Peter Fisher’s - Phyn3t

Well I’ve been considering programming for the iPhone but I cannot figure out if I really want to learn another programming language to program for the device and on top of that the programing language I would have to learn would be one that would lock me into programming only for Apple devices and computers. Now I love just about everything Apple makes but going about learning a programming language and spending all the time developing applications for a device I want to be certain it’s worth my time in doing so. So I guess I’m just going to list out the pros and cons in my eyes of learing objective-C against not.

Pros:

Program for an amazing device and my favorit OS

A lot of profit is to be had with the iPhone

Very good librarys

Great community

Cons:

Specific to Apple

No development on any plateform otherthan Mac OS

No IDE but Xcode

Deployment to the iPhone is gated; it’s slow - difficult - annoying (in comparison to the Android plateform).

Simply not OPEN!

For some reason I guess I keep coming back to the fact that it cannot be deployed in any envirnment but Mac OS and you cannot code in any IDE and compile easily on anything but Mac OS X. I’ve just always enjoyed langauges like Jave because it can be deployed anywhere, it can be coded and compiled on anything with no trouble and at the end of the day it’s very easy to use (but very cumbersome)! Also with Java it can be written for anything, for the web browser (applet) for the computer, and even on mobile devices that run Android and symbian! But for objective-c I’m stuck with it running on my Mac or iPhone. And to top it off I personally see everything moving more towards the web. But I’m going to sleep on it and see what I come up with.

So I purchased an iPhone 3G S on Monday via the online pre order and I was very anxious to see if it would actually be here like Apple claimed on the 19th. I first though tried to order it via the apple retail store but after everything was done it just said to come on in and I actually didn’t purchase anything and I didn’t want to really rely on this email saying, “come on in we will have an iPhone for you!” I wanted to pay to secure myself a phone and I was able to do that by purchasing one online (not through the retail store).

So on the 19th sure enough the phone was here at noon via FedEx overnight shipping! I was very happy, I drove home from work and picked it and ripped open the packaging to find an even !!smaller!! box than the previous one (which was to my impression already super small compared to the first iPhone). I don’t know how Apple fit everything in such a small box but they sure did it, and it looks nice! ( Even smaller than the Palm Pre box). It took about an hour for the phone to activate, it came with sim already inside it so it was a very easy process (minus the long activation; took my father six hours). I guess ATT network was swamped due to all the new iPhones so it took a bit. My mate that got his today said it didn’t take any time what so ever. EDIT: I guess it was Apple’s fault for the slow activation…

I was simply amazed with the phone idk if I was so amazed because I had been stuck on the Pre which has NO applications and all the applications are really NOT feature rich but I was just amazed with the iPhone 3G s. It’s super fast and everything is just so smooth on it. Compared to the Pre which is VERY sticky when it scrolls and just not an overall good experience like the iPhone when it comes to UI physics. And its not because the device has just a different feel, it blatantly lags when scrolling (palm pre).  One thing I did miss about the pre was how easy its to 1. switch between applications and 2. close applications and move to another one or back to the previous application. That and the amazing touch area at the bottom of the screen.

iPhone 3G S

So back to the iPhone, the new features are also very very fun, the compass is very cool I know it will be super helpful in maps when I’m trying to figure out which way I’m heading when walking about. I had  a lot of problems like that when I was trying to walk around San Francisco and then later attempt to find my hotel after wandering the streets for hours. Also the voice recorder I thought I would never open or even look at but WOW I had so much fun with my family tonight just recording silly things or just recording my family and playing it back to them, we had  a lot of fun with this. Another cool physical feature with the phone that I think little people know / low coverage is the anti oil screen. I’ts amazing finger prints dont stick to the phone at all, well yes some but its very rare now compared to the pre or the old iphones. Also I think (my friends say otherwise) the screen and the whole phone have a different feel, the feel is nice but it does feel different then the old iphones (because of this oleophobic  layer).

Lastly to note is the cool new locate my iPhone feature. I have mobile me (which i never use and only have because of my father’s family account) and this feature is simply amazing. I didn’t think it would actually work since 99% of the time I loose my phone its in a house and doesn’t have GPS signal but boy was I wrong. Inside of my work it was able to track my phone down to not only the building I was in but the SIDE of the building I was in. It was simply amazing. Also the ability to send the phone remote messages works very well, but the “play sound for 2 minutes” option is kinda lame since the noise the phone makes isn’t very loud.

Well that’s all I can think of now I’m very tired I’m going to save this post and hopefully spell check it tomorrow and fix any errors I see, but to conclude the iPhone 3G S is a simply amazing phone , Apple really knows how to create a good epic device. Also I’m actually happy Apple didn’t change the physical dimensions of the iPhone because now all my old accessories work on my new iPhone. So to end, I would hands down choose the ipHone over any other current smart phone out there. Both the core applications of the iPhone the physical appearance and all of the third party applications simply make the iPhone the best smart phone device out there.

If you just installed apache2 along with php and when people view your php files they are being download run the following 3 command and it should fix the problem IF you have both apache2 and php installed.

cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/
ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/php5.load
ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/php5.conf

I’m going to be adding GFC to my web sites this weekend and hopefully some easy links to post my stuff straight to twitter and other social media sites. Because we all know what I type needs to be all over twitter!!! lol

My plan is to use server side includes to include GFC on all pages of my site not just ones I paste the code to that isn’t scalable and is very annoying…

Ill keep you posted on the progress of this… But for now I have to run Brian through SM and then I’m off to bed for the night!

If you are having trouble with Find My iPhone through mobileme try fetching your mobileme mail and see if it works. You will most likely get an error stating, “Please enter your password.” Go back into system prefs and set your mobile me password. It seems a lot of people had this problem (along with myself). It’s simple fix and your iPhone should show up right away without a restart!

The Explorer title is something I’ve been wanting to get since its release but haven’t been maxed level thus haven’t really tired for it. (I’ve been busy)!

This “guide” will most liekly expand as I finish my conquest to explore everything. Currently I only have Kalimdor down, which has been very easy. It has taken me about 4-5 hours played to explore all of it. I’m very suprised at how much new stuff I’m finding doing it. I’ve played WoW on and off now since just about release and I’m finding new things all over. I’m not sure if the stuff has been introduced in the past few months / year or so or if I just missed some things. Ether way its not as bad as I thought it would be =D

So the first thing to always have open is the map of the current place you are exploring. Just google when you get there and pull up that map. I have two monitors so it’s easy to play on one and cross check my WoW map with the actual fully explored map. Just stop for a minute and setup a path in your head of which way you are going to go and finish. Once done check to find all of the POI (points of interest) on the map so you know where on the map exactly it’s going to trip the “you have discovered shit river” etc. Spending the extra five minutes to do this will make sure you don’t get lost in your travels and die :p or worst of all end up on the far side of the map and find out you forgot something on the other side. Trust me you wont want to do that in Azshara! =p

Once you have everything planned out go and have fun. Actually keep your eyes open for new things you haven’t seen in the past you will be suprised at how much you find!

Also use these maps, they show the POI that will trigger the finding of the area.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/images/zones/

Just search for MapAreaname so for example Tanaris you will search MapTanaris and there you go epic map for your epic adventure! lolol

Happy travels~

If you run into this error while trying to update a host just use the following.

mysql> INSERT INTO user SET Host=’127.0.0.1′,User=’root’,Reload_priv=’Y',ssl_c
ipher=”, Process_priv=’Y', x509_issuer=”, x509_subject=”;

Last night I arrived at a Sprint store at around 3am to wait for the Palm Pre. By 8am when they opened the line went from 4 of us to about 7. They only had 7 phones but some people had pre-oredered theirs… (How idk)… Anyway I got my device it was a very smooth proccess the employees were quick and it didn’t take to long. Not like the trouble I had trying to get an iPhone 3G(which was ATT fault not apples).

So I got home and playe with the device for a bit befoer I went to bed and something extremly annoying I found was that there were atleast TEN dead pixels around the screen mostly in groups AND at the bottom right there are two large imprints were the screen it seems got hit hard and now there is a discoloration which totally sucks because I’m going to have to hopefully get an exchange but I have to wait till they get more devices… I will report back later on how that goes, hopefully it goes smooth but we will see.

So on to the review of the phone. The phone itself is very nice, a lot smaller though than the iPhone which can be a good thing and a bad thing. It was said that it feels kinda plasky and cheap but I have to say otherwise compared to the G1 it feels very nice and hard. The G1 felt very  crappy and the worst thing of all with the G1 is that it creecked… Also the power button on the pre is extermly annoying its very small and hard to press at times. Also there is a side charging bay that’s extermly annoying each time you want to charge your phone you have to open it. Also it makes using the phone while charging very annoying since it comes out of the side unlike the iPhone where the charging port is at the bottom. But this leads to the TOUCHSTONE!

The touch stone is very nice, I didn’t think it would work as well as it does. First the “stone” itself sticks very well to what ever surface you stick it to. There is no adhesive it just has some type of suction at the bottom. Secondly the Pre itself sticks VERY well. It doesn’t move around at all. It feels very firm on the touch stone and you can type on it without any trouble. One thing that was very annoying with it is that it doens’t come with a actual cable to plug into the wall… You are supose to use the one you got with the Pre. Also if you work and want your touch stone at both work and home you can purchase a double kit from Palm: http://store.palm.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3584154 Also if you want a good deal you can purchase JUST the touchstone from PreCentral: http://store.precentral.net/palm-touchstone-charging-dock/6A39A5015.htm .

WebOS itself is very good, I was able to do a lot of work on it since you can have cards running in the background. And I switch a lot between my email and the browser so it was VERY nice to not have to wait for the browser to load each time I checked an email and vic verca. But WebOS is slow at loading an application for the first time. Currently there is no application out, but hopefully this will change soon with the release of the SDK. But one thing I hope that we see is the creativity we see in the applications for the iPhone that’s one reason why I didn’t want to leave the iPhone and still don’t really want to is the great creative application out for it!

One last thing to note is that the Pre can have more than ONE exchange account! Woot! But the mail application really sucks =( its slow and lags a lot. Hopefully this is improved with the next update.

If you have a Palm Pre and you are trying to add an Exchange account / EAS and you are getting the error: “SSL certificate error. Is the date and time correct?” and your CA cert provider is cacert.org you need to install their root cert because Palm forgot to add them to the devices trusted list. You can download it here:

http://www.cacert.org/certs/root.der

So two weekends ago I went out with my dad and we searched around for a new car. Ealier that week I went around to some dealerships and looked at cars; mostly the Lancer Evolution. I was suprised to find not a single one for around $22,00 out the door. Even after haggaling for days nothing, I was very suprissed especially noting the economic times. I think though if I looked longer and broader I would have found one but I didn’t and I’m very happy I didn’t because I found a far better car. This car is an Ininity G35 Coup.
After having to deal with all of the salesmen at all the different dealers I went to and called I decided I was done with that crap and wanted to just buy a car. So I went to car max and was very surprised that I found a car on my first visit.  The car is in great condition and so far I’ve only found 2 real problems and both have to do with the interior.
The car came stock except for a new exaust system, it sounds very deep and smooth I really like it. The only downside is that I cannot hear the engine at all, the exaust over powers it. The car handles VERY well around corners and just on the road. The supsention is very tight which allows for great handling around corners but can be a bit bumpy on damaged roads.

EDIT:
So far after a few months the car has been great, took it back right before the 30 day warrenty was up and got everything fixed that was messed up with the interrior. Carmax was very good about this there was no hassle just took it in and they fixed everything in a day at no charge. Unlike most dealers their warrenty is 100% not 50% or less like other dealers.