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Rob Griffiths

Indoor flying fun

For quite a while, I've wanted an electric radio controlled (R/C) helicopter--one of the small ones you can fly around inside the house. Over the last couple years, I've tried cheap versions (complete waste of money; they fly like crud), and the expensive versions seemed too, well, expensive for what would be nothing more than a silly time waster.

Then, just before Christmas, E-Flite released the new Blade mCX, a smaller, lighter, and easier-to-fly version of their Blade CX2. The CX2 was one of the expensive models I'd passed on earlier. The mCX, however, comes in $50 cheaper than the CX2, and came close enough to my self-imposed $100 limit that I bought myself one for Christmas :). (Click the image at left [and any image in this writeup] for a larger view.)

After only a few minutes with the mCX, I was hooked. This machine is unlike any other R/C helicopter I've ever tried to fly. Within a couple minutes of my first power-up, I had it hovering in place, and could maneuver it relatively well. Even for me, a complete novice to R/C flying, this machine is incredibly easy to fly. R/C purists probably dislike it, though--relying on dual counter-rotating rotor blades and a gyro, the mCX isn't a "real" R/C helicopter in any sense. But for my desires, it's (nearly) perfect.

The mCX weighs one ounce (with battery), and has a rotor span of just 7.5 inches. Everything about this machine is tiny, including the motors (the round items in the image at left) and the battery (visible at the bottom of the image; it's got a red dot on it). The front of the machine is the brains, though--a circuit board there holds the gyro, motor control units, fully proportional servos, and radio receiver. Amazing that it all weighs but an ounce.

Combine that with very sensitive flight controls, and you can fly the mCX almost anywhere--I've flown it above the garage's workbench, for instance. The throttle is amazingly precise, making it easy to fly at whatever altitude you desire. As a brief example, here's a video of me flying around in the den, trying to keep the mCX within view of the fixed video camera:

Read on for more about this amazing little machine...
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Macworld: 2008 writings

Macworld logoAll (or as many as could be found online) of my 2008 writings for Macworld.

January
Jan 2First Look: Excel 2008
Jan 14Expo Notes: Office gets its day in the sun
Jan 15Steve Jobs gets cohesive
Jan 15Time should be on our side with iTunes rentals
Jan 15MacBook Air: Holding my breath
Jan 16Expo Notes: Hurrah for Houdah
Jan 16Expo: Of Snowballs and Snowflakes
Jan 16Expo Notes: Podcasters in glass houses
Jan 17Expo Notes: TechTool Pro gets approachable
Jan 17Expo Notes: Merge ahead
Jan 17Microsoft Excel 2008
Jan 18Expo Notes: Screenshot sharing
Jan 18Expo Notes: Acura show its drive at Expo
Jan 18Expo Notes: Cleaning Up at Expo
Jan 23Stacking up the MacBook Air and a Sony Vaio
Jan 23Avoid embarrassing typos
Jan 25Expo's international flavor
February
Feb 25The state of the union for iPhone apps
Feb 26Mac case designs: Nirvana achieved?
March
Mar 5HoudahSpot 2.0.8
Mar 6When good hard drives go bad in small places
Mar 6The iPhone SDK has all the right answers
Mar 7ScreenFlow 1.0.2
Mar 12iPhone SDK: One at a time?
Mar 14Hands on with Firefox 3
Mar 25Hardware Monitor 4.5
April
Apr 4Leopard’s Unix tricks
Apr 15Excel 2008 vs. Numbers ‘08
Apr 18Apple and the homebuilt Mac community
Apr 18Frankenmac! What's in a Mac clone?
Apr 24iPhone battery life redialed
May
May 2Flying through time
May 7First Look: VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1
May 13Basic lesson: Microsoft listens to its users
May 19Best of Both Worlds: OS X and Windows
May 20Microsoft Office: The killer Windows app
May 20More killer Windows programs
May 21The 10 best games you won’t find on your Mac
May 22Psystar skates on thin ice
June
Jun 5Does Apple have an OS X update up its sleeve at WWDC?
Jun 10Some background on background processes
Jun 12Apple announces Mac, iPhone design award winners
Jun 13OS X virtualization options limited for desktop users
Jun 16Lingon 2.1
Jun 17Tidy Up! 1.4.2
Jun 23SmartSleep 1.2
Jun 24Smultron 3.5
Jun 25SuperDocker 2.2.0
Jun 25XP’s window is about to close
Jun 26The ARDAgent security hole: What you need to know
Jun 26MenuMeters 1.3
Jun 26When installing software is too simple
July
Jul 9A brave new world for iPhone apps
Jul 10Window shopping at the App Store
Jul 10View the web's images via iEnvision
Jul 10Use Jott to record your thoughts
Jul 10All the news that's fit to tap
Jul 11Review: Mobile News Network for iPhone
Jul 16Two steps forward and one big step backing up
Jul 16Review: Jott for iPhone
Jul 18Review: Bloomberg 1.1 for iPhone
Jul 21Review: iEnvision for iPhone
Jul 21Review: Golf scoring applications for iPhone
Jul 28Review: NowLocal for iPhone
Jul 29Review: Golf scoring applications for iPhone
August
Aug 1Review: Mocha VNC and Mocha VNC Lite for iPhone
Aug 4Review: Teleport for iPhone
Aug 5Review: Firefox 3.0
Aug 5How sound is Consumer Reports’ Safari advice?
Aug 6More ways to protect yourself from phishing scams
Aug 12Vetting the App Store approval process
Aug 14Troubleshooting iPhone and iPod touch issues
Aug 15Review: Secret keeper apps for the iPhone
September
Sep 1Review: Dive Planner for iPhone
Sep 5Review: 1Password for iPhone
Sep 10First Look: iTunes 8.0
Sep 17A market opportunity for Apple Remote Desktop
Sep 19Practice good online password security
Sep 19Review: X-Plane 9 for iPhone
Sep 23Review: Frotz for iPhone
Sep 29Apple and old equipment recycling
Sep 29Profile: Automotive performance apps for the iPhone
October
Oct 1More credit for Apple
Oct 6Review: Gas station finders for the iPhone
Oct 6Review: Razer ProClick Mobile Notebook Mouse
Oct 9Review: Fuel mileage trackers for iPhone
Oct 9iTunes and media file organization
Oct 14Matte matters
Oct 15Fluid 0.9.4.1
Oct 24Review: Grocery list applications for the iPhone
Oct 27Leopard’s year-old annoyances
Oct 31Stop the page-flicking madness—give us iPhone folders
November
Nov 5Remembering Michael Crichton
Nov 11Shopping at Apple’s Special Deals site
Nov 13Path Finder 5.0.2
December
Dec 3Eddy Winner: VMware Fusion 2
Dec 3Eddy Winner: ScreenFlow 1.0.2
Dec 4Did Hulu deserve an Eddy?
Dec 8Review: Another look at iGasUp
Dec 17Review: Parallels 4 build 3540
Dec 17Review: VMware Fusion 2.0.1
Dec 18Review: Sun VirtualBox 2.0.6
Dec 18Choosing a virtualization application
Dec 23Review: RemoteTap for iPhone
Dec 16The end of an era for Macworld Expo


Deals to be found at the Apple refurb store…

If you know me at all, you know how I feel about glossy screens, especially on laptops. As nice as the new MacBook and MacBook Pros are (and they are very nice, based on some early hands-on time with the new MacBook at the local store), the glossy screens are a deal breaker for me. I tried to use a MacBook for six months or so, but in the end, the glossy screen was too much for me, so I went up to the MacBook Pro and its nice matte display.

With the lack of a matte option on the new MacBook Pro line, I won't be buying another Mac laptop (of the 15" variety) until Apple comes out with some form of non-glossy screen--whether that's a true matte screen, or just an effective anti-glare coating, I don't really care. But until there's a solution, I'm going to use what I have for as long as I possibly can.

My current machine is a two-year-old 15" 2.33GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM--and it's a very nice machine. However, it's already two years old, and I want to get at least five more years out of my matte screened laptop...so I figured I'd go look on eBay for used last-gen 2.6GHz MacBook Pros--the fastest 15" machine with a matte screen available, basically.

On my way to eBay, though, I got sidetracked by the Special Deals section of the Apple Store--otherwise known as the Refurb Store.
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It seems something was lost in translation

I found the following examples of horrendously poor translation on the same box--a kid's play set called Fairyland Journey that we bought a while back at the local mall (click each image for a larger version):

I know good translation is difficult and expensive, but some of these are so bad they're hilarious. My favorite is probably "FLASHING ENTER!", used in a context where it makes absolutely no sense (not that I can think of many contexts where it does make sense!).



A look at how OS X tips spread via Google

When iTunes 8 came out, one very annoying change was the removal of the "Show iTunes Store arrow links" preference -- in previous versions of iTunes, you'd toggle this setting to remove the link arrows that appear when you select an item in your Library.

I never use these things, and they bother my eye, so as soon as I got my hands on iTunes 8, I started looking for a solution (here's how I do that). With some help from Kirk McElhearn, we soon found the solution in a hidden preference value -- a variable named show-store-arrow-links.

After a quick test, we confirmed that it worked, and I wrote it up as hint on Mac OS X Hints. At the same time, I ran a Google search for 'show-store-arrow-links', and came up with no matches.

Note that this does not mean Kirk and I were the first people to post about this workaround -- more than likely, it had already been posted elsewhere, but Google hadn't yet indexed those sites (we were doing this shortly after iTunes 8 was released).

Still, I thought this was a perfect chance to see how things propagate across the internet, as I could repeat my search for show-store-arrow-links over time, and see how quickly the hit count increased. Given the uniqueness of the term, any matches would definitely be people either linking to the hint on some other site, or actually posting their own version of the hint.

Within two hours of the original hint's posting, the hit count was up to five. After seven hours, 137. At 24 hours, 384. At that point, I grew bored with tracking the increases, and tabled the study. Today, though, after 12 days, I ran the search again, and there are now over 1,000 sites that contain the hint (or a link to it) on how to block the iTunes Store arrow links in iTunes 8.

I think that's a good measure of how many people dislike these arrows, and who really wish Apple would have left that preference in place. (Sorry iTunes for Windows users; preferences are stored differently in Windows, and I'm not sure anyone's figured out how to make similar modifications on that platform.)



Household math

  • Home

OK, so it's strange math :). The top-left image (taken before we bought the place; I didn't actually take any "before" pictures) is the wall of brick that surrounded the fireplace in our home. Add to that a Dasco Pro Mason Chisel with Hand Guard and a Stanley Three-Pound Drilling Hammer, and the end result is a pile of brick in the driveway ... oh yea, you need to add a fair bit of sweat, and a wheelbarrow will greatly ease the task of hauling out the brick.

This was the first time I'd ever tried to demolish a brick wall. Overall, it was actually a bit easier than I expected, other than the sheer number of bricks involved. I can highly recommend the chisel I used; it made short work of the mortar between the bricks, and the hand guard definitely works well--I didn't hit my hand once, despite swinging the three-pound hammer probably well over 1,000 times to break out all the bricks. If you're going to break down a brick wall, I definitely recommend a chisel with the hand guard.

(I took out the wall so that we could use the space on the right of the fireplace for a built-in bookshelf and storage cabinet, and to install a gas fireplace in place of the current wood-burning insert. Those projects, however, will be handed off to a professional--I can destroy, but I'm not so good at the build-it-up part!)



If your account here is gone, here’s why…

For the last few weeks, I've been getting hundreds of registrations here, and given (a) there's no reason to register except to post a comment, and (b) there aren't very many comments posted, I figured something was up. Until yesterday, though, I didn't know what was going on. Now, thanks to the WordPress 2.6.2 release, I do:

With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another user’s password to a randomly generated password. The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit. However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password.

In other words, by registering often enough with specially-crafted usernames, you may eventually be able to force the admin user's password to be reset to something random, and you may know that random password. Scary stuff. So today, I upgraded to 2.6.2, and cleaned out the vast majority of recently-created accounts.

If you'd signed up for a legit account and I zapped it, please just register again -- and sorry for the inconvenience.



Music in the new iPod nano ad…

Because I couldn't find this anywhere else on the net, here it is ... the music in the new iPod nano ad is a song called Bruises by Chairlift from an album called Does You Inspire You. I found this by doing a lyric search on the first line ("I tried to do handstands for you..."), which led me to this blog post [dead link removed] -- not directly about the iPod nano ad, but it does mention the song and the lyrics.

iTunes store link

The new nano may just get me to upgrade my original "tall" nano, which is one of my favorite iPods ... but the new one has some really nice sounding features; I'm going to try to go see one in person tomorrow.



San Juan to Dallas in-flight images

The following will probably only be of interest to aviation buffs--so if that's not you, you can stop reading now :).

My wife and I recently took a week to go scuba diving in Bonaire. I'll be posting more about that trip shortly, but getting to and from Bonaire from Portland, Oregon, isn't exactly simple. There's an overnight Continental flight that leaves out of Houston once a week, but neither of us enjoy such flights, so that was out. We wound up flying to Dallas (on an MD-80), then to San Juan, Puerto Rico (757-200WL), and then on to Bonaire (ATR-72). On the way down, we spent a night in Dallas, but coming home, we did it as one (long) 20-hour day.

While flying home, I snapped a number of pictures of the various islands we flew over--starting with the Turks and Caicos Islands and ending as we flew over the Bahamas. I found the mix of clouds, shadows, land, sky, and water to make for some very interesting images. None of these are award-winners (I was using my Canon 850is again, and there are often reflections in the window), but I just loved the colors.

As noted, more on Bonaire later--including a review of the island as a destination for scuba divers, as well as some of my underwater images from the week's dives.



Customer (or non-customer!) service done right

  • Auto

The other evening, our Toyota Camry came home with a leaking back right tire--it was leaking so badly that my wife could hear it when she went to get our eldest out of her car seat. A quick visual inspection found the culprit; I could just see the flat head of what looked to be a steel construction staple embedded in the tread, and hear the air rushing out around the staple.

After figuring out how to get the spare and tools out of the trunk of the Camry--by far, the most convoluted such system I've run into; I'm glad I was working on it in the garage and not in a driving rainstorm at night by the side of the road--I put on the mini-donut spare and tossed the now nearly-flat full-sized tire in the trunk and called it an evening.

The next day, I was trying to figure out where to take the tire to have it repaired, when I remembered something from many years back: America's Tire (called Discount Tire in some areas of the country) had once repaired a flat for me for free--but that was nearly 15 years ago in another state. I remembered them telling me (at the time) that it was standard company policy to patch tires for free, even if you've never bought anything from the company. So my first thought was to return to America's Tire--but surely, such a generous policy couldn't have survived the cost-cutting and bottom-line-focus that's afflicted seemingly every company over the last 15 years, could it?

After driving a few miles to the local America's Tire outlet, I was thrilled to find that yes, in fact, their generous 'free tire repair' program was still in place. About the only requirement is that you provide your name and address, and some information about your car. They'll then repair the tire (if it's repairable; holes on the shoulder areas of tires are not repairable), mount it back on your car, and put the spare back in the trunk--all for free. What's really amazing about this is that the employees don't treat this free service as a hassle--they were professional and treated me very well, and at no time did I feel like they were upset that I was taking up their time with a free service. From the time I entered the store until I left about 20 minutes later, I was treated just like the customers there who were dropping $600+ on new tires.

To find such service in today's cost-reduction-era is rare enough. To find it delivered with excellent customer service and in a courteous manner is simply amazing. Granted, I've only taken advantage of this service twice in 15 years. But both times, I've had a great experience, and I think that's worth sharing. So if you find yourself with a flat tire, you might want to visit a local America's Tire (Discount Tire) at which to have it repaired. (I also use them when I need tires for our vehicles, but there is absolutely no requirement that you be a customer in order to have a tire repaired for free.)

So thanks, America's Tire, for bucking the cost-cutting trend, and for providing a free service in a courteous and professional manner.