I recently discovered that this wasn’t just a dream but actually quite possible. Head over to iPodCarKitDirect.co.uk, choose your make and choose your kit. I went with the Dension Gateway Lite because it would charge the iPhone.

Installation was surprisingly easy.

First, remove the radio. You’ll need a pair of radio removal tools, which are easily found in Halfords or other auto shops. I didn’t bother disconnecting the radio completely, just pull it enough to get at the leads.

Pull the radio out and plug the Dension into the back

Now, pry off the panel holding the gear lever with a screwdriver (it’s really easy).

Pry off the gear lever panel with a screwdriver

Move this out of the way and thread the dock cable through the corner and up into the radio compartment. Connect it to the Dension Gateway and stuff the Dension into the space at the bottom of the radio compartment.

Thread the cable through the edge of the panel and up into the radio compartment

This is the cable coming up into the radio compartment

Now, test that the car still starts and see if you can change the source to a CD changer. Connect your iPhone and you should be able to hear the music. If it doesn’t play automatically, and if the next/previous controls don’t work, then it’s likely the iPhone isn’t seated correctly (I had to remove the hard case I keep mine in).

All done and mounted

Note: If a SEMP UI/Common Dopo deployer must consciously choose to use/leverage TOM, then make sure you have both a DEU with SEMP UI/Common Dopo as well as a DEU with TOM.

* acronyms changed

What?! It’s like a rejected scene from Office Space. Please shoot me if I ever write like that. I haven’t a notion what this guy is telling me (and from subsequent emails, neither did anyone else).

Some people lust for months, years or even decades over a Leica camera due to the huge expense involved in buying into that system. The idea of getting a Leica occurred to me in town on Saturday and today, Tuesday, it was finally in my hands. What’s more, it took just a minute to convince Hilary about the Leica idea. Most spouses would resist the Leica move, put up huge roadblocks or threaten all manner of dire consequences but — all credit to Hilary — she was the main facilitator in the Leica acquisition!

Here it is…

Ain’t it a beaut’? And, in fitting with the high-end Leica brand, the case is made from 100% natural silk yarn. Hilary has made a few of these iPhone “socks” at this stage (a strawberry, teddy bear, etc) which you can see if you’re on Ravelry (she’s ‘hilser’) or an early one in this Venture Beat article. If they wasn’t so labour-intensive I’d convince her to set up an Etsy shop… especially for the Leica version as Leica-owners probably have more money than sense and that’s exactly the sort of people you want as customers

Thanks Hilary, you’re an absolute gem and a very talented lady. I love you!

KISSmetrics got a lot of publicity around the startup and web development blogs/news sites so it was understandable to have assumed that startups were their target market. This month, KISSmetrics came out of beta and announced their pricing:

• $149 / month: 1m events tracked
• $399 / month: 5m events tracked
• $699 / month: 10m events tracked
• No free plan

W…T…F?! Frankly, I was gobsmacked and shocked when I received the pricing announcement. What the hell was all this? Were these annual prices? Nope. Who was this service being aimed at? Certainly not any sort of bootstrapped startup business. I don’t mind the lack of a free plan (in fact, I think it’s a good move) but where’s the $10-20/month startup plan for < 10,000 events? And then I got angry. I’d liked KISSmetrics. As the name implied I thought it was simple. I wrote a Rails plugin for the service to help rails developers easily send events to KISSmetrics. I spoke about the service at my local Ruby developers group. I recommended the service. Now I have to go and retract that recommendation. Even on the “small” plan, KISSmetrics would need to give you insights that save your business at least $200 every single month and all within 1m events. I wonder how many other people will retract their recommendations for KISSmetrics?

If I put my cynical hat on, I wonder if KISSmetrics’ business plan is actually about extracting large wads of cash from the bank accounts of venture-backed startups… because that pricing is far too rich for anyone else. Though I can’t help feel that for every $149/month plan they sell now, they could have sold more than 15 $10/month plans. It also means I’ll be staying well away from their KISSinsights product (and anything else that team may produce) and we should all be more wary about using pricing-unannounced-beta-products in the future.

Alternatively, you can watch the slideshow with some appropriate music I selected:

NEX-5

Just a quick note that I’ve started a new blog about Sony NEX cameras, called NEXtended. I’ll be concentrating on the various unique aspects of these cameras as well as the general aspects of photography. Hopefully, I’ll make it a regular publication and a lively community.

Sugru is awesomeness disguised as plasticine/playdoe/Mála/exercise putty. It’s a sticky putty substance that air-dries into a solid, hard (non-tacky) surface that remains stuck to whatever you stuck it to. If you can’t think of a million uses for something like this (shame on you!) then the Sugru blog has some ideas.

My immediate idea was to fix the ergonomics of my Sony a200 DLSR. You see, camera manufacturers think that cheap cameras should only be bought by people with small hands and the rest of us can just upgrade to their pro range of cameras. Or, you could sugru-ify your entry-level camera! I decided to improve the finger grip (particularly around the little finger) and fill out the palm rest to provide a bit more stability — I’m even more concerned about the ergonomics since my wrist is only out of a cast since last week.

Problem #1: Not enough support for the little finger

Problem #2: Space between the camera and palm

Stage 1: The hand grip

Stage 2: The palm rest
I left enough space to ensure that the battery and card compartment doors still worked.

“But… but… why did you use those colours? Didn’t you just ugly up your camera?”

Well, I could have used black but there’s no point in hacking something unless everyone notices it. I’m sure it’ll make a good ice-breaker at a photo walk (it also makes it damn obvious which camera is mine!).

Bonus Hack #1: The AF/MF button is waaayy too fiddling for a cold, dark night in the middle of a field.
I added a blob of sugru and made the grip surface using a cocktail stick

Bonus Hack #2: Replaced the missing feet off my laptop battery

In all, I used 20g of green sugru and another 10g of orange… so there’s still plenty left in my 75g multipack. I’ll be testing the durability of my hack over the coming weeks to see if the sugru starts to come apart, detach or get very marked but so far I’m really pleased. In fact, I think I might add a further piece around the thumb grip and base of my hand.

1. Heroku (a Ruby on Rails host) uses Git as its deployment mechanism
2. Git supports branches as a more native concept than Subversion

Here’s a few things I’ve noticed about Git:

1. The wording seems off:
   • git checkout <mybranch> is used to change between branches in your working copy. In Subversion, checkout is what you do to get an initial copy of the repository. git switch <mybranch> seems like a more accurate command.
   • By default, Git doesn’t commit the changed files. You need to call git add <my file/path> to add those files to the commit. If you delete a file, you call git rm <my file> to add the removal of the file to the commit. To remove the file from the commit, you call git checkout… it just seems quite confusing. I like the way this prevents files being accidently committed but I think it could have been made clearer. If you want Git to behave like svn, you call git commit -a
   • git branch <my branch> actually creates the branch rather than changes to it.
2. Because Git is a distributed SCM, the branches you create locally are not necessarily present on a remote copy of the repository. Likewise, if you git pull a remote repository, you don’t automatically get the branches. The worst thing is tagging. This is very useful for marking releases but tags are not pushed to a remote repo unless you pass an optional flag. This seems dangerous because if you forget this flag the tag only exists on your computer and not the master repository.
3. Also, it’s worth remembering that Git isn’t during a remote backup of your code until you actually do a push to a remote server
4. Annoyingly, when you switch branches using git checkout, it doesn’t seem to warn of uncommitted files (or, as is Git’s way, it might warn but does it anyway). This has led to some unintended contamination between branches and is just something to watch out for.
5. Unlike Subversion, the cmd-line really is the best way to experience Git. I used the nbGit plugin for Netbeans but found it incredibly slow and clunky. Perhaps better tools will arrive.
6. The main hosting site for Git is Github which is great for open source projects (social forking!) but I’ve chosen Codebase as I can host Git and Subversion projects, along with their associated tickets and milestones. Codebase can also do an automatic push which I might use to ensure each push to the production repository is pushed onto Heroku.
7. Worryingly, I have managed to corrupt my local repo though it might have been due to a power failure

Another thought: After 2-3 manic days doing too much, Hilary asked me if I was ready to go back to work on Monday (after my gallbladder operation last week). My response, as always, was:

“If I start work on a Monday morning all bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed then I know I’ve wasted my weekend. If I’m completely
fucking exhausted, I know I’ve done my best to cram 7-days of life
into a 2-day weekend. I’ve lived“