Category: Blogging

Just got this strange error when trying to install the new GitHub for Windows app. Here was the error message I received:

dfsvc.exe – Application Error
The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b). Click OK to close the application.

Frustrating, to say the least. I noticed the installation was opening Internet Explorer to the following url:

http://github-windows.s3.amazonaws.com/GitHub.application

So I tried opening that in Chrome. A file downloaded (GitHub.application) and I ran it. This produced an error log file, which I’m putting online elsewhere.

Strangely, after running GitHub.application and getting an error, I re-ran GitHubSetup.exe and it installed fine. Hopefully this fix works for you too! Leave a comment if it helped.

I’ve been playing with a variety of “local meetup” / “flirt locally” apps — the type that let you post a pic and chat with people near your GPS location on your smartphone. There’s some pretty consistent features between the different apps: You get a profile pic, you get a profile. It shows you people near you. That seems to be where the similarities end, though, since they’re all positioned a bit differently. Read on for my reviews of the most popular apps.

One more thing: if you find this article helpful, please buy me a coffee (donate)!

Table of Contents

1. Badoo App Review
2. Skout App Review
3. Flurv App Review
4. Blendr App Review
5. OKCupid App Review
6. Plenty of Fish (POF) App Review

Badoo App Review

Thanks to an advertising campaign in New York (and likely other cities too) Badoo has definitely got the mind-share when it comes to GPS dating apps. Because of this there are a LOT of users on the site, which is certainly a good thing! Overall, it’s definitely worth a try. Everyone on Badoo seems a little bit tentative, but that’s not  too much different from the other apps here…

Like: plenty of users. slick interface.

Dislike: no pic messaging. mediocre filtering options.

Skout App Review /
Flurv App Review

As far as I can tell, Skout and Flurv are the exact same app. I’m not sure how that’s allowed by Apple’s App Store, but apparently it is.

I found out about Skout from an article saying several sexual assaults had been linked to the app, so I downloaded it. Yeah, I’m creepy like that. Unsurprisingly enough, Skout/Flurv have shut down their “teen community” as of the time of this writing. Attempting to keep a teen community clean and safe is a tall order indeed — I’m not surprised they shut it down.

Like: A lot of users on the service. Better filtering options than Blendr. Best photo-sharing options of the bunch. Multiple pictures per profile.

Dislike: somewhat confusing app — too many features. App wants in-app purchases to buy points to unlock stuff like “see who checked you out”. Lots of users speaking gHeTtOsTyLeeeee~~~ and other forms of poor English.

Blendr App Review

Blendr is like a Grindr for straight people… almost. The main difference is that everyone knows Grindr is for … well … grinding. Blendr users are a bit more tentative, and that seems to confuse the purpose of the app.

My friend Rick Tastic made an observation about the different types of girls on this app:

Although each girl on Blendr is obviously different, for the most part each falls under one of 3 basic categories:
1) Pics – These girls literally just want to get off via exchanging erotic pictures… my dick is all over that app at this point as a result of not initially realizing this, but don’t take that to mean I actually give a shit because my dick is awesome.

2) Hook Ups – These girls are genuinely interested in meeting/fucking in real life, it just takes a while to warm them up before they’ll be willing to give out their number. They’re still willing to exchange sexy pics though.

3) Connections – These girls are looking for something a little deeper than just a hook up, whether it’s a FWB situation, dating, or just friends. They’re down to meet up, but respond best to being treated like actual human beings as opposed to “I wanna put my dick in your mouth” which would work well for me with Pics girls and ok with Hook Ups girls.

Like: girls that wanted to be on Grindr, but couldn’t, are on Blendr. Easy to share photos or locations. Girls fairly receptive to messaging.

Dislike: only one picture per profile. Not enough users on the service (it’s still pretty new). Advertised as “a new way to meet new people” — not for hooking up. Therefore, most users aren’t necessarily looking to hook up, although some definitely are.

OkCupid Locals App Review

The first app to add “locals” to a (straight) dating/meetup/hookup app (see my original post on OkCupid Locals) With OKC and POF we’re getting away a bit from the ‘local hookup’ type of apps since there are full profiles and ‘compatibility scores’ and whatnot.

Like: many cute girls on the service, detailed profiles, multiple pictures

Dislike: I don’t like that it comes with the assumption that it’s for “dating” and not “hooking up”. (I’ll try to use less “air quotes” as we go along here…) I also don’t like that I can’t send a picture from my camera roll — only take a new one. It’s slower than other apps to message multiple girls — too many different screens to go through. Finally, you can’t send a message to start chat from the “locals” feature — only click “let’s meet” and if she’s interested she can message back. Mobile messaging has issues — if you leave the message screen it deletes your message (so you can’t reference her profile or previous messages)

POF iPhone App Review

Plenty of Fish is apparently a bigger site than OkCupid, although both are free–this has advantages and disadvantages. There are plenty of users, but you’ll have to sort through more users to find the worthwhile ones.

Like: Again, LOTS of chicks to choose from, nice features like who viewed you, matches, “want to meet me?” and a favorites section. Profiles with multiple pictures.

Dislike: Creating an account is pretty painful — two full screens of info before the pic upload and then a survey after! The mobile messaging has issues. For example, you’re in the middle of a message, and you want to reference something on her profile, leaving the message screen deletes the message entirely (on Android). Balls.

Conclusion

My favorite apps so far are Skout and Blendr, in that order. I don’t have a lot of experience with Badoo yet, so it’s possible I might change my mind about it and add it to this top tier. However, picture messaging is really fun and that’s a big lack IMO for Badoo.

If you found this article helpful, please buy me a coffee (donate).

I read about this app on Hacker News — the developer was talking about starting his own business, trying to build a passive income stream. I had already seen the similar Caffeine Zone app, so I immediately searched for DrinkPacer in the App Store. $0.99? Well, considering that costs about the same price as NOTHING YOU CAN BUY AT A BAR, I quickly rationalized the purchase.

Trial by Fire Round 1: Birthday Eve at the club

My thought process went something like this: “Oh, cool, I got this DrinkPacer app. I should try it out. Hmm, disclaimers and warnings, click through those and ignore, ah, here’s the good stuff!”

The settings for “I want to get” are these:

• Relaxed
• Tipsy
• Drunk
• HAMMERED!!@!

A word to the wise: watch out for the “hammered” setting. It does not fuck around. Being as it was going to be my birthday at midnight, that’s what I picked.

Everything started off pretty well — we had some drinks at my place with the crew, including drinking some caffeine (which I was also tracking — gotta get in the caffeine zone!) Before we left, I took a couple shots which should put me solidly into the “hammered” range. It did not disappoint.

The problem was, I quit using the app once I was inside the club. preferring instead to just order another drink whenever mine was empty. If I had followed along with what it told me, I would have probably been less drunk — which would have been a good thing. Just the same, lesson learned.

Don’t set this thing to “hammered” unless you really mean it. For reference, a 160 lb. man would have to drink 6 shots with no break to touch the bottom line of the “hammered” range.

What is the “Without hangover, I can drink” setting?

After I dealt with my hangover and started to mess around with the app a bit, I realized I didn’t understand what the function of the “Without hangover, I can drink…” setting was. I had initially thought it affected the processing algorithm, but it turns out that’s not true.

As I understand it, whatever you set for “I can drink…” becomes your “limit” for that night, and the app shows you as “X over limit” when you cross it.

IMO, this doesn’t entirely make sense, since hangover is really determined by your water consumption (and other factors), not the total of drinks that you have.

Since I figured this out, I leave that setting on zero, which is counter-intuitive, but at least the app doesn’t whine that I’m over my limit that way!

Trial by Fire Round 2: San Diego Birthday Adventure

Since I pretty much got destroyed by using this pacer the previous night, I decided to play it safe and set it to “tipsy” the following night. Turns out that “tipsy” is basically keeping yourself mildly drunk for the entire day. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but you will need to drink slower than you expect.

On the bright side, when you go over the limit on the “tipsy” setting, it’s still a pretty pleasant drunk experience since you’re falling into the “drunk” range. Also, it gives you some fun warning messages:

 

 

Alex’s tips for using DrinkPacer effectively:

1. Keep your drinks logged every time you finish one drink or start a new one.
2. Set the “without hangover” to zero. No limit = no “over limit” messages, which are just confusing.
3. Set the meter to “tipsy” or “drunk”. Not “hammered”!

Suggestions to the Developer of Drinkpacer

One suggestion I had for improving the app would be to recognize that drinks aren’t always consumed all at once and take this into account when inputting a drink. For instance: a beer is generally drank over a period of 10-20 minutes, which could affect your drunk level (versus chugging a beer all at once).

Overall, I use the app as a rough estimate of how drunk I am, and I do appreciate its simplicity (only one button for entry, which makes it easier if you’re drunk).

More importantly, it would be nice to see ALL of the drunk-levels on one bar. Sometimes I’ll set the meter on “tipsy” and end up continuing drinking, and I get concerned because it yells at me. Basically, I’d like a frame of reference for how far over the line of “tipsy” I am.

I think that for anyone who’s purchasing this app, the “without hangover, I can drink” setting is pretty much useless. I was concerned when I was over the “limit”, but ended up with no hangover. Regular reminders to drink water or other advice (pace yourself, eat food) when entering drinks might be more useful for preventing a hangover.

It would be nice if the app remembered my settings, but this is more of a nitpick.

It would also be cool if I could see a graph of my drunkenness after a night on the town. And I think it’s a one-man dev shop, but how about an iPad version that lets you track you and your friends’ drunk levels? That’s sort of a pie-in-the-sky idea, but hey, that’s what I do here.

I keep getting hung up on this, so this post is as much for me as it is for you. These are the steps for how to upgrade an already-jailbroken device to a new iOS version, preserve your Cydia apps, as well as restore it with all of your legit app-store apps and music and whatnot.

Tools:

• iTunes (probably the latest version would be a good move)
• Jailbroken iDevice (duh)
• iDevice USB cable
• OpenIPSW
• AptBackup
• Jailbreak tool — RedsnOw or Absinthe (I read Redmondpie.com to keep up to date on this stuff)

1. BACK YOUR SHIT UP
   Seriously. Plug your iDevice into iTunes and right-click it and make a backup.
2. Use AptBackup to preserve your list of Cydia apps.
   There are some paid options too, but this one is free and good enough.
3. BACK YOUR SHIT UP AGAIN.
   This time, iTunes will preserve the list of your Cydia apps that AptBackup makes.
4. Use OpenIPSW to download the correct IPSW file for your device on your computer.
   Actually, you could probably do this as the first step since it’ll take a while to download.
5. Restore your device with iTunes, selecting the IPSW file you downloaded.
6. Don’t restore from the backup yet
7. Re-Jailbreak your device while it’s freshly-restored.
8. Assuming your jailbreak went well, you can try restoring from your iTunes/iCloud backup now.
9. Once you’re jailbroken and running happily and all that, install AptBackup again and restore your Cydia purchases

YMMV. This worked for me last time (4.3.4 → 5.0.1), and hopefully it’s going to work again this time (5.0 → 5.1.1)

I was (am?) having an issue with my RSS Syndication plugin (FeedWordPress) where it put my posts into two categories even though I explicitly told it to only put them in one. An hour and one hairy SQL query later, it appears to be fixed!*

Also, it seems like GMail was upset that I hadn’t logged in via the web interface in a while, so it stopped sending my contact form emails over SMTP. So I logged in and fixed that. Yay! You can contact me again now!

*: Although, my feed reader (Pulse) seems to have stopped publishing the RSS feed of the posts that I “star”, so there’s no new posts until I find a hackaround. And wouldn’t you know it, the “previous post” link at the bottom of the page is acting strange. Oh well, you’ll just have to deal with it for now.

We started running our site(s) on Amazon’s cloud for flexibility. Unfortunately, we started when the service was very young, and that meant it was difficult to back up our instances. We kluged a backup script in Python from someone else’s script posted on their blog. I just had a search and I can’t even find the source any more — this was at least two years ago.

So now, it’s my job to bring us up to the present. We had a problem where our server was crashing during the backup process — first, the backup would eat up any free space on our root device, which would then slow the site to a crawl as it got stuck at 99% cpu usage. Then, I would reboot the instance only to find MySQL was unable to start because the device was full.

Luckily Amazon offers a Relational Database Service which basically provides more robust/updated database servers in the cloud. I switched us to this service for our main two databases (a blog and a forum) and so far it’s running smoothly.

Now, I’m attempting to get rid of the last bit of vestigial, non-cloud-friendly technology that we’re using — filesystem backups and automatic AMI bundling. This requires creating a new EBS volume, formatting the volume, copying the entire filesystem to this new volume, snapshotting it in the AWS console, and then creating an image from the snapshot (also in the AWS console).

I got a lot of help from this blog post: http://thewebfellas.com/blog/2010/4/19/create-an-ebs-boot-volume-from-a-running-instance

as well as this gist on GitHub: https://gist.github.com/1004950

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the past little bit here. That, and all the debugging/troubleshooting/error-deciphering/guru meditation that goes along with it.

The good news is that once I’m done, our servers will boot faster, be easier to back up, and hopefully, more resilient.

 

photo credit: lrargerich via photopin cc

Recently, there was much ado about an Apple patent that was filed, where it would allow users to locate people near them, and browse a small profile. In a personal discussion, some friends and I agreed that it wasn’t that likely that Apple would ever actually make something like this, but here they were patenting it just the same. I thought to myself, “this seems like something OKCupid would do.” Lo and behold, that’s exactly what they’ve done!

OKCupid first came onto my radar because of their excellent blog, OKTrends, where they occasionally perform statistical analysis of the people using their site. Everything from what you should send in your first message through what types of photos tend to get the best ratings is covered. They recently wrote an article called, “What if there weren’t so many white people?”

A friend tried to show me her profile, but since it was private to OKC users only, I ended up making one myself. The site is so well designed that it gently pushes you along to fill out your profile and answer match questions, all the while rewarding you by moving a bar from left to right labeled “Profile Completion”. Needless to say, my profile is now complete. Damn you, gamification! Continue reading “OKCupid App Adds Geo-Location. Is This Awesome?”