Month: September 2011

General

Unresponsive iPhone 4 Home Button

By on Thursday, September 15, 2011

The iPhone’s home button had been rather unresponsive for a month or two. On standby mode, when I press it sometimes it takes some time before the screen lights up. Sometimes it doesn’t at all and I have to press it again, harder. The same unresponsiveness happens when I try to exit out of an application or try to launch the fast app switcher.

At first, I thought it’s just dust and lint so I blasted air through the available openings in the hope of dislodging any that may have accumulated. That didn’t work at all. I was starting to fear that I need to have the button replaced. But today, I found a possible solution here and here:

  1. Open a built-in application
  2. Press and hold the power button until the slide to shutdown swipe bar appears.
  3. Release the power button
  4. Press and hold the home button lightly until screen returns to icon screen

It does seem to work at first, but probably psychological, because soon it seems the button was back to its old unresponsive ways.

So I kept looking and I found one that does make sense here. I have my Accessibility triple-click Home button setting enabled. I figure that with this enabled, the OS will wait just a millisecond more to see if there’s an upcoming third click before responding. Turning off triple click improved responsiveness. Now how to shorten the double-click wait…

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General

Greece Debt Crisis

By on Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I recently read that not so long ago, debtors who were unable to pay their debts were imprisoned until they were able to. This doesn’t make sense really since how can you work and make money to pay when you’re behind bars? Supposedly, we have progressed beyond such medieval practices. But looking at Greece, you can’t help but wonder if we really have progressed much. Greece has a huge debt and is in risk of being unable to pay. So it needs to earn more (taxes), spend less (budget cuts), and borrow more. But lenders would only lend at a higher rate to reflect the increasing risk of default. This makes it harder to pay back the new debt. The European Community has also been providing bailouts in the form of cash and/or debt restructuring. But there are the strings in the form of austerity packages tied to the bailouts. These austerity packages include decrease in salaries/pensions, increase in tax rates, denationalizing companies, and selling government property. And again, these austerity packages, by possibly slowing down economic activity, makes it harder to pay back debt. Caught in this vicious cycle, you’d probably wonder if a prison cell is better.

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General

Why We Are Shallow

By on Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The post title is lifted straight from this Philippine Star article. What can I say? I have to agree. Most schools are focused more in raking in the tuition fees so it’s more of knowledge pumping, rote learning, more semesters, and less years, than really instilling critical thinking. After school, you probably end up working with an outsourcing company where the work being sent over from onshore is mundane and mindless grunt work (precisely why it’s sourced out, but we’re seeing improvements here). And every day we are exposed to crap on the newspapers (because crap is what’s happening), to drivel over the radio (apologies to friends who are Chico and Delamar fans), to retarded noontime TV shows, glorified tsismis (gossip) over SMS, Friendster, or Facebook (one reason why I quit those, at least Google Plus is still relatively clean), talk about showbiz over lunch and dinner, more TV (it’s not called the idiot box for nothing). Yeah, it’s no wonder why we are shallow. But there is always hope.

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General

Parental Guilt

By on Tuesday, September 13, 2011

I was on sick leave yesterday so I was at home with Jeanne. I was lying in bed watching a movie on the MacBook when I noticed her listening to an interactive book on the iPad. I felt guilty, perhaps also because of the movie I was watching (Punished, great movie!), and set aside the laptop. I asked her if she wants to read the interactive book with me. I only felt more guilt when she positively beamed and said “Yes!” with quite discernible glee. She then handed me the iPad, lay down beside me, and we read.

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General

Crumpler Sale

By on Friday, September 9, 2011

I heard about the September 9 to 18 Crumpler sale from A Bugged Life. I’ve had a previous-generation Crumpler 5 Million Dollar Home camera bag for a while now and I am very happy with it. I use it for carrying my basic photo gear and even  as a diaper bag when going out with Jeanne. Unfortunately, fitting the iPad in it is a rather tight proposition. So I’ve been thinking of getting a bigger bag and the sale was just the final excuse I needed. We dropped by the Crumpler store and checked out the bags. After a while I settled on a 6 Million Dollar Home. Its configurable partitions can be configured to create a small compartment that fits the iPad well. While at it, I got Michelle a Skivvy for her upcoming 13″ work laptop.

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