McCulloch House Blog

Hope Media on the iPhone App Store

2009-11-06T10:01:00.003+11:00

My second iPhone application has made it to the iPhone App Store. Developed for the Hope Media Ltd, better known for their Sydney's Hope 103.2 radio station, it streams their four online streams, including the new Christmas Hope station, using HE-AACv1 (aacPlus). First version is pretty basic, just playing the stream, volume control, and persistent buffering logic to reduce the amount of interaction the user needs to take with the app when listening.

Install the Hope Media from the App Store and give it a listen :).
Available on the iPhone App Store.

Debit Cards vs Credit Cards

2009-10-16T10:04:00.009+11:00

Visa and Mastercard Debit Cards are becoming more popular. With adcampaigns like "spend your own money" and the misconception that because the card spends your own money you're safer, who wouldn't get on board?

But I ask you to take a real look at what the Debit Card is, and why you want a Credit Card instead.

Credit Cards are Safer.
Credit cards and debit cards are equally as easy to fraud. Once you have the card number buying something online with a fraudulent card is easy, just type in the number and away you go. There is nothing safer about having a debit card.

In fact having a credit card is safer. If someone uses your debit card to buy a $5,000 flat screen TV, that money will come straight out of your bank account, goodbye food for the next week or so. Sure you can apply to your card issuer to return the money because it was stolen, but that still takes time. If this happened with a credit card, the money would never come out of your account, as your card issuer could reverse the transaction easily before you have to pay for it.

Credit Cards Save You Money
Do you have a home loan with an offset account? Or an internet-only linked high interest account you can keep your money in? If you have either, you can make purchases on 55-day interest free credit card (all banks have one) putting the money you save into an offset account for your home loan, or into a high interest bank account. You'll easily make an extra $100 to $300 a year doing this, and if you have the home loan it'll save you that much off your interest!

But what about the idea: Credit Cards will make me spend too much money...
At the end of the day having a credit card won't make you spend anymore money than you would with a debit card. You just need some self control. It is possible to use a credit card only for purchases that you intend to payoff in full when the statement arrives, and as I've outlined above it's a heck of an advantage over the Debit card.

Unless you have a poor credit rating, or for some other reason are unable to acquire a Credit Card, there's no reason you shouldn't be using one instead of the deceiving Debit Cards that are becoming oh-so-popular. The key is to use a Credit Card like a Debit Card, only spend the money you already have and even set it aside as you use your Credit Card.

Note: If you can't control your spending, you should probably limit your access to money in any form that detaches you from how much money you really have.

Tip 'n' Fart 4th in Search List on the App Store!

2009-08-28T08:26:00.005+10:00

I was pretty excited yesterday to see on both my own iPhone, and on an iPhone which had never searched for my Tip 'n' Fart application before, that when typing in "tip" in the search field "Tip 'n' Fart" comes up in the suggested search phrases. And not just in the list, it's visible immediately as the fourth item in the list! Yey! It doesn't seem to be making me rich though.

Unfortunately if you search for "fart" it doesn't show up, which would probably have more success for me :).

Marketing Fail

2009-08-14T15:19:00.005+10:00

This is a Guest Post by Oz Donut

This interesting email arrived a couple of days ago from Amazon.... as you can see, the recommended DVD seems highly appropriate given my enjoyment of Scooby Doo.

Worth Watching

2009-08-07T11:02:00.003+10:00

Hehe, this is well presented, but a good uncovering.

Short, simple and the focus you should have, and you should instill in your kids.

A little longer, but I agree with the fact that we, me, you and us are too attached to a way of life that isn't making society better for our kids.

iPhone OS 3.0.1 Update Development

2009-08-03T21:52:00.004+10:00

If you've just updated with the iPhone OS 3.0.1 Update and do development on the iPhone, you'll soon discover you won't be able to load up your apps onto your iPhone anymore. But there's an easy solution, as detailed in Apple's iPhone OS 3.0.1 Advisory, you just need to execute the following command in your Terminal to be back up and running.

ln -s /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.0\ $7A341$ /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/DeviceSupport/3.0.1

Most developers will know what that does. But for those that don't and are curious, it will create a symbolic link "3.0.1" pointing to the existing "3.0 (7A341)" directory. To XCode it will appear like you have a 3.0.1 SDK and a 3.0 SDK installed, even though the 3.0.1 directory just points to the contents of the 3.0 directory. Since 3.0.1 is exactly the same as 3.0 in terms of the SDK, that's exactly what we want.

iPhone OS 3.0.1 Update Error 3014 SOLUTION

2009-08-03T21:14:00.005+10:00

Update: If you are getting a 3014 error updating to iPhone OS 3.1 this fix will work as well.

I attempted to install the iPhone OS 3.0.1 update for my iPhone today with great disappointment. For the past few hours my iPhone has been a useless brick. The update started normally until iTunes tried to verify my iPhone with Apple. It failed displaying a "3014" error and taking me to a generic "somethings gone wrong" page.

I took a hint that while it doesn't make total sense, it must have something to do with my network, as I have the latest version of iTunes (6.2.1) and it's what everyone keeps tlaking about. I fiddled with my ADSL modem, router, firewalls, everything, with no success.

The Solution
I almost resorted to using iRecovery, an application that goes into your iPhone and changes something so I could go back to using my phone with plain 3.0, but I don't like the idea of having non-Apple software stuff around with my iPhone. Luckily I discovered an easy painless solution: Use another network!

I couldn't really use another network at home, so I downloaded AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield that lets me use their VPN network free of charge, tunnelled through my own internet connection. It worked, I installed Hotspot Shield, started up iTunes and away it went, no problems at all.

What is Hotspot Shield?
Hotspot shield is a piece of software that tunnels your network traffic through Anchor Free's network and back out to the internet, encrypting all the data sent between your computer and their network. This type of technology is called a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, and is primarily used to ensure the data between you and a work network or public wifi connection is secure. In this case however we are taking advantage of the fact that being connected through a VPN is like being connected to a different ISP or network all together. For those of us who have ISPs that are incompatible with Apple's servers, it is the perfect solution.

iPhone Dev: Detect if the iPhone's in Silent Mode

2009-07-20T22:30:00.006+10:00

I have been writing an application that delivers audio to the user using the AVAudioPlayer, apart of the AVFoundation. If the iPhone is in Silent mode, then the audio isn't heard, however from the applications point of view the audio has been played. If the iPhone is in Silent mode, I want to warn the user so they know that when they press the button that plays sound, they're not going to hear any.

The following function is based on some info I found scattered around on forums, as well as some of my own tinkering to actually get it to work. It will return a boolean indicating if you will be able to play audio using the AVAudioPlayer.

- (bool)isAudioEnabled {
UInt32 cfRouteSize = sizeof (CFStringRef);
CFStringRef cfRoute;
NSString* nsRoute;

AudioSessionGetProperty(
kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRoute,
&cfRouteSize,
&cfRoute);

nsRoute = (NSString*)cfRoute;

return ([nsRoute length] == 0);
}

Note: If the iPhone is in Silent mode with headphones attached, this function will return true, and the AVAudioPlayer should still be able to play audio.

Apple Mac Mini Incorrectly Detects Some Monitors

2009-07-17T13:40:00.008+10:00

I was recently graced with the frustration of monitor troubles on a Apple Mac Mini. A family member bought a Mac Mini, with the intention of using their previous LCD monitor with it. Save on costs, so on, just how Apple promote their product.

The problem was, after having set it up, the Mac Mini suddenly stopped working with the monitor. The monitor would display a message saying "Out of Range." An hour on the phone with AppleCare turned up nothing more than "Your monitor must not be supported by our product." Which was disappointing to say the least. The monitor, connected via VGA, should work without any sort of support requirements.

I worked out that the Mac Mini must be detecting their LCD monitor as another panel that had a higher maximum refresh rate. Apple's products when automatically detecting a monitor, set the monitor to it's native resolution and maximum refresh rate. Unfortunately for us that meant it was setting the monitor to a refresh rate it couldn't support.

The solution was to use a second working monitor to boot the device up and enable screen sharing. We could then connect their monitor, Detect Displays and wait for the display to go black and say "Out of Range." Then via Screen Sharing, we could go into the Display Settings and set the frequency to 75 which was in range for the monitor.

What was more concerning about this experience was that AppleCare could be of no help to us. It was a simple solution really. My only concern now is if the mini ever decides to "rediscover" what type of monitor is connected and they get stuck with it running at 85 again. Ultimately Mac OS X should, on detecting a monitor, set it to it's lowest refresh rate, like Windows does.

For reference the monitor is a BroMagic LCD 17" VT7V71, the same as a Northgate VT7V71, and many other rebrandings. The monitor was falsly detected as a PV1710, a panel used in a Sun, Advueu and VHT monitor.

This shouldn't be a reason to use only Apple supported monitors. I encourage you if you have any problems like this to perserve. Just because Apple don't support a monitor, doesn't mean that the monitor's manufacturer should have to suffer the sale loss.

iPhone: Multiple Recipient SMS's are Sent as MMS

2009-07-06T16:23:00.004+10:00

I discovered today that the iPhone doesn't support multiple-recpient SMSs. In fairness, no phone I know really does. Most phones when sending such SMSs will send a single-recipient SMS separately to each recipient. The phones just save you the trouble of typing the message X number of times.

Today I discovered adding a second recipient to an SMS on the iPhone automatically causes the SMS to be sent as an MMS, regardless of whether there is any multimedia in the message being sent.

This is a huge disadvantage in Australia. A large percentage of the people I know aren't able to receive MMSs. For myself it costs more for me to send a single MMS than it does to send two SMSs, and that's the best case scenario assuming I'm not being charged per recipient.

Oh well, I aint going to get hung up on it, but if you send multiple SMSs a lot and you see MMSs on your bill, you'll know why.

A discussion has already been started on this at Apple's Forums.

Cost-Effective Potatoe w/ Sauce for the Economic Crisis

2009-07-01T21:03:00.005+10:00

Tonight I cooked another economic crisis friendly potato based meal, at only $3.26 per serving.

Ingredients (makes 4 Servings)

4 Large (375g) Potatoes	$4.46
400g Diced Tomatoes	$0.75
184g Champignons	$0.99
1 Large Onion	$0.40
1 Large Carrot	$0.25
1 Small Broccoli	$2.00
430g Olives Black Sliced (1 cup of which is needed)	$2.14
3 Garlic Cloves	$0.20
500g Tasty Cheese (1/10 of which is needed)	$4.09
Total Cost for 4 Servings	$13.05
Cost per Serving	$3.26

Bake the potatoes in the oven, until cooked, probably 90 minutes. About 15 minutes out from the potatoes being ready, mix all the other ingredients together in a pot on the stove until vegetables are cooked to your liking.

* All costs are estimates in Australian Dollars. Homebrand or other cheap brands were used wherever possible.

A Great Breakfast

2009-06-27T12:50:00.004+10:00

I have discovered a great breakfast. For the past while I've been trying a few different healthy things to eat for breakfast, in an endeavor to launch myself into the day more effectively. Well for the past month I've been going pretty consistently on what seems to be a great breakfast.

My breakfast consists of:

1 Bowl Sanitarium Skippy Cornflakes with:

1/2 Banana
3 Prunes
Fruit, Seed and Nut Mix

Note: This isn't exactly a cheap breakfast. Prunes and Fruit, Seed and Nut mixes aren't cheap. I did however find that Sanitarium's Skippy Cornflakes were cheaper than the more popularily known Kellogs Cornflakes.

Cost-Effective Spaghetti Bolognaise for the Economic Crisis

2009-06-22T21:30:00.014+10:00

Tonight my wife and I cooked a very economic crisis friendly spaghetti bolognaise, at only $1.80 per serving!

Ingredients (makes 6 Servings)

500g Spaghetti	$0.99
500g Premium Beef Mince on Special	$4.00
400g Diced Tomatoes	$0.80
184g Champignons	$1.06
400g Three Bean Mix	$0.96
1 Large Onion	$0.40
1 Large Carrot	$0.25
430g Olives Black Sliced (1 cup of which is needed)	$2.14
3 Garlic Cloves	$0.20
Total Cost for 6 Servings	$10.80
Cost per Serving	$1.80

Put the Spaghetti in a pot on the stove, cook for approx. 20 minutes in boiling water. Cook the mince in a frying pan, once brown add onions diced and garlic cloves crushed. Once further cooked add diced tomatoes, a cup of olives and all the remaining ingredients to the mix.

Once the spaghetti is soft and ready to eat, the bolognaise should be ready. Serve and enjoy.

Bonus: The extra bonus of this meal is the lack of added fats, sugars and salts that come with using bottled or jarred bolognaise sauces. Resist adding any bought tomatoe sauce too! You don't need it.

* All costs are estimates in Australian Dollars. Homebrand or other cheap brands were used wherever possible.

Solution to Luke Surl's Chess-Doku (Comic No.: 174)

2009-06-22T16:03:00.005+10:00

My brother, Christopher McCulloch, solved the chess-doku that Luke posted today. I've posted his solution below.

Good work Chris :).

Click to enlarge.

You can see the chess-doku problem here.

Update: Luke pointed out there was a flaw in the solution above, but I'm still impressed. :) There's an accepted solution Luke posted here.

Strange and Beautiful Music

2009-06-04T15:21:00.005+10:00

I heard a beautiful song today, so beautiful, so touching I felt compelled to blog it. It's not new, I don't remember it being popular but it's beautiful in it's own, simple way. I actually found the song in the movie Wicker Park, which if you haven't seen is definitely worth a watch.

Strange and Beautiful by Aqualung

Click the "play full song here" to play the full song.

EDIT: I removed the link to the Wicker Park trailer...because I watched the trailer after posting this, and the trailer sucks. Just watch the movie.

Questioning our Actions, Making Decisions

2009-05-28T12:42:00.003+10:00

As leaders, don't we have an obligation to question our actions, and make sure our decisions are the right decisions?

A man takes responsibility for his actions, right or wrong. He accepts the consequences and lives with them, everyday.

Quoted from conversation between Captain Lee Adama and Admiral William Adam on Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Episode 2: Water.

How to Create a file of Specified Size

2009-05-22T20:49:00.004+10:00

So today for...unimportant reasons, I wanted to create a very large file, in the vicinity of 20Gb, without having to actually do any real work to create the file.

I found out in Windows there is a command you can use:

fsutil file createnew [filename] [size]

where:
filename = The filename for the file you are creating
e.g. file.txt or C:\Directory\file.txt

size = size of the file in bytes
e.g. 2147483648 for 2Gb

example:
fsutil file createnew twogigabytefile.txt 2147483648

On Mac OS X 10.5 you can use:

mkfile [size] [filename]

where:
filename = The filename for the file you are creating
e.g. file.txt or
~/directory/file.txt

size = size of the file in bytes
e.g.
512 for 512 bytes, or use the following suffixes b = half kilobytes, k = kilobytes, m = megabytes and g = gigabytes, i.e. 10m for 10 megabytes.

example:
mkfile 2147483648 twogigabytefile.txt
or
mkfile 2g twogigabytefile.txt

How to Extract the contents of an MSI Installer File

2009-04-27T16:19:00.003+10:00

Have you ever wanted to just get at the contents of an MSI file, without having to install the whole application or library? It's easy, just use the following command at the console:

msiexec /a yourmsifile.msi /qb TARGETDIR=C:\extracted

Note the TARGETDIR must be an absolute path.

Getting Fat

2009-04-23T09:26:00.006+10:00

A photo that marketing tells me will cause people not to read this post. (not me)

I was contemplating being fat a few nights back. A couple of years ago I put on weight, a lot of it. I'm sorta over it now, had my fun and want to return to my previous figure.

Anyway, I was contemplating being fat and I thought, if I'm fat because I'm eating too much or eating unnecessarily then I obviously have more food than I need. And if I have more of anything than I need I obviously have more capacity to share and give.

If we are fat, literally or figuratively, it might mean we need to share more. It's not to say if you have a weight problem you definitely need to share more, but maybe, maybe you do?

Enjoy what you have...

2009-04-14T22:53:00.004+10:00

"Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have. Dreaming about nice things is like chasing the wind."
-- Paraphrased from Ecclesiastes 6:9 (New Living Translation)

Battlestar Galactica uses PC (John Hodgman)

2009-04-01T15:15:00.002+11:00

While watching episode 15 of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica sometime back, I had noticed a character who looked like the PC out of the Apple Mac ads. But the people I was watching it with denied my claim, and I never chased it up and resigned myself that I was wrong and the majority was right. Today I came across it by accident, but it turns out my eyes weren't lying!

See a photo of "PC" on Battlestar Galactica over at IMDB: pin.nu/bsgpcphoto
See his wikipedia page as well for further proof.

I haven't embedded the image because I'm not sure of the legal implications with this particular photo. Nor do I want a PC on my blog.

A Battelstar Galactica perspective on the things God prepares us for

2009-03-26T10:54:00.004+11:00

** SPOILERS BELOW **

Final episode of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) has been released, and I finally got the opportunity to watch it last night and WOW what an experience. It had to be the most emotional, intense as well as satisfying end of a TV series. The music was as usual overwhelmingly immaculate. There's one part that stood out to me. Throughout the entire BSG series Gaius Baltar and Caprica Six have been on this journey, that would seem like the "god" of the BSG universe is guiding them and preparing them for something bigger. They have doubts, they have challenges and on numerous occasions it just seems like yes maybe they are pawns in some greater plan but chances are they're no different to anyone else but just obsessed with an idea of some greater power.

In the final episode they both indeed fulfill on what they had been prepared for. Due to all their preparation they are in the right place, at the right time to save, Hera Agathon, the young half-human, half-cylon girl and rescue her returning her to the CIC (the main command centre of the ship). That act that god had prepared them for was so insignificant compared to what they imagined it might have been, in a flash it was done and gone.

Baltar: "Hera, will she be alright?"
Angel Six: "She survived, thanks to you."
Angel Baltar: "Both of you."
Caprica Six: "And that's it, that's all god wants of us?"
Angel Six: "God's plan is never complete."
Baltar: "Great."
Angel Baltar: "But I think it's safe to say from now on your lives will be less eventful."

The reason such an act was unexpected in the show, is because we don't think something God would be preparing us for could be so insignificant. We relate to God preparing us for things that are bigger and better, things that are newer, things that are going to stand out bright compared to all our preparation. But it should be obvious to us now, the things God prepares us for, may seem so insignificant to us we might not even realise we've fulfilled on our training. God has a bigger plan than we'll ever understand in this world, so never underestimate the smallest things you do.

Photo of Gaius Baltar from TV Series Battlestar Galactica, downloaded from BattlestarWiki. This is a promotional photo falling under the fair use clause, which includes photos from press kits and used in promotion of the series.

Safari 4 - How to Set your Top Sites URLs Manually

2009-03-25T12:34:00.004+11:00

One thing that I love about Safari 4 is the Top Sites page that you get. I love the Opera interface, so along with Safari intergrating tabs into the titlebar, and the new Top Sites I'm right at home. The thing I've been frustrated about is that I couldn't figure out how to set the Top Site buttons to specific URLs. The only way I could get the sites pinned on there that I wanted was to delete each one, until the ones I wanted showed up.

Well finally I just stumbled across the solution. If I open the URL I want to put in the Top Sites, and open it in another window. I can easily drag the URL from the address bar onto a Top Sites button (in Edit mode), and that becomes the new URL for that button. See the video below.

AMCA Blacklist leaked on Internet

2009-03-19T16:36:00.005+11:00

The day after I blog about the AMCA's blacklist and it's $11,000-a-day fine for linking to any of the pages on it, and here in the news the blacklist has been leaked on the Internet.

According to the smh article, Colin Jacobs, spokesman for the Electronic Frontiers Australia, has said the Government could be considered a "promoter and disseminator of links to some pretty unsavoury material." And it's true, here the AMCA are claiming that this list, and it's fines and regulations that go with it are here to protect people but they've essentially found all the bad websites on the Internet and put them all in one place. Curious kids, or even adults will now search and find the list and the AMCA's blacklist will actually encourage the visiting of these websites.

Unfortunately though it seems the list isn't all about the bad websites. There's plenty of unexplained content on there, including stuff from YouTube, religious websites including Christian websites and even a tour guide operator and Queensland dentist.

AMCA Fine you for Linking to Blacklisted Content

2009-03-18T06:50:00.009+11:00

The latest in the news regarding the AMCA's interest in filtering internet content is the news that you can be fined $11,000 a day that you host content in Australia which links to websites on the AMCA's blacklist. At this point in time the list includes mostly illegal content, but has already expanded to include some 506 legal R18+ and X18+ rated websites, and it is well-known that any form of filtering on the Internet will result in more than just illegal/really-bad content being blocked, just look at what's happened elsewhere in the world. Today they block child porn and tomorrow we have China-like censorship.

From the smh article, to which I agree, "The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment."

The biggest problem I see with any sort of internet censoring is that once a government body takes responsibility for blocking illegal/inappropriate content, it creates a sense that if something isn't blocked then it is approved. Once that pattern of thinking sets in someone will come up with the bright idea of banning more content, and more content, and before we know it we have websites being blocked for saying the wrong thing.

I agree with the AMCA that child porn and alike shouldn't be available online, however I don't need AMCA filters and fines to choose not to visit those types of websites. And in regards to keeping kids safe from such content, it is your job as a parent to monitor your child's online interactions, no one else's!

One thing to take from the AMCA's intention to fine websites $11,000 a day, is to realise it's a great time to move your website to a web hosting firm that house their servers elsewhere, like the US, UK or Sweden.

P.S.: According to a related article on efa.org.au the full Australian blacklist is kept secret, so good luck avoiding the $11,000 fine.