The Question Post!
There have been a couple other posts involving literally hundreds of comments, so here's a new one. The theme is simple. If you have off topic questions, ask them here!
Simulator Seem to be Stuck on 2.2.1?
ARG! It's stuck!
So maybe this is the dumbest, easiest thing in the world and I'm the only one who didn't know, but when I upgraded to the iPhone OS 3.0 SDK, I couldn't for the life of me get the simulator to launch in ACTUAL OS 3.0 mode. You can change the version on the fly with the Hardware>Version menu, but every time I reran my app from Xcode, it'd revert back to 2.2.1. This finally became a problem when I needed to test an app with features unique to 3.0. Luckily, the fix isn't all that hard.
Portland Pie Company Has the Best Gluten Free Pizza Ever
I just had lunch at Portland Pie Company in Portland, ME for the first time, and their gluten free pizza is absolutely phenominal. It's expensive at $13 for a 9 or 10" pizza, but it's loaded with toppings and is actually filling, which can be a problem with GF crusts. It's also got exactly the spongey flexible feel that most GF pizzas lack, which seats it comfortably as the best GF pizza I know of. If you live in the Portland area (or Scarborough or Westbrook) go there and buy lots so they keep it on the menu.
If You Are Gluten Free, Avoid Snickers
Snickers don't contain any gluten in the ingredients, which is typically all I care about. I don't have celiac disease, just a gluten sensitivity, so I typically don't worry TOO much about cross contamination. I just had a Snickers, though, and my stomach hates me now which is fair warning that if you have even the mildest sensitivity, you should probably avoid them unless you don't mind getting sick.
My Gmail/Google Voice Productivity Tip of the Day
Heavily redacted, mostly just because I like the Gaussian Blur filter.
No, I don't actually plan to write a Gmail/Google Voice productivity tip every day. However, today I just happen to have one. Parts of this actually came from a good friend, @jamesconnors (his site). He told me his system for inbox management: he has his inbox, a "follow up" folder, an I believe another folder for stuff he just wants to keep around. Anything in his inbox that he can't quickly respond to in a minute or two when he sees it, he puts in his follow up folder. Every so often, maybe once every day or two, he goes through his follow up folder and takes care of everything he can.
Gizmodo is dumb – ATT Visual Voicemail Fix
#gizmodofail
If you have an iPhone and have not had visual voicemail for weeks, it's actually your fault, even if you didn't know it. When you downloaded that little file to enable tethering, the maker actually messed up. The file from gizmodo had the Visual Voicemail APN set to wap.cingular, which is incorrect. It should be acds.voicemail. The fix is easy: go to settings>general>network>cellular data network and edit the Visual Voicemail APN as above to read acds.voicemail. Restart your phone and everything will work again.
NOTE: The fix above only works if you're jailbroken and you have the package "APN Editing" installed. I think you can also expose this menu with unlockit.co.nz (but be careful, the normal profile they use for ATT US carrier, mms/tethering enabled has the wrong APN for vvm, reset it as above). I'm trying to modify the carrier profile from gizmodo to correct the issue in the first place.
Using the Open Tool Chain in Xcode (for both OS 2.2 and 3.0)
OTC =/= Over the counter, but it WILL cure what ails ya.
The iPhone OS SDK from Apple is wonderful, and being able to develop and debug on-device even without paying the entry tax is even more wonderful. To really take Jailbreak development to the next level, though - to develop Apps that don't play nicely in Apple's SDK playground - you are going to need the open tool chain. Here's how to rock Xcode OTC style.
ATX -> Bench Power Supply Mod
Yay bench power!
WARNING WARNING WARNING! Switching power supplies have many BACs (beefy-ass capacitors) that can hold lots of juice long after you've unplugged the unit. Do not crack one open like I did without knowing what you're doing, it could seriously injure you or at least be really uncomfortable when you shock the crud out of yourself. I'm not responsible if you do just that, don't say I didn't warn you. I have a cable I made with a brush at the end that grounds everything it touches, I use it to brush the back of all power electronics before I work on them. You should too.
This is a pretty common one, but I like to add flair. I needed a bench power supply. Sadly, bench power supplies are very expensive, and I'm a poor college student. What I do have are computers. Lots of computers. In fact, I just brought to the recyclers about 100lbs of computer waste from machines that are too slow for even my standards. Luckily, one thing computers have going for them is very refined, VERY powerful power supplies.
USB Breakout Cable
USB metering goodness.
A while back I wanted to monitor how much current my iPhone could draw under different conditions. I had seen a cable before where somebody brought it into a project box with a couple of screws on top exposing the two unshorted positive leads and the straight-through ground (such that you could measure both current through the cable or voltage across it), but I felt I could make things both smaller and more fully-featured.
WESD51 Lockout Pencil Tip
I just received a very nice Weller WESD51 soldering station from work where we had a few that just weren't frequently used. I was annoyed, however, to find out that the temperature lockout was set - that is, I couldn't raise the temperature above an arbitrary value set by someone as an upper limit earlier. I was more annoyed to find out that there's no control on the panel to set this. Instead, there's some silly magic wand that you're supposed to hold over a logo on the panel to get the job done. A wand that I didn't have. So I was looking around online to try to figure out what the thing was, and I noticed it looked like the tip was a little magnet. And so it is - there's a magnetic reed switch mounted underneath the "ESD Safe" logo on this unit that controls a number of functions. In the end, I am now just keeping one of the many magnetic reaching wand pencils I have laying around next to my station to set the lockout temperature. Hopefully, if you found this via Google, you're less confused now.
As an aside, a bunch of the other settings of the unit are managed via this reed switch too. I'm including a link to the documentation here, since it was a bit difficult to track down.
Weller WESD51 Soldering Station Documentation