First gen Macbook Air weak link
Just spent a large part of tonight trying to figure out why my macbook air had spotty wifi connection... it was driving me insane!
I finally tore it up and found two wires broken from the hinge body of the air. Manually joining the b0rked wire changed wifi condition from 50% packet drops to 900 kb/s rsync. Anybody know why the wifi wires are so thin? I'm thinking of soldering it back, but i'm worried about the thinness of the connections. Is there a better way?
Update: I soldiered it two lines today and full wireless strength now w00t!
Aperture 3 woes
First Apple release Aperture 3, i'm happy as Larry jumping on the band wagon to upgrade. I really wanted the facebook, flickr and video support. Little did I realise what a painful experience would be. It didn't warn me about not having enough disk space (I didn't) it complained something about FS error and crashed before you know it it deleted my entire Aperture library. None of the file restore applications would pick up the lost files due to the amount the intense reading/writing and moving which happened just before it deleted the library… I lost 2 nights in Hong Kong and 2 days worth of photos in China because of this. I learnt my lesson, no more upgrading without proper backups and no more trusting jobs! I do want that iPad though...
Now there should never ever have be a branch of the code where this is even permitted to happen! Come on testing 101!
Now Apple releases an update to Aperture 3 which presumerbly fixed most of the issues I had only to have the update program not detecting Aperture 3 properly, dear God! Apparently this was an issue they have had before from the upgrade process of Aperture 1 to Aperture 2. Is there no process at Apple to manage these historical blunders? FFS!!! Apple!
Delete the following file from Library > Preferences:
com.apple.AECT.plist
That's the file the 3.0.1 updater is checking and then revealing the incorrect Alert! message. Apple had the same problem with 2.0, and history seems to be repeating itself.
How to succeed in a start-up
I just stumbled upon a great lecture at Stanford university by a successful entrepreneur Eric Ries, co-founder of IMVU.
He talks about how to succeed and fail at a start-up. Retelling some of the mistakes along the way.
Some highlights include:
- Short iteration cycles, don't build big software that no one will use.
- learn fast and if something's not working change direction, something he calls the "pivot"
- Waterfall should be avoided unless both the problem and the solution is very well known (which is almost never)
- You think you know what customers want but you don't because you haven't asked
- All major assumptions (what he calls the shadow beliefs) should come out in the open.
Highly recommended to anyone who has started, thinking about starting or just thinking about a start-up.
So without further adieu here's the lecture homepage and the direct podcast.
