blog.arithm

If you’re trying to run an app that requires TCP connectivity and find it to be mysteriously failing, then probably your BlackBerry is missing it’s APN settings.  See Options -> Advanced Options -> TCP.

There are four recommendations floating around the net.  So far, this works for me:

APN: wap.cingular
Username for APN: <blank>
Password for APN: <blank>

Other allegedly successful access patterns, eg:

APN: <blank>
Username for APN: <blank>
Password for APN: <blank>

APN: proxy
Username for APN: <blank>
Password for APN: <blank>

APN: isp.cingular
Username for APN: <blank>
Password for APN: <blank>

would appear to be lies and damned lies.

On the backend, bad APN’s will fail with “Invalid tunnel name” if the device can’t figure out what type of network connection you’re trying to use, otherwise “Open tunnel - failure” if it thinks it can connect but authentication fails.

…

Oh BlackBerry people, why have you made basic networking so complex?  We’re starting to think we can’t afford to support network-enabled apps on your devices.  Life is so much easier on the iPhone…

The Bulk Rename Utility is a free Windows app from the makers of ViceVersa.

And it is awesome.

Of course, this is something only a true geek like myself can get excited about… but in all honesty it is the single most welcome addition to my arsenal of software tools in many years.

Every so often (or, as seems to be the case lately, every freaking day) I need to rename a large number of files from pattern X to pattern Y.  Usually this involves firing up Cygwin and working out some kind of rename script snippet.  Not rocket science this, but enough to make me groan inwardly.

I’ve tried a couple of rename utilities over the years; none powerful enough to replace script writing.

BRU is different.  You can see from the screenshot that it has intuitive (well, kind of) filters for just about any possible renaming combination.  Best of all it gives you a preview of how your files will be renamed… before you accidentally mung that entire directory tree.  BRU includes many, many more features, including exotic transformations such as renaming photos from EXIF extensions as well as renaming MP3 files using ID3 tags.

Anyway, enough gushing of the geekery.  It’s a nice tool.  Recommended.

What the.. This is annoying.  And all I wanted to do was write a hack to see my AdSense pittance from within WordPress.

What is this?

This is what you get for taking my advice running svnserve manually. Probably an upgrade has updated the svn binaries, though an older version of svnserve is still running. Either restart svnserve yourself, or figure out how to get the fancy shmancy init scripts to work.

Note that you may be seeing this on a remote client machine, though really it’s the server that’s the problem.

Just seen in the wild on an old-ish Fedora distro.

This works:

extension_dir  = /usr/.../php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613
extension = apc.so
extension = wbxml.so

Quick check shows good…

$ php -m
[PHP Modules]
apc
ctype
…
wbxml
xdebug
xml


But this does not:

extension = /usr/.../php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/apc.so
extension = /usr/.../php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/wbxml.so

And yet Zend modules seem to always require a complete path; eg:

zend_extension = /usr/.../php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/xdebug.so

If you ever find yourself unable to get your BlackBerry to connect to wifi, try the following:

Settings -> Options -> Advanced Options -> Host Routing Table

In the “HRT Editor”, click the BlackBerry button and select “Register Now”.  You should get a “Registration message sent!” message and see some network activity.  Click “OK” and try to access the Internet again.

If you’re lucky, you now get to say “Voilla!” This seems to work about 80% of the time.

I think this is how BlackBerry locks down their devices so that folks are required to purchase data plans from a carrier.  No SIM card, no data plan, no wifi.

Would that this were rather more seamless.

If you find yourself upgrading a wicked old Fedora distro, you may run across an error like this:

Error: Package initscripts needs kernel < 2.6.12, this is not available.

Try upgrading your kernel. To upgrade your kernel, make sure that only the latest version is hanging around. Because of a bug in legacy versions of yum, any older versions of the kernel must be removed.

To check your installed kernels, run:

$ rpm -qa | grep kernel

Note that if you simply run “rpm -q kernel”, you may miss smp kernels or other. The above will give you a complete picture. Remove all except the very latest version, then run yum update.

BlackBerry Simulator mysteriously dying every time you try to fire it up on Vista?  Same here. It’s a good thing I’ve become a compulsive reader of release notes. From the the latest JDE 4.6.0 docs:

If you install the BlackBerry® Java® Development Environment on a computer with Windows Vista™, if Use Account Control is turned on, launching the BlackBerry® Smartphone simulator might produce error messages and the simulator might not start.

Read:  Simulator will definitely not start.  And of course they mean User Access Control. How-To Geek has an easy way to kill UAC here.

I used to have a small library of Amiga-related books. I sold off most of these earlier in the summer; many unsurprisingly to collectors in Europe. I have two titles left if anyone out there is interested:

• AmigaDOS Inside and Out
• Amiga Tricks and Tips (rare book)

Flipping through “Tricks & Tips” now… <Sigh> Brings back the good old really geeky days.  So much more glamorous than my current only marginally geeky existence.

It’s interesting however to see that the Amiga still, somehow, miraculously, survives.

Mika Tuupola has come up with an elegant logging mechanism that has already found its way into the official PEAR::Log package.

It’s a snap to use.  Simply instantiate a “Firebug” log as such:

$log = &Log::singleton('firebug', '', 'PHP', array('buffering' => true), PEAR_LOG_DEBUG);

Output will then go to your Firebug console window:

$log->log('Debug lorem ipsum.', PEAR_LOG_DEBUG);
$log->log('Info wisi enim ad minim veniam', PEAR_LOG_INFO);
$log->log('Warning est usus legentis in', PEAR_LOG_WARNING);
$log->log('Error est notare quam', PEAR_LOG_ERR);


To split output to both the default error log as well as the Firebug console, build a “composite” log:

$log = &Log::singleton('composite');
$logFile =& parent::singleton('error_log', PEAR_LOG_TYPE_SYSTEM, 'to error log', array(), PEAR_LOG_DEBUG);
$logFire =& parent::singleton(’firebug’, ”, ‘to firebug’, array(’buffering’=>true), PEAR_LOG_DEBUG);
$log->addChild($logFile);
$log->addChild($logFire);