While googling a Japanese musician recently, I followed an Apple Music link, which opened the Music app on my iPad with this message: This dialog makes the Change Store option seem pretty innocent, and you might assume (like I did) that changing back to your home store would be easy and obvious. But I found… Continue reading How to fix “This Apple ID is only valid for use in the U.S. Store”
KickLogstash.sh: 7 Lines to Restart Logstash
It might well be my naive, beginner’s implementation of it, but it sure seems like Logstash is pretty easy to confuse. Elasticsearch temporarily unavailable? Hang. Some weird formatting sneaks in? Hang. Some as-yet-undiscovered circumstance that causes java to eat all your memory? Hang. And each time it hangs, Logstash becomes unresponsive, never recovering. So for… Continue reading KickLogstash.sh: 7 Lines to Restart Logstash
Coping With EXIF Rotation Problems
At Knowledge Architecture, we may not operate at the scale of Facebook or Flickr, but Synthesis sees enough image uploads that we’ve run into some pretty strange image rotation problems now and then. I’ve spend a lot of time with the issue, and while I’m not naive enough to declare victory over something as devilish… Continue reading Coping With EXIF Rotation Problems
What I Like Is Looking At My Phone
The other day I was thinking about the dawning of The Age of Smart Watches, and trying to answer a skeptical friend’s “why?” Why do people think they want such a thing? Â Or, at least, why do companies think that people want such a thing? I ran through the usual suspects: the wrist is a… Continue reading What I Like Is Looking At My Phone
Traveling With a Baby in Italy
Several months ago, my wife and I completed a two-week trip to Italy with our then seven month-old son, Felix, and for the most part, it was great! Before we left, though, we looked around for guidance and didn’t find much that lined up with our idea of a vacation: a “last” trip before Felix could walk (let… Continue reading Traveling With a Baby in Italy
NSRangeMake
Maybe this is common and maybe it’s not, but in the course of my work writing Objective-C for iOS, I end up using CGRectMake()—to make, yes, a CGRect—pretty frequently, but I only rarely need to build an NSRange.  So following the CGRectMake pattern, I inevitably start typing “NSRangeMake” and along the way the only method… Continue reading NSRangeMake
SQL Azure, Management Studio 2008, and the ‘sys.configurations’ error
Here you are, just trying to get some work done by connecting to a SQL Azure instance using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (hereafter “SSMS”) 2008. But instead of a connection, all you get is a line of Microsoft free verse: Invalid object name ‘sys.configurations’. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 208) Googling around for help returns… Continue reading SQL Azure, Management Studio 2008, and the ‘sys.configurations’ error
When Your DataMember Custom Property Names Aren’t Working
Let’s say you’re writing a WCF REST service, and in proper C# fashion, your object’s properties start with a capital letter. Then your service is being consumed by Objective-C code or javascript, which call for lowercase. Since WCF uses the DataContractJsonSerializer, you can set a different name for the property to serialize to: public class… Continue reading When Your DataMember Custom Property Names Aren’t Working