guioconnor’s posterous

First and foremost, a thanks is in order for Spotify service is awesome! Yes, some of us would like to find more things that are less mainstream and the quality of the ads (for those who don't pay the premium membership) is really bad. Still, it's a fabulous service for a very good price.

You see, I've seen people asking for a remote control application for their phones so they can control spotify running on the computer while they move around (or lie down somewhere they can't be bothered to walk to the computer) but I think right now I'd like the converse of that.

Let me explain, I've just paid for Spotify, essentially to be able to use it on the iPhone. As I'm working from my sofa with my laptop and it's not handy at all to plug it into the HiFi while I'm working, so I plugged my iPhone instead.

The problem is that I can't control the playlist from here. The laptop is a much better interface to manage playlists and play queues, plus, it's right in front of me while the iPhone is a bit further away.

Since both laptop and iPhone are connected on the same account, fairly enough, only one of them is allowed to play at the same time so one pauses whenever the other starts. Now, instead of creating remote controls to every pair of devices around, a more interesting option could perhaps be that multiple devices can control the same play queue without necessarily changing the audio source.

You see? If I check the play queue on the laptop I'll be able to see what's ahead and change it, the iPhone will react to this without switching the audio source. With no additional implementation, whenever the computer is the audio source the phone can play the role of remote control.

This way remote control is handled for all the combinatory explosion of device pairs without any extra effort to produce remote control applications. Life in the cloud, the true way!

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Setting up calendars on the iPhone is not as easy as we all would like it to be, there are lots of options and if your iPhone sycs calendars with iCal as well, you may have experienced that the iPhone will only read but not write on those calendars. Also, unless you're a Mobile Me user, your calendars won't update until the next sync. Now, I'm not a Mobile Me user and I don't have plans to become because by now these services should be commodities and they are available for free by the plentiful.

The answer is that you don't want to sync your google calendars through iCal, what you want is your iPhone to fech info from google (or any other calendar using CalDav you may have) independently. In fact, if you don't want to use iCal at all then the more reason to sync directly.

First things first, go to Google Calendar, on the list of calendars on the left sidebar click on "settings", select the appropriate calendar and copy the Calendar Id, it should look similar to this 23893278923hdaa98uiq3eqwhd@group.calendar.google.com

Using the calendar Id, build the calendar URL, for the above (ficticious) calendar, the URL should look like this: https://www.google.com:443/calendar/dav/23893278923hdaa98uiq3eqwhd@group.calendar.google.com/user

Then go to your iPhone settings

Select Mail Contacts and Calendar Settings

Select Add Account

Don't be tricked into any type of account from the list, you want to manually add a CalDav account, so select "Other"

Then select "Cal Dav Account" from the options

Finally, use the Calendar URL you created from your calendar ID on the Server line, add your google username and password to the appropriate fields and give your calendar a name.

Now your iPhone will be synchronizing directly from google and you don't even need to use iCal if you don't want to. Also, because Google Calendars can be shared, you can set up this calendar on other people's iPhones and have a shared calendar with your wife, friends, mom, whoever you feel like. You can also add and modify events from your iPhone, just as you would from iCal or the Google Calendar site itself.

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Click here to download:

Astrophotography_links.zip (887 KB)

I've always enjoyed astrophotography but it was only after this Christmas, when my wife gave my a beautiful telescope that was able to think of actually doing something on the field so, while London is completely overcast and nothing can be seen on the outer world, I'm trying to catch up with reading, here are some entry level links that I've read over the last few days, I hope they are useful to you and if you have reading suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

The first thing that will come to mind to most people would be DLSR photography, that was my first thought too and I came into this DSLR Astrophotography tutorial.

Now, if you're thinking on the quality side of things, probably webcam astrophotography wouldn't be the first thought in your mind, however I came to think it differently after a quick chat with ROG Astronomer Tony Sizer who delighted me with an inspiring chat in answer to my rather mundane questions about camera fits into telescopes.

It seems you can actually get some quality pictures from webcams, because you can do a series of quick shots, each of which will have only a faint image, but a precise one, and they can be combined together into a properly exposed one. If you have tried to take a picture of the sky for more than a split second and found it out motion blurred, then you know that a quick shot (or a motordrive for the telescope, which can be expensive) is very welcome.

Well, this Webcam Astrophotography Tutorial seems to cover the subject, I may just reuse the webcam I bought for the fisheye mount.

Also by recommendation of astronomer Tony Sizer, if you live in west London, you may find interesting to get in touch with the West Of London Astronomical Society (WOLAS) and if you are near London you may want to go to the Astrofest, as astronomy show/conference in February 2010.

Lastly, if you can read portuguese, Astroimagem website will have tutorials on techniques and instrumentation.

Have fun, and feel free to add suggestions to the comments.

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At the risk of stating the obvious, there are some interesting web advent calendars around and I, though I should have done this earlier in December or even November, I though I'd share 3 interesting ones:

• 24 Ways - All things web by an all star lineup of authors, don't miss a post!
• Inspired by it, Stoyan Stefanov decided to experiment having a web performance advent calendar, if you know Stoyan, then you know it's unmissable, if you don't, it's time you do ;-)
  
• Sitepoint's advent calendar sale, each day through December 24th a different offer on sitepoint books and products.
  

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If you're anything like me, you're now bored of Firefox opening a new window when you request to see source code.

Here are two bookmarklets that will come in handy for you, the first one displays the source code on the same tab, whereas the second will create a new tab and open the source there, hence preserving the page in the state it was when you requested to view the source. To install them, just drag them to your bookmarks toolbar.

Update: apparently I can't post bookmarklets to posterous, so you need to create your one bookmark on the bookmark toolbar and copy and paste the code below on the location field

To open on same window:

javascript:s=window.location.href;window.location=s.replace('http','view-source:http');

To open on a new window:

javascript:s=window.location.href;u=s.replace('http','view-source:http');z=window.open(u,'_blank');z.focus();

Technically speaking the second bookmarklet will open a new window, but behaviour depends on Firefox configuration and by default it will open a new tab, rather than a new window for new open requests. You can use this with other browsers, although I haven't tested and it's useless in Opera since this is Opera's default behaviour anyway.

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(Hover the image to get a link to the full-res image of the original poster, courtesy of the nice chaps at at Dingwalls)

A couple of months ago it striked me I hadn't heard anything about drusgtore in quite a while. Probably not since the early 2000s when I was a big fan and now, living in London, it would be a shame if I'd been missing their shows.

When I found out, after a friend pointed me to their facebook profile, they weren't active for 7 years but planning a return show I knew that would be a show worth klling for.

Why? Well, when you see comeback shows, more often than not is about trying to bring the popularity of the past, decadent artists that were once good and can't get past it, but I had a very different feeling about this one and probably the reason was the humble approach of the band through the web, talking to fans and making them feel as important as the band is for the fans.

I felt really lucky to have attended to a historical show like that, also very happy they did that gig after 7 years of inactivity because if you like Drugstore by their recorded songs, wait until you see them live.

Isabel Monteiro's presence on the stage is absolutely impressive, no one escapes the humor of the snob-ish character she plays on stage in between songs but it doesn't compromise the authenticity on her singing nor her actual sensibility. Instead, they blend together as nicely as the heavy notes on her bass, the guitars and drums blend with the cello and the violin.

Also, the iconography collector I am I wanted a poster of the gig that I couldn't get, so I turned to get the high res file that Isabel herself didn't have to print my own. I've contacted the nice chaps at Dingwalls and they emailed me the file.

Now, by Isabel's request, I'm sharing it with you so you can print own copy (hover the image to get a link for the full res version). And if you haven't been to the show, print it as a remainder for the next one. The one all of us who attended this time have our fingers crossed it will happen very, very soon.

Check also Isabel's blog: http://isabelmonteiro1.blogspot.com/
and Gary Simpson's fan site (seems official but is not ;-): http://www.drugstoremusic.co.uk/

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