Monthly Archive for February, 2008

If your iPhone is just show­ing a blank white box in its Camera Roll when you take a photo, here’s how you fix the problem.

1. Find this file on your com­puter and delete it:
f1b43d3b3ecf259a3626c13a8b0cebd8ba513117.mdbackup. Just do a search for it. It should be at the following:

Mac
Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/[gibberish]

PC
C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\[gibberish]

2. Plug in your iPhone and Restore it from iTunes.

After the process is com­plete, your iPhone should take and save pho­tos nor­mally again. Kudos to jkee­gan for fig­ur­ing this out and post­ing it in Apple’s sup­port forums.

I started watch­ing anime se­ries a few months ago. I’ve watched some on and off in the past but never an en­tire se­ries, ex­cept for Golden Boy which only has six episodes. Not sure why I de­cided to start again but I chose only those that were well drawn and ranked high on rat­ings lists. My opin­ions and rat­ings of the shows in the or­der I watched them:

Golden Boy
About a per­verted guy (okay a reg­u­lar guy) who has a dif­fer­ent job every episode, meets chicks and gets horny. That’s ba­si­cally it, but it’s hella funny. (4/​5)

Naruto
This show about child nin­jas is su­per pop­u­lar so I started watch­ing it, but it’s stu­pid. It’s clearly for lit­tle kids, like 7-​​year-​​olds. I watched about four episodes and couldn’t take any more. (2/​5)

Fullmetal Alchemist
Set in a world where peo­ple use alchemy, es­pe­cially the mil­i­tary, these two kids tried to bring their dead mother back to life and failed. The story goes on from there. Very in­ter­est­ing, and I liked it un­til I watched the aw­ful movie. (4/​5)

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
This ec­cen­tric high school girl, who doesn’t know she has a spe­cial power, starts a club for find­ing mys­ter­ies or some­thing. I guess this show is cute, and it kept me in­ter­ested enough to watch through all 14 episodes, but af­ter­wards it felt like a waste of time. (3/​5)

Neon Genesis Evangelion
Even though it went from a gi­ant ro­bot flick to to­tal ab­stract psy­cho weird­ness, the char­ac­ters, back­sto­ries, psy­chol­ogy, pol­i­tics and every­thing make this a com­pelling se­ries. And it’s the best anime se­ries I’ve watched so far. I’m glad they’re re­mak­ing it into movies right now. (5/​5)

Cowboy Bebop
It’s about bounty hunters and has space­ships so I should like it, but I’ve watched two episodes so far and I’m bored. Is there gonna be a plot later on? This anime’s sup­posed to be a clas­sic but it has the most un­in­ter­est­ing chase and fight scenes, and no story so far. (2/​5) (3/​5) [Update.]

On my to watch list: Great Teach Onizuka, Ghost in the Shell.

Cartoonist Hugh MacLeod /​ gapingvoid.com has some tips on how to be cre­ative. Looks like they’re for peo­ple work­ing in or as­pir­ing to work in cre­ative in­dus­tries. Here are a few I like:

1. Ignore every­body.
4. If your biz plan de­pends on you sud­denly be­ing “dis­cov­ered” by some big shot, your plan will prob­a­bly fail.
7. Keep your day job.
11. Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds al­to­gether.
16. The world is chang­ing.
18. Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
34. Beware of turn­ing hob­bies into jobs.
36. Start blogging.

He goes on to ex­plain each of the 36 points in depth. I haven’t read through them yet but you can go ahead.