I reported a few days ago on various issues I’d had with my newly loaded Apple iPhone OS 3.0.

I have now, at least for the moment, got a stable system back again.

1) I still can’t explain the system freezing and inability to reboot that first set this whole issue off.

2) I managed to re-install OS 3.0 and restore my settings, content and apps via iTunes.

3) I determined that the issue I’d been having with the inability to access the cellular data network was due to the new MMS subsystem. Telstra, my carrier, when auto-downloading the MMS settings, overwrote my data network configuration.

I had to reset my APN from telstra.iph to telstra.internet under the Cellular Data Network section. I can now get cellular data access again.

All is well (currently).

It’s either a huge coincidence and my iPhone hardware has now decided to fail, or Apple’s new iPhone OS 3.0 is quite buggy and has caused me to see several different problems.

I’ve been happily using my iPhone 3G for some 8 months. Two days ago I updated it to the latest version of the iPhone operating system, v3.0.

Since then I’ve had:

• The iPhone freeze on reboot. The Apple icon just sits there; I’ve left it for up to 15 minutes before forcing a reset. It eventually restarts if it’s reset enough times.
• Third-party apps don’t run any more. They try to start then the iPhone drops back to the menu screen. Apple apps on the other hand do start up (but are mostly useless due to the next dot-point).
• The phone can’t access the cellular data network; I’ve tried the normal 3G network and the slower EDGE network. When associated with a WiFi network, though, the iPhone will use that network connection.

Just about all I can do with it at the moment is to use it as a mobile phone – which is probably what I use it for the least.

I’ll restore it to a previous OS version to see if my issues disappear or not.

[Update: June 21, 2009. iTunes won't let me installed an older version of the firmware. I tried to re-install v2.2.1 but I was given "error 1600". I'll assume for the moment that this is due to the baseband modem firmware being a higher version that v2.2.1 can cope with. I'll just re-install OS v3.0 instead.]

I’m downtown in Armidale drinking a coffee and giving the WordPress iPhone app a test run. Hmmm, I can easily add a photograph.

I can see that citizen reporting (I won’t go as far as calling it citizen journalism) has taken a leap forward in terms of the ease of uploading news to the net.

OK, I get the message. The dogs and I were greeted to a paddock of whiteness this morning. Frost. The first real frost of the season. It wasn’t that solid hoar frost that will come soon enough but a soft, just-frozen sort of veneer to the grasses. Armidale recorded -4 degrees C (25F).

I’ve had a healthy relationship with maps since I was a teenager. Living in Scotland at the time, I used to purchase Ordnance Survey maps of the local area and pore over the paper – just looking at this and that. Then, in my early 20’s, I’d go hill walking and learn the names of the hills, find old and ancient ruins, monuments and stone circles, then use the maps to find my way home.

So how does this translate to the digital age?

I’ve been collecting tracks with my GPS receiver for some years now. Initially I didn’t know what I’d end up doing with the tracks though I did submit a set of Outback Australia tracks to the Tracks4Australia project. Tracks4Australia, being essentially a one-man operation, and having a slow turn-around, didn’t give me the outcome that I was interested in which was to see the result of my efforts appear on a map.

Some time passed and I became acquainted with the OpenStreetMap project. OpenStreetMap is a community-driven venture to create a set of geographic data from scratch that can then be used for any purpose without restriction.

The outcome is a global map. It will continue to evolve as further contributions are made to it. New streets, new housing developments, changes in land-use, and points-of-interest are examples of data that are being, and will continue to be, added.

A key restriction to what can be contributed is that new data may not itself be taken from copyrighted data or data which cannot be re-used for any other reason (eg it doesn’t permit derived works).

For my own part, over the past year or more, I have generated data that I have uploaded and annotated to create a map of the city of Armidale, bush-walking tracks in and around many National Parks in the area, and major and rural roads around the region.

The map of Armidale, for example, can be viewed at:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-30.5146&lon=151.6711&zoom=14&layers=B000FTF

It may take a while to load initially; after it loads try zooming in to see street detail (click-and-drag the map too), then zoom out to see how Armidale relates geographically to the rest of the region.

To generate the data used to create the map of Armidale I drove, over a period of months, every street in the city. I initially just varied my way to and from work, and to and from the CDB. Then, at lunchtimes, towards the end of the mapping period, I would just go for drives around the remaining streets.

As an example of the type of use to which such maps can be put, if the local newspaper wanted to include a map of part of the local area to illustrate a story, they’d be free to generate it from OpenStreetMap and not incur licensing costs that may normally be associated with using third-party maps.

Another way in which this data can be used is to generate an image file that can be displayed on a Garmin GPSr. More on this later.

I currently run four blogs (with a development version of each) on my own virtual server half way across the globe. That means I maintain 8 set of databases and backups. Three of the four blogs are low volume.

I’ve been mulling the idea of aggregating the three low-volume blogs for several months now but couldn’t quite bring myself to break with the many years of self-maintenance and total control over what I did – until now.

More and more, these days, I feel that I never seem to get time to accomplish the tens of things I’d like to do. So, …, one small aide to reclaiming some time was to get on with the blog aggregation.

I exported the contents of three blogs and fed them all to one hosted at wordpress.com. I reconfigured my “macalba.com” domain to add a hostname “blog.macalba.com” and pointed that name at the wordpress.com blog (at a cost of US$10 per annum).

Once the new blog name has propagated around the globe via DNS I’ll update some other DNS records, add some web server redirections and do some feedburner reconfiguration to point to the new home.

The three blogs in question are so low volume that I’m not too worried if something breaks for a while — it’ll get fixed.

In a couple of days I’ll remove all traces of the three blogs from my remote server to leave only my photoblog. I think I’d even be tempted move that blog if I could find some way of moving 5 years- and 1600 posts-worth of content.

Now, a fresh start.

Monthly rainfall tallies for the past 7 years (in millimetres), as at 20 km east of Armidale, NSW.

      Jan   Feb   Mar   Apr   May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec   Total
2002  50.0  80.0  78.7   3.5   4.3  21.9  10.3  58.2  26.7  25.0  83.2  75.6  517.4
2003  51.6 144.5  52.7 108.7  39.1  31.8  18.9  23.0   5.7  91.3  55.9  71.1  694.3
2004 192.1  77.8  65.2  22.4   5.4  20.4  43.3  49.6  45.9 111.2  69.0 133.8  836.0
2005  92.9  66.3  16.2  13.2  18.8  82.6  20.9  13.4  87.1  60.2 154.3  98.7  724.6
2006 109.5 115.2 110.2  22.5   3.6  45.8  46.4  30.8  44.8  29.8 133.6  43.8  735.0
2007  98.1 137.1  95.4  43.6  21.7  39.9   8.7 105.4  13.8  95.7 102.8 127.7  889.9
2008 133.6 203.0   3.8  68.9  10.9  60.4  25.8  35.0  54.5  57.1 119.4  61.2  833.6

Not bad for a year where the Armidale area was officially drought declared for much of the year.

The 135 year average for Armidale (in millimetres) is:

Avg  104.5  87.1  65.0  45.9  44.4  56.9  49.2  48.4  51.6  67.8  80.4  89.2  790.1

“The Time-Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century” [ISBN-10 0224079948] looks like an interesting book – you just never know when the information it contains would come in useful. Now I could import it from The Book Depository in the UK, with free air-mail shipping, for the equivalent of Aus$30.09, or I could buy it from my local Dymocks bookshop next time I’m in town for Aus$59.95 (where they’d have to order it in).

Hmmmm. Which one do you think I’d go for?

I’m usually always a person who will shop locally to support local businesses, but there is a limit to my support of businesses where the cost is double.

[Price comparison correct using the exchange rate as at Dec 20, 2008]

I’ve been mulling over a couple of issues that I’ve had with “charities” that have left a bad taste in my mouth. A post from Matt Cutts, ‘Charity donation recommendations?’, galvanised me to put fingers to keyboard. Matt’s asking for suggestions for charities to whom to make donations, I have some charities that I’ll now never donate to.

It’s that time of year when, more than others, we are asked to think of those who are less fortunate than ourselves. To be charitable. To think of, and give to, those who may otherwise have a less than cheery time this festive season. But charities must be having a tougher time than usual themselves.

Those people who may once have given willingly to charities may themselves now be less able to repeat that gesture this year given global economic hardships (albeit, though, most of us are still way better off than the vast majority of the populations of third world countries).

How can charities compensate for this reduction in their income?

It’s a tough one. I don’t have any suggestions. I can suggest to them, though, what not to do (based on my reaction to a couple of their tactics).

One. Don’t cold call me on the telephone. I’ve become conditioned to not give out my credit card information over the phone to somebody I don’t know and haven’t called. After I decline to hand over those credit card details, don’t abuse me and patronise me. If I ask for information to be sent to me in the mail, do it – otherwise I might be believe that the phone call was a scam in the first place.

Two. Don’t bail me up in the street. Don’t attempt to flatter me. Don’t ask me to fill out my credit card details on a piece of paper there and then. Don’t abuse me for declining to handover my card details to somebody I’ve never met before even if they have an “ID card” dangling from their neck (I can laminate a piece of laser-printed cardboard as well as the next person). Don’t then swear at me. Don’t call me stupid for declining to comply the now more excited demand for cash and tell me the “hundreds of other people do it”. Don’t call me a miser for not acquiescing to the collector’s continuing harassment. And then, after the collector tells me that he gets a portion of the “donation”, don’t expect me to ever donate cash to you ever again.

Three. Don’t expect me to hand over cash when the collector doesn’t share the values that the charity itself is supposed to hold. Do charities actually put their collectors though a selection process? Or do the charities take just anybody and hope that luck is on their side.

… and I’m talking about major, globally recognised, household-name charities here.

What works for me? Well definitely not being approached by a charity! It’s pretty much the case that I will only donate to those that I seek out.

In fact, in much the same way that Matt Cutts is, and has been, doing.

I received an undated letter in the mail the other day from “Toyota Motor Corporation Australia Limited”. It’s my first recall notice – or, rather, it’s a “Customer Service Exercise”.

Apparently “with certain Land Cruiser model vehicles fitted with the 1VD-FTV V8 diesel engine, there is a possibility that the engine may stall, at low speed only, whilst decelerating such as approaching a stop”.

The fix requires that they reprogram the Electronic Control Unit with a “revised logic calibration”.

Even though my vehicle is within the target range of vehicles, I’ve not noticed any problems when decelerating to a slow speed prior to stopping. It’ll be interesting to see if I can pick any difference after the “logic re-calibration”.