Casey Sousa dot com

iPhone MMS Message Send Failure

// October 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Apple, Hardware, iPhone, tech support

My iPhone 3G was doing very well with the new MMS capabilities until one day it wouldn’t send any. I didn’t update, add any apps, or change any settings. All I did was sync it with iTunes to backup the phone. I don’t know if that caused the problem or not, but it was the only thing I did besides normal usage of the phone. I was hunting for a fix online and saw a lot of suggestions for people who couldn’t get MMS working from the beginning, but none about how to get it working again after it had been working previously.

Some suggestions were drastic including a full restore of the iPhone, and others were annoying by suggesting that you call at&t customer support. All that noise sounded like way too much of a headache to me, so I just did a simple power cycle (turn off the phone, then turn it back on), and that fixed it. Amazingly simple. I’ve made it a habit to start with that as my first step of troubleshooting my iPhone, computers, routers, modems, cable boxes, etc. Sometimes it fixes it, and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s nice when it does.

Transfer Music From iPhone to Computer

// October 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Review, Software, Tutorial, iPhone

I recently got a new iMac and wanted the music from my iPhone on it. I have tried several different apps that work well with iPods, but have trouble with the iPhone for whatever reason. Senuti used to be my go-to app, but it hadn’t been updated for the iPhone 3G, not to mention that they had started charging for the software. Yamipod is a great free app that does the job for getting music off, as well as putting music back on the iPod (although a little unrefined as far as UI goes and occasionally crashes), but it doesn’t work with the iPhone 3G either.

I settled on Music Rescue, which costs £10 to register, but you can download and try it for free.

When you first launch it with your iPhone plugged in, it automagically recognizes it and gives you the option to open it or QuickRecover. Pretty smart, eh? I chose to open it, because I didn’t know what QuickRecover would do. I’m ignorant. I admit it.

After you open it, you can see the contents of your iPhone in a beautiful and very iTunes-esque interface. I’m not saying iTunes is the best, but at least it eliminates the learning curve. You have access to view and playback your music, movies, podcasts, and audiobooks. I didn’t have any TV shows on my iPhone, but it appears to handle all media on your iPhone. Probably not voice recordings, though.

I was impressed with all the options in the preferences to customize how you want the app to behave. Very flexible and useful. You can even setup a profile for your device that will be stored on the device itself so that when you plug into other computers with Music Rescue, it will remember the settings. This could be useful if you want to keep two computer music libraries synced through the use of your iPhone.

When you’re ready to start the copy, click the button in the bottom right corner that says “Begin Copy…” and you’re presented with some options of which media you want to copy as shown below. I love options and flexibility! I also love the little encouragement in the bottom left, “Don’t steal music.” Isn’t that Apple’s line?

If you use the software in the Demo mode, then you’ll be nagged every 50 songs with this little window which goes away by clicking OK. I love developers who tell you it isn’t free software, yet they let you use it for free. It’s like those companies that send you free return address labels, but then ask you to send in a donation if you plan on using them. Yeah, ok, I’ll get right on that.

It’s a small annoyance, but if you use this more than once, it would definitely be worth it to purchase a license key. After all your media is copied from the iPhone, it then opens iTunes and adds it to the library. If there are conflicts, it warns you and gives you options for overwriting, skipping, or merging data. How very thoughtful!

Overall, a very flexible, easy, quick, and painless procedure to get my music off my iPhone. I highly recommend this software to anyone in the same boat.

P.S. They also offer a Windows version, but I have not tested it. Let me know how it works for you.

Twitter Haters Who Text Me What They Are Doing

// September 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts, Websites

The top 2 reasons I hear for why people don’t use Twitter are:

1. I don’t get it.
2. I don’t care what people are doing, and I don’t want people to know what I’m doing.

I can understand the first reason, but it’s the second reason I take issue with. If you are the person who tells me you don’t care what other people are doing, and you also don’t want people to know what you’re doing, then you need to stop texting me everything you’re doing throughout the day!

• Stop texting me that you had the best burrito ever.
• Stop texting me that you found a great deal on shoes at Payless.
• Stop texting me how tired you are because you didn’t sleep well last night.
• Stop texting me to tell me you’re going to bed now.
• Stop texting me what your mom/dad/brother/sister just said to you.
• Stop texting me asking what I’m doing.

These are all the sort of things Twitter was made for. You bash on the service, yet you do it on a smaller scale by individually texting all your friends the same message. Knock it off, and start Twittering!

Get Large Voice Recordings Off Your iPhone

// July 15th, 2009 // No Comments » // Apple, Software, Tutorial, iPhone

The new Voice Memos app on the iPhone 3.0 software is pretty cool. It makes great sounding recordings, and it’s easy as pie to use. The only glitch I’ve run into is that you can’t get the recordings off if they are over 2 minutes. Now what?

There are two methods. One is easy, and one is for the geeks.

Method 1:

When you plug your iPhone into iTunes, go to the Music tab and make sure that there is a check mark next to “Include voice memos”. This will automatically sync your voice memos into their own playlist in iTunes where you can then do whatever you’d like with them.

Method 2:

If you have your iPhone jailbroken, you can SSH into it and pull the recordings off manually. They’ll play just fine in iTunes or QuickTime and then you can convert them to another format if you want.

In your SFTP program (I use Cyberduck, it’s free), go to this path to find the recordings:
/private/var/mobile/Media/Recordings

JP Greenwood Photography

// July 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Review, Websites

A good friend of mine, JP Greenwood, who usually only has time for major photo shoots for huge clients such as Oakley, Vanity Fair, ESPN, Surfer, Forbes, and Glamor, (to name a few) has just started selling his prints online. These are high quality framed prints at an extremely good price. You can order them online by clicking here.

He also has 15 pieces displayed in the gallery at Capo Beach Calvary from July 1st, 2009 through September 1st, 2009. If you’re in Orange County, swing by and check it out.

A few samples of Greenwood’s work:

Borders Books Online Reservation Feature FAIL

// July 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Happenings, Review, Thoughts

I’ve seen the “Everything is amazing, nobody is happy” video, and totally agree with it. I complain about way more than I should considering

how amazingly far we’ve come with technology. However, sometimes I just want to wring someone’s neck for being lazy or not caring.

I checked Borders for two items: a book by John Eldredge, and a Moleskine notebook. Both inventory reports for the Mission Viejo Borders said that it was “likely in store.” I reserved it online by putting in my name and email address, and the confirmation page told me to wait for an email within two hours to tell me if it was in stock or not. Well, I didn’t want to wait, and figured they would at least have one of the two in stock, so I drove down there.

When I got there, I checked my iPhone for an email, but nothing. I went straight to the Moleskine spinning display and found about 10 of the notebook that I wanted. I grabbed one, and headed for the other book. I found the last copy on the shelves within about 5 minutes, and headed for the check stand. I checked my email again on the way to find the following email:

We’re sorry to say that the remaining stock of the item you requested has been purchased since our last online availability update. [Edited for relevance.]

The books were in my hands, so clearly the system kinda broke down somewhere. Apparently the website sends an email to the store, which is then taken by an employee to hunt down the request. When they don’t find it, they notify the website that they don’t have it and then you are emailed. When I asked the checkout clerk what might have gone wrong with the system, she said that it probably just got put on the shelves right before I picked it off the shelf. That means that when the employee looked for it, it hadn’t been stocked yet. This doesn’t make any sense because the website said that the book was “likely in store” which would mean that the system had some sort of awareness that the book could possibly be there.

My theory for what happened: Request landed in the hands of one of the lazy, coffee drinking, mohawked, minimum waged employees who wiped his nose with the paper, and then reported back that it wasn’t in stock so that he could go take another smoke break. He probably thought it wouldn’t matter because who would be stupid enough to go to the store when they told you they don’t have what you’re looking for? What he didn’t account for was my impatience… and maybe a little bit of my stupidity.

I guess it bugs me because it could have caused me some inconvenience had I waited and trusted what they said. If they didn’t have it, then I probably would have had to drive to a farther bookstore which would have wasted my gas and time. Or I might have ordered it online which would mean that I have to wait till next week to get it.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t complain because it’s pretty amazing that it’s possible for almost anyone to get their hands on virtually every written word in the world within a week. These huge stores provide vast amounts of learning possibilities and wisdom from millennia ago that would blow the minds exponentially of every reader going back thousands of years. It’s just a shame that forward progress can be halted by one lazy person.

Wordpress Footer Spam

// February 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // CaseySousa.com, Software, Websites

I’ve had a ton of spam links for drugs of various kinds showing up in my header and footer for a long time. I keep deleting them and they keep coming back. They aren’t visible, but they have caused Google to no longer list my site in results even when searching for my specific domain name. I finally hunted down the code that was causing the problem. I don’t claim to know everything about php or WordPress, but maybe my experience will help you.

In my footer.php file, I found the code <?php do_action('get footer'); ?> at the bottom of the file just before the </body>erbium doped fiber amplifier tag. This seemed to be retrieving the spam links in the footer.

I found some help on the WordPress forums, so I guess it’s a known problem.

Strange Name-Collecting Twitterer

// February 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Happenings

For those of you using Twitter for more than a couple weeks have no doubt received at least one email notifying you that someone new is following your updates. Some of you even know that these followers are usually someone you don’t know that just wants you to follow them back, even though they are just retweeting the good stuff that they get from other people. Well, I received the strangest and probably the scariest follower this morning.

Apparently, this user only follows people who have the name “Alex” or “Casey” with the exception of some famous Twitterers like Kevin Rose and John McCain.

The notification email sent to me said that “Cody Hutchison” was now following my updates. This user, who also goes by “footballguy166″, has what I can only describe as a fetish. He seems to be collecting a certain type of Twitterer, but not based on what they tweet. He’s following 365 people and hasn’t posted a single update, which makes me wonder what the heck is going on. It’s like a train wreck. I can’t NOT look and wonder what’s gonna happen.

Do you have any weird followers or experiences on Twitter?

Something About “FAIL”

// February 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

I saw this article on the NY Times site, and thought it was really interesting. It’s a visualization of the Twitter chatter that happened during the Super Bowl. Those chatters are placed on a map of the U.S. so you can see what location is saying what. There’s also a play button that lets you view the chatter over the course of the game. Very cool, right?

My favorite part is if you view “Talking about ads” and keep your eye on tweets near Lake Forest, CA, you’ll see at the end of the game the most used word was “fail”. I’m not sure what ad it’s referring to, or if it’s even referring to an ad at all, but it only appears in Lake Forest.

The word is definitely not localized to Orange County, as was noted on Slate.com. Apparently, it comes from a video game with poor Japanese-to-English translation.

It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the first reference, given how common the verb fail is, but online commenters suggest it started with a 1998 Neo Geo arcade game called Blazing Star. (References to the fail meme go as far back as 2003.) Of all the game’s obvious draws—among them fast-paced action, disco music, and anime-style cut scenes—its staying power comes from its wonderfully terrible Japanese-to-English translations. If you beat a level, the screen flashes with the words: “You beat it! Your skill is great!” If you lose, you are mocked: “You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!”

For a while now, I’ve personally noticed the use of “fail” increase in everyday speech, mostly under the age of 25. I’m not sure why, but I really get a kick out of this word when it’s used like this. Maybe it’s because it’s so simple and to the point. Maybe it’s the way it perfectly embodies the arrogance of the cyber geek who casts judgement and ridicule from the safety his armchair.  Maybe it’s because of the many images that I’ve seen this word tattooed on. Maybe it’s a combination of all the above.

Whatever the reason, I have to soak in the enjoyment from this meme as much as I can. As history has taught us about slang, it won’t last forever!

Hands-Free

// January 31st, 2009 // No Comments » // Thoughts

Since California passed the law about hands-free cell phone usage, I’ve seen and heard some weird stuff. Just to be clear for those of you still holding out on buying a hands-free headset, it’s not “hands-free” if you hold your phone to your mouth on speakerphone. That pretty much defeats the whole purpose of the law.

However, there are a couple details that you may not have known about.

1. You are allowed to use your phone “to make emergency calls to a law enforcement agency, a medical provider, the fire department, or other emergency services agency.”
2. “This law does not prohibit reading, selecting or entering a phone number, or name in an electronic wireless device for the purpose of making or receiving a phone call.”

If you do have a hands-free headset that isn’t wireless (AKA, Bluetooth), only use one side of the earbud because both ears covered is against the law. Also, if you’re under 18-years-old, you’re not allowed to use your phone AT ALL.

If you are weighing out the consequences versus your need to make a call illegally, just be aware that you’re fine will only be $20 the first time, and $50 every time after that and doesn’t count as a point against your driving record.