Troy Kelly

This afternoon completely out of the blue my iPhone running 2.2 software has just started saying “Error Sending Message”.

Unfortunately - I am with Optus, which means that I have to call either 133 713 and deal with one of the most idiotic voice response and prompt systems ever, or call 1300 307 937 to get straight on to Optus Technical Support (erm… that’s what they call it) and then ask for the iPhone support team.

When you eventually get the iPhone support team - its a 70 / 30 chance that you will get the Philippines or Australia. Officially Optus says that the teams in Australia and the Philippines are the same size, and it is merely the operator that has been waiting the longest for the call that gets assigned the call, but - from a customer perspective… (and keep in mind this customer has called the iPhone support line about 214 times… not that I am counting) it seems to route offshore first, then to Australia.

Firstly, I will explain why so many calls to the support line. The primary issue is access to information. I have found that the offshore call center doesn’t understand some fundamental pre-requisites that somebody taking accounts or technical support calls needs to know. We recently added another 3G card with Optus, and for some reason my personal Credit File had the entry put on it. The Accounts / Customer Service people that I was dealing with initially didn’t even know what a Credit File was, until I spent a great deal of time explaining it.

However, i digress…

I am unable to send messages with my 2.2 iPhone. Connected to the 3G network or 2G network, there is no difference, I just get the progress bar appear, move slightly then the phones response is “Error Sending Message”.

I can put my SIM in a $5 nokia phone, and it can send fine… just not the iPhone.

The wizards of technical support wanted me to reset my network settings, done - no joy. So I had to erase my phone (that takes two hours) then restore the software (another 45 min). That still doesn’t work.

I have wasted a fair amount of time on this already, and now I have no idea what to do. There is no apparent fix online, and Optus has “no idea” (yes that is a quote from their technical support people). If anybody who reads my inane rants has a fix - let me know… comment comment comment - or email me directly.

Also, if the person from Optus who reads my blogs (yeah, I check my stats) would care to respond to the abhorent disregard with which your customers are treated - please feel free also… I would love to hear your reasoning behind it all…

The recently released OSX 10.5.6 update has broken almost every MacPro that has attempted the upgrade. The fix is fairly simple, reboot and manually install it yourself. You can download the update from here.

I am a little confused that the apple support line is painfully aware of the issue affecting every 10.5.5 and 10.5.4 user - but has not taken any action to fix the online automatic update.

The real update package is 690mb or so, not the 190mb that the auto downloader package is.

I have been searching for some time for an application that will run on OSX (on a Mac) that can act as a virtual sound desk (audio control surface). I have a heap of audio input and ouput devices including a Tascam US-1641. I also have a MIDI based control surface with faders and pots.

All I really want to do is be able to map inputs to busses and then map those busses to outputs. Thus - ending up with a virtual sound desk.

It didn’t seem like it was too difficult a task, but - as it turns out - it is. I even purchased Logic Pro 8 to use it as the mixer - because it gave the impression it did that sort of thing - but no… nothing. It has a “live performance” mode… but that mode doesn’t work with control surfaces… strange.

I would love to hear from anybody with ideas about how to get around this. Ideally it would be midi controlled so I could use it as part of our existing MIDI Show Control (MSC) system (including the CueServer, MegaSeg and QLab).

I am also a little annoyed by the number of app’s that are called “Audio Mixers” that are just playback applications. Yes, it can play back more then one audio tracks and “mix” them I guess - but that isn’t what I would call a mixer.

Panel sitting in testing

If there is one thing that I would like to strongly recommend to anybody interested in Home Automation it would be to run away from anything related to the ThinkBoxx offering. It has been one of the most expensive and problematic lessons I could have ever hoped to have endured.

We are currently ripping out the ThinkBoxx from my parents house and upgrading it to a Ness M1 panel. Thus far the Ness panel has mopped the floor with the ThinkBoxx. It offers true ethernet/internet support (even on Mac OSX) and so far has been a real pleasure to build and program.

I will endeavour to provide more information as time progresses about the install of the panel for those who care, and those who don’t - just skip the posts