I was just about to sync my iPhone and back everything up before the 4.3 software update when iTunes kept throwing me this unknown error:

After talking to Apple support the issue was solved. Turns out this error is caused by corrupt / duplicate voice memos on the phone. There is a way to fix this!:

In iTunes, plug your phone in, go to the music tab and select “sync only selected music and play lists”, then deselect “sync voice memos”

Now sync up, everything should be alright.

WarcraftUpdate.net got all of its server status information from a publicly accessible XML file. Every realm, status type and load was easily accessible with and easy to parse document.

This past weekend that all changed with the launch of the new World of Warcraft website.

With the change of the website comes a change of the way things work. One particular change was this publicly accessible XML document: It’s gone.

So naturally I whipped up some code to scrape the page for all the data WarcraftUpdate requires. First the HTML page is downloaded and fed into an XML parser; Good thing Blizzard wrote compliant XHTML. Next I xpath my way to the correct div containing all the realms’ data then create an array of each element that has what I want. From here you just do another xpath to fetch the specific data, create the old standard XML tree and there you have it.

It’s good to note that there seems to be a new queue field. Right now it’s blank so I have no idea what data will populate it. Maybe queue times? This might mean a new WarcraftUpdate feature in the near future!

Need some XML datas? Send me an email on my contact form and I’ll get you a link to my parsed files.

I decided to check out these 4K videos on YouTube using a top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. I figured since this laptop had handled everything else I had thrown at it without issue, what could YouTube possibly do?

That right there is four maxed out cores of an Intel Core i7. And the video? Choppy.

CSS3 has been in development for some time now. As more specifications are finalized we, the markup masters, get to use them on the more advanced web browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome etc..).

I recently had the chance to sit down and play with the box-shadow property. Box-shadow is just what it sounds like. You can add shadows to box elements without the use of Photoshop.

So there you have your basic drop shadow. The CSS code looks like this:

box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888888;
-webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888888;
-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #888888;

Currently these only work in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. Each browser is using their own CSS selector but they all work exactly the same.

box-shadow: horizontalAlign verticalAlign blur color

CSS box-shadow eliminates the need to use images for drop shadows. What makes box-shadow even more interesting is the way it interacts with other CSS properties. In my next example I put a small drop shadow along with a border radius and a 1px white border to create a simple but appealing content box.

And there you have it, an image-less style for comment boxes or content boxes. Quick loading and easy on the bandwidth. CSS3 is awesome.

Congratulations Rogers, you have once again thrown an unnecessary step into something that was otherwise doing fine. Today Rogers enabled the new “Quick Start” Guide on my cable boxes. It’s this little menu that pops up when you press the “Guide” button on the remote. You can no longer get to the Channel Guide by clicking the self explanatory guide button. No, you have to press guide twice to get to the real channel guide.

This inconvenience has customers up in arms about this “feature”. I called the Rogers support line and requested it be turned off, they told me that’s impossible. The only way to live life without the “Quick Start” guide is to go to your local Rogers store and exchange your box for a PACE model; but who knows when that will be updated with this crappy feature.

Rogers, do us a favor, let us turn this off.

My laptop asks for a password every time I close the lid. I can’t use it unless I put it the password. This time it asked for the password, but it still let me use it anyways.

Apple OSX password security fail

The newest addition to my portfolio has just launched.

CaffeineWise was created because after drinking the same few drinks several times over just gets boring. I am now out into the world looking for my new favorite drink.

Starting in January 2010 CaffeineWise will be putting up a new drink review every Friday until they either run out of drinks, or run out of cash. Lets hope neither of those happen.

Check out the Red Bull review that was just released.

p.s. Happy New Year.

My MacBook is officially old. The 3 years of Apple Care warranty expired last month and now my laptop is expected to fend for it’s self.

I don’t always treat my stuff with the utmost of care. I use them for what they are, things; and If chucking my things around is what I want to do then that’s what I’m going to do. To commemorate this 3 year anniversary I’m going to list all the times Apple Care has saved my ass:

1. LCD back light starts to flicker. Fixed in 2 days. No questions asked.
2. Charger catches on fire. Send me a new one the next day.
3. Cracks near my keyboard start to appear. Took it in just in-case they could do something about it. They did. Got a new keyboard and track pad. Woot.
4. Battery occasionally cut out. New one the next day.
5. Back light stopped working and cracks in the plastic around the LCD. Fixed in 2 days.

Was paying for Apple Care worth it? Totally.

Google recently launched a public DNS system for everyone to use. This caught my interest because my current ISP’s DNS redirects me to a ‘search’ page that 9 times out of 10 shows irrelevant content. I’m sure it’s there just to make money off the sponsored results.

If you have read this far and have no idea what a DNS is, then maybe a bit of explaining is in order. DNS stands for Domain Name System. In a nutshell, every time you type a website’s address into your browser (like google.com) your browser uses a DNS to find out exactly where that address goes to. Without a DNS, you would go nowhere.

What makes this Google DNS so awesome is that users no longer have to rely on the ISP to direct them to websites. Oftentimes my internet provider’s DNS is slow and serves up annoying ads when an address cant be found. Not anymore with Google DNS. (Things are noticeably quicker after using the service as well)

Enough talk already, I’ll show you how to set up Google DNS in Apple OSX:

Step 1: Open up “System Preferences”

Step 2: Inside System Preferences, select “Network”

Step 3: Select your network device. In my case I am using Airport, but others may be using Ethernet.

Step 4: Once you have selected your network device, click the “Advanced” button in the lower right of the window.

Step 5: Click on the DNS tab.

Step 6: Click the + under the DNS box and type: 8.8.8.8

Step 7: Repeat step 6, but type 8.8.4.4 instead.

Step 8: Press the OK button and hit Apply. You’re done.

Hope this speed us your internet browsing as much as it sped up mine.

P.S. Merry Christmas.