up for about 10 seconds every time I click on the handheld device – FAIL
In the end I decided SongBird was closest, so I tried a little harder. Ejected the device, closed Songbird, reconnected device, re-opened songbird. Settings screen screwed itself up, took a while to show me my saved settings again. But in the end, it worked – synced the music to the device in the format Music/AlbumArtist/Album.
All in all, it took about 40 minutes to sync one f**king album to the phone. I really wish the guys behind ImgBurn would take a crack at making music software, I bet there’d be none of this bullshit.
Essential Windows Apps
May 27
After a fresh XP install (and I’ve gone through a few lately with triple boot problems) I have to install almost all of the following.
Does it take a long time? Yes. Is it worth it? Hell yeah.
I have an old Sony Ericsson K750i which has been lying around the house for a while. It’s got no sim and the joystick is broken so its useless as a phone, but I’ve been using it as a spare charger for my new phone – a newer but less featured SE v630i which takes the same battery
I really miss the camera on the k750i – it’s got autofocus, macro mode and an LED flash/light, and its always produced a better image than the newer v630i camera.
I’ve looking for a way to keep using the handset. I tried getting a spare SIM card, but the phone is locked to vodafone and they charge for new SIM cards.
Then recently I found a forum thread on how to flash the k750i to be a w800 – a phone which was launched around the same time, identical hardware but released under the walkman branding and with different firmware. The w800 can function as an MP3 player and camera without a SIM card! Viola! Just what I was looking for – and I could even use the original DCU-60 USB cable that came with the phone.
This is the forum thread, but I’ve extracted the important bits in case it happens to be down. Here’s all I had to do to flash the k750i to a w800
Before u start
1. A phone needs two things FLASH and MAIN. These are the operating system for ur phone. The files for any of the models can be found from www.topsony.com. But u need registration. The FLASH file will be something like W800_R1BC002_FS_EMEA6.bin and MAIN something like W800_R1BC002_MAIN_EU_EMEA.bin.
2. EMEA indicates the software type and the above supports for India tested by myself. For others u will have to download others like (W800_R1BC002_MAIN_EU_EMEA_RED49 & W800_R1BC002_FS_EMEA2)
3. W800 stands for the mobile model for which the software is and R1BC002 is the type of FIRMWARE (Something like software version).
4. Full package can be found at http://rapidshare.com/files/12706205…oW800.rar.html
5. or search for this file at www.4shared.com “K750toW800” it also contains the full package. I have used this its free.
The rapidshare link is corrupted here, bit searching k750toW800 led me to the right file quickly enough. =)
Unpack the rar file using WinRAR.
The package includes:
XS++: This program is used to flash you phone’s firmware. This also lets you check your CID number.
Gslide: This program converts W800 CID36 firmware to CID49, to make the firmware compatible to K750 CID49 phones. CID36 users need not use this.
W800 Firmware: Your Main and File System files. Your W800’s operating system files.
USB Flash Driver: The driver you need to enable your phone for flashing through USB cable. These drivers are NOT (I repeat NOT) the same ones you get on K750 PC suite CD
Flashing should be done in this order
1) Flash FS
2) Customize FS
3) Flash MAIN
Because in XS++ the flashing has to be done in following order only because of a bug.STEP1: Installing USB Flash Driver.
Turn off your phone. Remove SIM and memory card, and re-insert battery. Do not turn ON.
Inside K750toW800 folder, goto XS++ folder and open the program. now click START. While pressing and holding the ‘c’ button on your phone’s keypad, insert USB cable. Windows will detect a new hardware and ‘Install new hardware’ wizard pops up. Release the ‘c’ button. In the wizard, click ‘no, not at this time’ and next. Choose to install from a specified location and click next. Under ‘search for the best drivers to install’, check ‘include this location in the search’. Under ‘browse’, choose the path to the unpacked folder you downloaded and select the folder USB Flash Driver. Now click next and let the windows install the driver.
After installing the driver, close XS++ and disconnect phone and turn it off in case it has switched on. Remove battery for 2 seconds and re-insert it (to refresh your phone). (Removing and re-inserting is usually required once u disconnect in any step)
Now your phone is ready to be flashed.CHECKING CID NUMBER
Again open XS++, click START, and insert cable while pressing ‘c’ the same way as before. Your fone gets detected and on the left side of the screen, you get the detailed info of your phone including the EROM CID number.
If you have CID 36, then goto STEP2 and go directly to STEP3. Do not close XS++ or unplug your fone.
STEP2:
Now, you know you have a CID49. So the CID36 firmware has to be converted to CID49.
A. Open Gslide. for flashfile, click ‘…’ and select the file named ‘W800_R1BC002_MAIN_EU_EMEA.bin’ inside the W800 Firmware folder. Inside ‘output’ type in the path… C:MAINFLASH.bin. Now click ‘Process’.B. After sliding process is completed, again click ‘…’ for flashfile and select file ‘W800_R1BC002_FS_EMEA6.bin’ inside the same folder. Under output type in C:FSFLASH.bin and hit process. Close the whole program after sliding completes.
Now there will be 2 files in C: drive using Gslide. MAINFLASH.bin and FSFLASH.bin
STEP3: Flashing FS.
• For CID36: Your phone is already detected by XS++. Under Select Firmware, check Flash File System, and then click ’…’ , now select the file ‘W800_R1BC002_FS_EMEA6.bin’ inside W800 Firmware folder. Hit flash… the flashing process is now initiated. After completion of 291 blocks, it will say either ‘done flashing’ or hang at ‘finishing flash’. Don’t worry about it. Close the program and unplug phone. Again take-out and reinsert battery to refresh. Goto STEP4.
• For CID49: Inside XS++, Under Select Firmware, check Flash File System, and then click ’…’ , now select the file ‘FSFLASH.bin’ in the C: drive which we generated from Gslide. Hit flash to start flashing process. After completion of 291 blocks, it will say either ‘done flashing’ or hang at ‘finishing flash’. Don’t worry about it. Close the program and unplug phone. Again take-out and reinsert battery to refresh.
STEP4: Customizing FS.
Common for CID36 and CID49: Again open XS++ and connect the phone same way as we did before. Now check Customize File System and then select phone model ‘W800’, select CDA and region ‘EMEA_6(CDA102430/6)’. Hit Flash. It will ask you whether you want to use ‘breakin’ or ‘brute-force’. Click ‘yes’ for breakin and strictly follow instructions on the left side of the screen. It will ask you to connect and re-connect phone 2-3 times by press and hold ‘c’ method. Do not panic at any point here, just follow the instructions carefully on the left. At the point when it says ‘FS activation’, wait for 3 minutes. After completion, close XS++ and unplug fone. Refresh by re-inserting battery.
STEP5: Flashing MAIN.
• For CID36: Open XS++ and again connect your phone the same way. Under Select Firmware, check Flash Main, and then click ’…’ , now select the file ‘W800_R1BC002_MAIN_EU_EMEA.bin’ inside W800 Firmware folder. Hit flash… the flashing process is now initiated. After completion of 291 blocks, it will say either ‘done flashing’ or hang at ‘finishing flash’. Unplug your phone and close XS++.
• For CID49: Open XS++ and again connect your phone the same way. Under Select Firmware, check Flash Main, and then click ’…’ , now select the file ‘MAINFLASH.bin’ in the C: drive which we generated from Gslide. Hit flash… the flashing process is now initiated. After completion of 291 blocks, it will say either ‘done flashing’ or hang at ‘finishing flash’. Unplug your phone and close XS++.
STEP6: Final steps
Now, insert your SIM and memory card and turn on the phone, wait for sometime as the phone takes time loading from a brand new firmware. It will say phone staring don’t panic it will take some time as the new software has to be initiated.
With that all done (and it only took like 5 minutes including the time spent installing things) I now had a w800 in a k750i shell. Unfortunately it would only fire up to a menu which let me choose either Phone mode or Player mode. Phone mode was selected by default and would allow me to do nothing without a SIM Card, and selecting Player mode with the broken joystick took several frustrating attempts. Even then it wouldn’t start that properly either. Back to the forums.
A few searches later and I had my solution. When the menu appears, simply lock the phone and open the camera shutter – this will start the camera app. And it works!
Thanks to a few minutes of searching, downloading and flashing, I now have a working standalone 2.0MP Autofocus camera from my broken k750i, which I can use as a quick document scanner thanks to the macro mode!
iPhone
Jul 9
iPhone!
iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone, iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone! iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone? iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone, iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone.
iPhone, iPhone iPhone iPhone. iPhone "iPhone" iPhone? iPhone iPhone!
iPhone iPhone iPhone!
iPhone.
See? When you say something enough it loses all meaning.
Enhance that video
Sep 1
This is one of those rare tech things thats too cool to pass up even if its not about games.
A startup called MotionDSP is offering a free online service that can enhance crappy lowres video like you wouldn’t believe. The technology is also being used by the military to enhance low res satellite video feeds.
It turns this
<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rQldR1-kT34"></param><embed src=" http://www.youtube.com/v/rQldR1-kT34" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>
into this
<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nxsIrQ2WURk"></param><embed src=" http://www.youtube.com/v/nxsIrQ2WURk" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>
I honestly didn’t think that was even possible. Apparently, it compares successive frames of the video to basically get the best bits of each, much as the human eye does.
They’re looking for people to upload crappy 3gp files to them to test and publish on the site.
Get to it people!
for anyone who gets annoyed by those mac vs pc ads…
!
Flock
Jun 15
Flock is a free web browser that makes it easier than ever to share photos, stay up-to-date with news from your favorite sites, and search the Web. Take our tour to learn what’s different about Flock, then download the beta to get started – and please tell us what you think
I’m actually blogging this from within flock!
Honestly, it looks interesting, but I don’t know if I’ll be switching just yet. I’ve got a lot of firefox plugins on the go, and I doubt I could manage without them.
Here’s hoping flock compatible versions come out soon