My iPhone wish list

I’ve had my iPhone for just over a year and a half now.

There are several things it does very well (browse the web, sync with my computer) and some things it does not do (talk to CalDAV servers, record video, wash my laundry).

In the past year and a half, the iPhone OS has been upgraded 12 times. Major new features have been added, including the app store, a scientific calculator, geolocation, ActiveSync and MobileMe push support, additional languages (including two-byte languages) and contact search.

Great. But…what’s missing? If I were in charge, here’s what I’d fix:

  1. Make syncing work over WiFi. Syncing only happens over USB. I rarely remember to plug my iPhone in to my Mac, but they are in the same room at least once a day.
  2. Let me swear. “Fuck” and “shit” are not in the spelling checker dictionary.
  3. Allow forwarding of SMS messages.
  4. Sync notes with Mac OS X Leopard Mail’s notes.
  5. Have iCal To Dos show up on the phone.
  6. A unified inbox. Go to one application to see SMS, email and voicemail messages.
  7. Let me backup, save, or sync voicemails to iTunes.
  8. Use the iPhone as a modem, like you can with a 2001-era Sony Ericsson.
  9. Create the concept of a selection. This means I can delete blocks of text and copy and paste.
  10. Smarter quoted text. When you reply to an email, Mail quotes the entire message or thread, perpetuating the top-posting problem. There is no way to disable or adjust this. (Downloading 20K of useless quoted text on EDGE with two bars is all sorts of no fun.)
  11. Call metadata is lost. It would be great if I could export my call log data to my computer.
  12. There’s no easy way to see carrier billing data. I want a settings panel that shows me the minutes and messages used and remaining in my current billing period.

Make a typeface (font) sampler with AppleScript

Every wanted to find just the right ampersand? Or question mark? Checking it against every font in your system manually would be a pain. Font Book doesn't have the font sampler feature you need to do this.

But the problem can be solved with ... AppleScript:

tell application "TextEdit"
  make new document at the end of documents of it
end tell

set paraIndex to 1

tell application "Font Book"
  set allFaces to get every typeface
  repeat with t in allFaces
    set currentFace to PostScript name of t
    set currentName to displayed name of t
    tell the front document of application "TextEdit"
      set size to 18
      set paragraph paraIndex to "? (" & currentName & ")" & return
      set font of character 1 of paragraph paraIndex to currentFace
      set paraIndex to paraIndex + 1
    end tell
  end repeat
end tell

A car rental experience gone well

Shocking, isn’t it? The folks at Enterprise Rent-a-Car in Nashville (BNA) were so polite and efficient, I wrote them a nice thank-you letter.

My coworker Pete suggested I have a little fun: give them a copy of the Hertz letter to laugh over. So I did. I also gave Hertz a copy of the Enterprise letter to show that I can be a nice guy sometimes.

Date: February 11, 2008

From: Paul Schreiber, San Francisco CA 94107

To: Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Nashville International Airport, 1 Terminal Drive, Nashville, TN 37214-4112, (615) 275-0011

Re: Rental 395385

Thank you.

On January 23, I flew into Nashville and picked up a car from Enterprise. This was the most efficient and most pleasant rental experience I have ever had.

My past rental experiences have ranged from the sub-par to the truly horrific. I’ve been given dirty cars (Avis, San Diego), threatened with a lawsuit (Hertz, Chicago O’Hare), made to wait for half an hour (just about everywhere) and been “upgraded” to large, inefficient vehicles.

In Nashville, by contrast, I was in and out of line in under five minutes, and even ended up with a decent car.

Please extend a personal thank you to the agent who assisted me. He was genuine, friendly, knowledgeable, and didn’t pressure me into purchasing anything I didn’t want.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Paul Schreiber

Vegan Apple Muffins

by Caroline Rioux.

Bowl 1

1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking power
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Bowl 2

1 cup soy milk
1/3 cup oats
1/2 cup oat bran
1/4 cup maple sugar
2 tablespoon oil
1/3 cup apple sauce

Set aside

1 1/2 cup apples, shredded

Preheat oven to 350 F.
Mix ingredients into bowl 1.
Mix ingredients into bowl 2.
Add contents of bowl 2 into bowl 1.
Fold in Apples.
Bake for 20 minutes.

Hertz Chicago O’Hare (ORD) staffer gives shitty service, threatens to sue

Last fall, when I was in Chicago, I was treated incredibly rudely at the Hertz location at O’Hare. (This is not the first time I’ve had a poor rental experience.)

As soon as I walked up to the counter, the agent said “Don’t give me any attitude.” Before I had said anything. He had taken off his nametag, so I had no idea who he was. I took his picture so I could identify him later. He threatened to sue me over this — twice.

Here’s the jerk who did this:
hertz_guy_small

And here’s the letter I sent Hertz:

Date: February 11, 2008

From: Paul Schreiber, San Francisco CA 94107

To:

  • Hertz, Chicago O’Hare Airport, 10000 Bessie Coleman Drive, Chicago, IL 60666, (773) 686-7272
  • I. David Logan, Hertz Corporation, 225 Brae Boulevard, Park Ridge, NJ 07656, (201) 307-2000
  • Becky Robertson, Hertz Corporation, PO Box 26120, Oklahoma City, OK 73126

Re: Rental 543 600 131 (October 24, 2008)

To say my rental experience as unpleasant would be akin to describing the Atlantic Ocean as a small body of water.

Let’s start at the top. When I’m greeted at a business, I would expect the clerk to say “Hello,” “Hi,” “Welcome to Hertz,” “How may I help you?” or perhaps even a simple “Good evening.”

Certainly not “Don’t give me any attitude.” Not before I had said a single word.

The rental experience went downhill from there. By the time I had left, your agent had twice threatened to sue me. Add to this the understaffed counter, the half-hour-long wait to even reach someone, the staffer not wearing a nametag to avoid identification, the garage employees who grunted at me in broken English when I asked who the manager was (I never found out), being saddled with a Ford Fusion and I’m looking for the hidden camera, thinking I’m the victim of some sort of prank.

This is not how one conducts business. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I would like a personal apology, acknowledging the events of the day; the removal of the employee in question from his position at Hertz and steps taken to prevent this sort of behaviour from happening again.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Paul Schreiber

PS I’m not asking for compensation, but if you do send any sort, I’ll gladly donate it to my favourite charity, Engineers Without Borders Canada.

HOWTO set up an SOCKS proxy via an SSH tunnel on Mac OS X

Recently, I came across some streaming video that was only available to Canadians. Being a Canadian in the US, I felt somewhat entitled. Yes: I wanted to watch a hockey game.

I knew I could do this with an SSH tunnel. I just wasn’t sure how. There are lots of pages explaining how to set up SSH tunnels and proxies, but none were very clear or complete, and they didn’t explain what you had to do on the web browser end.

Step 1: Set up the SSH tunnel

ssh -D 8080 -f -C -q -N [email protected]

Step 2: Set up System Preferences

This is for Safari and other WebKit-based browsers. Note: this will also affect Mail and other CFNetwork-based applications.

  1. Select Apple > System Preferences
  2. Click Network
  3. Select the network interface you wish to use (i.e. AirPort)
  4. Click Advanced
  5. Click Proxies
  6. Select Configure Proxies > Manually (only necessary on Leopard and earlier)
  7. Check the box beside SOCKS Proxy
  8. fill in “localhost” and “8080”
  9. Click OK
  10. Click Apply

System Preferences SOCKS configuration

Step 3: Set up Firefox

  1. Select Firefox > Preferences
  2. Click Advanced
  3. Click Network
  4. Click Settings
  5. Click “Manual proxy configuration”
  6. Besides SOCKS Host, fill in “localhost” and “8080”
    Do not fill in any other fields, including “HTTP Proxy”
  7. Click SOCKS v5
  8. Click OK

Firefox SOCKS configuration