KCLErrorDomain Error 1 'Fix' for Twitter iPhone App.

I've had my iPhone all of two weeks now and to be honest i'm woefully underusing it's potential awesomeness, Twittering inanities and FourSquaring every trip to the pub from it is currently about my limit. Now i'm one of those A**** retentative types who likes to see things work properly and loses much needed beauty sleep when they don't so i was bit miffed/panic stricken recently to see this  when i tried to send an important Tweet...

The Operation could not be completed kCLErrorDomain error 1

Googling didn't come up with apart from a few people experiencing the same but if my befuddled understanding is correct i *think* the problem is this. The program suddenly seems to think it's ok to use Location/geolcate services even though you've turned them off in Twitter app settings and 'trips up' when denied access (i first experienced it after accessing a Foursquare site via a Twitter link) the 'fix' seems to be resetting this feature by....

• Go to iPhone General settings and turn on the Location Services for Twitter App (this will only be temporary).
• Open the Twitter app and create new Tweet (you won't be sending this, it's a dummy).
• Tap on extras button bottom right and tap geolcate,it should now pinpoint your position.
• Re-tap geolocate to switch it back off.
• Close Twitter app.
• Reset Location Services to off in settings.

This hopefully should now have fixed the problem. Many apologies if it didn't, donations and praise if it did  :)

(* i'll be jiggered if i'm using the word Anal in a blog post, that's just asking for trouble)

Stalking The Shend

Flicking through yet another half read copy of Bizarre magazine today i notices the Shend is back contributing to their pages via the medium of the written word. "The Shend who?" you may ask, if you're a Tellybox owner you just may know him as an extra who typically plays thug #2 in such dramatic delights as The Bill, Eastenders,Casualty and had a speaking part in Men Behaving Badly as 'man in bar who insults Dorothy and gets beaten up by Gary'. Sci-Fi nuts may know him from Red Dwarf (the tail end of the series when it wasn't very good) and TorchWood (They Keep Killing Suzie). Film afficianados may know him from a shit load of other varied stuff.
Me, well i know him as the lead singer of one of the Midlands (well Redditch anyhoo) finest eclectic musical exports The Cravats. Memories of first hearing 'Cravats In ToyTown' in the early Eighties with it's Dadaist lyrics and Daliesque saxophones was epic listening indeed after my usual diet of G.B.H washed down with cheap lager,egg fried rice in it's foil container and The Exploited.
But i digress, my reason for this outpouring is simply it's Monday night and i'm bored!! so i thought i'd see what the amazing electronic interlinker could turn up on the big beardy renaissance man.

Shend's Myspace (Well everyone who's anyone has a Myspace) still in use by looks of it

Shend's FaceBook

Cravats Website  (a Bravenet relic)

The Very Things Myspace (again still in use)

Shend's Showreel ,(some gaps here including his part in Pervirella with cult TV babe Emily Booth)





Shends Podcasts, Yes he has a Radio show :)



Shend performing with KroonCat lounge nights.

Shend in the 118 118 sponsored ITV4 station ident.

and by way of a half arsed coda a Google Image Search :)

More to follow....

Geeky Advent Rehash.

Well ok, it's five months late but here's is my rushed take on tinkerlog's Geeky Advent widget (instructions here) the interesting quirk with these things being the way an LED is used as a light sensor. I've built it using an ATtiny85 instead of the ATtiny13 which requires a tweak to the code to allow for the slight differences in the ADC registers...

ADC Reference voltage

ADMUX = ( 1 << REFS2 ) | ( 1 << REFS1 ) | ADC2; //internal ref 2.56v, sense on PB4

ADC clock prescaler

ADCSRA = ( 1 << ADEN ) | 7;

prescale set to 7 (divide by 128) as i'm led to 'believe' it improves accuracy if the main chip clock is set to 8Mhz

Fuses set to switch off chip prescaler.
avrdude -c < Your Programmer > -p t85 -U lfuse:w:0xe2:m -U hfuse:w:0xdf:m -U efuse:w:0xff:m


Seems to work ok but may need some tweaking to the 'AMBIENT_LIGHT' variable.
not demonstrated is that the LED's light up one LED, Two LED's, Three LED's, Four LED's on each reset, (apologies for blurry video but i'm using a crap digital camera)

Hacking Car Boot Sales.

What's that?, £3.60 for a thumb joystick!?, i'll not line their pockets says i. So it's off to the great British insitution that is the car boot sale. I managed to pick up two Playstation controllers for the reasonable price of one whole quid (actually the one on the right was a quid, the guy let me have the Sony one for nicks as it had a button missing). Back home and after some deft work with a soldering iron i now have four two axis joysticks (complete with switches), four electric motors , two preset potentiometers AND an LED.That works out about 10p a component, a good days work allround methinks.

The Old PC PSU to Bench Supply Hack.

Yep, a million and one Instructables on the internet on this old hack so i thought i'd add mine to the pool. Started with a cast off Aopen FSP300-60PN power supply and...

• 5 Amp Terminal block from a pound shop (cheapskate!).
• A 10 Ohm 10 Watt Wire Round Resistor (for Load which 'may' be optional).
• HeatShrink Sleeving to insulate exposed solder joints.
• Switch.
• Couple of cable ties.

Then just followed the instructions . Note the hole above the switch...Measure Twice, Cut Once!, i knew the fan had some depth but didn't check it properly when i drilled the first hole. I've kept the Grey PWR_OK wire for possible inclusion of an LED later (Imho the fan spinning round is a pretty good indicator it's on).It's main use is for low current electronics and it has built in short circuit protection so i've omitted any fuses on the outputs which some other hacks use. The label was quickly knocked up with Inkscape.
TO DO... some mesh over the fan, it's just begging for some tiny bit's of wire cut off to be 'sucked' in.





DISCLAIMER bit, you've read them elsewhere, here's mine...
The voltages inside a PSU are potentially lethal and the power capacitors can have quite a kick EVEN AFTER THE MAINS HAS BEEN DISCONNECTED AND THE UNIT SWITCHED OFF!. Do not attempt this hack unless you know what you are doing. I'll take no responsibilty for anything.

Disabling ProCon Latte

Note: this post is for educational purposes only, i'll not take any responsibility for anything.

So you've come in to work Monday morning only to find someone's installed the ProCon Latte web filter add-on on Firefox, now you can't check up on FaceBook statuses, the new bands on MySpace, the trivia on Twitter or those adult art sites that no-one else understands but you. You can't uninstall it from Add-ons, Procon itself in 'Tools' is password protected and about:config is disabled, what to do...what to do?
Simple...

• Shut down Firefox.
• Go to your programs menu and start FireFox up in Safe Mode (just click continue in safe mode at the pop-up).
• Type about:config into address bar (click on i'll be careful i Promise)
• In Filter field type procon.password then enter, (you should now see a single line with a long series of characters at the end).
  
• Right click on it and click on Reset in the pop up menu,it should now say 'default string').
• Restart FireFox normally.
  

Now if you click on Procon in the Tools menu it should pop right open, you can now uncheck 'Prevent Being Disabled Or Uninstalled' and remove it entirely via FireFox's Add-Ons menu.

A Quick Piece About The TV B Gone On Stripboard

Well as you may or may not know i dabble (and fiddle) in Electronics & Microcontrollers so after having met the US hackers Mitch Altman/Jimmie Rodgers at a Fizzpop workshop and successfully built a AVR ISP programmer i thought i'd have a bash at making a TV B Gone on stripboard from scratch. Here it be (well attempt #2 t.b.h) , the main circuit was pretty much built 'on the fly' with a homebrew LED driver being a PNP transistor powering 2x IR emitters in series (my calculations are a bit ballpark so it's probably under powered). Does the job though, just a shame the 3xAA batteries that power it dwarf it and spoil the illusion hence them being cropped out the picture.

(PS: The ongoing competition in geek circles with these things appears to be in ever increasing the range, so hang around for the TV-B-Gone bazooka, coming to a Nielsen box near you soon!)

Ghouls on Film*

You know that uneasy feeling you get when you walk around the Custard Factory 'will the brickwork finally fall on my head?', 'will i go through that hole in the rickety boardwalk?', 'how rank will the toilets be today?'. Well Saturday bought a whole new world of pain to the venue with the arrival of the Ghouls On Film event at The Mixing Bowl, part of the international Women in Horror appreciation month. Put together by film student Nia Edwards-Behi we were treated to a smorgas board of Gore and weirdness featuring several short films and two full length features, 'Slaughtered' and 'Dead Hooker In a Trunk' (which unfortunately i had to miss). The popcorn intermission included a Q&A session with Directors Melanie Light (Switch) and Kate Glover compared by the delectable scream queen Emily Booth (i got the stage fright and didn't speak to her) which included enlightning views on women making their way in the scream flick business and Castration Anxiety. You couldn't wish for a more blood drenched way to spend an afternoon and it's a pity you don't see more of these events around Birmingham (though The Sunflower Lounge and The Black Horse are starting to do B-Movie nights) especially at the underused Mixing Bowl. Happily the outlook isn't as bleak as the films subject matter,as Emily pointed the equipment costs and technical nous needed to make shorts is rapidly becoming within everyones reach so with a bit of luck Ghouls on Film will be back next year with a bigger roster of new talent.

* i was trying to think of a witty title but if it ain't broke don't fix it