This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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November 2024
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Using EC2

I was going to use my old laptop Zeus, but instead I’m trying to get the wiki back up and running on EC2. I got the signed up. Got the EC2 instance up and running with an image pre-populated with apache, mysql and php. I transfered over all my wiki files, and the last mysql dump I had. I restored from the dump. At first it gave some db errors because there was one place where the host location was hardcoded. Then I changed that and also the user grants in the db to get around that.

Now I have no db errors, but a blank white screen.

More debugging to go.

If I get it all up and running, I won’t KEEP running it at EC2 for a variety of reasons. It will just give me the confidence to wipe my current setup on Cronus and rebuild there. But EC2 is proving to be a handy quick way to get another “machine” up and running to try some things out on.

With the data transfer and everything, and me having run the instance overnight while I slept too, so far it has cost me $2.38 to have this EC2 instance up and running.

Somebody got the Message

Guess they had generated enough bad press they decided a change in direction was in order.

Third Party Applications on the iPhone
(Steve Jobs, Apple Hot News)

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task.

(via TUAW)

That Didn’t Take Long

OK, now I want one again.

Third Party Apps ported to iPhone 1.1.1
(Erica Sadun, TUAW)

This morning, we were having a lot of trouble getting third-party iPhone apps to show up properly and run on the home screen. Despite the fact that Apple has added extra protections to SpringBoard and created a list of approved identifiers, iPhone hacker asap18 has managed to port several applications to the iPhone and gotten them to appear properly on the home screen. For now, only 15 icons can be added this way–the last spot appears to be reserved for iTunes. The apps have been tested and are working fine.

I’ll still wait until next year though. :-)

Echos of Sling

Although I guess I should reserve judgement for awhile, my initial reaction is that this can’t be a good thing for those of us who love our Slingboxes.

Sling Media To Be Acquired By EchoStar; Deal Valued At Approximately $380 Million
(Staci D. Kramer, paidContent.org)

This just in … EchoStar (NSDQ: DISH) is acquiring Sling Media in a cash-and-options transaction valued at approximately $380 million. The deal announced late Monday evening, is subject to the usual closing conditions; it is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

(via Techmeme)

Although of course since there is no subscription or anything existing boxes should not be effected at all… just potential future new products.

MTurk Looking for Another Missing Person

In the future, is this going to happen every time anybody goes missing? Once again there is a Mechanical Turk project to help search and rescue find a missing person:

Help Find Steve Fossett
(kdawson, Slashdot)

An anonymous reader invites us to join in the hunt for the missing Steve Fossett using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. DigitalGlobe, one of Google’s imaging partners, has acquired new high-resolution satellite imagery of the area where Fossett disappeared on Monday. The public can now go through this imagery and quickly flag any images that might contain Fossett’s plane. Flagged images will receive further review by search and rescue experts.

I did some for a few minutes. I don’t think I found him.

Planning for Load

Looks like the little service that was supplying those map widget thingies I posted about yesterday and put up elsewhere on the site earlier today has fallen over and died under the increased load of all the people trying out the map thingy. Or something. http://whos.amung.us/ gives a nice little PHP information summary page rather than their website, and http://maps.amung.us/ just isn’t answering at all any more. Cool.

I guess they got a bit too much traffic a bit too fast and melted their servers. Oops.

I’ll leave their stuff up on my site for the moment assuming they will recover. If they don’t by the time I get home tonight, maybe I’ll comment out their stuff until they come back.

Hmmm… the maps one just answered… just REALLY slow and not quite functional. Maybe they are on the way back. That would be cool. I like the map thingy.

Map Widget Thingy Bop

OK, yeah, it is way past bedtime and I am playing with Site Visit Map Widgets. The above shows the location of recent visitors to this site… well, at least all the pages of this site where I’ve got the footer in place, there are still a bunch of old pre-2004 pages with no footer yet… and of course it only gets real site visitors, not people reading via RSS and the like, but still… it is cute.

I generally am a big fan of maps. Maybe I’ll put a smaller version of this on somewhere on the front page permanently. Well, at least until I tire of it.

Google Flight Sim

Very cool:

Google Earth Flight Simulator
(Marco’s Blog)

Some time last week, Google expanded Google Earth with Google Sky. As fascinating as Google Sky is, that’s not the focus of this post. Along with the latest update comes a hidden feature of which I cannot seem to find any other information about. It’s not in the release notes and a search on Google produces no results. Seems Google have done one of their unpublicised updates they’re becoming well-known for.

What I’m talking about is a flight simulator embedded within GE. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? If the thought amazes you as much as it did me, then might have run off and tried it for yourself. But there’s a problem. Remember what I said above – it’s a hidden feature!

First of all you’ll have to install the latest version of GE. Once you’ve started it all up, explored Google Sky a bit, then all you have to do is hit Ctrl+Alt+A (if you’re running OS X it’s Command+Option+A).

(via Techmeme)

I’d been thinking for awhile that if X-Plane was combined with Google Earth how awesome that would be. This isn’t quite that. The flight sim is pretty basic. But still fun. This is how scenery in those things should look… Cool.

New Best GPS

Well, at least for portable detachable car use.

Garmin Nuvi 750/760/770
(GPS Lodge)

The Garmin Nuvi 750/760/770 was announced today for the start of the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. The new line features the sleek design look of the Nuvi 200 series, and a full feature set that will set it at the top of the Garmin line. The units will offer you the ability to get some help, including how to get to police, hospitals and to the nearest gas station. This is now becoming a standard feature in the GPS world, which I think will be welcome features for most users. The other way the units can help you are to find your car: Tap the screen and take your GPS with you (to avoid it from being stolen) and then the unit can help you get back to your car when your “Pedestrian Mode” walking or shopping is over.

I of course want the 770. But that is definitely not on the 2007 budget. Maybe the venerable Nuvi 350 if I get lucky. Realistically though, no GPS this year. It is just way too low on the rational priority list. Near the top of the irrational gadget lust list, but pretty low on real life priority. So it will wait.

Wicked Resizing

I’m a little slow on this one, but take a look at the image resizing method highlighted in the article below. It is very cool.

Adobe Hires Co-Inventor of Image Resizer Technology
(Michael Arrington, TechCrunch)

The day before yesterday I showed the above video (it has now been viewed nearly 100,000 times), which shows some jaw dropping examples of next generation image manipulation, and said “I want this in PhotoShop immediately.” Well, that may be happening sooner rather than later. Co-inventor Shai Avidan has now joined Adobe and will work out of their Newtown, MA office. More info on Shai is here.

Basically it works by finding parts of the picture where not much is going on and eliminating them first when you resize rather than just scaling the image. So for instance, if you have a picture with two people on opposite sides of a street and make the picture narrower, the street will get narrower and the people will get closer together before it starts doing anything to the people.

Very cool. Check out the video.