I just happened across a hyperlink to apple.com/hypercard that redirects to wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard. Yes, I confirmed that the source of the page contains both meta & JavaScript redirects to said Wikipedia page, so it’s for real.

Since when is Apple redirecting straight to Wikipedia!?¹ Why not redirect to a search of their own knowledge base!? Is this going to become common practice for corporations!?

¹ My sincerest apologies for the blatant overuse of the interrobang, I’m just still in shock.

Update: Some further research by myself and others in the comments revealed that it had been redirecting to a non-existent product page on the Apple Store for 4+ years after it was discontinued in April of 2004. It was then redirected to Wikipedia sometime in January or February of 2008, so it’s been this way for a while now!

Regarding my previous report that the “Enable default host” functionality for the AirPort Extreme and TimeCapsule was broken in firmware version 7.3.1: the issue been resolved in firmware version 7.3.2 which was released nearly a month ago (July 11th).

I was able to disable my port forwards, hop on a cellular connection and access all services as well as ping the default host. I have not yet experienced any other issues with the firmware update, but I’m not using anything beyond the WiFi & router functionalities, esp. AirDisk or printer sharing.

Unfortunately I’ve been out of town for the last two weeks due to the death of Emily’s father whom I’ve now known for the past six years. There have been many additional stresses tossed my way during this time, but the one that has affect others was that my AirPort Extreme (Gigabit) has been a bit flaky and requiring numerous reboots.

While it had been failing to route traffic after four or five days I could still remotely reset the AirPort Extreme, but not being totally with it (as you can imagine) I was failing to detect outages in a timely manner. On Wenesday, April 30th, I decided it’d be prudent to upgrade to the latest firmware in the hopes of gaining stability improvements.

However, after upgrading to AirPort Extreme firmware version 7.3.1, I could no longer ping my server. I chalked it up to a crash after the update, and fortunately was scheduled to be home that day (for only an evening) so was able to reboot it. But, I did not test from the outside world and I had not researched to latest firmware update before applying it. Doh!

Four days later (today), when I finally was back in town again, I took to troubleshooting the situation. I had full Internet access from inside my network (wired & wireless), but I couldn’t get any HTTP, SSH, or ICMP traffic to go through. I tried toggling many settings and eventually found that I could still hit HTTP through port 81¹. I was afraid that Comcast might be blocking ports again, but decided to fully test the port forwarding lead first.

I soon found that I could just port forward the most important ports and traffic flowed correctly. There was obviously a problem with the “Enable default host at” option in the 7.3.1 firmware. A quick Google search confirmed that others have run into this as well:

• Apple Support Discussions: Time Capsule 7.3.1 & ‘Enable Default Host’
• Accelerate Your Mac: Feedback on Airport Base 7.3.1 Firmware & Airport/Time Machine Update 1.0

So, hopefully this’ll be fixed in the next firmware release. In the meantime, I sincerely apologize for the four day downtime of UNNA (and this site, of course).

Note: I’ve filed a bug report for this issue with Apple (see rdar://problem/5955680) in the hopes of expediting the resolution of it.

Update: This issue has been resolved by firmware version 7.3.2.

¹ A port forward I put in for backwards compatibility with links to my site from the days when port 80 was blocked by my ISP.

This morning Google went live with the Macworld Makeover of their mobile portal with a number of new updates for iPhone/iPod touch users. It’s now very much iPhone-like as well as including improvements to both Gmail & Google Calendar and adding iGoogle to the mix.

I’ve been using their mobile portal on my iPod touch since I received it on December 14th (more on that another day). They had only just released said AJAX portal 9 days prior, so I didn’t find myself missing Apple’s Mail client from the iPhone which is non-existent¹ on the iPod touch.

Today’s modifications are a welcome update to an already well executed feature.

¹ One can hack the iPod touch to install the various iPhone-specific and 3rd-party apps.

A friend wanted to Launch Front row by pressing the programmable button on his new LaCie D2 Quadra hard drive, but the software wasn’t letting him program a keystroke, so I whipped up the following AppleScript to press Command-Escape for him and so launch Front Row. I’m sure there are plenty of other solutions out there or maybe even this same one, but here it is anyway:

tell application "System Events"
	key code 53 using command down
end tell

Save it as an application (preferably “run only” without a “startup screen”) in your ~/Applications folder if you want to launch it as an app, or in ~/Scripts if you want to launch it from the Script Menu or Quicksilver.

For more information on using the key code AppleScript command, check out the System Events, Key Code and Keystroke article over at Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes.

While I subscribe to the "Less is more" philosophy, I’m actually pretty poor at adhering to it. I have a major case of information overload in my digital life and junk clutters up both my digital and anolog lives. I’ve been pretty good with the RSS feeds that I subscribe to, I’ve slimmed down this site, and I’ve started attacking the piles of unused computer gear in my apartment.

I’m going to continue whittling away what computer gear that I actually need and use until I reach a perfect harmony, a blissful happiness, or complete enlightenment. This week’s part of that task is the server rack in my living-room.

I’ve done all my web hosting from home for years due to the increased flexibility & control I have over the servers, the challenges I get to face, the practice, and the somewhat lower operating costs (ignoring the labor, of course). However, having a half-height server rack housing two servers, plus a bunch of networking gear, in our living-room for the past few years has grown tedious. It takes up a lot of space, it’s frickin’ loud, and it’s an eye-sore¹.

The current setup consists of:

• A home-built 18U, 4-post, open-air rack
• A Comcast cable modem
• A Dual 2.0GHz Xserve G5 providing web hosting and acting as a gateway/router²
• A 400MHz PowerMac G4 in a Marathon G•Rack, my former media center & file server
• An Intel Express 530T Switch
• A “Snow” AirPort Base Station
• LaCie D2 hard drives (rack-mounted, naturally)
• Rack-mount power strip & cable management accessories

Now, I’m not about to stop hosting from home, but I do want to reclaim some of the space, reduce the noise, and cut the electricity usage a tad. To pull this off I hatched a master plan to consolidate my server and network equipment to one small, quiet 8U desktop rack. The new setup will be as follows:

• A Middle Atlantic DR-8 8U desktop rack (with a couple Middle Atlantic U1 shelves)
• My Comcast cable modem
• A Gigabit AirPort Extreme Base Station which will provide WiFi as well as act as my new gateway/router
• A 1.83GHz Core2 Duo Mac mini which will provide web hosting and act as a file server
• My Intel Express 530T Switch
• My LaCie D2 hard drives
• My rack-mount power strip & cable management accessories

This new configuration will be a hell of a lot smaller, much quieter (there will be only three small fans: one in the Mac mini and two in my Express 530T), and draw much less electricity. An added bonus: the boxes for all the hardware take up less space in a closet than that of just one of my servers. There are also some added technical benefits, as well, including: a better NAT implementation³, support for more WiFi standards, gigabit uplink from my server to my router & network, reduced load on my server, etc.

The cost break-down?

1. Mac mini & AirPort Extreme – approx. $750
2. Middle Atlantic rack & shelves – approx. $90

Well under $1000. I’ll also be selling the PowerMac G4, the 18U rack, and possibly the “Snow” AirPort to further reduce that. Even when I bought the Express 530T switch two weeks ago the net cost to me was only $30 after I sold the switch it was replacing.

I brought home the Mac mini and AirPort on Friday and have already integrated the AirPort into my network as the new gateway. The 8U desk rack and shelves are on order and should arrive sometime this week. The migration of the Xserve’s configuration and data to the Mac mini will be the most time-consuming part of the project and I’ve got plenty of practice doing that sort of thing.

All in all, what will this get me? First and foremost: a much happier girlfriend; but also more space in a cleaner living-room, a quieter living-room (all the better for watching movies in), a lower electricity bill, and a pretty powerful server that I actually own.

I do still need a proper 1U rack-mount UPS, but that’s for later. I know, I know… I live in Vermont so I do really need a long-lasting UPS. Unfortunately, that’d cost as much as this entire new server setup.

¹ Emily’s never exactly been a fan either. In fact, she’s always hated it.

² Graciously loaned by Small Dog Electronics, Inc. for continued development, testing, and training. Fun, fun.

³ The built-in NAT in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) Server always tests as “Moderate” on my Xbox 360 and so I get kicked off Xbox Live fairly frequently. The new Gigabit AirPort Extreme’s NAT tests as “Open” and so I have nary a hiccup now.

There’s been some recent iPhone-related news that gave the impression that we were getting closer to legitimately using using iPhones in Vermont. Unfortunately, I think we lost all progress today.

First, the good news: I now have three coworkers that have iPhones: Jimmy, Mark, and Don. So far their accounts are still active. I really suspect that their EDGE usage will be what tips the scales against them, but it’ll be interesting to find out for sure if/when their accounts get cancelled.

Also, iPhone hackers have produced a way to bypass activation or activate it using a different AT&T/Cingular SIM card. This means that one doesn’t need activate and then cancel their iPhone’s AT&T service to use it as a video & web iPod or use it with another AT&T SIM. They’re not working on fully unlocking the iPhone so that it can be used with any SIM card yet, but I’m sure they will be soon.

This is all well and good, however today’s bad news is that Verizon Wireless is buying RCC (i.e. Unicell), the only GSM¹ cell phone network actually in Vermont.

What does this actually mean? Well, nothing yet. Change moves slowly in the cell phone market. However, it does mean that Verizon will be transitioning RCC customers over to CDMA technology at some point in the future (and my guess is that it’ll happen within a year):

Rural Cellular utilizes both CDMA and GSM technology separately across its five regional markets. Verizon Wireless plans to deploy CDMA service in Rural Cellular’s existing GSM markets and convert the GSM customers to CDMA service. Verizon Wireless, however, anticipates maintaining Rural Cellular’s existing GSM networks to continue serving the roaming needs of other GSM carriers’ customers.

Fortunately, they do note that they’ll be maintaining the GSM network for those roaming with GSM phones (e.g. the iPhone). Also, the benefit of “reduced roaming and operations expenses” will be a nice bonus for RCC customers who already have to pay higher rates.

But, and there is a big but, this will mean that non-AT&T SIMs will be disappearing in the not-too-distant future, so when AT&T does kick Vermonters’ iPhones off their network, even if the iPhone is unlocked by then they won’t have anywhere else to get a valid SIM.

As I mentioned previously, AT&T recently purchased Dobson so other rural areas in the United States will be able to use iPhones on AT&T’s own network, but Vermont just lost all hope of that ever happening.

¹ GSM is the cell phone technology used by the iPhone.

A week ago I discussed the ways not to get an iPhone in Vermont since we’re not covered by AT&T’s own network and in honor of the iPhone’s release. Now that people in other states have had their iPhones for a week, the in-depth reviews have been rolling in: Steven Frank’s, James Duncan Davidson’s, Steve Dekorte’s, and Jason Kottke’s are my pick o’ the litter.

As I also noted, my friend Jimmy drove to New Hampshire to pick one up with the goal of using it until AT&T cancels his contract. His initial lists of wants has been posted as well. And, of course, I’ve now gotten to play with the iPhone a couple of times at the office.

Jimmy has stated that he’s been able to hit 100+k on EDGE in Watebury, VT, so Unicel’s EDGE network can’t be half bad. Although, I have to wonder whether using data services while roaming will alert AT&T that much earlier and cause them to cancel his contract sooner rather than later. Only time will tell.

There has been other news on the iPhone front too. On the day of the iPhone release, AT&T and Dobson (i.e. Cellular One) announced the purchase of Dobson. This should be great news for the rest of the country, but Cellular One left Vermont years ago, so we’re still stuck¹ with RCC (i.e. Unicel).

However, all is not completely lost, even if AT&T does cancel Jimmy’s contract (or anyone else in Vermont), Alex King has verified that the iPhone works without AT&T service. You do have to get a contract in the first place, but that does mean that the iPhone won’t as quickly become a useless brick in a drawer when the cell phone technology becomes outdated and sure gets me closer to buying an iPhone.

One thing that I had originally investigated, but failed to mention in my original post, is the idea of getting a pre-paid plan (i.e. a GoPhone plan) from AT&T. I had immediately and completely ruled this out because you cannot roam on a pay-as-you-go plan (see the GoPhone coverage map) and so Vermont is completely out of the picture. For a while there, it looked like this wasn’t even going to be possible for anyone anyway, but the tried-and-true way of getting a GoPhone contract has been discovered. Still great news for others.

The bad news so far: even another AT&T SIM card won’t work in the iPhone, so the hope for unlocking the phone is not even an easy first step.

We may not actually be getting much closer to having true iPhone support in Vermont, but atleast hope is growing. Again, I’m still not ready to give up my Newton, but the iPhone would be a great companion. :)

BTW – Don was on TV again regarding the no iPhones for Vermont issue. Of course, I don’t know where he got the statistic that we’re the only state that doesn’t get AT&T service.

Update: I added Steve Dekorte’s iPhone review to my above list of favorites. I don’t know how I had missed it.

¹ Now, I’m not sure I actually want AT&T to own Unicel as well as Cingular and Cellular One, but I sure would like an iPhone.

Well, the iPhone’s been out for 24 hours now and the initial reviews are in: it’s totally kick-ass and what the videos show is absolutely the real-deal.

Man, that’s hard to hear. I really want one!

To make matters worse, Jimmy (one of the only people I know in Vermont that’s somehow been able to retain their AT&T/Cingular account which was signed up for out-of-state) ordered his iPhone last night. Actually, he couldn’t even wait the 2-4 weeks before it would ship, so he and his girlfriend drove to the Salem, NH, Apple Store today and came home with two iPhones.

He’s up and running after a short wait for the activation and loves it (per our AIM conversation):

This has the to be the absolutely best gadget ever
and i’ve only used it for like a minute
the keyboard, wow
it’s easy

Of course, now I really, really want one. And, to make matters even worse, I’ll get to see one, touch it, and drool on it, next week (Monday?) in the office.

Jimmy, who lives in Waterbury, VT, also noted that he gets full signal and picks up EDGE. So, that side of it works. I don’t expect him to see the same speed increases that AT&T’s network has seen this week, since it’s probably Unicel’s towers that he’s picking up.

The lingering question at this point is: how long will he be able to keep his contract? After all, that’s all that really matters to me.

BTW – There’s already some take-apart photos posted.

Update: Jimmy’s now got some initial photos of his iPhone(s) posted.

Today’s the day everybody’s been waiting for! Yup, we’re little more that twelve hours away from the release of Apple’s new iPhone! Some are queueing up for them already, some will be ordering online, and others yet are prepping to rejoice over the impending flop.

I highly doubt the iPhone will be a flop. Yes, I love Apple’s products (a lot) and, honestly, I’ve been loving them more and more recently, even with the occasional intentional limitations that Apple builds in so that they “just work” (which the iPhone seems will have many). The more things “just work” the easier my life is and the iPhone looks to be one of those things that “just works”.

Oh, and yes, I’ve been reading all the articles, all the FAQs, and watching all the videos (these ones as well), and generally drooling over the iPhone. It looks beautiful, functional, and, most importantly, extremely intuitive.

I want one! Hell, everyone I know wants one.

I Live in the Boonies

Unfortunately, while everyone else is trying to get out of their cell phone contracts so they can get an iPhone, I can’t get one. At all. Trust me, I’ve tried to figure out a reasonable way.

You see, I live in the beautiful state of Vermont and while AT&T, which has an exclusive on the iPhone, covers most of our state, they only do so by partnering with existing in-state GSM carriers (e.g. Unicel). If you go to their Coverage Viewer and enter “VT” for the state (no other address data required), you’ll see what I mean.

Then zoom out a little and look at the surrounding states. Hmm, we’ve probably got a better coverage percentage than Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania¹, in general, but they’ve all got that deep-orange color in them (meaning they have a true AT&T network). We don’t.

That’s okay, I can always go buy it out-of-state and just “move” back home and keep using it, right? Well, unfortunately, as a couple of my coworkers have found out, they cancel your contract after a few months because you’re always roaming. Oh, right, “mov[ing] to the boonies” was one of the ways to try to get out of your contract for just that reason.

But I don’t want to get out of my contract, I want to keep it and use the iPhone. But, it wouldn’t be so bad if I lost my contract right? I mean I could still use iPhone as the coolest iPod ever and an awesome portable browser, right? Oh right, that was in David Pogue’s FAQ:

Do I need an AT&T account? Yes. The iPhone won’t work at all without a two-year AT&T voice-plus-Internet plan (and no, you can’t use it as just an iPod, no matter how tempting the bigger screen and longer battery life is).

Now, he doesn’t specifically say what happens when your contract expires (forcibly or naturally), but trying and finding out doesn’t exactly seem to fall in the “reasonable” category for me.

Ooh, but I could just get a Unicel contract & phone (as much as their pricing sucks) and pop the SIM card into my iPhone, right? Actually, I didn’t even think that one would work, and it won’t. Sure, eventually someone may figure out a way to unlock the iPhone, but it’s risky, the setup isn’t going to be smooth, I’ll lose visual voicemail, probably the EDGE support (as slow as it may be), and it’s going to cost me a lot more to set up and use. Nope, that doesn’t qualify as “reasonable” at all.

Uh oh, this doesn’t bode well for me, nor the rest of Vermont’s residents. Well that’s definitely disappointing, and Don agrees, as well².

I guess I’ll just have to wait until AT&T comes to Vermont. Hopefully it’ll be a shorter wait than that of our friends to the North or those over in Europe.

Always Look On the Bright Side of Life

However, today’s a day I’ve been looking forward to for the release of another Steve Jobs-related (in a way) masterpiece anyway! Pixar’s Ratatouille is opening today!

Honestly, I would have had a hard time deciding which to wait in line for… an iPhone or Ratatouille, Ratatouille or an iPhone. You can bet I’ll be in line for Ratatouille at the Palace 9 tonight!

However, all is not lost, the truth is I wasn’t quite ready to try to give up my Newton MessagePad anyway. I would have missed having my financial software, to-do lists, and notes with me wherever I go. Of course, I could find web-based alternatives to most of these functions, such as Remember the Milk, stikkit, or the iPhone-intended OneTrip. I’d also have missed being able to use my cell phone to get online with my MacBook Pro in a jam, that also won’t be a feature of the iPhone.

However, not having to cary my pager, my cell phone, my MacBook Pro, and my Newton around with my all the time would have been nice on my back. And yes, I’d still have been able to access servers in an emergency thanks to the iPhone’s VPN support and a dedicated server running AjaxTerm, but I’ll live. C’est la vie.

¹ Granted, they’re all much larger states and said coverage map is a poor estimation.

² Although the article states that Vermont is the only state without any AT&T coverage, I have a feeling that Montana and the Dakotas may be in the same boat.

I have quite a [messy] collection¹ of Apple hardware and paraphernalia taking up much of my old bedroom at my parents house² that I would love to still have available to show off and to play with occasionally. Some of the collection is actually scattered throughout the closets of our current apartment, but my Color Classic still sits out since I still tinker with it frequently.

Seeing this collection makes me realize just how much I have and that it really could be displayed nicely. As much as I hope this’ll help convince Emily to let me bring it out of storage, I have a feeling it’ll still get vetoed.

We sure don’t have even a fraction of his space available and although it looks really clean, I’m personally opposed to doing all my shopping and decorating through the IKEA catalog. Impressive, nonetheless.

[via Daring Fireball ]

Update: The owner of this collection is one Jeremy Mehrle, and there’s now a walkthrough and interview video up on YouTube.

¹ After all, I was running The Classic Mac Workshop for a number of years there.

² And to think I was partially moved out seven years ago (college) and have been officially moved out for the last five. Wow, my parents are great for putting up with so much!

Update: Wow, I’m really kicking myself right now!
The following is a rough post that I wrote on January 7th, but held of posting for a little spit and polish. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to clean it up last night (I was planning to do it somewhat Chandan-style and actually provide a little description of the technology behind it, including comparisons between iChat & Starfire). Well, with Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iPhone — which, honestly, I was extremely skeptical about — you can really see why I should really have just made it live. Doh!

For the past week, every time a coworker has asked what I’m hoping for most at MacWorld, they always look down at my hand with the Newton MessagePad 2100 in it and just chuckle and say, “Oh, a Mac tablet!” Well, duh! Er, I mean, naturally.

However, when OWC’s ModBook was brought up on NewtonTalk I couldn’t help but think, “Flop.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still requesting that my coworkers take some pictures of it while they’re at MacWorld next week, but I have to agree completely with Steven Frank — Well, almost completely, I might be the only person in the world that wants a Mac tablet more than him — that there really just isn’t a big enough Market for one and surely running Mac OS X with some tweaks to make it function better for pen input is not the right solution. Especially when it’s not even Apple implementing it. Nothing against OWC and Axiotron — in fact, I wish them the best in this endeavor and a hope it’s a great product — but this seems like a fairly risky business venture for them to try to undertake, esp. considering the cost of repackaging MacBooks (they’re not exactly cheap, even for bulk orders) and the consumer is left to hope that: 1) OWC/Axiotron can make additions to Mac OS X to allow better control using only a Wacom tablet, and 2) that they can keep up with Apple’s changes.

There’s a reason I still use my Newton every day and have not switched to a Palm or just carrying my MacBook Pro around with me everywhere: the Newton OS. There’s a reason that Paul Guyot has put so much work into bringing it to other hardware platforms with his Einstein Newton emulator: the Newton OS. Starting to see a pattern here? A PDA/tablet computer just isn’t useful if you try to “strip-down” a desktop computer OS in an attempt to shoehorn it into such a device. Apple’s Newton team and Palm’s teams did excellent work designing the OS to go along with their devices and work for the type of usage such a device gets.

As much as I love Mac OS X, I do have to completely agree with Steven Frank on this one:

Here is a handy trick you can apply to any rumor to determine its validity: Does the rumor contain the phrase “stripped-down version of Mac OS X”? If so, the rumor is almost certainly false.

Even Mac OS X would not easily be “stripped-down” to work on an embedded device or a PDA/tablet. The User Interface has been heavily optimized for desktop use. Sure, one could easily get a slimmed down version of Darwin running on the hardware, but that says nothing about the windowing & UI layers that Apple has built-up ontop of it.

I don’t think that a real tablet computer will have a large enough potential user base to be a profitable product until multi-touch displays are available in a tablet-size device so that on-screen keyboards are a viable option when large amounts of text input are required.

I’d guess that a Mac (or other) tablet would really have to be a device not too much thicker than the base of a MacBook or MacBook Pro (not including the display), a multi-touch sensitive display (which, incidentally, must also have a very wide vertical viewing angle), and a modernized OS similar to the Newton OS. This is a significant amount of development for a product category that would likely have a much smaller user base than even a single laptop model.

I’m currently sitting in JFK on my six hour layover between Burlington, VT, and Santa Clara, CA en route to Apple Channel Camp and then Rack ‘n Roll.

Six long hours that Jimmy and I could have spent trekking to the 5th Avenue Apple Store (maybe even with the red Apple still hanging in it.) Unfortunately, we sat around for a while before we remembered we could go visit Apple retail stores (hey, we work for an Apple Specialist, so sue us!) but we’d be cutting it too close (if we could even pull it off at all) at this point.

We’re flying JetBlue and had a good flight down from BTV, but JetBlue’s free wireless hotspots suck! Jimmy was able to get his MacBook connected for nearly an hour, but I’ve yet to get my MacBook Pro to connect (and actually get on the web) so have been using my Verizon Wireless V710 via BlueTooth (thankfully it’s a weekend!)

I don’t know what to think of the impending six hour flight, the jet lag, and the fact that we’re probably not going to have time to sleep tonight before getting up for a 9am course.

I will likely be under NDA for atleast Rack ‘n Roll, possibly Channel Camp as well, so I doubt I’ll post any updates on those, but I’ll try to post regularly regarding the trip in general.

Apple has launched a new Get a Mac campaign, including six new funny TV Ads.

I love that John Hodgman, a “correspondant” on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart plays the PC. John Gruber writes: “Swinging hard against Windows with my favorite weapon: humor.” :D

Joining the likes of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report (did you catch Steven Colbert at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner? Awesome!), and The Show with Ze Frank, I’d say humor is back in full force. Finally!

[Source: Daring Fireball]

Thanks to a post by Giulio on the NewtonTalk mailing list, my Newton MessagePad 2100 with Blunt and a Pico Card is entirely stable. Transferring notes from the Newton to my MacBook Pro has been extremely fast and very reliable (although you can only send one note at a time).

The solution: Freeze SysPatch 0.6b.

Either I, or somebody else on the list, will investigate to see if it’s any of SysPatch’s particular features that causes the restarts or if the package is just incompatible.

Happiness. :D

I don’t receive packages from overseas very often, so I’m not as good at estimating shipping times as well as Adriano obviously is… my Pico Card arrived today. I don’t think the timing could have been any better! (Is it odd that the first thing that comes to mind to say is, “Happy, happy, joy, joy!”? Ren & Stimpy has stained my generation.)

Following the BlueTooth setup instructions over at WikiWikiNewt, at Adriano’s suggestion (plus it’s just a really good resource for most things Newton), I was quickly on my way to having BlueTooth configured on my Newton. However, before I do my quick explanation of how it went, let me just say these two things: this is the buggiest thing I’ve ever tried to do with my Newton MessagePad 2100; and Escale (part of DCL) works just fine on the Intel Macs (this tested it on my MacBook Pro).

After downloading and installing¹ Blunt and the prerequisite packages, I started trying to configure it. Configuration is pretty straightforward, but I experienced a few crashes here and there (some to my not paying attention to which was the English and which was the German package, but others related to trying to “Get Services”). I’m not talking hard freezes, I’m talking spontaneous reboots.

Discovering, pairing, getting services, and sending files via BlueTooth OBEX is all pretty straight forward both on the Newton OS side and the Mac OS X side, but my success rate is about 0.75 notes sent per reboot. Basically, I can send one to two notes before my Newton reboots during one BlueTooth process or another. Unfortunately, the reason that the ratio is less than one at this point is that it often needs me to “Get Services” again, which has about a 50-50 chance of a reboot. :\

Buggiest thing I’ve ever done on my Newton? Yes, unfortunately, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t successful. The notes I’ve been able to transfer are ones I’ve been unable to transfer via Mail V (too large?) or even sync with nSync. With that in mind, I’d definitely say this has been successful.

Also worth noting, I may try to keep my Newton’s internal storage clean (and I do have about 720K free, even with all my packages), but I don’t know how free my heap is, nor how fragmented my internal storage is (it’s been a long time since I did a backup, brain wipe, and restore). It’s likely that I need to do a little more spring cleanup on my Newton or freeze some packages at startup to make BlueTooth more reliable.

Ignoring that fact for now, Eckhart has been working on Blunt 2 for quite some time (see his blog), so hopefully he’ll have an update out sometime this year. Blunt 2 is a complete redesign and should prove to be immensely more stable than its predecessor, so I have high hopes for it when it’s released.

I won’t be giving up on BlueTooth on my MP 2100 anytime soon, this looks like it’ll be quite an interesting adventure.

¹ In my haste, I missed the fact that I couldn’t use the latest Blunt (0.7.7) with the Pico Card and had to use 0.7.6 and so had to endure re-downloading and re-installing a couple packages. Only lost a little time to troubleshooting that one.