So Derek had convinced me to get a Nest, but honestly it doesn’t take much these days to convince me to get a new toy. Ooooh shiny! This isn’t a cheap thermostat as it sells for $250 and for someone like me, it’s probably not going to save me much money in the short run given that my previous thermostat was already fined tune. I could probably save more money if I changed those darn filters more regularly. ;p
So I’ve had the Nest for a month and it’s been pretty cool so far (no pun intended). The auto-learn feature is pretty neat as it was able to guess my schedule pretty closely after the 1st week. I did end up tinkering with the schedule a bit, but it’s still learning.
One cool feature is that you can change the temperature from your phone or computer. You might think that I should just probably get off my lazy ass and just go turn up the thermostat, but the real benefit is when you’re not home. I set my thermostat to turn on rather late at night, but on the evenings when I’m going to be home unexpectedly early, I can turn on the heater before leaving work or while I’m in my car, so I return to a nice and warm house.
Have you ever left your house on vacation and wondered if you remember to set your thermostat to vacation mode? Well, now you never have to worry because you can always check and even turn it off from any computer.
They recently updated their software to display energy usage and it’s pretty cool:
One thing I’d like to see is location based learning. My thermostat already connects to the internet and pulls in local weather or data. What if it also knew where its cohabitants were currently located? If they detect that people are on their way home, turn on the heater. If they detect that everyone just left, set auto-away on.
So last week, I uploaded 2 cover photos to my Facebook page so I could see which one looked better. After deciding which cover photo I wanted to use, I couldn’t figure out how to delete the one I didn’t want to use. I understand cover photos are suppose to be public, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to delete cover photos that aren’t active. I searched around a bit and no one had a really good answer that showed me how to delete a cover photo.
So I decided to see if I can get around this by seeing how photos are normally deleted. To delete a photo these days, it appears you have to click on Edit Album > Edit Photos and underneath each photo is a Delete checkbox.
On my Cover Photos album, I was missing the Edit Albums link.
Turns out if you can get to your Edit Photos page for your Cover Photos, you CAN delete your cover photos!
Here’s what you’ll need to do:
1. Find a working Edit Photos link by going into any photo album (other than your Cover Photos), click on Edit Album and right click Edit Photos and copy the link. It should look something like: https://www.facebook.com/editphoto.php?aid=461756&id=270425625146&session_id=9999999999
2. Next go to your Cover Photos album and take note of the URL. It should look something like: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151348016065147.815154.270425625146&type=3
3. What you need to do now is modify the Edit Photos link you got from step 1 and with data you got in step 2. Notice the string of numbers in the middle of the URL from step 2. Break them apart at each dot so they look something like:
10151348016065147
815154
270425625146
Take the 2nd # (815154 in my case) and replace the # after aid= in the link from step 1.
The resulting URL you would get should look like: https://www.facebook.com/editphoto.php?aid=815154&id=270425625146&session_id=9999999999.
4. Enter that URL into your browser and you should now be able to delete photos from your Cover Photos album.
To delete a profile picture, you would do the same thing, but instead of using the URL from your Cover Photos album, you would use the URL from your Profile Pictures album.
So I’ve been playing with the Messages Beta and it’s pretty neat.
Messages is touted as the replacement for iChat for its upcoming OSX release. Not only will it support existing IM networks, but you will now be able to chat with people on its iMessage network, where anyone using an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch running iOS 5.0 is already on.
I’m currently attempting to switch completely from Adium to Messages and see how that’ll work out. Messages currently supports AIM, Yahoo! IM, and Google Talk. The only obvious missing network is MSN/Live Messenger.
It obviously doesn’t have all the plugin support such as OTR (Off-the-Record Message), but for a beta, it’s actually working pretty well. I understand this is still in beta and any of the problems I see will probably be fixed by the time Mountain Lion comes out.
One annoying thing is there’s no way to disable all sounds. If you’re a fan of the beeps and boops you get with text messaging on the iPhone, you’ll probably enjoy it. The preferences allows me to disable sounds for each event individually, but I can’t seem to find a way to disable sounds globally.
An issue that my only friend on Yahoo! keeps reminding me is that they appear to have broken the Yahoo! IM protocol for links. Whatever it’s doing, the links are showing up multiple times on their end. I’ve confirmed this by doing a test with my dad’s Yahoo! account also. Here’s what happens when I send a simple http://www.example.com/ link:
One rather cool thing is that you can link up your IM contacts with your address book entries. Took me quite some time, but I’ve finally mapped out most of my IM contacts. Previously I would attach a note/comment on the user in case I forgot who they were (which happens to people I don’t talk to frequently).
I had hoped that conversations would be synced to the cloud, but unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s happening yet. Something I was hoping to see was if I was having a conversation on my laptop, I would be able to see the full conversation in Messages on my desktop (and vice versa).
All in all, I’m enjoying Messages and looking forward to see it in its final form when Mountain Lion is released.
Today is officially SOPA Resistance Day. If you haven’t heard about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) or PIPA (Protect IP Act), don’t let their names fool you as they’re anything but.
Learn why Wikipedia, Google and many other sites are protesting against these 2 bills.
I had emailed my 3 congressmen sometime in December:
I understand that a similar proposal to the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act called Protect-IP will be up for voting in the Senate early next year.
Given the huge opposition from the people against SOPA, I implore that you understand the implications of Protect-IP and not only vote against it, but convince your peers to do so too.
Thank you.
Of course my email to my House rep was worded a bit differently since SOPA is the House bill and PIPA is the Senate bill. Unfortunately I no longer have a copy of that email.
So far I’ve received 2 responses and all I got out of it was “Thanks for your expressing your view. Please sign up for my newsletter.”
Hopefully as more and more people contact them, we’ll be able to stop the destruction of what made the internet great.
Here’s Rep. David Reichert’s response:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the protection of intellectual property on the Internet. I appreciate hearing your views on this matter and welcome the opportunity to respond.
U.S. law enforcement agencies may protect against violations of intellectual property rights when perpetrators are acting within the United States. However, the Internet provides a way for businesses to expand across borders, and poses a challenge for the enforcement of intellectual property rights when violators are acting outside the U.S. Currently, U.S. authorities cannot reach foreign websites offering pirated or counterfeit goods to U.S. citizens.
In response to these concerns, Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) introduced the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) on May 12, 2011. This legislation would authorize the Justice Department or an intellectual property rights owner harmed by an Internet site “dedicated to infringing activities” to pursue a cause of action against either the registrant of an infringing domain name or an owner or operator of one. Moreover, the bill allows the Justice Department to pursue such actions against registrants, owners, or operators of foreign domain names as well. The bill has been placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar for consideration. Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261) in the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. This legislation would also authorize an action by the Justice Department against registrants, owners, or operators of foreign infringing sites. Though both bills would increase the criminal penalties for those that sell counterfeit goods of certain categories, like counterfeit medicine, the House legislation includes military equipment as a special category.
Promoting and protecting innovation is critical to U.S. businesses remaining competitive in the global economy. Many industries, from pharmaceutical companies to recording studios, depend on intellectual property protections. These industries contribute greatly to the U.S. economy and serve as significant job-creators. At the same time, some have expressed concern that this legislation goes too far, and would lead to government overreach resulting in the chilling of free speech online and the stifling of innovation. As a result of these concerns, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) have released an alternative proposal, called the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, which would authorize the International Trade Commission to investigate, and if necessary, take action against foreign websites involved in the advertising or selling of counterfeit products. This proposal is based on the premise that the International Trade Commission would be better suited to investigate such issues because of its current investigative role in determining whether certain imports into the U.S. violate U.S. property rights. Rest assured, should this legislation come to the House floor vote a vote, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to get in touch with me. Your interest and input are valued and I hope to hear from you in the future regarding other matters of importance. I encourage you to visit my website and sign-up for my monthly e-newsletter at http://reichert.house.gov to learn more about other issues impacting the 8th Congressional District and our nation. You can also follow my work online and receive frequent updates on legislation being considered in Congress by visiting me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/davereichert) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/repdavereichert).
Sincerely,
David G. Reichert
Member of Congress
Here’s Sen. Patty Murray’s response:
Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act , which is currently pending in the United States House of Representatives. I appreciate knowing your views on this matter.
In the Senate, this legislation would fall under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee. While I am not a member of that Committee, I want to assure you that I will be following the progress of this bill and will keep your views in mind if this or related legislation comes before the full Senate for consideration.
If you would like to know more about my work in the Senate, please feel free to sign up for my weekly updates at http://murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=GetEmailUpdates. Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.
Nevertheless, Wyden has at least three colleagues from both parties opposed to cloture – Jerry Moran, Maria Cantwell and Rand Paul. They will need a lot of help to block the 60 votes needed to clear cloture and get PIPA to the floor.
I sent in my first gen iPod nano I purchased on launch day because of the battery defect issue. Apparently due to supply constraints, we are getting upgraded to the current gen with twice as much storage!
Dear Apple Customer:
Thank you for participating in the iPod nano (1st generation) Replacement Program. Please find your replacement iPod enclosed.
Serial Number
Please note that your replacement iPod has a serial number different to that of your original iPod nano. In some case due to limited availability of replacement stock of iPod nano (1st generation) Apple may have replaced your iPod with a more recent iPod model of equivalent or better specification. Always retain a record of your serial number(s) for future reference.
Warranty
Your replacement iPod product is warranted to be free from defects for 90 days from the date of service.
So for a long time, I’ve gotten tired of having my Twitter logs fill my blog’s main page, and since I’ve winded down the HD-Trailers.net blog (moved everything to the main site), I didn’t want that to fill the blog up with Twitter spam either. But I love the archive ability of having my Twitter messages saved into my blog. It makes it a lot easier to search for stuff I’ve tweeted about.
After a bit of searching, I found this WordPress plugin: Ultimate Category Excluder. It allows you to exclude any category from your main page, feed, and archives.
As of now, I’ve excluded the Twitter category from the main page and feed, so it’ll still show up in the archives.
If you’re trying to automate pinging Ping-o-Matic! via PHP/cURL, you may have hit into an issue where the response you get is:
You are too awesome for Ping-o-matic.
To fix this, all you have to do is add a user-agent to your curl options, e.g. curl_setopt( $ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "Mozilla/5.0" );
Once you set a user-agent, you should be able to get a valid response and have the Ping-o-Matic service ping all the services for you. Of course if you run that script too often, they’ll probably reject your request and tell you to slow down.
So I was trying to save some D&D character sheets to PDF and noticed the bottom portion kept getting chopped off, while there was a big chunk of white space on the top of the page. What I thought would be a simple task of changing margins, turned out to be 30 minutes into searching online, without really finding a solution.
Coming from Windows, it took me a awhile to figure out that margins were set inside paper size, so I created a No Margin paper size following instructions from the help center (see below), but there wasn’t a way to choose a paper size from the Save as PDF… menu.
It turns out that Save as PDF… uses the default paper size set in your Print & Scan settings. If you go to Settings > Print & Scan, you’ll see a Default paper size near the bottom. Note, there isn’t a way to create a new paper size from this menu, but you can create one from any app that allows you to select a paper size from it’s print dialog (e.g. Safari)
From the help center:
Create a custom page size
If you want to print on paper that has an unusual size, such as an envelope or card, you may be able to choose the paper’s size from the Paper Size pop-up menu. To find the Paper Size pop-up menu, choose File > Page Setup. If you don’t see a Page Setup command, choose File > Print.
If you can’t find the size you need, you can create your own custom paper size.
Do one of the following:
Choose File > Page Setup. Choose Page Attributes from the Settings pop-up menu, and then choose Any Printer from the Format For pop-up menu. Choosing Any Printer ensures that your document can print on any printer that supports the paper size you select.
If Page Setup is not available, choose File > Print. If you see a Show Details button, click it to show all available options.
Choose Manage Custom Sizes from the Paper Size pop-up menu.
Click the Add (+) button.
Double-click the name of the paper size, and type a new name.
Enter values in the Paper Size and Printer Margins fields, and then click OK.
After creating the custom paper size, go back to Settings > Print & Scan. You should now see the newly created paper size in your Default Paper Size drop down menu. If you choose the new paper size and try to Save as PDF again, you will notice that the new PDF will contain the new settings.
So as I mentioned a couple days ago, I’ve been playing with the Apple’s Cards App on my iPhone 4S and have been mostly satisfied with the experience so far, but I hit into a couple hitches today.
The first thing I noticed was the server was overloaded this afternoon. Half the time, I would get an alert telling me there was a problem connecting to the server and to try again later. But if I tap Buy again, it usually went through.
Then I got to a point where my card was being declined. I logged into my credit card’s website and looked at the pending transactions:
No, I didn’t create that many cards. Half of them are $1 authorizations. Of the remaining half, about 1/3 are duplicates from server failures, which I’m hoping I won’t be charged as these duplicate orders don’t show up under my account. The cards are $2.99 each + tax. If you want to deliver them internationally, it’s $4.99 + tax.
So I expected a call from my credit card fraud/security team, but that call never came. I eventually called customer support myself assuming that the flood of Apple transactions was the cause of my card being declined. After speaking with someone on the security team, it turns out there’s a limit of 25 transactions per day before my card starts rejecting additional charges. And each of those $1 authorizations count toward that limit.
Here’s my suggestion to Apple: Please group multiple card orders like you group iTunes purchases and make one charge at the end of the day. Given it’s the holiday season, the perfect time for someone to use your Cards app, sending out 13+ cards should not be uncommon and that assume I won’t be using the credit card anywhere else that day. Plus with your server issues, some charges are showing up twice. If needed, I can even create all the cards I want beforehand and then submit them all to be charged together, but that’s currently not an option via your app. This would not only avoid having so many transactions which would easily trigger fraud alerts, but you wouldn’t have to make so many separate authorization checks. Plus it’s better for you in the long run too, since you’ll be saving on per transaction credit card fees.
I’ve already submitted the same feedback at Apple – Cards – Feedback. Hopefully we’ll see this fixed soon before the holidays are over.
Given it’s the holiday season, I got a chance to play with Apple’s Card app. Despite the greatness of iPhone 4S’ camera, it still wasn’t as great as my Canon 60D SLR, so I took the picture I wanted with my Canon and imported it into iPhoto. Like magic, it was on my iPhone Photo Stream moments later.
The app is still rather primitive. The selection of templates to choose from was decent, but still felt lacking. I didn’t really find a particular one that stood out to me, but I guess the card is really about the photo you’ll be choosing.
After you select the photo you want, it allows you to zoom and move around. I guess if you wanted to edit the photo, you can use iPhone’s new photo editing software, which is supposedly good, but I haven’t had a chance to mess around with it yet.
The text was where I found the app lacking. There was no way to choose a different font or change the font size. When I wanted something left aligned, there wasn’t an option for that. Given a box, the font, size, and alignment were unchangeable. It also wasn’t immediately obvious that some text can be changed, but I soon found out that any text can be changed.
You can enter a name/address to mail the card to, but it was a lot easier to pick the person out from my address book.
Halfway through making a card, but need to stop temporarily? No worries. The app allows you to save the card and come back to it later.
I was hoping they would allow me to use my iTunes credit to purchase these cards, but unfortunately it’s hooked up with the Apple store and not the iTunes store. After logging in, it showed me my credit card on file and ask me to enter the card security code.
Then ZOOOOOOM, off my greeting card goes. The total cost was $2.99 + tax and I got my receipt in my email shortly.
Update: They also need to fix their Online Order Status for Cards. I’m not even talking about the inability to cancel the order as I can see how once your order is submitted, it could be processed for printing immediately. What I’m talking about is there’s no indication which order is which. You can click on order details or print invoice, but the only info you’ll see is your own. The email they send you does include who it’s for, but even on that email, there’s no confirmation of the mailing address. You can open the Cards app and confirm the mailing address there, but there’s no order # in the app so you can easily look up the order status.
So I’ve been playing with the 
Given it’s the holiday season, I got a chance to play with 