Slashzerø » Uncategorized

Problems with my Fascinate

abx21 — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:16:41 +0000

Last year, I purchased a new Verizon fascinate to replace my aging first gen iPhone. Not having a lot of experience with Samsung hardware, I decided to purchase a warranty from Squaretrade.

A few months ago, I noticed my sch-i500 was starting to exhibit some odd behavior. The screen would randomly fill up with colored lines, or refuse to light up. The digitizer was still accepting input (ie I could unlock the phone by drawing the correct pattern on the messed up display), but the only way to get the display back was (shouldn’t be a surprise to the readers of this blog) tapping the phone on a hard surface.

So I filed a claim with squaretrade and sent my phone of to be repaired. Getting the claim generated was easy, and they provided pre paid next day air to and from the hardware repair depot they deal with in LA.

However, when I got my phone back, as soon as I turned it on, the screen immediately started to show the same ugly lines. They look like what you used to get on an old CRT monitor when the VGA connector on a PC was loose.

Curious, and aggravated, I took apart the phone and made sure the ribbon connector for the display/digitizer was correctly seated, to no avail.

I have noticed the problem is worse after the phone has been in my pocket for a while, perhaps its over heating.

Anyway, since I now voided the warranty, I installed cyanogen 7.1 on my fascinate and it has completely changed my phone experience for the better. Since I have 5 more months since my contract is up with verizon with a phone whose display comes and goes, I might as well enjoy a well put together rom, free of Verizon bloat and with the latest version on android.

An actual IPv6 in the logs!

abx21 — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:05:21 +0000

2001:a60:9004:100:250:56ff:fe8a:22d8 – - [11/Feb/2011:07:23:26 -0500] “GET /2008/10/how-to-thin-provision-an-exsiting-vmware-disk-on-esxi-without-virtual-center/ HTT
P/1.0″ 200 40432

Best Comment Spam Ever

abx21 — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 23:36:33 +0000

Sometimes, when I am bored, I take a look at the spam comments that get blocked by Askimet. Its oddly interesting to see the different patterns in the spam, and once in a while one really catches my eye. I saw one such message today:

It’s so hard to get backlinks these days, honestly i need a backlink by comments on your blog / forums or guestbook to make my website appear in search engine. I am getting desperate Now! I know you’ll laugh while reading this comment !!! Here is my website XXXXXXX I know my comments do not relate to the topic, but PLEASE HELP ME!! APPROVING MY COMMENT!
Regards: XXXXXXXXXXX

Are the spammers and SEO whores really getting that desparate? Heck I almost felt bad enough to approve the comment.

Almost.

Identity Crisis

abx21 — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 19:15:17 +0000

I think I am going to rename this place “Look I know how to setup wordpress all hail me”.

Ipad brightness

abx21 — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 23:37:14 +0000

So I have been an iPad owner for about a year, it was a gift from my awesome wife. Since I got it, I hardly use my laptop anymore, and when I do its work work. One thing I tend to do a lot is use it in bed late at night. I am a bit disappointed that the screen brightness cannot be further dimmed, even at its lowest setting it is WAY to bright. I know it can be dimmer, apples own ebook app allows lower screen brightness settings that in the default ipad settings, but sadly this only works for ibooks. I can’t be the only one who finds this disappointing. My brother, who is an iphone dev, told me that apps that touch the brightness settings via the API will get rejected since messing with the levels can affect battery life. This might be a good reason to look into jailbreaking the device.