My Blog

Introducing..

2010-03-29T21:43:00.001-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Adam Lerman <alerman@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 5:18 PM
Subject: Introducing..
To: Gretchen Slocum <gcav417@aol.com>, Tim Slocum <tslocum@snet.net>, Brian Lerman <brian.lerman@gmail.com>, Dad <blerman@bottles.com>, Maura Chilson <mrchilson@gmail.com>, Leo Gonneville <lpgonn@gmail.com>, Mom <alerman@stevensautogroup.com>, Donna Piskura <dpiskura@bottles.com>

Finley Hannah Lerman. 8 week old husky

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Just another trip to dunkin donuts...

2010-01-23T09:58:00.001-05:00

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Recover lost BootCamp Space

2009-12-19T11:20:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I set up my Macbook Pro with bootcamp using a windows 7 beta CD. When The license expired, I formatted and used that disk with time machine for a while. When I went into bootcamp again, I couldnt recover the space, it did not show it was there, and wouldn't let me remove the new partition. Below are the steps to recover the space lost:

1) Create another bootcamp partition on the now smaller main disk

2) set up windows

3) When setting up windows you will notice that the Hard disk size is equal to the sum of the lost space and the new space.

You are done, you can now reclaim the space in BootCamp Assistant.

Free calls grom Google Voice to Cell Phone

2009-10-13T09:05:00.002-04:00

Do you have ATT A-List? Or Verizon Friends and Family? If so, you can get free calls with google voice. If you set your google voice to "Display your Google Voice number" and add your google voice number to your A-List, then all calls that come into google voice will not go against minutes!

Lounging around

2009-10-09T12:28:00.001-04:00

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Dinner to go with NCIS

2009-09-22T20:11:00.001-04:00

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Pics of vacation make me want to take another

2009-09-22T17:16:00.001-04:00

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Clover is just chilling

2009-09-18T10:02:00.001-04:00

Sent from my iPhone

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Jetty likes the new bed too

2009-09-13T20:27:00.001-04:00

Sent from my iPhone

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The App store solution

2009-08-21T00:28:00.002-04:00

Apple has taken a lot of heat over the past few weeks especially with regard to their app store policies. As a software developer, it scares me to think about working on a project for weeks, months, or even a year without knowing if that app will pass the approval process. This, I believe, is going to make iPhone developers weary of developing for the iPhone.

I believe that there is a simple solution to this, short of Jason Calacanis' great idea of just giving is an "allow unsupported apps" button. My solution is this: Hey Apple, you know those NDA's you love to make your faithful sign? Well agree to go the other way here too. What I mean is "sign" an NDA with developers and then create 2 approvals. Concept and Code. That way a developer could submit a concept for an app, and if approved they have exclusive rights to build it. This way developers would know that the app wouldn't be blocked for concept after spending a lot of time and money developing it.

And now that I am thinking about it, Apple could use a system like this to find out what kind of apps the users really want. They could allow non-developers to submit ideas, and let developers that want to build those apps do it. They could even reward the person who submitted the idea with part of the app revenue. (30 percent Apple, 20 percent idea, 50 percent developer?)

Although does apple really care about whether the users get the apps they really want?

Make Speed Dial home Screen Icons for Google Voice

2009-08-11T17:05:00.002-04:00

I have created a script that allows you to set home screen icons on your iphone to dial your google voice contacts.. Check it out here:

http://budgetjax.com/gv/gv.php

The iPhone 10MB Limit, and how it hurts apple.

2009-08-11T16:57:00.001-04:00

So you are sitting in a doctor's office, and in the waiting time, you decide to browse the app store. The first problem, is that the app store is set up in a way that makes browsing it roughly as enhoyable as the route canal you will be experiencing in just a few minutes time. But alas, you troop through and find a game that you want to download to pass the time. You click to download only to get that lovely error message "This is over 10MB, please connect to a computer or wifi network".

It has gotten to the point now that if I find a game I like, I instinctively check its size, BEFORE I check the price. Because regardless of how much it costs, if I can't download it now, I dont want it. There are a lot of games and apps I have found (probably about 100 dollars worth) that if I could have downloaded them I would have, but Apple is effectively stopping the impulse buy, and making the user say, "Do I really need that?".

I am sure this is a restriction that AT&T came up with. But if they are going to enable tehtering, as they say they are, then why not throw us a bone here, and let us download our apps no matter the size.

Problem with Tivo Desktop

2008-08-01T15:07:00.002-04:00

I like the Home Media Sharing options that come with my TiVo. It is quite nice to have the ability to record in HD, then transfer those recordings to my computer for use on the go. However, I do have a few problems with it.

1) File Size/Transfer Time

HD files are usually over 4 or 5 Gigabytes. This is understandable, as they would need to be very large, but TiVo needs to find a way to either make this transfer faster, or have a smaller version of the file. I do not have 2 HD TiVo's, so I cannot comment on the transfer time between TiVo's, but it takes a very long time to get to my computer (both TiVo and PC wired in)

2) Conversion

I bought the 25 dollar TiVo Desktop Plus upgrade because the idea of being able to convert things for iPod (now iPhone) was very intriguing. At first, with SD recordings, this worked decently well. A few warnings though. First -> Only do this on a machine ou do not plan to use. My Core 2 Duo takes a huge hit if I let it run on my main computer, which results in my computer becoming slow and unresposive. 2) Keep an eye on it. I want to be able to tell Tivo Desktop I want all my programs transferred, converted, and put in Folder X. It does not work that way, because the program is not nearly stable enough to hendle that.

3) Commercial Removal

It would be real nice if during this process, or even a seperate one, the TiVo software removed commercial. I have tried TVHarmony but thet can't find my Series 3 TiVo

What do you use to get your TiVo programs onto your iPhone or computer?

BudgetJax

2008-07-23T22:21:00.004-04:00

I wanted to learn a bit more about using AJAX with PHP so I started working on something I wanted to have, a good budgeting web app. I want to see what other people think and if they might use it, so if I should keep building it as something for many users, or just for me. Here is the idea:

You enter a monthly budget (after you register, log in and click "Edit Budget", enter the categories of your budget and the amount (monthly) that you would have budgeted for that)

Then, as you spend money you enter it as transactions. (In the future I would have quicken/money file import, so it could do it automatically)

As transactions are entered, an overall summary is updated so that you can keep track of how your spending is going for that month.

It is very rough but I have decided to let people use it, I am sure it will break, but I want to get other peoples opinions.

I know that there are plenty of problems with it, so please while using it use short field names (problem 1), short descriptions (still works, but looks funky), and enter amounts in numerical values only. None of that should bring down the server but it may annoy you.

Please understand this is a VERY rough copy. I want to (and if there is interest, plan to) upgrade many of the things it does, as well as make it quite a bit nicer. This is just a feeler to see if people use/like it.

Here it is: http://www.budgetjax.com

As a note...To edit an already entered transaction just click on it, to edit the budget click "Edit Budget" at top. Also, it is meant to keep track by month, so before entering a transaction that should apply to august, select August next to "Display data for" and click "Go"

Please let me know (via comment or email me budgetjax at gmail dot com) what you think and if I should keep working on it

Customizing TomTom

2008-06-24T05:51:00.002-04:00

It occured to me today that I really wish my TomTom was Open Source. It isnt that I dont like how it does things, there are just little things that bother me that I wish I could change.

For instance, TT always tells the time for the drive in the format X:XX hours. This is ok, but if your drive is under an hour (as most are with gas as high as it is) then you get something like "0:31 hours". I would prefer this to say "31 Minutes".

Yes, I am nitpicky, but I want to be able to customize some of this stuff, and wish there was a way I could.

I am going to look into hacking the TT and see what options there are, maybe someone like me has done it already...

Browser wars all over again...

2008-05-03T17:51:00.002-04:00

Every time I reformat, I find myself wondering which browser I am going to use. Now that I have vista, I have to admit, the IE7 experience is pretty good. Not great, but pretty good. I have also downloaded and installed, Safari, Firefox 2.0.0.14, and Firefox3 beta 5. I figured I would try some of them out and see what I liked or didn't.

The first problem, believe it or not, was hardware. Well not hardware so much as software that supports it. I have a Upek fingerprint reader that came built in to my Dell XPS. I love it, it makes logging in easy, and I dont need to be storing passwords in Firefox or IE. I also am able to back up the passwords to a disk. I realize this can be done with firefox but Upek does the most important thing, they make it easy. Unfortunately, I was unable to find plugins for Firefox 3 or Safari, so they got scratched immediately (although I really like what I have seen so far from Safar, I used to own a mac and they do it pretty damn well.)

So that leaves IE and Firefox.

I have to say that for most users, IE is great. Good integration with windows, and a pretty decent user experience. I dont really use too many plugins or anything, I tend to stick to the core browser functions pretty much, something that both IE and Firefox do well. Where Firefox wins out is the profiles. The fact that I cant easily do profiles for different people without switching users in IE is a major downfall. Bad enought that it means I will be back on firefox.

Hopefully the Upek guys will pump out Safari and Firefox3 plugins soon so I can use those instead!

If you have any of the plugins for htose, let me know!

iPod: Very Low Battery! Screen...FIX!

2008-05-01T23:07:00.002-04:00

So I found my (5G)ipod today and it was dead. No big deal I figure, just needs to be charged. After leaving it plugged in for multiple hours, it still wouldnt turn on and told me low battery. I tried a few different suggestions to fix, including:

Use Xbox to charge
Hold butons to get it to restart, then unplug.

Nothing seemed to work, so I, being upset that it wouldnt turn on, decided to take it apart.

Bright huh? I got it apart, and disconnected te 2 wires (carfully!!!) from the back to the main board.

I fiddled with it for a while and decided to put it back together and sell it as broken, well what do you know, when put back together, everything works, battery has been running for hours with no problems!!

For those of you that need step by step:

CAREFULLY open ipod
disconnect 2 cables from back case (battery) to man board
leave disconnected for 15-20 minutes
reconnect (harder than it sounds, because one of the cables connects under the HDD
put back together (will display error on screen)
Plug into iTunes and restore software

Hope this works for you!

Tri-boot Ubuntu MacOS Windows Guide

2008-04-30T13:41:00.002-04:00

Disclaimer: I am not an expert, most of this was figured out by trial and error. I will try and help you if you need it, but most of what I learned came from Google.

Install guide for Dell XPS1530 (I am not going to go too far into detail, but I will tell you what you NEED to know. Anything further and to be honest I am probably not sure...)

1)Prerequisites
Get the following files downloaded (and burned to CD or DVD)
-- iAtkos 1.0r2 DVD
-- Kalyway 10.5.2 ComboUpdate pack
-- Ubuntu 8.04 Desktop Live CD
then get any data that is on the computer now off the drive.

2) Partition
Put in the Ubuntu Live CD and boot to it.
Start the Partition Editor by typing

sudo gparted

in terminal.

Delete all the partitions from the disk.
Set up the partitions I used the following setup:
15 GB NTFS (for windows)
15 GB unformatted (for macOS)
Crete new Extended Partition
1 GB linux-swap
14 GB ext3 (for Ubuntu)
the rest to storage (FAT32) can do that now or later.
Apply changes.
Close GPARTED
Shutdown computer (it will eject the CD)

3) Install Vista (or XP)
Install to the first partition, should show up first on the drives screen. No special instructions

4)Install Ubuntu
Once Windows is all set up put the Ubuntu CD in and restart
When you get to the desktop use "Install"
Most of the install options dont matter, but when it asks you about partitioning say Manual. set the ext3 Mount point to / and the linux-swap to swap.
Go through Ubuntu install.
Ubuntu Installer should set up and configure Grub for you, so that you can go to Ubuntu or windows.

5) install OS X
Once Ubuntu setup is done, verify the boot loader works for windows and Ubuntu
then insert the Mac OS DVD, and reboot
Click next at the "Click to continue" screen.
Go to Utilities->Disk Utility at the top
Select the partition for MacOS (should be the 15GB that has almost all space free)
Select "Erase"
Change File system to "Mac Os Extended Journaled"
Erase
close disk utility
coninue the installer until you get the customize button.
When you get to the screen that gives you the customize option, click it
Expand bootloades and click the box next to "Darwin EFI" to select everything under it.
Expand drivers->system->there is a kext (I think APPLESMBIOS) select that

SELECT NOTHING ELSE!

Continue the installer, it will not take too long, but may appear to have frozen.

After the installer finishes it will reboot. Mine then opened the Grub bootloader --> make sure to go into windows not ubuntu, if you let it get to ubuntu, just restart again

6)Bootloader
Download EasyBCD
Install and run it
Go to add entries and add one for MacOS and one for ubuntu, i Called mine OSX
Add another entry for Ubunto for easier boot later

7) Get into MacOs
Reboot, and select the GRUB option for windows
this will then bring up the menu that should have Windows and OSX on it, and Ubuntu if you added that to the list
Select OSX

8) Once you get in to MacOS use the comboupdate to update to 10.5.2
When that is finished, go to http://scottdangel.com/blog/?p=23 and get the installer for the NVIDIA card.

Run the installer (top and bottom boxes checked) and enjoy your MacOs with everything but sound...

WinMacTu, the Windows, OSX, Ubuntu laptop...

2008-04-30T13:04:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon the OSx86 project. I decided that it would be a good time to try to install it on my XPS 1530. I also noticed that the new Ubuntu was out and thought I would install all three. (Installation and bootloader info to follow)

This was a week ago, and one week later, I am happily running my ~~triple~~ dual boot. It was a good idea, but alas the MacOS Partition has been removed. Before I get in to why let me give some information about the setup and the configuration.

Computer:
XPS 1530
Core 2 Duo T5550 (1.83 Ghz processor)
1440x900 LCD
2GB Memory
120 GB 5400 SATA HDD
128MB NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS
Dell 1490 Wireless Card
Dell bluetooth card (Taken out of my Inspison E1505)
Sigmatel STAC9228 sound card

The first thing I did was partition the drive in a way I thought would be best. What I did was a 15 GB partition for each OS and then the rest as a shared storage drive. Format the shared drive to FAT to be sure you can read and write to it easily from each of the operating systems. There are ways to read all the others, but FAT makes it really easy, because there is no extra configuring to do.

After setup I was indeed successful in installing all 3, and configuring the Vista bootloader to give me the choice of what to boot to, it all worked great. Everything worked great in Vista, and Ubuntu. A lot of things worked just fine under Mac but I had some major problems thatall the forum crawling and kextloading I did I could not fix. The following were problematic in OSX:

1) Sound. Tried many different things, downloading pre patched kexts, using AppleHDA with a codec dump, the Dell Leopard OS X post-installer. Nothing worked at all.

2) Ethernet -- I believe that this did not work, but admittedly, I never tried it, because the wireless worked flawlessely.

3) Mouse. It worked great until I tried to install the patch to allow 2 finger scrolling. It enabled a version of scrolling, (one finger, hold at edge for a second then it would scroll) but it RUINED the mouse Acceleration. (I was able to speedd it up again, but the acceleration was just too messed up)

The mouse is really what did it. Before that not having sound was annoying but not mission critical. I do plan on reinstalling OSX to a bootable USB external, or at least trying to, we shall see if that works.

Check back later for my install guide.

Product Reviews

2008-04-15T08:34:00.000-04:00

I consider myself a half-geek. Yes, I am a gadget freak. Yes, I am a computer programmer. But like most people, I am just too lazy to get in to absolutely all the features of every device I own. Now don't get me wrong, I do look through them at least once for every device, but then I settle into the ones that make my life easiest and pretty much ignore the rest. Because most product reviews you see go incredibly into detail about the features of devices and things, I am going to start doing reviews a little different. I am going to review products I have had for a longer period of time and the things about them that make them good, and the ones that are missing or too hard to use.

Check back soon for my first few. I plan on reviewing the BlackBerry Pearl, the TiVo Series 3 (with cablecards), my XBOX 360, as well as various other cell phones and such that I have used for a long period of time.

The opinions that I have come from delving deep into the features, then seeing which ones really make a difference and make my life easier. It takes me a fairly long period of time to figure out what exactly those features are, so I take a bit longer than most reviews, but it will be worth it.

Blackberry Program Ideas

2008-04-06T13:00:00.000-04:00

Last December I took the plunge and decided to get myself a Blackberry Pearl. Being a programmer, the first thing I did the minute I got it was to look up the Blackberry SDK. You see, I bought the Pearl without a data plan, and wanted to create a program that allowed me to sync my email onto the phone. While receiving email in real time was not important to me, I did have a phone that was built to use email, I should be able to take it along with me.

I set out to write a program that would take my Gmail and put it into a CSV. Then upload the CSV into Outlook Notes. Then sync the notes to the phone. This sounded good, but in the end it wouldn't seem to work well. Somewhere in the middle I changed my direction. I decided to write the emails to text files, because it is actually not that difficult to read text files from the media browser. However, It would take quite a while to scroll through the list, even using the blackberry scroll tips.

Then I wrote an application for the blackberry that would read these and display them on the phone in a similar way to how the blackberr messaging works. I got it all done, and it worked great on the simulator, but as soon as I moved it to the phone, I discovered that it will not run until RIM signs the app. For 100 dollars. So scrathch that.

I finally discovered the simple and easy way to do it. Tell gmail to forward my emails as MMS messages. Granted, this requires unlimited MMS, but I have that, and it is a lot less expensive than the data plan.

My next idea is to create a text based internet browser for use through MMS. Anyone interested in this? would you use it?

Basically it would be a port of the Lynx Browser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29

I would like to do this, I dont know if anyone would be interested in it. If so let me know, I would gladly make this open source, if I can get it to work right.

Programmer looking for freelance work.

2008-04-06T12:53:00.000-04:00

Anybody need some freelance programming. I am a software engineer that currently lives alone and has a lot of free time. I am always looking for some pet project to do and would love a chance to build something for someone else. Anyone have any projects they would like some help on?