QR Codes

qrcode qrcode

I know this is old news for some – I remember seeing these at least six months ago and I was intrigued by them then. I gave the QR Code the good ol’ Luddite taste test (see how the gf reacts to it) and was pleasantly surprised with the response.

QR Codes are a Japanese invention and once you hear what it is you will probably let out a “of course” like I did when I first grasped its concept. Under my previous employer I got to do a lot of work with bar codes. The basic idea behind bar codes is to get computers to be able to read print without sophisticated optical character recognition (OCR) software. It’s also far less prone to error.

So, when you’ve got a guy at a terminal who needs to input thirty-five digit alphnumeric codes off of labels into a computer with five nines of accuracy, bar codes make life a lot easier for everyone involved. When they were first created, lasers (pew pew) were used to scan a strip of vertical black lines of varying width which would carry the encoded information.

It’s a great system, except you need a lot of infrastructure to get it to be practical. Enter QR Codes. The world now has a great deal more underutilized infrastructure, among which we could easily count the fact that you now have to specify it if you want your cell phone to come without a camera (usually for security purposes, see AT&T Wireless 8900). When was the last time you heard someone say, “Oh, I wish my phone had a camera.” Right?

So, boys and girls, what is one of the coolest things we can do with all these handheld camera computers everyone carries with them everywhere they go? Turn them into barcode readers of course!

I discovered i-nigma.com on Friday when I was trolling for the answer to a FixYa! problem I was trying to answer. I’ll have to write about FixYa! in another post. The FixYa! problem deal with installing a piece of software on a Windows Mobile handset. I googled to freewarepocketpc.net, a great site with a great self-descriptive domain name. I found the software I was looking for and when I went to the download page, I found a QR Code there. The caption for the image said something like, “don’t recognize this image?”

Intrigued I looked into it and found i-nigma, a company making mobile QR Code reader apps. They also have a little QR Code generator that will make you a QR Code with your contact information, a URL, SMS, or encoded message. Basically, the QR Code will have data and meta-data encoded on it, like a subject and a verb. i-nigma will let you encode some data and then assign a type to that data. Like, “send a text message.” So when I use the mobile app on my phone to scan a QR Code, it pops the data and a button with an action, like “Call Tom.”

I haven’t been this excited about a tech for a while. I know what I’m doing at lunch today!

So I’m throwing my weight behind this format and I’m going to try it on a larger scale. Now I just need to find a good adhesive paper for my printer so I can make some stickers…

AT&T USBConnect Mercury from Sierra Wireless “Error 668: The connection was terminated.”

Straight out of the box, the AT&T USBConnect Mercury manufactured by Sierra Wireless left a little to be desired. So did the technical support AT&T was willing to provide me.

“Don’t worry about me, AT&T Wireless. I’ll figure this out on my own. Thanks, though!”

BACKGROUND
All in all, it’s a neat little package and I really have to commend the Sierra Wireless guys for a great piece of engineering and design. Leave it to the %#*&! carrier to rebrand it and ruin it with their provisioning.

The device is a little USB dongle that is part *supposedly* read-only flash memory and part cellular data connection. All powered off the USB port, as it should be, with the driver and application software (AT&T Communication Manager) installer on the read-only flash memory. Pretty nifty idea, as usually worry about taking a data card with me and not having driver software to use it. This solves that problem. Now if they’d just put the OS X software on there too. When will we learn?

So, I’d installed one of these on a Mac a few months ago and, surprise surprise, this Windows install proved to be a lot trickier. No, seriously, I was surprised. I remember it wasn’t that long ago that one had to hack the OS X kernel to get a Verizon Wireless card to work on a Mac. I’d be speaking from person experience if the binding EULA didn’t prohibit taking such actions. 😉

Now, after the install, I rebooted and ran the cute little “AT&T Communication Manager.” I got four out of five bars and decided to try clicking on the inviting little button that said “Connect” only to be greeted with a nasty little Windows dialog box informing that “Error 668: The connection was terminated.”

I googled all over for a good solution, and, although I got a lot of good pointers that fleshed out almost the exact nature of the problem, I still had no solution. I don’t usually spend too much time with tech support, unless I’m desperate. I gave them 60 minutes on the phone at which point I decided I’d be better off continuing to work on the problem myself.

A lot of the posts I’d read pointed me back to Sierra Wireless to get their version of the software. I’m usually a big fan of using OEM software over third party ports, so I gave it a shot. Sure enough the installer threw about fifty new drivers in, along with a new connection interface application called, “3G Watcher.”

Unfortunately, I still had no joy with the new app. I felt like I was getting the same error message with different verbiage. The app threw the “Disconnected from ” “Invalid profile” message at me.

Then I remembered the hack I had to try on my Tilt to get Dutty’s ROM to let me run Slingplayer Mobile. It was really simple and just involved making on little tiny change.

SOLUTION
So if you find yourself getting the “668 terminated” message, the solution is really simple. You aren’t supposed to do this, but you just need to make one little change to the profile. Just change the “Access Point Name (APN)” value from “ISP.CINGULAR” to “WAP.CINGULAR” and you should be good to go.

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New Dark Future From Frank Miller?

One good thing about entering an economic downturn: a new dystopic classic from Frank Miller is undoubtedly around the corner. Miller has created three titles set in separate dystopic futures: Ronin, Hard Boiled, and Give Me Liberty.

I recently spent some time re-reading some of my favorite Frank Miller works. These are some of my favorite favorites. I don’t know where he gets this stuff from, but it makes me smile inside when I see something on CNN that looks something he made fifteen years ago.

I recently learned that Miller frequently has his characters attacked in the groin area.

Some dark futures, although fantastic, exceed their believability. The Mad Max world is just unrecognizable from our own. The same goes for most post-WMD apocalypses, be they germ/zombie- or nuclear-oriented. Most films just generally fall flat in this department, lacking either credibility (“Where did all that sand come from?”), story (See Planet of the Apes), or both (See Class of 1999).

Miller’s worlds are believably scary. Take Ronin for example. Set in the midst of a global economic depression that has spanned much of the 21st century. All you see of the world in Ronin (1983) is small parts of what is left of midtown Manhattan; this world has devolved to exhibit little difference from thirteenth century Japan. If anything, this world is more savage. Again, maybe it is the medium, but I believe the tones of these stories challenge the vocabulary of the screen.

In Give Me Liberty (1990), Miller depicts a less fantastic world, set much closer to the present. He shows us a close-up view of a Chicago housing project though the eyes of a young woman named Martha Washington. To call this existence grim is to understate the obvious. Washington has to dress like a boy to avoid getting raped on the way to school.

Needless to say, Miller wrote this story after he left DC.

Like the world of The Watchmen, in Give Me Liberty Congress has repealed the 22nd Amendment, allowing the President of the United States to continue to be re-elected after two full four-year terms. Our armed forces are engaged in conflicts across the globe. Corporate greed and the avarice of the ruling class are destroying the nation.

It may be coincidence, but it is on the on the heels of periods of economic hardship like the one we are in now that Miller has created his darkest worlds.

Why It’s So Hard to Make a Blockbuster Based on The Punisher

Punisher: War Zone may get it right. We’ll see. I discarded my collection of War Zone issues (I had two copies of Volume I Issue 1) about four years ago. It was a way cool series in the late eighties – early nineties. Especially the Wolverine crossover that was set in Africa. Those were what first got me really into Jim Lee as an illustrator. That, and Uncanny X-Men #248. Whoo-weee. That was some mighty pencilling.

But, I digress.

The Punisher is Marvel’s answer to Batman, if for no other reason than he is a comic book hero of the urban-superpowerless-metalegal vigilante who’s family was killed by criminals and has lots of cool gadgets. He is unique to the Marvel Universe for other reasons. He is generally considered by the mainstream heroes to be a criminal. He was originally introduced as a foe for Spider-Man to thwart. The cover of that issue depicts an Oswald-esque Punisher on a rooftop taking aim through the scope of a sniper rifle. In fact, he doesn’t really fit any of the criteria of a super-hero. He’s basically a criminally insane sociopath who’s super power is his passive-aggressive grief.

The Punisher character is more like a cinematic action hero who has been ported over to the comic book medium. No wonder it’s so hard to get the character and his story back into movie form. They’re already on loan from the film industry. He’s a Martin Riggs / John Matrix / Parker Barnes . But waaaayyyyy out there.

This isn’t the hero who ties up the bad guys and calls the cops to tell them where they are. When The Punisher bests the mob boss, he doesn’t cuff him and call the cops; he ties him up in sausage links and feeds him to his own guard dogs.