Archive for the ‘iphone’ Category

Motivation and direction

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

 I’ve finally made some more decisions for my life. Besides moving to Sydney in the next couple of months I’ve decided a couple of other things.

Firstly, I want to program games and other applications for the iPhone and Macintosh OSX.  For years I wanted to do programming but could not settle on a platform and language. Well, now I have. This will at some time later this year involve purchasing a Macintosh myself. I think I will get a Macbook as I want a laptop and not a huge machine to lug around and take up space and electricity when it’s really not needed these days.  I currently have an old Dell D600 computer borrowed from work which I’ve put Mac OSX 10.5.2 onto.  It’s enough to be able to program applications for Mac OSX and the iPhone.  I have been reading my Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX book on and off for some time (mostly off) but today I took the laptop to work and started doing some of the exercises. It’s starting to make a bit of sense now.  I also ordered a book from Amazon.com called Beginning iPhone Programming: Exploring the SDK.  It should arrive about March 19th .. two days before my birthday. Great timing!

Secondly, I’ve started researching information on getting into Voiceover work.  I’ve recently created some promos for the Tech Talk Radio show from 3WBC in Melbourne. The presenters asked for listeners to create some new promos they could put on the show this year.  I have uploaded them to my Voiceovers page if you want to have a listen.  There’s some serious attempts and some cartoony ones.  I also joined Voices.com and have my own mini webpage there.  I’m on the lookout for more work in that field and will take up more lessons when I get to Sydney.

Thirdly, I’ve decided to learn about music. I have a Casio CTK-810 keyboard I bought a few months ago but have hardly used.  Tonight I went for my first lesson and had a fantastic time. It’s only $25 for each half-hour lesson or $50 for a full hour.  I started with a half hour lesson to see how I’d go.  I’ve started practicing playing a song and seem to be understanding some of the theory and reading notes already.  I brought the sheet music home and practiced it for an hour.  The first lesson was about notes in the Bass Clef (played with the left hand) and so I did that, but I also worked out where the other notes in the Treble Clef were and played a few with my right hand at the same time as the others with my left.  It took some brain twisting but I could do two notes with my right hand while doing one with my left.  Neat. Only now when I go back to practicing with my left hand only the music doesn’t sound as good hehe.

It’s great having direction and these things are also giving me the great anticipation and direction I need in my life at this time. I’m really happy and optimistic for the first time in years.

Posted in 1st Life, Computers, iphone | Comments

Sharing your Windows XP Ad-Hoc WiFi connection with your iPhone

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

Since I keep forgetting how I’ve done this if something happens and I have to redo it, I’m posting it here to remind me.  I have a PC with a LAN connection to my ADSL2+ modem and a WiFi card inside the PC sharing out WiFi to my iPhone and visitors. The connection is best set up as "Connect to PC to PC Ad-Hoc networks".

Set up your SHARED+WEP ad-hoc Wifi connection:

The thing I kept forgetting is to SHARE my LAN connection which goes to my ADSL2+ modem.

The circled option is the main point. Without this, your iPhone will not get an IP Address (as shown in the iPhone screenshot above). This was driving me crazy trying to figure out why it had a ‘169′ address. 169 means the DHCP didn’t work.

You will find out, if you use something like Air Sharing on your iPhone, that the iPhone IP Address changed a very large number of times. I think possibly when it goes into screensaver mode it gives up the IP. When you try the Wifi next it gets yet another IP Address.

Note that from what I can work out Ad-Hoc networks can ONLY be encrypted with the easily-breakable WEP encryption method. But, something is better than nothing, right?  You need to chuck on a 5 letter password anyway, so without that it’s a bit harder for the Average Joe.

The only issue I find is from time to time my Windows PC will pause a second or two when browsing webpages while the Wifi connection is enabled. If I disable the Wifi while not using it, my web browsing is instantaneous.  However, when I try to re-enable the Wifi while the PC is on I get an error ‘10′ cannot start and I have to reboot the PC.

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Working the weekend away

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

Today I’ve had to drop Sienna off home so I could go into work. We had issues during the week with the bank’s network. It seems fixed but they want us to be onsite just in case something happens. I will be back again tomorrow mirning too. So here I am getting more acquainted with my new iPhone and all the fun games I have downloaded.
This week I downloaded Zen Pinball: rollercoaster and it is amazingly fun! Go google the name or check out the demo I put on the AusPUG Review forum.
One thing working well with this platform is I am actually paying for games. They are usually priced under AUD$10. Brilliant!
So far I bought Apple’s Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, Zen Pinball, Koi fish and Aqua forest. None were expensive. I rarely play games on any platform but this one I am really enjoying the funkiness of the iPhone. All were definitely worth the price and come with free upgrades.
Since so am already in the city I may as well watch Riverfire live. Fireworks galore woo! And a jet flyover.

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A good test of my iPhone and Apple Texas Hold ‘Em

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

 Today I listened to Podcasts for most of the day at work. From 7:30am on the train until 5:30pm when I got home. It was on most of that time.

I also used the Telstra free WiFi connection in the Queen Street Mall for 50 minutes and played with a couple of games.  

When I got home and plugged in the iPhone into my USB port the screen shows I’ve used not even 1/3rd of the power of the battery. Sweet!

That’s gotta be a good result.  Tonight I’m going to test more free applications. I will wait until next pay to get an iTunes card from Coles and rent a movie or two. Jo says Chris liked the original Hellboy so I can rent that for $3.99 and watch it on my iPhone. Should be a good test.  I also want a Texas Hold’em Poker game and Apple themselves wrote a really great looking one called Texas Hold ‘Em for iPhone.

There’s a review on the Ars Technica website. "The other cool feature is a multiplayer option that lets you play against up to eight other actual, live iPhone or iPod touch users over a Wi-Fi network."

 

 

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