On a recent trip to the UK I purchased the 20MB package and carefully monitored my usage to stay within the limit.  Despite this, when I returned my bill said I’d used 23.3MB and they stung me an extra $29 for the 3MB overage – which was more than the cost of the original 20MB!!  I’ve heard other people have had similar issues.

According to AT&T, despite their recommendation to use the iPhone usage meter as your gauge, the ‘approved’ way of checking usage is to phone ‘*data#’ (*3282#) when you are travelling.  This will send a text back to your phone like the one shown on the right.  They assure me that, even though you are abroad, you won’t get charged for the international text message.  My next trip starts today.  We shall see if they are right.

So make that call!

iTunes Description: The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is the largest collection of movie, TV and celebrity information anywhere. We aim to list every detail about every movie and TV show ever made, including who was in it, who made it, the plot, user ratings, trailers, photos, reviews, and trivia.

IMDb for iPhone and iPod Touch includes:

• Over 1.5 million movie and TV titles
• Over 3.2 million celebrities
• US Movie showtimes
• Trailers
• Photos
• US TV listings
• Top ranked movies (MOVIEmeter)
• Top ranked celebrities (STARmeter)
• Celebrity birthdays
• US Box Office results
• Movies coming soon
• Top 250 rated films of all time

Look and Feel I use Winterboard to modify the screen with a number of visual key changes (all installed via Cydia): Illumine theme (not active when the screen shots below were taken) Blue Apple Signal Bars Helix Battery RSS WiFi Orange No Docked Icon Labels And also the following mods: Lock Calendar Five Column Springboard Five Icon Dock

System Tweaks There are also several system changes that are installed, also via Cydia dRus Strong Bad Email announcement sound Snappy – fast access to camera by holding status bar qTweeter – fast access to tweet by swiping down the screen SBSettings – fast access to toggles by swiping across the status bar Push Notifications SBSettings Toggle Push SBSettings Toggle Rotation Inhibitor SBSettings Toggle Action Menu (with Plus Pack) 3G Unrestrictor – allows various applications to work on 3G (and not just WiFi)

The Apps

Below you’ll find all the apps installed on my phone.  I’ve tagged the apps into four categories:

1. Use them all the time
2. Use them occasionally
3. Installed just in case
4. Installed but didn’t like/didn’t use and should be deleted

I’ll use this numbering scheme for all the apps below.  Also note that I’m in the middle of reordering a few screens, so a few apps appear in strange places.

First Page apps:

• 1. Mail (built in)
• 1. Things – to do lists
• 1. Consistency – from Sciral – recurring to do lists
• 1. TWC – The Weather Channel, with the Weathericon mod
• 1. Calendar (built in)
• 1. Safari (built in)
• 1. Facebook
• 1. Contacts (built in)
• 1. Camera (built in)
• 1. Photos (built in)
• 1. Maps (built in)
• 1. Messages (built in)
• 1. Clock (built in)
• 1. Calculator (built in)
• 1. SplashID – password keeper
• 1. TideGraph – tides at any location
• 1. MyBlog – Safari shortcut to this blog (www.nickjhowe.com)
• 1. WordPress – to administer this blog
• 1. Wikipanion – Wikipedia look up
• 2. iPass – prepaid access to WiFi hotspots

And in the dock:

• 1. Phone (built in)
• 1. Reportage – Twitter app by Wherecloud
• 1. Settings (built in)
• 1. iPod (built in)
• 1. AppManager (built in)

Second Page apps:

• 2. PicSafe – store pictures securely
• 2. Sonos – controller for my Sonos whole house music system
• 2. Remote (built in)
• 2. TimeScroller – Suggests times for multi-timezone conference calls
• 2. Skype
• 1. AP Mobile – news from Associated Press
• 1. NPR News – news from NPR
• 1. USA Today – news from USA Today
• 2. BBC Mobile – news from the BBC. Not an official BBC app – still waiting for that.
• 4. WikiHow – app to show info from the WikiHow website
• 2. Chase – Chase banking app
• 2. Wells Fargo – Wells Fargo banking app
• 2. BofA – Bank of America banking app
• 4. Drync Wine – wine cellar app
• 2. Tetris
• 1. TripIt – shows travel information stored at the TripIt web site – great for frequent travellers
• 1. FlightCaster – tries to predict whether flights will be on time (US flights only)
• 1. FlightTracker – detailed flight info.  Can use TripIt data
• 3. HotelsNearMe – lookup hotel availability and prices near where you are

Third Page apps:

• 2. AutoStitch – create panoramas
• 4. iSnapShot – create email postcards with four photos
• 1. Camera Zoom – zoom the iPhone camera
• 2. Photogene – Image editing
• 2. GazoPa – search for images on the internet that look like another image
• 2. ColorSplash – selectively add or erase color from images
• 2. NightCamera – use the iPhone accelerometer to capture still images in low light
• 2. SmugShot – upload images to SmugMug
• 2. ImagePro – search the internet for images
• 2. Cooliris – search the internet for images and display on a 3D ‘wall’
• 2. Dictionary – internet dictionary
• 2. SoundHound – get the name/artist of a song by ‘listening’ to the song (was Midomi)
• 4. Bump – exchange contact details by ‘bumping’ iPhones
• 2. BJ Run Lite – Blackjack game
• 3. InchCalc – add/divide fractional numbers (useful for carpentry or picture hanging)
• 2. iTunes (built in)
• 1. Mint – online money management – (like Microsoft Money)
• 4. QuickMark – barcode decoder
• 3. iHandy Level – 2D spirit level

Fourth Page apps:

• 2. TweetDeck – Twitter app; works just like the desktop version
• 2. BrightKite – location aware social media app
• 1. AppMiner - Lists new and on sale AppStore apps
• 2. USA East – marine navigation
• 2. LinkedIn
• 2. Zillow – find home prices/homes for sale
• 2. AppBox Lite – useful tools (currency converter, etc)
• 3. Weather (built in)
• 3. To Do (built in)
• 2. iDaily – quote of the day
• 4. HomeFinder – find homes for sale
• 3. Google
• 3. Tweetie – Twitter app
• 1. Timing ‘09 – Formula One official app (09 season) live qualifying/race timings
• 3. What’s On? – TV guide
• 4. Alarm+Clock – alarm clock!
• 2. Meet – Webex app
• 3. TV Listings – TV guide

Fifth Page apps:

• 2. eBay
• 3. Stations – UK rail network info
• 2. Now Playing – Movie listings.  Includes Rotten Tomatoes ratings
• 2. Boxee – remote for Boxee app
• 4. Air Sharing – use iPhone as a wireless disk
• 3. Cricket SC – Cricket scores from Sky TV
• 3. MotionX GPS – full GPS with tracks, routes, etc.
• 3. Audio Boo – record/post quick audio ‘tweets’
• 3. Voice Memos (built in)
• 2. POTUS – List/details of Presidents of the United States
• 2. Amazon
• 2. DocScanner – Save pictures of documents with keystone correction
• 3. FlashBang – how far away is the lightning?
• 2. FlashCards – learn info about the 50 states
• 3. PublicRadio – listen to free radio stations
• 4. Layar – augmented reality browser
• 3. i.TV – TV guide
• 4. TV Forecast – TV guide
• 3. YouTube (built in)
• 3. Last.fm – listen to Last.fm radio

Sixth Page apps:

• 4. Jamd – celebrity news/pictures (interesting multi-touch interface)
• 2. Pandora – listen to Pandora radio
• 4. Public Radio – old version of Public radio app
• 3. Rocket Taxi – find local taxi numbers
• 3. Big Oven – 100,000 recipies
• 4. Trapster – show live speed trap/police trap info
• 3. Check Please – calculate check/bill splits and tips
• 2. Koi Pond – excellent demo of iPhone grapics
• 2. Dial Zero – 800 numbers of hundreds of companies, and how to bypass voice prompts
• 3. iBird Pro – Bird database of US
• 3. CitySearch – find local restaurants, shops, etc.
• 2. Google Earth
• 3. Flashlight
• 3. G-Park – use GPS to record where you parked your car
• 2. HJ – Human Japanese – learn to read, speak and write Japanese
• 3. Drinks Free – thousands of cocktail recipies
• 4. E*Trade – E*Trade app

Seventh Page apps:

• 1. Open Table – find restaurant table availability and book
• 4. IsaDial - Dials using calling card info.  Still broken on iPhone with Sprint
• 2. iPhunny – jokes
• 4. Police Scanner – listen to police radio
• 4. Pocket Whiteboard – scribble on a mini whiteboard
• 4. Restaurants – keep track of fast food eating
• 3. Tracker Lite – track packages on UPS, FedEx, USPS
• 2. Scramble – word game
• 2. myWireless – view AT&T billing/usage info
• 3. Spanish Anywhere – offline Spanish/English translator
• 2. Starwalk – visual star map
• 4. Stocks (built in)
• 4. Roambi – Business Intelligence/Dashboard viewer

Eighth Page apps:

• 4. Land Line – sends tones through the speaker to dial a land line hands free
• 2. Twitterific – Twitter app
• 3. Seafood Watch – helps avoid endangered sea food in restaurants
• 3. iTrans Tube – London Tube maps/timing
• 3. Compass (built in)
• 2. Craigs Pro – Craigslist app
• 3. Factbook 09 – CIA world country factbook
• 2. Moonlight Lite – Mah Jong game
• 3. uStream Viewer – viewer for uStream
• 3. EPCOT Wait Watch – how long are the queues for the rides at EPCOT?
• 3. Weatherbug – weather app
• 2. Red Laser – Scan bar codes and find competitive prices on the internet

Nineth Page apps:

• 1. Urban Spoon – Restaurant suggestions
• 3. White Pages – residential phone number look up
• 3. Yellow Pages – business phone number look up
• 2. Drivers Ed – driving test questions for all US states
• 2. Flixster – look up movie locations/times/reviews
• 2. ISSLite – when can the International Space Station be seen at your location?
• 4. JamBase – find local live music performances
• 2. Labyrinth LE – game – excellent example of accelerometer
• 2. Notes (Built in)
• 3. Repair Pal – find local car repair locations and costs of repairs/service
• 3. Speedtest – connection speed test
• 3. Wifi Trak – find WiFi hot spots
• 2. WildWest – pinball game
• 3. iBart – routes/times for BART in San Francisco

Tenth Page apps:

• 2. Word Warp – word game
• 2. Crog-Mag Racer – racing game
• 4. Tris – tetris game
• 2. Toobz-Free – flowing water game
• 2. Movem free – pattern matching game
• 2. Hangman – word game
• 2. Brick Free – blocks game
• 2. iFighter Lite – arcade WW II fighter game
• 2. Cross Light – crossword puzzles
• 4. Place Tagger – GPS/timer app.  Can be used to help geotag photos
• 4. Searchme – search using multiple search engines
• 4. SpeedTest – connection speed test
• 2. Sol Free – solitaire game
• 2. Wall Street Journal – online news paper
• 2. Yammer – like Twitter, but secure

Eleventh Page apps:

• 2.Yelp – find local restaurants/shops, plus social media component
• 2. Stanza – offline book reader/book database
• 2. Sudoku – Sudoku game
• 3. Translator – online multi-language translator
• 2. Yowza!! – get online coupons for local stores
• 2. Constitution – US Constitution, with notes
• 2. qTweeter – settings for qTweeter twitter app
• 1. Insomnia – keep wireless connection live when iPhone locks
• 1. 3G Unrestrictor – allows any app to work on 3G, bypassing WiFi-only restrictions
• 4. Icy – app installer – website just announced this is dead
• 1. Winterboard – modify look and feel of iPhone
• 1. Cydia – install non-AppStore applications
• 4. Finder – iPhone version of Mac finder (crashes constantly)
• 2. Terminal – terminal access to iPhone (or other computers)
• 2. AppLinks – creates shortcuts to all installed apps in /var/mobile/AppLinks

Click the image for a bigger version. The yellow circle shows the herniation. (c) Nick Howe. All rights reserved.

Four weeks ago my lower back started to stiffen and over the course of a week got worse and worse.  I did stretching exercises every day and over the course of the next week it gradually improved until I was back to normal (or so I thought).  During that second week I’d been to see my GP (‘primary care physician’) Dr Brian Moraes about something else and mentioned my back problem.  His diagnosis was “your lower back is too straight.  Don’t wear flip-flops; wear shoes with better arch support”.  Thanks a bunch.

Two days later I was sitting in the driveway repairing sprinklers (again!  I think I need to do a post about garden sprinkler problems.  They seem to fail unusually often).  I reached sideways to pick up a plastic ‘T’ piece and felt like someone had knifed me in the back.  After the initial pain had subsided my back didn’t feel too bad.

Over the next three days the pain in my back got worse and moved into my hip and thigh – classic symptoms of sciatica.  I went to the doctor on Wednesday.  This time I went to see my wife’s GP (Dr Robert Johnson), having lost faith in mine.  Dr Johnson suspected a deep ligament strain and prescribed pain killers and steroids, expecting the problem to fixed in 3-5 days. By the weekend the pain was no better and I made another appointment for the following Wednesday.  This time, Dr Johnson changed his diagnosis to a suspected herniated disc and sent me for an MRI.  He referred me to a spine specialist (Dr Ashish Sahai).

On Friday I went to see Dr Sahai and he confirmed that I had a herniated disk (L2) and prescribed an injection into the spine, which should happen next Thursday.  The injection has to be done under X-Ray to guide the needle, but allegedly I’ll be up and about the same day.

The back is gradually feeling better, but sitting is still very painful and I spend most of the day lying down.  At least it isn’t too difficult to use the iPhone and my small laptop while flat on my back.

Eventually I found this thread on the VMware community site that fixed the problem.  Seems that there is an entry missing from the VMX file.

To fix the problem, make sure the virtual machine is powered off, navigate to the Virtual Machines folder in Documents (or wherever you store your VMware files), right-click on the virtual machine and choose ‘Show Package Contents’.  Scroll down to find the file with the .vmx extension and edit it with text editor.  Your file should contain a lot of lines including:

ethernet0.present = “TRUE”
ethernet0.connectionType = “nat”
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = “FALSE”
ethernet0.linkStatePropagation.enable = “TRUE”

Add the following line:
ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000″

Start up the virtual machine.  Windows should install a new driver and you should be good to go.

The original article can be found at here

Step 1: Share the printer in Windows Vista

If you don’t know how to do this you are reading the wrong blog post.

Step 2: Edit the Windows Registry (and maybe Group Policy)

Use the Registry Editor to set the following registry entry (create the key if it doesn’t exist):

• Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Lsa
• Key: lmcompatibilitylevel (this is a DWORD)
• Value: 1

If you are running Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise you will also need to set a Group Policy. Open the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) and set:

1. Computer Configuration/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Local Policies/Security Options
2. Right-click the ‘Network security: LAN Manager authentication level’ policy item, and select ‘Properties’ from the pop-up menu.
3. Select the ‘Local Security Settings’ tab.
4. Select ‘Send LM & NTLM – user NTLMv2 session security if negotiated’ from the dropdown menu.

Step 3: Add the Shared Printer to Your Mac

This is far more difficult than it should be.  You would think you would open the Print & Fax dialog, select ‘+’, select Windows, find your printer in the browse window and select it.  No chance.  Instead you need to:

1. Choose the ‘Print & Fax’ icon in the System Preferences window and Click the plus (+) sign, located just below the list of installed printers.
2. Right-click the printer browser window’s toolbar, select ‘Customize Toolbar’, drag the ‘Advanced’ icon from the icon palette to the printer browser window’s toolbar; click ‘Done’.
3. Click the ‘Advanced’ icon in the toolbar; select ‘Windows’ from the Type dropdown menu.
4. The next step is to enter the shared printer’s device URL, in the following format:
   smb://user:password@workgroup/ComputerName/PrinterName
   An example would look like this: smb://TomNelson:MyPassword@CoyoteMoon/scaryvista/HPLaserJet5000
   The PrinterName is the ‘Share name’ you entered in Vista.
5. Enter the shared printer’s URL in the ‘Device URL’ field.
6. Select ‘Generic Postscript Printer’ from the Print Using dropdown menu. You can try using one of the specific printer drivers from the list. The drivers most likely to work are labeled ‘Gimp Print’ or ‘PostScript.’ These drivers usually include the proper protocol support for shared network printing.

7. Click the ‘Add’ button.

All done.

Good luck.  It worked for me, but I can’t promise anything.

The Apple Time Capsule is supported, but as I have a 4TB Drobo disk array and a new dual-band AEBS I don’t see the point of going out and spending $299 and up for yet another device.  Despite many attempts at different fixes nothing would work.  Ultimately I gave up.

Then a couple of days ago whilst troubleshooting another problem I came across a post in a forum that suggested enabling an option called ‘Use Interference Robustness’.  On the AEBS, choose “manual setup, the Airport pane, Wireless tab, ‘Wireless Options’.

This innocuous little check box seems to have worked miracles.  Since I turned the option on I haven’t noticed any speed degradation on the network, and Time Machine has been working flawlessly!  I’m now three days into the new setup and monitoring it closely.  The big test is going to be a restore (backups are useless if they won’t restore).  Keep watching this space for an update.

The lasting legacy of my time at Bechtel are the many friends I made there. Unfortunately I don’t get to catch up with them very often but occasionally a chance crops up and I seize it. This week not one but two chances presented themselves. My first meeting was with Danny Jones.  I worked with Danny in Kuwait in ‘92. I can’t do justice to Danny’s resume and world-traveling escapades here (such as the time he was in Falujah when the bombs started dropping) but it was great to catch up with him over lunch.

My second encounter was with Tommy Bombon.  I love the fact that although we have’t seen each other for a dozen years, we can pick up like it was yesterday.  Tommy comes from the Philippines but has been in the Bay Area since he was 17. Back in the early 90’s Tommy spent five months at the Hammersmith office of Bechtel in London and we became good friends.  Despite being separated by the Atlantic we kept in touch and saw each other regularly – usually on my business trips to San Francisco.  In the mid 90’s Tommy went over to the UK with his family and I met his (then) wife and his young sons, Russel and Mike.  That was (I think) the last time I saw him until this week when a chance discovery on Facebook reconnected us.

So what has this got to do with “Your New Secret”, and what is “Your New Secret”?  Well…Tommy has always been interested in photography and recently formed  AtomicBee Productions to showcase his work and (maybe) to start a second (or is it third?) career.  Many of the videos he’s created are for the a couple of bands, the most recent being Your New Secret.  The common element in those bands is the lead guitarist and lead vocalist – none other than Mike Bombon, Tommy’s son who has grown up quite a bit since I met him in London.

Putting all these things together led me last night to the pool patio of the Sofitel Redwood Shores to meet Tommy who was there filming YNS performing an acoustic set for a private party.  Mike and the guys performed four songs (which I’m sure will be up on their and Tommy’s websites soon).  If you can’t wait, check out my feeble attempt below (sorry for the terrible quality – this was my first attempt to use the QIK live streaming software in my iPhone).

A  beautiful, warm evening under the setting California sun was finished off by a great thai meal with Tommy before I headed up to SFO for the red-eye back to Miami and home.

Thanks to Tommy, Mike and the rest of the band for a great evening.  Hopefully my next trip to Santa Clara in a few weeks will give me the chance to meet Tommy’s wife Cat and daughter Sophie and to sample some wonderful Filipino home cooking.