stevem.net

I bought a JBL On Stage IIIp for my iPhone in the hopes that I had finally found a good docking solution that actually worked with the iPhone.  So far, my experiences have not been that good.

The product has been reviewed for it’s feature set in many other places – I was attracted to it by the fact that it was a speaker set that supported the iPhone, and had a small amount of menu control via a small remote.

I mainly use it at work so I can have music while working, and not have to contort my hand to get to the menus while it’s in the dock – hence the remote requirement.

So far, the following is happening, and I can’t find any resolution:

• No matter what album/artist/playlist I select, it only ever plays one song in an endless loop.  I have to hit the next button on the remote, or on the iPhone.
• 80% of the time when I dock the iPhone, it spits out the usual “this accessory is not compatible with this iPhone – would you like to go into airplane mode”.  Power cycling the JBL usually gets rid of this.

I’m going to keep searching for a solution, but I’m not confident I will find anything based on my initial results…

steve Computers iphone, jbl, jbl on stage iii, on stage, onstage

Yesterday I was out sailing with a friend in Elliott Bay, well I guess we weren’t really sailing because there was no wind….  anyhow, we were trying to figure out what to do next, and hadn’t planned on being out very long.

We’d seen one of the smaller Coast Guard boats running around near us for a while, and when it came straight towards us, I figured something was going on.

Sure enough, they politely asked if we had been boarded and inspected recently by the Coast Guard, to which I replied that we hadn’t.  They then asked, again very politely, if they could do so.  It didn’t really seem like a question that had an answer other than “sure”, so that’s what I said.  They asked permission to come aboard, and two of them transferred, rather adeftly, to my boat to start the inspection.

They looked at life jackets, bilges, wastewater pumpouts, toilets, fire extinguishers, flares, and engine compartments.  They found a couple of things wrong, but since it was an inspection, they just asked me to fix them.  I suppose they could have fined me, but they were extremely nice and courteous.

We both asked some questions of them, about the process and regulations, and about their fast boat and strange weapons that they were more than happy to explain.

Overall, it was a very pleasant experience, and at no time did I feel uncomfortable or anything at all.  They were so super polite and efficient, and very courteous, as well as even a bit joking at the end.  I’m glad they try to make it as stress-free as possible.

I’ll be changing my fire extinguishers and zip-tying my pumpout valves here in the next few days just in case they decide to check up on me, and because it’s apparently the law.

The only bad thing was that as a result of being below during very barfy waves, I got really motion sick and we had to abandon sailing about an hour afterward, and I barely made it to the dock.  I was shot the rest of the day…

steve Sailing boarding, coast guard, inspection, Sailing

In the last few weeks I have been investigating ASP.NET to fulfill a project at work.  I haven’t looked at it in a long time, and am really impressed with the ease of being able to publish a fairly complex web site with minimal effort.

In particular, I’m working on a project to represent data in grids and tables, as well as graphs.  A lot of the built in controls in Visual Studio 2008 (we’re using that with ASP.NET 3.5) don’t really look all that great, and lack functionality.

I found a great set of tools from Developer Express that we’re using for grids and graphs.  They are very powerful, and look great.  I’ll post more on them after we have used them, and maybe even some screen shots.

steve Computers asp.net, developer express, devexpress

I upgraded WordPress today to version 2.6 which I had been putting off for some time.  The upgrade was surprisingly easy, but there are a few things that aren’t working after the upgrade.  My Flickr photo plugin appears to be activated, but doesn’t seem to be serving images, or causes the browser not to load anything except the header.

I’m still trying to figure out that piece, but everything else seems to be working correctly.  The upgrade wasn’t supposed to provide a huge amount of new features, but there are a few nice things such as the word count, Google Gears compatibility to make things a little faster/smoother, and a few other things.

I also started using the WordPress app for the iPhone and have posted a few times with it, even with pictures.  I started using it with my first gen iPhone and it seemed to work just fine for standard posts, although it was a bit slow.  Uploading pictures is not tenable with the first gen iPhone – it takes too long over the EDGE network.  Wireless of course works fine.

Overall, I love WordPress and have had no problems with the core software.

steve Uncategorized iphone, wordpress

Summer is good.

steve Uncategorized