The remote for my TV stopped working today. Neither my cable remote nor the remote that came with my TV would work on the TV, so I knew it was a problem with the IR receiver, rather than the remote. I figured I’d probably have to get LG to replace the IR receiver, but I went ahead and Googled for problems with LG remotes, and found this. AVS Forum rules! I just sprayed some CRC 2-26 on a headphone jack, popped it in and out of the remote port in the back of the TV a few times, and everything works fine now. Sometimes, the internet is exceedingly helpful.
Year: 2010
A Big Book
75 Years Of DC Comics: The Art Of Modern Mythmaking
Wow, here’s a book I’d buy, if it were a lot cheaper. I’m sure it’s worth the price, considering the size — 720 pages and 16 pounds! And written by Paul Levitz, who is probably the man most qualified to write such a book, given his long tenure at DC.
AdSense
On a lark, I signed up for AdSense a while back. I haven’t really bothered looking at my account in a while though. I got a message today that they’re changing some stuff around, so I looked at my account. It appears that I made a penny in May, another penny in June, nothing in July, then sixty-one cents in August. Oh, and nothing since then. I wonder what I did in August? If I can manage to do it again, on a consistent basis, I could maybe make enough money for a coffee and bagel by the end of 2011!
mashups
It looks like I will be working on a mobile app (iPhone and Android) at work soon, and I’ve been vaguely interested in mobile development for a while now anyway, so I spent some time this weekend looking around for ideas for a small project to work on, to get my feet wet. I spent some time on Programmable Web, and was interested to see this article wondering why there aren’t any great mashup apps for Arlington National Cemetery. Having recently attended a funeral there, I can see how a good mapping app for the cemetery would be really useful. It’s a huge place. There’s an interesting comment following the article from someone who tried to work with the cemetery to try and get something done, but he didn’t get too far.
Newsweek
I’m not sure what to think about this development. I canceled my Kindle Newsweek subscription a while ago, but I’ve been keeping an eye on what’s going on with Newsweek since it got sold for $1. It might be interesting to see what Tina Brown would do with it.
SSMS Tools Pack
Stumbled across the SSMS Tools Pack today. How has this been around since 2007, without me knowing about it? I installed it at work, and I’m already finding it useful.
more on BlackBerry syncing
After some finagling today, I figured out that I could keep using Missing Sync for my calendars if I just created a single dummy calendar on my Mac in iCal. It syncs my “real” calendars as read-only now, but I’m OK with that.
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do for my next phone, but if I was interested in Android, I’d be looking at the Droid Pro or maybe the Samsung Continuum.
syncing BlackBerry and Mac
I’ve been using Missing Sync with my BlackBerry Storm, just to sync my contacts and calendar from my Mac. I’ve had problems with it, on and off, but it’s mostly worked OK. Since I’ve switched to the new MobileMe Calendar though, the calendar sync doesn’t work anymore. Mark/Space has a KB entry acknowledging this, but there’s no indication that they’re planning to fix the problem.
I’m eligible for a “new every two” discount from Verizon soon, and I’m wondering if I should stick with BlackBerry. If Verizon really does get the iPhone, that would really simplify the sync situation for me. On the other hand, if I switch to an Android device, that’ll make it more complicated. I’ve been playing around with options for syncing iCal and Address Book on the Mac with Google contacts and calendars. It turns out to be really easy to sync the address book with Google — the option is right there in the preference screen. There’s no such option in iCal, but it seems like I ought to be able to subscribe to a MobileMe calendar in Google calendar, though I apparently would have to make the calendar public to do that.
I’m wondering if Spanning Sync would be worth looking into. It’s kind of expensive for what it does though. And I occasionally think I should switch over to using the calendar that comes with my Backpack account. I could use that as the source, and subscribe to it in iCal and Google.
Meanwhile, I’ve ordered my usual Moleskine calendar for 2011.
Doctor Strange
I just finished reading Doctor Strange: The Oath, by Brian K. Vaughn and Marcos Martin. I stopped buying comics about a year ago, but I still have a big pile of unread books. This mini-series was published back in 2006, so that’s how far behind I am. This is a good standalone story. It’s respectful to the characters involved, which I appreciate. The art is quite good too — a little reminiscent of Ditko, and maybe even a bit of Kirby in places. Nice and clean, and not flashy, except when it needs to be.
There’s an article on CBR where Vaughn discusses his approach to Strange and his goals for the series. If you think you might be interested in picking this up as a trade, go read it. It’ll give you a good idea of whether or not this series would be your cup of tea.
weird Blogger stuff
I just updated tags on a bunch of old posts. I do that once in a while, since Blogger makes it easy to do. If I realize that all the posts mentioning “Windows” should be tagged “Windows”, it’s easy to do a search, select all, then apply the tag.
The weird side-effect of that is that if you look at this feed, a bunch of old posts are bubbling to the top now. That’s OK though. I don’t think anybody looks at that feed.