How to add times (HH:mm) or (HH:mm:ss) in a regular calculator

Ever so often, I have been wanting to add times in a regular calculator. Thanks to a friend of mine (ISP), and some improvisation, here's the technique.

In case of adding two times, lets say, 1:36 and 2:40 - replace the ":" with a 0 in the calculator and add the times. This will give you 1036+2040=3076. Now, resolve by replacing the middle 0 with ":". In case this yields in a minutes figure of more than 60 (which is the case here), add 940 until you get an acceptable figure in the minutes/seconds figure. So 3076+940=4016. Your answer is 4:16.

In case of subtraction, you will need to keep subtracting 940 from the answer till you get an acceptable value.

Hope this helps.

AC2736 on OSX 10.6.8

Not much has been said about this online. If you were one to be fooled by Reliance saying the ZTE AC2736 Netconnect+ will work with your Mac, then welcome here. Last supported operating system was OSX 10.6.6, and any upgrades to that weren't supported. They don't plan to either because now OSX Lion is out.

Solution: Use the AC2737 drivers available on their site. Works decently, yet to test it out in low coverage areas, once that is done, will report here.

iPhone SMS Delivery Reports

One *feature* I miss on the iPhone as compared to virtually any other phone is the SMS delivery reports. I find this a very useful feature whenever I send an SMS.

However, if you have already jailbr0ken your iPhone, then you can use this method, and I must say, it works quite well. I am going to list it down again in any case, you never know when a webpage goes unavailable.

1. Open Cydia>Manage>Sources>Edit>Add, and add

   http://iphonedelivery.advinux.fr/cydia

2. After it is done verifying the URL, you can click on the source and look for iPhoneDelivery and install it. It will ask for a reboot of the phone once installed.
   
3. Once rebooted, go over to Settings>Messages and you should be able to see the option to enable Delivery Reports, and how you want them.

I find this extremely useful and would like to thank the user who posted this. Did I mention that this works across carriers, unlike many others which have a list of supported carriers.

Please leave a comment if this helped you.

Google Contacts on Nokia E71

It is obviously not a good idea anymore to store your contacts or your email on your portable device. Always better to have it on the cloud and "Sync" as you go. The *Apple* bug has bitten us all.

If you have an E71, and you want to sync your contacts with Google Contacts (I recommend GMail Contacts at this time simple because they have easily compatible export options, in case you want to back-up locally)

Take a look at this tutorial from Google and follow.

In case you run into an error (like I did), follow this discussion, it might help.

Good Luck!

Compress PDF files on your Mac

I was looking through ways to compress scanned PDF files on Preview (Mac OSX 10.6.8 at the time of writing), and wanted something better than the in-built quartz filters which output a really small file with poor image quality.

Stumbled across this post by Jerome Colas on the Apple forums, and thanks to the instructions there, now I can have more control over my scanned PDFs before emailing them.

Of course, this still doesn't beat Distiller and the like.

Far far away

In a far away land, lived a poor man. He was happy. He couldn't ask for more, beautiful hills, his cattle, his little cottage by the river, the most beautiful shades of green, orange, yellow and purple for him to see every morning. He never knew what poverty was, and he didn't have much money. He did not know the use for money, so he never bothered making it. He had a beautiful wife and they did everything together. Climbed up the hills, threw stones into the river, cooked great food and made fantastic coffee. They only ever needed money for the things they couldn't make or grow.

He didn't know what 'career' meant. He didn't have one, but he was doing just fine. He wasn't contributing to the society either. He never sold his 'produce', hell, he didn't even know it was called that.

Desperately need some positive thoughts flowing in to stay afloat. I wish I could visit this couple sometime. I am surely running out of them, and my mind needs to flex its power more to keep them coming in. The future stresses me out, but I should look forward to it as eagerly as I have always been.