Alex A. Hutnik

I’m testing out the new Wordpress app for the iPhone and it seems to work well for short posts. Unfortunately while setting it up it made a fake post that was distributed to email subscribers and then deleted.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Release Day

Tommy and I were interviewed and photographed by the Plain Dealer. The PD also put us on the front page of the Business section. And, all of that caused us to be mentioned in the Case Daily (since we loudly mentioned our affiliation with Case to any reporter who talked to us).  We are also supposedly on WEWS, but I can’t find the video. I called my parents to TiVo it for me, so I’ll probably see it the next time I visit. Tommy and I are still shocked at the attention we got from this. We had such a great time sneaking around and getting our phones. The media attention is certainly the icing on the cake.

We were probably the first two people in Legacy to buy iPhone 3Gs. The three guys in front of us all had problems buying them (account issues, missed payments, etc). If you want to split hairs, I was the first person in Legacy to actually buy an iPhone 3G since my credit card processed faster than Tommy’s. But, he walked out of the store first, and that is why he got way more media attention than I did. So, I think he wins that one.

Here are some pictures and video of the whole event:

(I really encourage you to go to the Flickr set, where I have added comments, notes, and tags.)

Afterwards, we went back to our apartment where we slept the rest of the day and recovered from the festivities.

Uh-oh: how come my GPS isn’t working?

The next day I noticed I was no longer able to use any location-aware application.  Tommy joked it was from overuse and that the phone was just tired.  But it became clear that there was something wrong with it.  So, of course we went back to the Apple Store where, after trying some things and applying a software update that took forever, they replaced my phone free of charge.

Uh-oh: how come I don’t have any service?

So when they replaced my phone, they accidentally de-registered my SIM card, so we had to go to the nearby AT&T store to get it reactivated.  When that was done, my phone worked like a charm.

Thank You

I’d like to thank everyone that sent me messages about my appearances online and in print: Margaret, Lev, Neil, Krystin, and Sonia (I think that’s everyone).

I’d also like to thank everyone at the Apple Store who helped me out:
Francis, Jeremy, Gerry, Vince, and the guy who unboxed the phone for me: sorry buddy, I forget your name.  I was too busy playing with my phone.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Tommy and I are wating in line at the Apple Store in Legacy Village.  We are 4th and 5th in line respectively.  Our iPhone-eager comrades hail from as far away as Toledo.

The photos are a little bit grainy since they were taken with (what else?) Tommy’s iPhone.  Expect more updates soon.

Popularity: 12% [?]

If you’re on a college or university network, chances are you have access to internet2 (i2), the private internet that connects many higher education institutions.

Recently, I attended a meeting at the Ohio Supercomputing Center where the leadership of OARnet (a private fiber network in Ohio, which Case accesses) announced they were removing bandwidth limitations. Soon (perhaps now, even), our OARnet (and therefore i2) bandwidth will be at least 500mbits/sec, a 300% increase over our current service level.

You can exploit this new increase in bandwidth by selecting package mirrors that are on i2. Then, when you access them on your campus network, the traffic will be routed over the faster connection. For example, at Case our routers are smart enough to know if you are accessing a machine that is reachable over i2 and route your traffic accordingly.

So, fire up a terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

And then find-and-replace “us.archive.ubuntu.com” with a .edu package mirror (I use http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu/).

When I download packages, I would get a measly few hundred KB/sec. Now I get several MB (megabytes!) per second.

Leave any questions or comments below.

Popularity: 14% [?]

There are two answers to that:

1. Hell yes.

2. Who knows. Apparently the phones might not be on sale until next week.

Either way, I’m really excited to get one. As it turns out, I can realize a lower TCO over two years by canceling my current Verizon contract, paying the cancellation fee, selling my current phone on eBay, and then signing a new AT&T contract and buying an iPhone (with or without the rumored subsidies) than by upgrading my current service (to the minimum $80/month) and getting a Blackberry (which I would have to purchase at full price - $400).

Update: No.  July 11th.  I’m camping out in front of the store the night before.  MacBookPro and DSLR in hand.

Popularity: 19% [?]

My boss at ITS has a new blog and I have been mentioned in the notorious First Post.

Hopefully the trackbacks all line up and these posts will be linked together.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Today I had some problems with using Pidgin for Google Talk.  I was getting weird errors like “read error”.  I don’t think it’s a Pidgin problem because that package hasn’t been updated recently.

Anyway I search around for a bit and found this solution: http://www.manast.com/2007/05/11/how-to-configure-pidgin-to-work-with-google-talk/

Scroll to the bottom of the post and read the update.

Popularity: 31% [?]

First breakout session, about blogging in general.

The panelists are talking about who blogs and why. Pretty interesting points. One thing the bloggers talked about was comments policies and Mano Singham posed an interesting question, “If you have a comments policy, aren’t you liable for the comments you let through. Doesn’t it look like you’re condoning those comments?”

Another audience member said that a blog that his friend runs changed the icon for anonymous posts to the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz.

Lastly, an audience member asks what the macro impact of blogging is: is it an additive or replacement activity? Some panelists think it’s an additive activity. I disagree, at least in the way that I use this blog. There are some things I record here so that I don’t have to explain them a second time. Other times I use it to announce things that I would like to announce once and reach my subscribers (most of whom are friends of mine) all at the same time.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Case is hosting a summit on Collaborative Technology in Higher Education, CollabTech, which I’ll be reporting on throughout the day.

First up is a panel discussion using next generation technologies like  SecondLife to augment learning by  bridging geography.  Not too sure how I feel about that.  The whole environment feels kind of cartoonish.  I think that extra layer of “unreality” provides a sense of disconnect, especially in comparison with video chat.  I demoed Adobe Connect in one of my classes this semester, and it was fantastic.  Totally Flash based, so there’s really no extra software needed.  Allows video and audio chat, screen sharing, shared whiteboard, private chats.  I don’t feel like SecondLife, in it’s current version, allows the same kind of connection as a virtual “world”.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I’ve decided to move my photos to flickr. I did this for a number of reasons. For one, I think it will give my pictures greater exposure (no pun intended). Second, I like the flickr interface and features better than Gallery2 (what I was using previously). Third, most of my friends who themselves are amateur photographers are also on flickr and this is a nice way to stay on top of each others’ photos. And lastly, Facebook now added the ability to publish your flickr uploads on your mini-feed.

Here are some of the recent images I’ve taken. Some will look familiar because I’ve reposted them elsewhere.

I’ve also changed photos.alexhutnik.com to be a little snazzier gallery than the one before.

Popularity: 28% [?]