Tech Talk at ShieldsGroup

Recently I was using PocketCasts, the best podcatcher I’ve been able to find for the Android OS, to listen to podcasts when I realized it was behaving erratically when it came to downloading podcasts. Some podcasts downloaded automatically. Others did not.

To set things up, the procedure I had followed went like this.

1. I searched for the podcast.
2. I clicked subscribe.
3. I looked at the list of episodes and selected the second-newest (to auto-download two episodes).
4. I clicked the plus sign to add it to a previously created playlist (one set to download automatically)
5. I waited.Hours, days, weeks later…. I still had to download the podcasts manually.

Although this is the correct method, some podcasts were automatically downloading and others were not. To further confuse the matter, the manually downloaded podcasts were not on the assigned playlist.

I finally contacted their technical support via email — a lengthy ordeal if you’re opposite Australia, globally speaking.

First, their tech asked me to check my global settings. They were as follows:

1. Refresh on app open check
2. Check for new episodes EVERY HOUR check
3. When on Cellular / Mobile Network: Warn when not on WiFi check

She said that was good.

Then she asked me to check if I had “Only when Charging” selected? It was not checked, so she said that was fine.

Then she suggested that my playlists (including the default ones) might be competing with each other. I checked to be make certain all playlists have the same settings.

As it turns out, the playlists I created were all the same, but the ones that come with PocketCasts (unplayed, audio, video, and downloaded) did not have Auto Download or Only On WiFi checked.

I checked those boxes in those four playlists and it immediately started downloading.

Solved!

LATER: It would seem that this setting is not saved in the PocketCasts setting backup. When I had a different issue and uninstalled / reinstalled, I had to go back in and do this again.

The good Amish men who reshingled my roof weren’t too sure about what to do with my DishNetwork dishes, so they just fastened them down pointed in the general direction.

As you might guess, they ALMOST got it right.

It occurred to me that there might be an app for the Droid that would help me aim my dish. Sure enough, there are several. The one I installed is called Satellite Director by Zekitez.

The instructions are right in the app and it lets you look at the dish (through the camera) while you’re aligning your phone.

You’ll note that the alignment is just a little off in the screencapture here. The reason is because when I lined it up perfectly, I had partial signal loss. I attribute this to my phone being a bit off.

The hardest part was finding which satellites my dish wanted to see. Turns out that I needed to adjust my second dish (the one DishNetwork installed when they upgraded me to HD) to the 128.87W CIEL-2 satellite.

I think, but I am not sure, that the other dish needed to point to the 118.85W ECHOSTAR 7 | 14. Since it was working, I didn’t play with it.

Satellite Director did a great job for me. And so did the Droid!

I love Google’s “Instant Upload,” but suddenly it stopped working last month

After poking around the web, I found a suggestion that you login to Picasa and then it will work.  Yeah, right — how can that fix it?

I don’t know, but it did.

I fixed Google+ Instant Upload simply by logging into Picasa on my desktop.