iPhone OS 4.0
Since it was made available last night, I updated my iPhone to the newest OS 4.0. It seems to work really well so far, but Apple didn't update any of the documentation links in Safari, so I had to read about how to use the new features elsewhere. Here is a good guide from Gizmodo that goes through the ins and outs of the newest update.
UPDATE: The Ars Technica review is actually more thorough.
Change uppercase filenames to lowercase
I needed to rename a handful of image files from my iPhone from all uppercase letters to lowercase. I did this in a bash shell in Fedora linux. Here's how I did it:
[dacaprice@fedora10]$ for i in `ls *JPG` do mv $i `echo $i | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'` done
Hacking Aerogarden seed pods
A few years ago I received an Aerogarden by Aerogrow as a Christmas gift. I love to cook so growing my own fresh herbs seemed like a great idea. My only real complaint was the cost of the replacement seed pods. So naturally I began to look for a way to make my own seed pods. I was inspired by a blog post I saw on Jung's Weblog. Jung is really into aeroponics and growing and cooking with her own veggies. Here is what I did:
I had to order a new pump which arrived today. I'll update in a few weeks if I get some growth.
iPhone Update 3.1.3 Problem
I've recently updated to the latest iPhone 3.13 software that claimed to have fixed some battery issues brought on by the previous 3.1.2 version. While I didn't think I was having any battery problems, I gave it a shot. BIG MISTAKE. I would advise anyone who is NOT having any problems with the 3.1.2 version software to stay right where there are. Even with little or no use in a day, I find my battery drained more than half way. With the previous software I could sometime go a day without recharging. I hope Apple fixes this soon. It seems I am not the only one with the complaint either.
View text iPhone messages once you start typing.
I'm a big fan of the SMS & MMS user interface on the iPhone. However I've always found it annoying that once you start typing, you can not minimize the keyboard. In other words if you want to view all of your messages from one contact in full screen mode, after you've started typing a new message, you have to go back to the previous screen, then back into the conversation you started in the first place. I found that you can avoid this by clicking edit (upper right-hand corner). You can view all of the messages in edit mode, then hit cancel when you're finished. You don't lose any of the new message you started typing. Just be careful you don't accidentally delete anything!