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Instacanv.as Gallery

2012-04-26T19:50:52Z

My Instacanv.as gallery officially opened a couple of days ago, so if you would be interested in browsing it, heres the link;

http://instacanv.as/aproudlove

Let me know what you think

Photos Updated

2012-04-20T20:59:57Z

I've added a few new photos to the Photos page into the Misc gallery, please feel free to check them out :)

Undergoing Redesign

2012-04-20T09:40:38Z

Hi, just wanted to say that I am currently working on a site redesign, so except some things to change around for the next couple of days, sorry for the inconvenience but I hope that the end result will be worth it :)

iPhone or iPad Apps stuck on waiting since the iOS 5.1 update?

2012-03-19T14:56:31Z

I recently updated my iPhone 4 to the latest version of iOS, namely 5.1 in this case. Although the update went fine with no issues (I updated directly on the phone), I started having problems the next day when I tried to apply an update to one of my apps and the app was stuck on waiting.

In the past when this issue has popped up, the solution was often to tap on the app to pause it and then tap it again to resume the download or switch to another wireless network, which allowed things to get unstuck and start moving again. For the more stubborn apps, a reboot sorted it.

So when I had this problem again I wasn't worried and simply repeated all of the steps above except that this time none of them worked. Some Googling revealed that powering off and then on again could also do it or going into settings and resetting the network settings but these didn't work for me either. At this point the only way that I could install apps was to tether the phone to the computer and run the installations or updates in iTunes and then sync them over to the phone, which is a nuisance to say the least and definitely not the post-pc future that's written about.

I found a solution that worked for me though but unfortunately it takes a couple of hours and involves resetting your phone. Heres what I did.

1) Connect the phone to the computer and in iTunes made a local backup (perhaps this would work over iCloud but I thought local would be faster).

NB: Encrypt the backup! This way all of your passwords and settings are saved and restored later, if you don't encrypt it, you will have to re-enter them.

2) Once the backup is complete, restore the phone back to the factory settings by clicking on the restore button in iTunes

3) After it has restarted and re-installed the firmware, iTunes will recognise that the phone is connected and offer to restore your backup, confirm that you'd like to restore it.

4) Once iTunes completes the restoration of your backup file, wait, don't disconnect it just yet. The phone will connect to iTunes once more and start to copy all of your apps, folders and songs back over, just let it run and when it's finished it should be back to the state it was in at the start.

In my case with a 32GB iPhone 4, this took around 2.5 hours total and afterwards I had a working phone again.

Hope this helps.

Instagram and Instagrid

2012-02-03T11:32:57Z

Just a quickie but one of the reasons that I've been so quiet lately (besides having nothing to fix), is because I have been playing around with photography and photos again, in particular I decided to give Instagram a try as I didn't quite get it when I tried it in the past.

This time around its a bit different, I'm enjoying seeing pictures of things from all around the world and there are some truly amazing photos there, it's really worth checking out.

I was looking for a way to be able to view and present images from Instagram online though in the form of a gallery of some kind and found a solution in the form of Instagrid. It's free (so far) and displays your photos quite nicely, I can't be the only one looking for something like this and so I thought it worth sharing.

You can see my gallery here http://instagrid.me/aproudlove/ and I'm aproudlove on Instagram.

iPhone Apps

2012-01-26T08:55:18Z

I've been I'll the past few days and unfortunately so have my wife and kids. It's meant that most days so far I haven't had the energy to turn the computer on, so instead I have been "computing" on the iPhone more.
In fact I'm writing this on my iPhone right now, partly just to see what it's like as an experience but also because as sad as it may sound, I'm not strong enough to go and get my computer.

The past couple of days have made me glad that I have the mophie case though as I wouldn't get through the day without it. Contrary to what I last wrote about it, I've actually been using the iPhone first and then when it gets low putting it into the mophie.

Nevertheless I've discovered a few new apps since Monday that I have found useful and thought that they would be good to share with you as well. Perhaps I'm late to the party with some of them but better late than never.

First up is WhatsApp, which is essentially a replacement for the messaging app on the iPhone. Like the messaging app, it uses your phone number so no username required an like the messaging app, texts between devices with WhatsApp installed are free. Where it differs though is that it works over Wi-Fi and 3G, plus it allows you to send text, images, audio, contacts and your current location. Transferring images is fast and easy and in a couple of chats that I had with friends, one in hong kong, the other in the USA, it proved extremely reliable. The Cherry on the cake though is that WhatsApp works on Blackberry's, Android, and Nokia, so for once most of your friends can join the party too. Did I mention that the texts are free?

Another new app that I discovered is called PicFrame. This app allows you to pick a frame made up of a various number of boxes arranged in different ways and amounts within each frame. Into each box you can then insert a photograph that you can then further manipulate by cropping or zooming. I've seen some nice images made with it, especially on instagram where I discovered it (I'm aproudlove).

Finally I picked up Path. A lot of people seem to be quite excited about it and admittedly the interface is beautifully done but it's essentially another social network and I'm not sure how many of those a person can belong to before they go insane.

What it is useful for though or rather I should say what I use it for are two things, the first is to cross post to Twitter and Facebook at the same time and as it records the time an date with each entry, it makes a useful journal for keeping notes when you're out and about, especially as you can add images and other media. Actually this for me is the best part of the app and the reason I'm still using it. I like it better than Evernote for this kind of recording, that is, jotting down thoughts, reminders, general research. Will see if I'm still using it in a couple of days time.

Have any of you discovered any new and interesting apps lately?

Regenerating an old MacBook

2012-01-19T09:46:00Z

No, don't worry this won't be one of those posts were I talk about improving performance by adding memory and an SSD, even if it would make a nice difference. Instead I want to describe the steps I took using software and a can of compressed air to being some life back to my wife's white MacBook.

First off, lets set the scene a little, the MacBook is (I think) 4-5 years old, unfortunately I can't find the invoice to confirm it but lets just say that it has definitely seen better days. Its been beaten by our kids and worked into the ground by my wife and although it runs Lion, I think it was happier with Snow Leopard.

Recently though, it got very slow, so slow that my wife was starting to get frustrated with it and complain about it. I put it down to Firefox, which she always has open, complete with half a million tabs and told her that she should start closing tabs and bookmarking stuff she wants to keep, instead of leaving the tab open and/or switch to Chrome. I even set Chrome up for her, complete with all of the extensions that matched those that she had in Firefox. Whats stopping from switching full-time though is there is something installed in Firefox, I'm not sure what, that strips the ads out of TV programmes she plays back on the ITV player, which isn't present on Chrome and the ads are so frequent and annoying that she refuses to give up Firefox as a result.

Anyway, a couple of days ago, she was telling me that the computer was so slow it was affecting her work, so I took it from her to take a look. Sure enough when trying to switch tabs or even applications the computer slowed to a crawl and the SBOD (Spinning Beachball of Doom/Death) would appear. It was taking 10 minutes to switch tabs.

The first thing that I did was to bookmark all of her tabs in Firefox, so they wouldn't get lost, which has been a sore point in the past. With that done (and painfully taking a long time), I quit Firefox or rather I tried as it didn't want to quit by itself. After 15 minutes, I force quit it.

I then went through and closed everything else she had open, Word, Preview, Chrome, Photosync, Spotify and so on. However even with all of the applications closed, I noticed that the fans on her computer were still going strong, I couldn't see any processes running that were causing it, there were no Time Machine backups going and Spotlight wasn't indexing either, so it seemed to me that it might be time to check out the hardware.

First things first though, I ran Onyx, cleaned out all of the various cache files for the system and user, in particular the browser cache took a long, long time to delete, so long in fact that I thought Onyx had crashed but luckily I decided to be patient and wait it out.

Once I had finished with Onyx, I shut the MacBook down and went to visit iFixit to find out how to remove the bottom case of the white MacBook, as it's one of the older models, the process is a little more complex than with the newer MacBooks. When I finally had the case off, it was easy to see why the fans had been coming on so much. The entire logic board was coated with a layer of dust and the fans had a particularly good helping of it. It was easy enough to take it outside though and carefully use compressed air to blow all of the dust off the logic board and out of the fan and from the case too.

Then it was just a simple matter of putting it all back together and since then it has been running like new, it's strangely almost silent, which just demonstrates how often the fans had been coming on and how we had got used to them being on and now my wife is happily telling me that when she is working the computer is responding instantly again and so she is really happy.

I guess the moral of this story if any, is to keep an eye on the hardware maintenance side of things as well as the software, we all try to keep our computers in good health by cleaning out the crud every so often but it's also worth taking a peek inside the machine once in a while too.

Mophie Juice Pack Air - Follow Up

2012-01-12T15:50:33Z

I took the Mophie with me on the aforementioned holiday and mostly used it during the day while we were out and about, here are a few follow-up comments.

Battery usage, while I continued to get around 6-8 hours of additional battery life while using it, I seemed to last longer if I had the Mophie switched on and drained its battery first and then the iPhones. Mophie actually recommends that first you drain the iPhone battery first and then use the Juice Pack to charge the iPhone but if you use the iPhone while it's charging you will get up to about 75% of a charge, if you don't use it, you should get 100% or close to it, in about 3 hours total. My personal finding though was that it seemed to last longer for me letting the Mophie drain first.

Unfortunately I don't know what order the devices charge in if charged together as a result because usually when the Mophie is discharged, I take the iPhone out and continue to use it while the Mophie is charging. My assumption would be that it would first charge the phone and then the battery but I have yet to test this.

Otherwise the additional weight and bulk of the case were good when I had the phone in my ski-pants as it provided some reassurance that the phone was still there and helped to stop it sliding out of my pocket, as I stated in my previous article though, the case does tend to get in the way when trying to use the volume button to activate the shutter. It can be done but it is fiddly.

One good tip though - the LED diodes on the bottom that indicate the status of the battery make for a good LED flashlight in a pinch (providing that the battery has a charge of course) and are much faster to activate than launching an app on the iPhone. Don't expect the light of a thousand blinding suns though but to see what you're doing when its dark and you're trying to unlock the door, its definitely useful.

I can now also put and take the case off quite quickly, it's still not perfect, it always catches for me in the top right corner but it's nowhere near as awkward as it was the first couple of times that I tried it. I guess practise makes perfect.

Overall I am pretty happy with it, especially as it meant that I could go without charging for the day, even while taking photographs and making videos, this came in especially useful this time around as my iPhone was the only camera that I had with us as I had forgotten our main camera at home and my wife had left hers in our car at the town at the bottom of the mountain where we were staying, so it was crucial that it stay charged in order to capture pictures.

Definitely recommended.

From a quick test that I made, it seems that when charging a Mophie and a Juice Pack at the same time, the iPhone is charged first and then the Mophie.

Keep Up with TV Abroad

2012-01-12T14:53:01Z

Do you travel abroad a lot for work and yet want to keep up with your favourite programmes while traveling? As you probably know, as soon as you go outside of your country any services that you use all stop working as they recognise that you're no longer in your home country.

If you're desperate to keep up with the shows that you're watching though and of course you are supporting all of the channels that you watch in some appropriate manner, then here are the steps on how to get these channels available again on your iPhone or iPad.

First of all you will need to sign-up for (and possibly pay for) a VPN service.

A VPN service (Virtual Private Network) provides you with a secure connection to a server somewhere, from that server you then go out and access the Internet. VPN servers are commonly used to provide you with a secure connection to the Internet from a location that you don't particularly feel safe using the Internet in, say for example in a hotel or cafe.

One of the other advantages though is that your computer gains an IP address from the server that it's connected to, so in this case you would gain a UK IP address and be able to use any Internet based services that work only in the UK or if you connect to a US server, then a US IP address and so on.

So sign-up for a VPN somewhere, a good recommendation is this company - Consult Here - despite the dodgy Web site they do provide a reliable service but feel free to use someone that you are happy with.

Once you are signed up with them, they will send you a server name/address, a username and a password, keep these safe somewhere as we will need them in a minute.

On the iPhone or iPad, do the following;

Go to Settings -> General -> Network - VPN
Tap "Add VPN Configuration"
Tap "PPTP" at the top
Enter a description, for example My VPN or UK VPN etc
Server - enter the servername that you received in your email e.g. ukserver1.myvpnservice.com
Account - enter the username that you received
Password - enter the password that you received
Encryption Level - Leave this set to "Auto"
Send All Traffic - set this to On
Proxy - Leave this Off

Press save at the top right and you should go back to the previous screen. To test if your connection is working, move the VPN slider to On, a new row should appear called Status and you will see it display messages such as "connecting", "Authenticating" and on. If you set up everything correctly, then it will change to "Connected" and you will see a timer counting up.

If you go back to your main settings screen, you will notice that you now have a new slider under Wi-Fi labelled VPN, you can use this to quickly switch the VPN on or off instead of having to go through all of the screens that we did to set it up.

This means that your iPhone or iPad now has a UK IP address (or a US one if you used a US server) and so you can now download and/or launch iPlayer on your device and watch TV as normal.

Bear in mind that you should be supporting whatever service you use though and only use this as a last resort if you really are stuck somewhere abroad with no other choice.

Back from holiday

2012-01-12T14:46:00Z

We went on an impromptu holiday to the mountains, with the idea that we would teach our daughter to ski or rather let someone else teach her. She didn't do too bad to say that she was on ski's for the first time. Unfortunately the weather was against us and there were some strong winds most of the time that we were there, of course though on the morning of the last day when we were leaving, the weather was glorious.

Now just need to think of something to write about... :)