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Also - how to make it self-destruct in <10 invalid passcode attempts.
Shtep One: Download the iPhone Configuration Utility from Apple
Shtep Two: Futz with the Stuffz
Not shown: there’s an option at the bottom where you can stipulate self-wipe after as little as 5 incorrect passphrase attempts.
Shtep 3: Upload config as per instructions in the “Installing Configuration Profiles” section of the Deployment Guide.
Phdone.
I’ve noticed a trend where a lot of feeds are including large blocky ads at the bottom of each feed item. I can live with that; a little ugly, but I can skip them easily.
Today I saw something new:
That’s right: two complete posts consisting of nothing more than the same ad.
Scrolling down shows me that the very next item is exactly the same add from “The Fail Blog”, another site operated by the same company.
Ads with content I can stand. Ads without content? *unsubscribe*
Not much time to write. Busy watching great Aussie movie I’d never heard of till you reccomended it, on the crystal clear big wide screen.
All is forgiven.
PS phone is charging off the USB port, a nice touch. Pic related, droid included for scale.
Dear Singapore Airlines,
I love you. Really I do. Out of all two international airlines I’ve flown, your by far the best. I’m only flying cattle class, in your planes cattle can only be a reference to those Japanese cows that live a hand-fed, daily massaged life.
It’s the little things you do so well that make the difference: the hot towel immediately on takeoff, recognising that just getting to the airport can be a hard day. The frequent - it feels like every ten minutes, but is probably more like once an hour - offers of a juice or water. I don’t do booze on flights, but the couple beside me do, and your staff have kept them supplied with beer and Baileys until they stopped whining (the couple, not the staff - as far as I can tell, bringing a constant stream of booze for this couple fulfilled the childhood dreams of the staff, judging by the looks on their faces)
I do apologise - turns out they weren’t sated, just resting - but once again the hostess bringing the booze seem thrilled to be of service. It’s little things like that that make me return every weekend to my favorite local cafe, and will keep me returning to your airline.
You get the big things right too - last time I flew SQ, I had the absolute pleasure of riding in an A380 from SIN to SYD. Being first to fly that plane, something you’re rightfully proud of, is just a small demonstration of your comittment to remaining one of the world’s leading airlines.
Right now I’m treating myself to a runthrough of my Living End albums on my iPod. This is a real treat - their early work remains some of my favourite music of all time, and I don’t get to listen to it often enough.
As nice as this is, it’s not what I had in mind when I boarded your aircraft. You see, you’re famous for your entairnment system, and again, rightly so. The games leave a bit to be desired, but your movie and TV selection is second to none. It’s not just the number of programs - it’s the variety! Hollywood, Bollywood, European and Chinese - you have a vast range of programming from all over the world. The first thing I did on boading the plane was to peruse your entertainment guide and plan my next 8 hours of relaxation.
So why am I listening to my own music? Because your entairnment system has failed me. It’s been off for over half the flight. It was off for over 90 minutes at the start of the flight. Eventually it came up, but minus the Video On Demand. Even so, I managed to watch some of Gomorrah on broadcast channel 13 - but before the movie ended, the system rebooted again.
After a considerable time with no entertainment the system came back. This time I decided to go for something shorter, so I started on some of the TV documentaries. I managed a show about gardens in India, and most of another show, before the system crashed entirely. Still about 2 hours from Singapore, and my only entertainment is provided by the music I provided my self, and writing you this rant.
I’m not going to pretend this means I won’t be back: an SQ flight with no entertainment still beats most carriers. I just want to let you know that flight SQ232 today was almost the perfect flight - it was only your entertainment system that let you down.
I loom forward to flying SQ again soon - my next three segments are already booked, the last one once again on your A380, the first mere minutes after I get off this flight - and look forward on particular to being reminded just how good your system can be when it’s working.
I just bought myself a QNAP TS-409 Pro from Skycomp. Very happy with both the device and Skycomp so far.
However, the initial setup was a struggle.
The device has a very limited openwrt-style firmware. Very, very limited: it contains the bare minimum functionality to be able to bootstrap the device with a more capable OS once you have disks installed.
The documented way of doing this is via a “QuickInstall Wizard”, that comes on a provided CD in Mac and Windows flavors. I only have Macs on my home network, so the windows flavor wasn’t useable for me. The Mac flavor is… interesting. I ran into the problem described here: In short, the full firmware isn’t pushed until after the drives are initiated; but the Wizard gets stuck at the “Initializing drives” stage, so the full firmware is never pushed.
I got around it using these instructions - they’re described as being “For linux”, but as it just uses basic tools like telnet and ftpd, it will work on any *nix.
Some notes:
It’s not clear from the documentation, but the device creates a RAID-1 segment 500Mb in size on each disk you insert (/dev/md9 in my case), and mounts this on /mnt/HDA_ROOT. This is where configs for the device, packages you install, and so on are stored.
The device can handle multiple raidsets - although with only 4 disks to play with, you’re not likely to end up with >2 sets. In my cause I currently have 3 1Tb drives in a RAID-5 set, and a single 500Gb disk sitting on its own.
That’s the Powerhouse Museum, located between Pyrmont and Ultimo. If you could hover above it in a helicopter, the view would look something like this:
Imagine if you could magically click a link and jump back in time, and see the same view from sometime between 1900 and 1939…
If you’re lost: in the older picture, look beyond the chimneystack, and just to the left. Immediately beyond the chimney is a vacant block of land; at the top end of this is a short road, which has on the right a not-quite-right-angle corner. The road then continues up the picture - but it’s not quite straight, it bends a little to the right. If you look at the modern picture, you can see the same not-quite-right-angle corner and the same not-quite-straight road - although now the Western Distributor flys across the not-quite-straight road.
See the large building inside the block bounded by the not-quite-straight road? That building is Global Switch Sydney - built in the last days of “Build it and they will come”. It’s only in the last few years that it’s starting to reach full capacity.
The railway line visible in the earlier picture was the Darling Harbour Goods line, which formed the first part of the Metropolitan Goods Railway Line. It’s now used as the Metro Light Rail line.
Talking to a workmate who has a sick cat led to looking at Medibank Private’s pet cover.
This led to the source of (apparently) all pet insurance in Australia; which then led to comparison shopping between the various resellers.
The differences are amusing, but annoying. One provides 15k total cover; but only $500 for tick paralysis. Another only offers 9k total cover; but removes the restrictions on what percentage of that can be used for drugs/medication vs how much is for dental care. None of them cover treatment for leukemia in cats; but some add an additional clause declining to cover any condition for which there is a vaccine.
I’d like to go with the RSPCA - if someone has to make a profit, they seem like a better choice than some of the for-profit companies. But the limits are half that provided by Medibank, while the premiums are double. Sure you can skim profit off the top, but that doesn’t mean I want you to gouge me for every cent I own.
Gah. Choices, that aren’t really choices. Just what I wanted.
I was in the supermarket getting some laundry powder last night and noticed something really strange: every single brand of concentrated laundry powder was advertising on their packaging the fact that they’re about to be relaunched in a new version. The new powders are all going to be 2x as concentrated, and most brands made a big deal out of the fact that the new packaging will therefore be half the size.
Golly. Every brand? All at once? All deciding to redo their formulation, redo their packaging, and retool their manufacturing plants, all with identical changes to formulation and packaging, all at the same time? Unpossible!
You’d almost think that every brand of powder was actually exactly the same, made at the same plant, and just packaged slightly differently. But that would surely never happen!
