do you need apple’s broadband tuner?

The Broadband Tuner allows you to take full advantage of very high speed FiOS based Internet connections that have a high latency. The installer tweaks some system parameters.

This was not the decription a few days ago, as it had no mention of FiOS connections at all. Just speeds of over 5MBps. This has confused a lot of people recently.

It’s been slightly clarified over at Version tracker’s comment section for the file that if you’ve got a high speed connection and are looknig at ping times of 100+ms, then the Broadband Tuner will help. Otherwise, this might DECREASE your download speeds.

How can you check your ping time?
Open Terminal and enter this string: ping a.root-servers.net

It’ll give you al ist. If you’re over 100ms and are on a high speed connection, this could work for you. I saw no improvement on my G5, but my pings were also under 100 (and downloaded before this FiOS thing was added.)

Installed it accidentally? Well, Apple claims:

There is an optional uninstaller that can be used to restore the settings that were in effect at the time just before the system parameters were changed.

Although people were mentioning grey screens of death unpon uninstalling. I’ll let you know tomorrow.

Me and Steve Jobs are like Brad Pitt and Ed Norton

We’re the same guy. Or something.

Sorry if I just spoiled the end of Fight Club, but apparently Apple had the same idea I had a few weeks ago in that the Mac has a future in the living room.

Check out this Think Secret post to see what I mean. A Mac Mini with a DVR built into it, apparently as a part of Front Row 2.0. Hot stuff!

Here’s my personal speculation, the Mac Mini is going to have a composite or RCA output built into it. So remember that in January when the Intel Mac Mini is released.

Does A Dog Know When His Birthday Is?

Exactly one year ago today, Matty was adopted by me for a mere $75 and another $75 donation. I can’t tell you how unmeasureably better Matty has made my life. If you’ve been thinking about adopting a pet but haven’t gotten around to it, please go out and adopt a dog, cat, rabbit, ferret, horse, etc. that needs a home. Avoid the pet stores, find a kill shelter and look for a friendly dog or go to a no-kill shelter that adopts dogs from kill shelters, or just a no-kill shelter.

I adopted Matty form the North Shore Animal League on Long Island, NY. They were one of the shelters that sent planes and vans down to the gulf coast when the hurricanes hit earlier this year knowing that hundreds of pets would be displaced as a result. Recently they took dogs in from China that were heading towards being slaughtered. Their website doesn’t reflect the amount of dogs, cats puppies and kittens then actually have there.

Another great directory online is petfinder.com.

When walking through the Animal League I looked at a few dogs, they were all barking pretty loudly except for one who looked like he was sleeping. He was very cute and had an odd body shape to him. I pointed him out and said “That’s the one, but I want to walk though and make sure.” Sure enough, I walked by all the other dogs and none of them stuck out liek this one did. I asked to play with him for a few minutes, but first I had to wake him up from his nap. He came to, and what an odd combination he was! Part Basset Hound, part German Shepherd, this little guy had the body size of a German Shepherd on the legs of a Basset Hound. His coat was a Shepherds, and so was his face, but his ears were turned down, and when he wagged his tail, his whole body swung around because he was so excited. They weren’t sure of an exact age, jsut somewhere between 2 and 3. He was neutered, they knew that much. I wish I paid closer attention, but I’m pretty sure he was saved from a kill shelter in West Virginia. I’ll have to call and ask if they still have that info on record.

A few thrown tennis balls, hugs and face licks later, I had filed the adoption papers. Thanks to my references (my sister and my friend April) I drove back to my parents house with Clawson in tow.

My mom didn’t know I went to adopt a dog, so she was pretty surprised when I came home with a dog. She even broke her one rule she said she’d never break (no dogs in the house ever again), and she admitted he was a very cute dog and thatmaybe she’d let him in the house next time I was home. From there I went to my sisters to see if he socialized well with her golden, and they socialized great. When I went to pick up some supplies from the store, my sister said he waited by the door the whole time.

Later that night I decided to change his name to Mattingly, or Matty for short. The rest, as they say, is history.

Front Row on any Mac!

Curious about running Front Row on your mac but don’t have one of those snazzy new iMac G5s? It’s a pretty simple process.

It used to be that you had to change some administrator needed files by hand, which can be worrysome to some Mac users. Well, the files still need to be changed, but now there’s an application that does it for you. The aptly named Front Row Enabler.

Front Row Enabler is only one part of the equation though. The other two are Front Row, obviously, and a shareware program named Pacifist.

Pacifist is a package installer for OS X, outside of the built-in one. This is to circumvent the need to have an iMac G5 in order to install the package. You don’t ned to pay the $20 if you are just installing this one thing.

The enabler alters your BezelServices.framework and BezelService.loginPlugin in your system library. This is to change your computer’s identity, regardless of what computer you’re running. The computer’s identity regarding what kind of Mac it is. To my knowledge it doesn’t really change anything else.

Here’s some proof. The link goes to a screenshot I took in the transition to Front Row. You can see the system info saying it’s a 2.0 GHz G5 in the image.

Screenshot

A review of Salling Clicker is next, which acts as my Bluetooth remote for Front Row and multiple other applications. Go download and enjoy!

wordpress notes

So it seems like all the images on the page have died.  Great.

 My apologies.

Motorola e815 review

I was going to hold back on this until it got resolved, but it’s geting me very frustrated.

I’m a Verizon Wireless customer, and my “New Every Two” deal just came up. I got my $100 off and a new two year agreement along with a shiny new Motorola e815. On paper, it’s an extremely cool phone, the screen’s big, the buttons are large and easily pressed, the memory card slot (I have a 512 MB card in there) is an awesome addition as now I can watch movies and mp3’s on the phone (not that I do, but I COULD), the 1.2 Megapixel camera is pretty good quality (check out my flickr account for more proof of that, the bluetooth works just fine and sync’s good to my computer and headset. It’s got EVDO capability although I don’t use it.

But…

When I first got the phone, it couldn’t send or recieve photos. I pay $5 a month for unlimited text and photo messaging to Verizon customers. So this is an issue because it’s a service I pay for. It just couldn’t send them. I took it to a store, who attempted to update the phone (by dialling *228, something I already did) and then told me to go to a service center. I went to a service center, who told me that I need to go through phone customer service first. I called customer service and spoke with 6 people over the course of an hour and a half. Eventually I was told to go to a service center to get the phone replaced. I went to a service center and it took 45 minutes to get a replacement. It sent pictures for a while.

Then it stopped one day. This is my second e815 and it’s stopped being able to send pictures. What the hell. I do NOT want to ssit on the phone with Verizon again for ANOTHER hour and half to find out that I need to takt ehe phone in to wait another 45 minutes to get another new phone.

The phone is also capable of OBEX transfers, which are transfers from a file system to the internal memory of the phone; which were disabled (the word people liek to use is “crippled”) by Verizon, so you will buy their games, their ringtones, etc. They’ve also disabled the ability to use the phone as a bluetooth or USB modem. I’d gladly trade the ability for the phone to “VCAST” for the Object Exchange (OBEX). Who gives a crap about VCAST anyway? I don’t care about music videos to start with, let alone watching them on my phone. I had my memory card filled up with episodes of My Name is Earl and Family Guy anyway.

Speaking of the video, it’s not too bad if you load it yourself. Quicktime will convert to the file type (.3gpp2) and you can get a minute of 15FPS video under 1 MB. I got 24 minute episodes of My Name is Earl down to about 16 MB if I remember correctly. Not too shabby all things considered. It’s no HDTV or even a 5G iPod, but it’ll do if you’re stuck and want to watch a show or two or the train or wherever.

Bottom line is that I’m PISSED about it not working for a second time on a new phone.

As soon as I get a new one or this one starts working again I’m hacking it anyway.

edit: this problem seems to have fixed itself somehow with a power off, power on. I think that might mean I’m an idiot.