Technobabble

I’ve been using Nuevasync for since late 2008 for syncing my Google Apps calendars to my iPhone. At the time, it was one of the few over-the-air syncing solutions for hooking up Google calendars (including Google Apps) to the iPhone. When Google came up with native Google Sync earlier this year, I evaluated it and found that Nuevasync was better . Since then, people have commented on my post about various improvements to Google Sync and it seemed like Google Sync was finally at the point where all my original issues had been fixed. So I had to try Google Sync again. The steps to move to Google Sync were straightforward: Backup the iPhone by syncing with iTunes. Since I use Google Apps, I had to enable syncing for my domain . Configure Google Sync on the iPhone per the instructions . I chose to delete all contacts and calendar data on the phone since my contacts were already being synced with Google Apps Contacts via iTunes. I use multiple calendars on my Google Apps Calendar a...

The AD-5526 is an ancient multimeter from A&D but for $10 one can’t complain. Has all the basic features one would expect from a multimeter and at 5.2 cm X 9.5 cm X 2.6 cm, it’s quite compact. Uses a LRV08 12V alkaline battery – not a common battery in the USA.

The Yaesu VX-8R FM transceiver comes with a stock antenna (YHA-65) consisting of the “Base Antenna” - recommended for operation above 50 MHz - and the “Extender Element” for frequencies below 50 MHz. With this antenna, I was receiving signals from only a couple of repeaters, and that too restricted to certain parts of my house. The N6NFI repeater (Frequency 145.230 MHz, Shift –600 KHz, PL 100 Hz) was the one with the best signal, and I could hear some nets like the SCARES weekly net , all on the 2m VHF band . I also had very little success transmitting indoors with the stock antenna. Outdoors, the transceiver worked pretty well with the stock antenna. Having seen good reviews for the Maldol MH-510 antenna at eHam.net, I decided to give that a shot. The antenna is for 6m VHF, 2m VHF and 70cm UHF . It is 20.75” tall and is thin and flexible. Gain is advertised as 0/0/.32 dBi and the MH-510 can handle up to 10 watts. The antenna terminates to an SMA and fits directly with the VX-8R. ...

Silicon Valley Code Camp V4 is on October 3rd and 4th 2009 at Foothill College. Register now and save the date! There are already 38 sessions covering a whole range of technologies and more to come as we get closer to the date.

Recently the Arduino IDE installation refused to start on my Mac with the following exception: uncaught exception in main method: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /Users/arun/arduino-0015/Arduio15.app/Contents/Resources/java/librxtxSerial.jnilib: no suitable image found. Did find: /Users/arun/arduino-0015/Arduino15.app/Contents/Resources/java/librxtxSerial.jnilib: no matching architecture in universal wrapper Rather bizarre error and as far as I know, I hadn't mucked around with any settings. According to the Arduino forum it had something to with the Java version and suggested giving priority to Java 5 over Java 6. However this didn't work on my setup. Eventually I just downloaded the Java 6 compatible version of librxrxSerial.jnilib and replaced it in the package contents of the Arduino app. This fixed the problem.

Earlier this week Apple made available the iPhone OS 3.0 GM Seed (build 7A341). It's the best build to date. Compared to the previous build, E*Trade's Mobile Pro application now works without crashes. Apple have also implemented one of my feature requests - the ability to retain the order of application icons between restores. So this upgrade was the smoothest of them all. Apple have also provided an iTunes redemption code to pre-test a version of AOL’s AIM that makes use of the push notification service. In the iPhone’s Settings page, push notifications can be controlled globally as well as for individual apps: