Published December 4th, 2009
in Work.
If all of a sudden you restart your computer and you get a yellow icon over your network connection and it says “No Internet Access”, remain calm, don’t panic, and don’t go smash your router to bits.
You probably want the fix so here it is:
Click the Start button, Right Click on Computer, then select Manage. Under Services and Applications select Services. Scroll down and find the Bonjour Service then double click it. Under Startup Type select Automatic (Delayed Start) then hit OK, close Computer Managment, and restart. If that for some reason fails to fix the problem go back through and choose Disabled instead of Automatic (Dlayed Start).
The cause:
For some reason if the Bonjour Service starts before the network adapter you end up with a default route of 0.0.0.0. This lets everything on the local network function normally. Anything that need to go to another network (e.g. the Internet) can’t get there by going through 0.0.0.0. I ran into this after installing Gizmo5, but there are quite a few programs that use Bonjour. It’s tricky to catch that an application install caused the problem since it will work just fine until the computer is restarted.
Published November 9th, 2009
in Hardware and Linux.
So I picked up a generic case for my new Droid phone and I noticed that whenever I pulled the phone out it was unlocking and I was sure I hadn’t hit the button. I was a little puzzled until I accidentally set the phone on the case and caused the phone to enter “Multimedia Station” mode.
To my knowledge the Multimedia Station and Car Dock for the Droid haven’t been released yet. I’ve heard that they’re going to cost $30 each, pretty steep. It seems that the docks are really just a charger with a ton of extra plastic to hold the phone and… drumroll please … a magnet.
I haven’t figured out the exact placement / power to reliably trigger either mode with any magnet. The red area highlighted in the photo seems to be the magic spot. However a stronger magnet more towards the left in my picture tends to put the phone in Multimedia Station, while a weaker magnet more to the right seems to lead to Car Dock. However for you DIYers it seems that once you figure out a good spot with a given magnet the result is easily repeatable.
My plan is a cheap car window mount, with a strategically placed magnet. I’m also thinking a nice wooden Multimedia Station on my desk would look nice.
I apologize for the atrocious picture. The Droid’s phone is not its best feature. Even less so trying to take a picture of itself in a mirror. My good camera is far away in Vegas with my wife.
Published June 1st, 2009
in Life.
I got this e-mail today:
Dear kwiry Community,
On April 13th we shared the unfortunate news about kwiry’s impending shutdown. Since then, Wabo, LLC has purchased the kwiry service and will continue to maintain and improve it.
We are happy to relay this news and hope you are as well. While the founding team/management will be moving on, we are glad the kwiry service will continue to grow.
The service is being transitioned and should be fully functional again very soon, even within a few days.
Thanks also for all your messages of support during the past few weeks,
-Ron, Steve & Nabil
I personally think it’s too late. The service was nice but it wasn’t something that couldn’t be replaced. It’s been long enough that most people who really used the service have found other alternatives. Unless they have some really killer new features coming soon I don’t see much of a future.
Published May 26th, 2009
in Hardware and Life.
After dealing with “one of those people” the other day I had an idea. What if you combined the game of Perfection and a keyboard. Instead of the timer that the original Perfection game included this special keyboard would be triggered by typing something stupid.
You thought firing off that “First Post lolz 
” message was funny. All of a sudden the keys fly off your keyboard in random directions, now you get to spend 10 min remembering what comes after QWERTY. Think of it as a shock collar for the internet.
It’s also a non-lethal alternative to SOIP (Stab Over IP) that has been suggested by others.