Arthur Lockman's Blog

What's in my Dock?

2010-07-28T01:53:07Z

In this short screencast, I try to answer the small but important question, "What's in my Dock?" Enjoy!

All for now!

The Apple Repair Team Strikes Back!

2010-07-26T23:11:22Z

Everyone who has been reading my blog today will know that I this morning sent my Macbook in to the apple store to have the case cracks repaired. Well i am happy to report that this repair was firstly free, and secondly a huge success! My macbook has no more palm rest cracks, though the bottom case is still cracked. That's mostly because i neglected to tell the repair guys that it was cracked in the first place. But other than that it was a fabulous repair. The ended up replacing both the keyboard assembly and the entire bevel for the screen. Which, so far as i can tell, included a new iSight camera for my computer. And on top of this all, having the keyboard be the right shape seems to bave bent my Macbook back into shape and allowed me to use my CD drive once again. That is fabulous, and was completely worth the time I was without my mac. And as you can see by the picture, the case is crack free, which is what i wanted in the end.

In the end I highly recommend that anyone with a 'cracbook' take it in and get it repaired; it is completely worth your time.

All for now!

Spiders!

2010-07-26T23:06:45Z

Found this little guy in the yard today. Hopefully he does his job and earns his keep by eating all the mosquitoes so they don't eat me.

All for Now!

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The Crackbook Saga Begins

2010-07-26T17:22:30Z

Image via Wikipedia

As everyone probably already knows, the older white MacBooks have this tiny little problem that Apple doesn't like to admit. Yes, i'm talking about the case cracks which turn your pristine white macbook into a 'Crackbook'. Well of course I had this happen to me, but didn't think that there was anything I could do about short of paying for the repair myself. I wasn't too keen on doing that, so I just let it slide and became best friends with a bottle of crazy glue to help hold it together. This worked for a long time and probably would have worked for much time to come. However, my father James found something out while getting the cracks on his iPhone fixed. In a conversation with one of the technicians at the apple store he found out that apple was in fact starting to replace the cracked palm rests and outer shells of these white macbooks. This got my ears perked up, so this morning I had James take my macbook over to the apple store on the way to work. Now, i had called earlier in the week to see if my macbook was eligible for this replacement program, and i got the standard apple response 'well, if your computer falls within a certain serial number range...'. I couldn't actually get anyone at apple to tell me what range this was, so i figured what the heck, i'd just bring it in. When James brought it in this morning, he was told 'if we see cracks, we fix em'. This was fantastic and as we speak my computer is getting surgerized and having its cracks replaced. The moral: If you've got a crackbook, go get it fixed for free. Apple is happy to help you out.

All for Now!

The Great American Game

2010-07-26T00:51:10Z

This is a shot (well, actually a panorama) that i took today at a Portland Sea Dogs game in Hadlock Field. We lost 3-10, but still had a good time.

All for Now!

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Don't try this at home. I mean it.

2010-07-25T22:23:10Z

Yesterday, I thought it might be a good time to give my MT5 blog a much needed refresh. I installed a new theme into the blog system, and switched over. Well when I went to publish this new layout i encountered publishing errors, and so decided to go back to the old theme. That published just fine, but to my horror when I went to view my page everything custom that I had installed was gone. My ads, twitter button, toolbar, everything. I immediately began the long and laborious process of installing everything again, only to discover that since i had built everything in MT4 that all of the components I was editing had moved to a different place. I spent the greater part of last night and today finding everything again, and installing everything I thought i had. As of right now it is back up and fully operational, although i still feel as if I'm missing something. If there's anything I am missing that you as loyal readers remember being there, please let me know. I want to have everything back, and I can't remember what is missing so please help me out.

My message to all you MTers out there who would like to give their blogs a refresh: BACKUP EVERYTHING!! I can't stress that enough. Make sure everything in your system is backed up as to not end up like me. You will thank yourself afterwords.

All for now!

Free Bumpers? Not so fast Apple.

2010-07-25T01:11:01Z

Now, we all know about apple's 'solution' to the iPhonegate problems. Yes, I'm talking about the 'Death Grip'. As you probably also know, Apple has 'fixed' this problem by giving everyone a free iPhone case to alleviate the problem. Well, for me, this doesn't cut it. Take Toyota for example. When they had a serious problem with their cars (which turned out to be mostly user error), they started a major recall and fixed the problem. What does apple do? Not a recall, but an addition to their product that 'fixes' the problem. Here's what apple should have done in my opinion. 1: Change the iPhone 4 design so that there is a thin layer of clear plastic around the outer antenna that would prevent the two antennae from being bridged, causing signal loss. This would essentially do the same thing as the bumper does, only more efficiently and easier for the user. And finally 2: Recall all iPhone 4's and either add this coating to the outside of the iPhone or replace them with the newer one. This I feel would be a much better solution to this problem. If anyone has anything better to say about it, let me know. I'd love to hear what you think!

All for Now!

My Desktop: Circa Today

2010-07-12T23:54:22Z

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Forrst Invites up for Grabs!

2010-07-09T22:23:37Z

Image via CrunchBase

I have a few invites to the Designer/Developer community site Forrst. If you think you deserve them, @reply me on twitter with some of your best work. I'll pick the winners tomorrow afternoon. Let's see some good stuff!

All for Now!

Something Tabulous is coming....

2010-07-06T14:48:56Z

Something Tabulous is coming your way. Check it out at http://www.startmytab.us

All for Now!

Return to Developing Flex Backends with Dreamweaver CS5

2010-06-30T14:20:00Z

Return to Building PHP Backends for Flex Applications from Arthur Lockman on Vimeo.

Due to the amount of questions I had on my last video about writing backend scripts for Flex applications, I decided to remake that video to help answer those questions and really explain what I had made in more detail. Enjoy!

(PS: Try Full screen mode to get the full picture)

All for Now!

Telephone: The Little Softphone that Could

2010-06-23T00:45:40Z

In my everlasting search for the perfect way to use the full potential of Google Voice, I have stumbled across several solutions to make free VoIP calls from my Mac. I had stumbled upon Gizmo, which is still what I use for this purpose. However, I today stumbled across a new frontend for Gizmo that makes the whole experience that much better.

Enter Telephone, a little SIP Softphone that can connect to basically any kind of SIP service. Sipgate, Gizmo, whatever you may have this app can connect to it. Currently, I have it connected to my Gizmo account, which links to Google Voice. Now as most of my readers probably already know, Google has purchased Gizmo and has shut down sign ups. So unless you were fortunate enough to get a Gizmo account before the shut down, this post probably won't do much but to make you jealous.

Anyways, back to the point. When you open this app, all you see is a very simple window asking you for a SIP

server, a username, and a password. Once you enter that, it

signs you in to the account and allows you to make and receive calls. The application links in with your Mac OS Address book contacts, and allows you to call any of

them. But, if you use it to link to Gizmo and Google Voice, then you can have google call you and it will send a Growl notification from the background alerting you to the call.

If you click on the Growl notification, it goes to the application and presents you with this window, that asks you whether you want to accept or decline the call. In all very simple. And the best part, it uses about 13 mb of ram while sitting in the background. That's how a softphone should be. No bells and whistles, just let me talk.

This awesome app can be downloaded from their Google Code Site.

All for Now!

Note: Although as of today Google Voice is open to the public, Gizmo5 Signups are still closed. Sorry!

Windows 7: Not Real Enough for My Laptop

2010-06-22T23:07:18Z

Image via CrunchBase

Today, when starting up my Windows 7 VM to perform routine updates and installations, I came across this little notification in the right corner of my screen letting me know ever so kindly that "My copy of windows is not genuine". Well as you can imagine, I was not pleased. I see this and think I might have a virus or something, but Kaspersky told me that I in fact didn't. After working for a little while, a little notification popped up and told me that 'My copy of windows is not genuine' and 'I may be the victim of Software Counterfeiting'. Great. So I follow its instructions, and come to the conclusion that my copy of Windows is no longer activated.

Let me say this right now that my copy of Windows was in fact activated for 4 months before this little notification reared it's head, and I had activated quite successfully before. So what had changed? Who knows.

I proceeded to do the phone activation and got my computer re-activated. I for one would like to find out what went on. Did Microsoft suddenly decide that my computer wasn't real enough to run its software? Or that windows wasn't real enough to run on my laptop? I'd like to think the latter was more true. Still, I think Microsoft should look in to this as this also happened to me on XP.

All for Now!

Untitled

2010-06-20T23:41:58Z

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iPhone 4? I was wrong.

2010-06-09T13:13:28Z

Image by cattias.photos via Flickr

Well, previously I gave my thoughts on the validity of a 'leaked' iPhone 4. As made apparent at WWDC this year, i was wrong. I for one do like the new iPhone design, although i have not held one in my hand yet. I want to as soon as it is available, to see if it really is as amazing as it is said to be. I'll post a review as soon as I get my hands on one.

All for now!