tl;dr

Every so often, Twinkle (a location aware Twitter client for the iPhone) thinks I am in Chepstow:

This seems to happen at random, but often enough to be annoying. I’ve seen it half a dozen times, I’ve seen it happen in the just-released Twinkle v1.1, and I’ve seen it happen in work (in Cardiff) and home (in Cwmbran).

If I immediately quit Twinkle and hop over the Maps, the wrong location measurement persists. These screenshots were all taken from my workplace in Cardiff. The screencaps below show the area it thinks I am in, both close up, and zoomed out to show how far out it is — the false reading is about 35-40 miles from Cardiff.

Based on the radius of the blue circle, I’d guess this information is coming out of the iPhone’s WiFi based location system (more details on how this works are here); the circle radius is too small to be derived from cell phone tower triangulation, and if it were a GPS based reading I would see a blue pin and not a circle at all. So a first guess as to the cause of the problem is that it could be duff data in Skyhook’s database of WiFi positions.

But! That wouldn’t be an intermittent error, and would only effect one location; I’ve seen the exact same false position reading when at home and in work, which certainly have very different WiFi networks visible to the phone. Furthermore, a few minutes after this false result I booted Maps up again and suddenly it got my location right:

Note that once again this seems to be based off WiFi positioning (I am a long way indoors, so the iPhone can’t get a GPS signal in the office). I went back to Twinkle after taking this screenshot and it had the right location this time.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Twinkle, as far as I can see, doesn’t do much with the location apart from ask the iPhone SDK for it; certainly, the fact that the iPhone’s native Maps application replicates the incorrect reading suggests it’s a bug in Core Location and nothing to do with Twinkle. However I have only seen this bug appear after using Twinkle — although Twinkle is the only location aware app I’m using regularly on the iPhone. It’s all very odd; what gets me is that it keeps locking me into that very rural area of Wales between Chepstow and Abergavenny.

Edit: seems this problem is being discussed on Tapulous’s support forum.

Personal, Tech, iPhone iPhone, Tech

To Paul Hale, Editor

Regarding: Escaped spammer kills himself

I’ve been reading the Inq since before there was an Inq — in fact, I was a fan of Mageek’s writing before there was even a Reg. I followed Mike from the Reg to the Inq and have read both sites ever since. I am not opposed to your tongue-in-cheek commentary, and I am a fan of your sometimes gutterpress attitude to rumours. The world has enough boring tech sites.

This article however is appalling. I hate spam as much as the next guy but that report is disgustingly insensitive. To make light of the murder of a three year old girl is simply staggering in its stupidity.

Let’s reflect on that opening sentence:
“NOT ALL STORIES have a happy ending, but the tale of escaped spam king Edward “Eddie” Davidson sure does. After walking away from prison, he got a gun, killed his family, then killed himself.”

Do the decent thing, Paul. Retract this and issue an apology immediately.

(If the Inq pull the piece, The Register has linked to a backup copy incase you want to see what the fuss is about)

Personal Rants

Testing testing, one, two, three!

Seems quote nice – literally just a posting interface, no management or comment features. I imagine that will come in future versions. Still adapting to the iPhone’s keyboard but getting better.

Personal, Tech, iPhone Tech

One of my biggest gripes about Windows Mobile? Well, actually, general piss-poor reliability, but beyond that, an ever pissier-poorer web browser. Particularly since I put it on a mobile tariff with unlimited data in February, Pocket IE’s shortcomings were really a pain. Slow, never got the page rendering right, constantly filling up the tiny 64Mb of internal memory with cached content (despite the 6Gb memory card, which it refused to use), crashed a lot.

The answer to a lot of these problems? Apparantly Opera Mobile 9.5 is very, very good. And wahey! The open beta just came out today so now I can try it out and see how much happier it makes me with my TyTN.

And what came yesterday? My iPhone. So no, I won’t actually be trying out Opera, or indeed ever using my TyTN again I imagine.

Personal Tech

Email to DHL:

Hi there. I have been tracking my parcel today (JD00 022 125 8082 6813, not that it matters for this inquiry) and I’d like some clarification on what my tracking information means. At 06:02 my parcel was “Released to other delivery agent” — does this mean it’s been passed to a subcontractor? At 07:30, my parcel was then “Out for delivery” — sounds simple enough. But the next entry in the log, which appeared at about 3pm or so but doesn’t have a time, I have “HSD Out for Delivery awaiting IOD”. What does that one mean?

Reply:

Thank you for your email.

It stands for “Home Shopping Delivery awaiting Information On Delivery”.

Thank you for contacting DHL and assuring you of our close co-operation at all times.

Oh, well that cleared that up then. Oh, no, the other thing: I’m none the wiser. Idiots. I asked what it meant not what it stands for.

Personal Rants

Less than impressed with this. Logged in earlier to blog about my iPhone, and was asked to upgrade WordPress to the latest stable release. Fair enough, I reckoned, as WordPress is an app with some history of being exploited; so I duly download the zip, do the upgrade, etc etc. All seems fine and I make my blog post… but I notice a typo, so I try to click through to the article to access the Edit link. I get a HTTP404/Not Found error. Odd, I think, and do some testing; it quickly becomes apparent that all my individual post pages are down.

Googling quickly turns up that this seems to be a known problem that WordPress 2.6 shipped with. It’s related to whenever “index.php” appears in the permalink tag, which admittedly is a bit ugly and unnecessary. There is a workaround but I must admit I just rolled back to my previous version right away. Good job I kept my old source tree and a snapshot of my database from just before the upgrade, eh?

Personal Coding

Yes! I can has!

Plunked my existing O2 SIM card in (I’m doing an upgrade so I keep my current card), activation went fine, now waiting for it to copy 8Gbish of music onto it. Then I can commence playage.

Fair play to O2, once someone in the Executive Office got hold of my details, I was looked after. I had a long call on Saturday with Christine (where I offered some… full and frank feedback on the problems, and she was very apologetic and understanding) and then a followup call today as she could see my iPhone had shipped. I still think it wsa a cockup but at least they’ve been very nice about it.

Personal iPhone, Tech

Well, it seems that not only has Guitar Hero: Aerosmith been patched to work with Rock Band guitars, but that Guitar Hero World Tour (i.e. GH4) will work with Rock Band instruments. Hurrah for common sense breaking out, and hurrah too for one less set of plastic instruments in my living room. The odds me picking up GH4 went up a bunch of notches when I read that, as now it’s feasible to just pick up the disc.

Except… the drums could be a sticking point, as the Guitar Hero drum set has one extra pad over and above the Rock Band one. I wonder what they are planning to do about that. I guess the ultimate answer to that is the $300 Ion Drum Rocker kit. So now I have two reasons to buy it.

Personal Games

Some amazing tracks on here — I imagine Hungry Like The Wolf (Duran Duran) and Eye Of The Tiger will get a lot of drunken play. I’m very keen on Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, and getting AC/DC and Bob Dylan is an amazing coup.

84 songs on the disc and some unknown method to import “most” of your Rock Band 1 tracks… with the DLC I’ve already bought that would put my Rock Band 2 track list at nudging two hundred songs. They need to improve the select-a-song UI, but other than that, EPIC WIN.

Sadly, though, no Dire Straits and no Pink Floyd. And when is someone going to get The Beatles into a rhythm game?

Personal Games

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Just bought:

• Assassin’s Creed
• Rockstar’s Table Tennis
• The Darkness
• Crackdown

All for £25 from Gamestation. I have no idea when I will play these! I may have to somewhat shake off my ongoing Rock Band addiction.

Personal Games