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Upgraded my MPULSE Blackberry Curve 8320 to OS version 4.5

Since buying my Blackberry Curve this past September, I've been really impressed with the device. It is rock solid and rarely has any issues. It's the best cell phone that I've ever owned. That being said, my recent trip to the states brought on a bad case of device envy. I checked out the Apple iphone and the latest crop of Blackberry smartphones. I was less impressed with the iphone than I expected. The phone that really caught my eye was the new Blackberry Bold.

After I got back to Guam, I almost pulled the trigger and upgraded to a new phone. The big draw to upgrading was the improved screen resolutions, faster processors, Blackberry OS 4.5, html email, improved web browser, and video and audio recording. But then I discovered that RIM had recently released a software upgrade to OS version 4.5 for the Blackberry Curve.

I called my cell phone provider, MPULSE, to see if they had a release of the update that was network specific; they didn't. I asked them if updating my device to Blackberry OS 4.5 would work on their network; they didn't know. So I had some decisions to make.

After pondering the idea of possibly bricking my phone and reading some online posts about other users experiences, I decided to go for it and perform the upgrade. I started by downloading and installing the latest version of the Blackberry Desktop Manager (v4.7). After getting the Desktop Manager installed on my new Eee PC, I plugged in my Blackberry Curve 8320 and paired it for the first time with the computer. One of the first alerts from the Desktop Manager informs you that there is an update to Blackberry OS 4.5 for your device. I clicked on the option to proceed to the update. Make sure you choose the option to back up and preserve your data.

Now for the warning! This update takes a long time; like 2 hours to install. Do not get impatient and assume that the update has failed and turn off your blackberry or unplug it from the computer. Just let it keep chugging along at its ridiculously slow pace and eventually it will get done.

After the update finishes, the Blackberry will reboot and again, this will take a long time. When my Blackberry came back up for the first time I thought that I had fu@#$d it up! It was really, really slow. It took like 5 seconds for the email app to open. I got online and read some posts and some individuals had experienced the same thing. Nobody had a solution and I though that I had permanently screwed up my phone. I decided to reboot the phone one more time to see if it would fix the problem. To my pleasant surprise, when my phone booted back up, it was a fast as ever!

Now I think that my phone is faster than it was before the update. It has all the great features that come with Blackberry OS 4.5; html email, improved web browser, video recording, and voice recording. Plus, the application interface has been tweaked for almost all of the productivity apps, and they have an improved presentation of your personal data. So if you're considering updating the OS on your Blackberry smartphone to v4.5, do it! You won't be disappointed.

I bought a netbook

I've been watching the netbook market for quite some time and I have to say that I have been very interested in these ultra-portable computers. I have always wanted an ultra-portable computer, but in the past they were really expensive. Since I'm really a mac fan, I was waiting to see if Apple would release a netbook, but eventually, I became too impatient, and while I was in Pennsylvania, I bought an Asus Eee PC. I picked up the 1000H from Best Buy and for the most part I'm really stoked! The only thing that I did not like was the placement of the shift key,which they have corrected with the latest model (1000HE). But I just swapped it with the up arrow key and then re-mapped the keyboard (using SharpKeys). It only has a single core processor (Intel atom 1.6), but for what I want to use it for, its fine; web browsing, word processing, and email. Its running Win XP, which is very stable and I'm familiar with it. It also, has a lower memory overhead than Vista. So far, I've been putting it through its paces, and it has not disappointed. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, which has made an improvement with multitasking. I've been averaging about 4 hours of battery life while running on powersave mode. When plugged into the wall, I use it on superperformance mode. It does a great job with you tube videos, web browsing and most general computing. You won't be playing any games on a netbook. But if you're looking for a mobile internet fix without any of the compromises that come with your typical mobile devices such as a Blackberry, take a serious look at these little computers.

Grandma Eileen's got Skype!

Kudos to my mom, who went out and purchased a new webcam and got Skype up and running on her computer by herself without any outside assitance.

Skype may need to have a new Geico-like commercial:

Skype, so easy a Grandma can do it!

The "new" Xbox Live

Coming sometime before Christmas, Microsoft will be updating the interface to their popular Xbox Live service. I'm not too sure about the direction they are going. It seems like a pathetic copycat of the extremely popular Mii avatars from the Nintendo Wii. They are claiming that the new interface will add features to Xbox Live and that both casual and hardcore gamers will like the new interface. To me, the jury is still out. I'll have to see what new features come with the new interface and whether they collectively add something more than silly avatars. You can check out the full story here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10053868-52.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.0

Blackberry Curve

I have been having issues for quite some time with my cell phone (a well used Motorola SLVR) and I finally decided it was time to replace it. Now that I am working, I am very busy and I wanted something to help me keep on top of things while not at the house. I really would like to have an iphone, but they are not available here in Guam. So after comparing all the features and pros and cons of different devices, I settled on a Blackberry. Our cellphone provider offered Blackberry service so it was easy to add on to our existing account. I got $100 off too, because I have been a customer for over 22 months. So I got a good deal on the Blackberry Curve 8320. I have only had it about 4 days, but so far I really like it. I have my calendar synced between outlook on a Windows PC (which in turn syncs with mobile me(formerly .mac)) and the Blackberry; so I have my calendars synced across all of my computers/devices. I have all my email accounts pushed to the Blackberry as well. So I am able to stay on top of things while out and about and while I'm at work. Having email on the go is probably the coolest thing that I have experienced so far with a techno gadget. In the past, with my old pda, a pocket pc, I had to sync my email between the pc and the pda. But getting email in real time, pushed right to the device is a whole other game. I can definitely see why these devices are nicknamed "Crackberries!"

My New Favorite Mac TV ad!

Just click the play button. Enjoy!

Rodrigues Digital Media

I got my updated business website online today! I switched from using Apple's iweb to hand coding the site in xhtml and css. You can check it out here:

http://rodriguesdigitalmedia.com

I liked the way the site looked in iweb, so I styled the hand coded site to look the same. I'd love to hear what you think.

Enjoy!!

btw- the site is best viewed with the following browsers:

Safari>>>Firefox>>IE 7>IE 6

Best>>Worst

If you haven't tried it, try downloading Apple's Safari for Windows, it rocks!!

Time Machine is working again!

Since I had success backing up my MacBook Pro with Carbon Copy Cloner, I thought that I would give Time Machine one more chance. So I turned it on this morning and to my surprise, it worked! It made a successful backup of the entire hard drive, and has been doing consecutive hourly backups ever since. The only thing that I have done since the last attempt was delete the .dmg (disk images) files that I had in my downloads directory. One of the files had caused Carbon Copy Cloner to hang, so I guess there was some sort of problem with the .dmg files that I was keeping around.

The two sides of Apple's Time Machine

Unfortunately, I've been living through another computer disaster this week. I seem to be plagued with bad luck with my 17" MacBook Pro. Since buying it I have had the battery swell up (thanks Sony!), the graphics card go kaput, the hard drive became corrupt while upgrading to Leopard in March, and on Monday (4/21) my hard drive again became corrupt and the computer would not boot. This has really been a big headache for me because my MacBook Pro is my principle production computer that I do all my photography work on. My older systems will not run Aperture, and they run Photoshop CS3 very slowly. So when the MacBook Pro goes down, everything comes to a screeching halt.

When I upgraded to Os X v 10.5 Leopard, I bought a new 250 GB external hard drive and set it up as a Time Machine backup disk. Time Machine is one of the main "new" features in Leopard and promised to be a no brains, hands off method to back up your system so that you would never loose a file in case of an accidental deletion, or worse, a hard drive failure. Having just lived through a hard drive failure while upgrading my system to Leopard, I thought that this was a great new feature and eagerly set it up. The setup was a breeze, and after Time Machine made the initial complete system backup, it just started chugging away every hour making incremental backups.

When my computer crashed again on this last Monday, my first thought was wow, I'm up shit creek again (I had just done my taxes and I had not yet backed up the tax file for this last year). Then I remembered that Time Machine had been backing my system up and I went from feeling hopeless to cautiously guarded.

So I busted out the Leopard install dvd and started to restore my system from the Time Machine backup disk. First I reformatted my drive and wrote zeros over all sectors. Then I chose restore from Time Machine backup disk from the utilities menu and to my pleasant surprise, it worked flawlessly; at least as far as I could tell, my system was back exactly how it was the night before at ~6 pm. I opened a few programs, checked some files, it seemed like a perfect clone of the old disk. Just to make sure, I ran the disk utility and verified the disk--I got the green "Volume passed verification" result and was feeling pretty good about the system restore.

Then all of the trouble began. Not with the restored disk image, but with Time Machine. The first time Time Machine tried to resume making hourly backups, it failed. Second time, same result. It just couldn't seem to continue backing up to the backup disk that I was using before the system restore. I figured that maybe there was a problem trying to do backups to the disk that you had restored from, so I reformatted it and started from scratch. I got the same result after the format. The worst thing about the failure, is that Time Machine does not tell you why it failed, so you have no idea what to do to fix the problem.

I did a quick google search and discovered that Time Machine is quite buggy and there are lots of folks who have had similar problems with failed backups. I read just about every post on every discussion forum and have tried just about every suggestion that has been offered, including:

repairing permissions
reformatting the Time Machine backup disk (I even wrote zeros over all sectors)
hiding the Time Machine backup disk from spotlight
reseting the PRAM
trashing the Time Machine preferences
etc, etc...

After many attempts to let Time Machine resume backing up my system, I gave up and resorted to my old method for complete system backups. I downloaded the latest version of Carbon Copy Cloner, rebooted the MacBook Pro in target disk mode, and then plugged it into one of my other macs. The first time I tried to clone the drive, it failed. It just got hung when it tried to copy some disk images (.dmg) that were in my downloads folder. So I deleted the disk images from the downloads folder and retried. Second time I had success. The drive backed up perfectly. I verified the backup and it looks good. So now I at least have a complete system restore on a portable hard drive.

This whole experience has left me a little frustrated with the Time Machine feature of Leopard. On the one hand it got my system up and running very quickly and exactly where I left off. On the other hand, it has been a pain in the ass since restoring from the Time Machine backup. From everything I've read on the web,its clear that Time Machine is more than a little buggy and misses the mark by a mile as a hands off, no brains method to rely on for your complete system backups. I hope Apple is working hard to correct all the flaws of this ambitious feature.

Well, at the end of the day, I'm still not sure why my hard drive crashed again? Luckily I was able to restore it from the Time Machine backups. I leaves me wondering though if there is still something wrong with the integrity of the data on the drive because Time Machine cannot back it up now? Everything seems to check out okay, I guess only time will tell.