Author Archive
iOS Tip – Load Remote Images
Quick tip, if you have iOS3/iOS4 on your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, you can disable loading remote images in emails by going into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and flipping the “Load Remote Images” option to Off. By default, it is set to On.
Why would you want to do this since Apple has deemed it good to enable it by default? Well spammers can embed tracking in the image URL’s. When Mail loads the images, the spammers will know that the email address they sent to is valid, which of course leads to more spam. That’s why on the desktop Mail.app and Outlook by default have this disabled. Why Apple choose to enable this by default on the iDevice is strange.
Military Terminology from Band of Brothers
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on April 2nd, 2010
![Band of Brothers [6 Discs] [DVD].jpeg](http://echerng.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Band-of-Brothers-6-Discs-DVD.jpg)
The other week I just finished watching the World War II-based mini series Band of Brothers. It’s a great show with a good story and lots of action and even sparked an interest in me to learn more about the War. This recent Time magazine article is what inspired me to watch this show.
As I started watching the first episode, I realized I knew nothing about military terminology. Many times, the soldiers would call each other by their rank, but since I didn’t know the terms, I had no idea who was the leader of whom and who outranked whom. Eventually I got a feel for the terms, but it took a few episodes. To make it easier for anyone else out there in my situation, here are the ranks mentioned in the show that I caught, from highest ranking to lowest:
- Colonel
- Major
- Captain
- Lieutenant
- Sergeant Major
- Sergeant
- Corporal
- Private
Quick tip: throughout the movie, you can see each person’s rank by the symbol on his helmet.
The other military terminology that I was illiterate to was the unit of each military squad: how many per unit, and what was the hierarchy? Same as before, here’s what I eventually figured out, from smallest to largest:
- Squad (9 – 13)
- Platoon (20 – 42)
- Company (70 – 200)
- Battalion (300 – 1,300)
- Regiment (3,000 – 5,000)
- Division (10,000 – 15,000)
The Wikipedia pages have a much more detailed list of ranks and units, which is partly how I figured out the above list!
TextWrangler with Subversion on Mac
Amazing what you’d find if you read the manual!
Even though TextWrangler is a window-based editor for the Mac, it comes with this useful terminal command: edit. Executing this command loads TextWrangler from the command line.
How is this useful for a window-based environment like the Mac? Well just recently I was configuring my Subversion environment on my Mac and wanted to use TextWrangler for my comment editing needs. Using the edit command, making this configuration is as simple as loading up the config file (by default in ~/.subversion/config) and changing the editor-cmd entry to:
editor-cmd = edit -w –resume
-w blocks the edit command from returning until the file is closed in TextWrangler.
–resume will restore the last top-most app before TextWrangler launched. In this case, the Terminal window.
Now every time I checkin, the svn command will automatically launch TextWrangler with the comment file for me to fill out!
UITableView Background in a Standard UIView
Posted by eric in Programming on March 22nd, 2010
While exploring the CoreDataBooks sample iPhone app, I came upon the EditingViewController which I noticed had the same grey/white bar background as does a UITableView has when it’s in grouped style. After fiddling with the Background property for some time, I eventually figured out how to set the Background to the same background pattern.
1. Open the Inspector window for UIView and click Background.
2. Select “Color Palettes” (middle icon) and in the Palette drop down, select “iPhone SDK”.
3. In the options, select “groupTableViewBackgroundColor” and you’re done!
Your view should now have the same bar pattern as a grouped table view!
Vista SP2: Now with more free space!
Just did the Vista SP2 upgrade on one of my PC’s and, just like the rumors, got some extra hard drive space back. Neat!
Before
After
Here’s to hoping Windows 7 will at least keep the same size!
Star Trek Movie
Posted by eric in Commentary on May 7th, 2009
Went to see the new Star Trek movie today on an IMAX screen.
Fun movie. Not geeky like the original movie/series. More mainstream plot/acting to appeal to the masses. Even so, they did include lots of hints/references to the original Star Trek for Trekkie fans.
Don’t like how they keep changing the Star Trek story line with each new show/movie, but oh well… what can I do about it?
Hot day in LA
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on April 6th, 2009
Super hot day in socal today! Unfortunately the rest of the week doesn’t look as good. 
Skype on iPhone
My initial reactions to using Skype on the iPhone:
- The sound quality is about the same as using the AT&T 3G network. Not as clear as Skype is on the desktop. Better than using Skype through Fring. I was hoping for desktop sound quality, but oh well.
- Not being able to run programs in the background, Skype will only work when the program is activated. Therefore it can’t work as an alternate phone line.
- Chat is saved on the Skype server. If you lookup your chat history on your desktop Skype, the chat through the iPhone will be there as well.
- There’s no shortcuts for smileys on iPhone Skype. You’ll just have to remember the shortcuts to use your favorite emoticons.
- There’s no sound effect to notify you of new chat messages. You’ll just have to look at the screen to see the chat count. This isn’t so bad since you have to keep Skype open anyways to chat, but kind of annoying this behavior forces you to check your screen every few seconds if you’re engaged in a chat with a buddy.
Oh well, not bad for version 1. Hopefully with iPhone 3.0 and updates, Skype on iPhone will become even better soon!
Deleting a Stubborn File
During the past week, I was consolidating a bunch of files from my smaller external drives onto a new, larger drive (more on this in a future post!). The new drive is formatted as HFS+ (Mac) while the smaller drives are formatted as NTFS (Windows). I didn’t pay attention to the copying, just dragged and dropped from the source (NTFS) to the destination (HFS+).
While going through the files on the new drive, I noticed some duplicate files. Even though the new drive is much larger, of course I still want to save space! Weird thing is trying to delete these files: Finder would ask for my password (sudo?), and afterwards do something, but the file remains… it refused to be deleted!
Perplexed, I thought it might have been a permissions problem:
But as you can see, I am the owner and I have the permissions.
Wondering if it has something to do with Finder, I dropped into Terminal and tried to delete the file manually:
OK, Operation not permitted… perhaps I need to be a super user?
Gah.. still no luck. So getting frustrated now, I started browsing around to find some answers. Not finding anything and finally about to give up thinking there’s some NTFS -> HFS+ or file system error, I just happened to look up and noticed the icon for the parent folder has a small… padlock?
Going up a level, and looking at the info for the parent folder revealed that the folder was Locked.
So I unchecked this and BAM, I was able to delete the file now. So turns out the “Locked” folder causes anything inside to become read-only. Besides being a nub and not knowing about the locked feature, I was assuming the behavior would be similar to Windows. In Windows, a “Read-only” file/folder can still be modified by just accepting an extra message box. In OS X with Finder, anything locked is seriously “locked” making everything read-only until it is “unlocked”.
Some more noob info about the Locked feature in Finder:
- Contents of a locked folder cannot be modified. This means nothing can be added, modified, or deleted. Right clicking the contents of the folder shows a different set of options.
- Corollary to the previous rule, contents of a locked folder cannot be moved to another folder. Contents can only be copied. Using the CMD key while dragging will not force a move.
- Locked Folder A with Folder B inside. Any files/folders inside Folder B are excluded from the locked rules. That is they can be modified without any restrictions.
So if you are having trouble deleting a file in Mac OS X, try checking if the folder is Locked! Don’t make the same nub mistake as I did. 
WWDC 2009 Keynote Reactions
Posted by eric in Commentary on June 8th, 2009
The live coverage blogs
Kind of fun to see where the bloggers are sitting by viewing the perspectives from their pictures. The AJAX auto updating blogs are awesome. Those that require refreshing… not as much. Also the picture qualities are very different. You can tell which site has the bigger budget with the quality of their pictures.
One of the live blogs I was monitoring died towards the end of the keynote while the other 2 kept going. Turns out they were relying on the WWDC network to stream their live blog while the other 2 must have had their own network. Shows who is more prepared!
New MBP
Although the updated battery life is appreciated, I just feel this is another typical Apple move: milking the consumers once more. Although I have to say by dropping the prices this time around instead of introducing another insanely priced product, it makes the move a bit more tolerable.
OS X and Snow Leopard
Funny that they highlight Exchange support as one of the major features of the new OS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Exchange a Microsoft thing? hm…
Over 6 GB in extra HD space. That’s nice! Too bad the same can’t be said of Windows, exponentially increasing size with each upgrade.
New Chinese input is really cool. I’m sure my Chinese friends will love that! Doesn’t work for those of us who suck at writing though… I hope the existing input methods are still there!
Expose from the Dock for an application sounds familiar… what happened to trash talking Windows 7?
64-bit, finally catching up to Microsoft!
$29 upgrade price is great! I don’t think Microsoft would do anything like that. They would slap on some new “UI Improvements” and charge another $100 to upgrade. Although this point is debatable since sometimes Microsoft introduces new technologies for free with Service Packs (ie. XP SP2). I’d say those occasions are rare and most of the time Microsoft would charge the typical $100 for upgrades. Let’s see if those Best Buy Vista/Win7 upgrade prices rumors are true.
Exchange Support
Fill in email and password, and set across all 3 apps! Sucks since Outlook is just 1 app! I guess it’s a “better than nothing” approach without building another Outlook.
iPhone
Great that they acknowledged the developers. It is the developers that helped Apple make iPhone the platform it is today.
AT&T, the worst part of the iPhone experience in the U.S. No mention of MMS nor tethering. Get ready to turn in your first born in order to get such features.
Nice Safari improvements.
FindMyiPhone… an awesome service on the crappy MobileMe.
C’mon hackers! Find a way to use this without Apple’s MobileMe!
The doctor app for the iPhone looks amazing. I’m sure a specific doctor friend will love it.
Sucks some of the demo’s failed. Oh well, it happens.
All the new features rumored (besides video chat) are there. Good that the prices have remained the same… now it’s up to AT&T to see who qualifies for this “upgrade” price and how much the rest of will be paying. Monopolies suck!
Tags: mac, osx
No Comments