cndnsr trivia for iphone!

There were no trivia games made for iPhone.

The other day when I was sitting at the doctor’s office to have my arm checked out, sitting, staring, looking at the outdated magazines… I noticed my little brother playing trivia on his iPod. I thought that was a great idea and we started to play together. It was a great laugh. Meanwhile I poked around for a trivia game that would work on iPhone. None existed, so now one does!

I will be releasing the beta very shortly.

The entire thing was developed in Ruby on Rails in about a day and 1/2. Once I work out the rest of the bugs, and add enough questions it will be ready for the public. It will be located at cndnsr.com. Check back in the next couple days.

;{)
Mr. French

Settings for OSX

This is a really good article about using “defaults” shell cmd in Leopard to set options such as Full Path in Finder and remove Translucent Menu Bar. Check it out. VIA digg.com

AIM Phoneline with iChat Update

My bad…

Ok, So it would seem that a great many people are interested in my post on how-to get AIM Phoneline working with iChat.

I had personal business to attend to so I had let my site go stale. After the drive crash, I just took the site down due to lack of personal time. ….. but things are back up now! So here is an update.

What you need to know

This only allows for incoming calls. When I originally configured everything for iChat it worked. I did start to notice that every 4th or 5th incoming call would either be dropped, or sent right to VM. Initially everything worked as promised by AIM, yet over time things started to break or have additional problems.

Problemo Problemo

The first problem that started was the notification to my phone. I set an email forwarder to send a txt message to me if someone called. That way I can be notified if I am out and get a VM so that I can check it. Turns out that worked only 25% of the time and now I do not even get txt messages or emails from it anymore.

(I use AIM mobile forwarding to forward my AIM to my iPhone as soon as I am not signed online. I have been using it for years. This automatically routes the AIM message to my phone as a txt and then I can reply with a txt that will be routed to the AIM user on the other end. I have noticed over this period of time I will have to go in and reset my settings, and reinitialize my phone every once in a while because the messages stop sending properly and end up in /dev/null. I have no idea how AOL’s network is set up, but do the two services share infrastructure? Possibly, Probably.)

Calls garbled, delayed, echoing, or just not initiating was my next problem. When I stopped getting messages and it was garbling or just not even initiating calls, I just plain stopped giving out the number.

Also, of note… I was/am using Chax iChat Component.

For your reference, I was using it on an Intel Macbook Pro on version lower then Tiger 10.4.10 and version lower then iChat 3.1.8 with Chax iChat Component installed.

So, what is the deal with it now?

Software updates or network routing changes broke it or do break it. Who knows if it works on PPC or not? NAT routing might break it. Lack of UPNP support in your router might break it. OSX firewall could break it. Since it is an unsupported feature they have no reason to try and not break it. *It is unsupported since it is potentially buggy, or just plain busted for lots of people, which is why it is only officially supported on AIM Windows.*

Again, sorry I did not update everyone months earlier. Check back though for other goodies, I am going to try and come up with a neat hack per week at least, some with video how-to’s.

Stay Frenchy :{)

*I mentioned this in the last post…

The Doughboy Unloads….

80’s Commercial Compilation

Being back to visit the `rents for a bit made me think of commercials that I used to see on TV when I was younger. I poked about the me-tubes and found some. Here they are in no particular order. Enjoy. :{)

Fruity Pebbles

Of course, because when I think gangsta, Barney Rubble is the first thing that pops to mind.

Nintendo Cereal

The absolute worst theme song for a cereal, yet it does it’s job and stays in your head 20+ years later. I was once on the subway in NY humming and I realized that I was humming it.

Crazy Calls

I HATED this commercial. It makes me want to pull a Vincent van Gogh just seeing it here. Never in the history of TV has a product sucked so bad. The entire marketing strategy revolved around bombarding you every single commercial break, day or night.

Micro Machines

Fast talking car salesman… If it doesn’t say micro machines it is not the real thing! This guy was also in a FedEx Commercial a number of years before he did the micro machines stuff.

Viewmaster

Viewmaster! Oh boy! I swear I can not think of a single person I know who didn’t have one. 30 seconds of enjoyment. Here are the steps to play with Viewmaster.

“Oh man.. this thing is much more fun then I remember… wow.. zebra.”

Teddy Ruxpin

This commercial used to scare the crap out of me. Lifeless eyes. The “I am going to kill you… EVIL ROBOT!” stare. A friend of mine got one and when I slept over his house I made him put it in the closet.

Big League Chew

Ahhhhh Big League chew. Of course! Chewing tobacco,…. but for kids! What a grand idea! It even comes in the same type of pouch.

Super Balloon

Super Balloon gets my vote for “least increased sales by commercial placement”.

McDonald’s Razor

“..Bob, you are looking a bit scruffy this morning..”
Sweet! Because nothing says good morning like 1800 grams of saturated fat and a sharp object!
“You come here often?… ahahaha” *PUNCH*