Microsoft Ch 9 - A super small file server

Channel 9 on Microsoft MSDN has a cute Video about building a WinCE 5.0 NAS device. It uses a ICOP eBox-II which is about US$180 - and looks REALLY cute. All the advantages of an embedded windows box - but without the power consumption and the like.

A lot of the details are on the video - a real developers box. Uses a laptop HDD, but I imagine that a larger HDD would not be too hard either. The image is about 2.7 MBytes, and is really configurable. The device has audio, ethernet, serial, video and paralell. It has a Windows CE Remote Management interfaces using HTTP.

Holy Magnesium... Up goes the computer

Burning a NeXT Cube

This land is your land...

There is a good piece of satire on the Shockwave Web Site to the tune of THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND. It compares George Dubya with John Kerry - and has them insulting each other. It is a good laugh.

Dell Order Stuff Up

Ok... So the Dell computer arrived yesterday. When I ordered it, it came with a free Dell printer. Like, can I rather get a reduction in price or something? No. It comes with a free printer. Something that is not as useful as it sounds.

So I get the order yesterday, and the Picking Slip listed it. Something I saw yesterday but I did not take much notice of. So I ring up Dell. Oops. It was included on the same order. BUT, and this is a big BUT, DELL does not ship printers from Malaysia. It ships them from an Australia Post warehouse in Sydney. And they needed to create a seperate order but did not. So they are woking on this now.

Some questions come to mind. Firstly what use is a Picking Slip if they do not actually use it. And there are some stupid things on it like 'No Floppy Drive' and 'Free Delivery'. Next, why isnt their system automated to detect this sort of thing, and make the whole thing work automatically.

Microsoft Office Update

If you visit the Microsoft Office Update WebSite at the moment you fill find the Service Pack 1 for Office 2003. Unfortunately it does not even install on my PC. ARGH.

Dell Delivery Toy

Ok. The Dell FINALLY arrived today. Bit surprised with hit arriving at about 2:30 PM. The delivery guy was not expecting anyone to be home, and was even more surprised when it was me who was home since I was the one the computer was for. Very Rare.

Took a while to get all the rubbish off. Things like Works 2003, all the AOL junk, Ozemail stuff. You get the picture. Dell put a lot of horrible things on their computers. Makes me almost tempted to reformat the HDD of an otherwise new computer.

Next to my normal computer it is a bit bright - but that is probably becauase I have dulled down the brightness of my laptop. Overall I am impressed with the computer. Seems reasonably fast too.

Some functions are useless, such as rotating the screen 90 degress. Great for a tablet. Not Good for a laptop. Well not in my experience anyway.

EtherPEG

Wow... I knew that wireless networks were insecure. But this is amazing. I found this tool called EtherPEG that actually listens for images on a wireless network, and shows you what they are.

How did I find this - well, there was a link to the USA Democratic Party Convention on Boston

DHTML Lemmings� by crisp - Menu

I dont beliebe it...Someone has written Lemmings in Javascript

Dell Order Tracking

I have needed to order a new computer from Dell for one of my associated businesses. The Dell Tracking seems not to get better every year. They used to offer an email tracking notification system. Now they dont even do that.

According the the
Dell Order Tracking Web Site, Bax Global now have the Laptop in Sydney. It arrived in Sydney on Saturday. If this was FedEx I would have receieved the parcel today. Given that today is Monday, and that this is BAXglobal, I would expect to receieve the parcel sometime either this week or next week.

FedEx have people who work weekends. BAX have people who normally work weekdays from what I have seen. The Parcel cleared customs yesterday - Sunday. So I would guess that they are going to un-bundle the box from the pallet today, after it has been delivered to the BAXglobal office. And then they will do some accounting, and then decide to hand the parcel onto another courier company. I doubt that the pickup would be today, but probably tomorrow, for delivery on Wednesday.

Do out sound as if I have gone through this before. Well, yes. I have. So have friends. With items other than computers too.

Welcome to the world of cost cutting and cheap quotes

UI-View - Roger Barker G4IDE

Some concerning news. There was a message on a mailing list from New Zealand first thing this morning concerning the author of UI-View and WinPack. The message asked for the opinion of people about the idea of changing the registration requirements for the programs since Roger has cancer.

Looking further I found the following...

Hi All,
One thing we have all commented on over the years is the excellent
support Roger has given to the UI-View and WinPack lists.

I suggest we should now show him our support during his present
difficulties by sending him a get well card. It would mean a lot to him.

The address is:-

Roger Barker
Ward 8a
The Pilgrim Hospital
Boston
Lincolnshire
PE21 9QS
England

Have an enjoyable weekend.

73,
Ken

Now, this is the least likely thing that I expected to read today. And it really does put the entire APRS community in a bad situation. UI-View is the result of a *LOT* of work by Roger.

Roger has added features for me for use in my commercial work. All he has wanted in return was for me to register a couple of extra copies of the software. This is amazing, and unique. He is the very epitomy of Ham Radio. Tirelessly working for the hobby.

It is with regret that I have had to offer that TAPR in some way look after the software. It is not something that TAPR really needs to do, or wants to do. But it is something that I think it needs to do.

Roger is lucky that his wife is supporting him, as well as friends like Ken who wrote the message above.

Coke Can GPS X-Ray

According to a story on SlashDot, there are some concerns with the Soda Can GPS tracker that is being used as a marketing tool for Coke in the USA. there are a lot of interesting things that this PDF tells us. Click on the image and find out...

Many many things

Update on Lookout Searching for Outlook

Microsoft have re-released Lookout for Outlook. Unless you knew it was there you would not find it. Argh.

Windows XP SP2 RC1

Install with care. CRN, a part of CMP who purchased byte many moons back, note that there are many problems installing RC1 of the XP service pack. OOps.

Microsoft to require SPF to Stop Spam

According to InfoWorld, Microsoft are going to start requiring SPF by October 1. The revolution has begun. A site to assist can be found on POBox.COM. Not sure yet how this affects dial-up users.

802.11 Antennas - Mix and Match Antennas

Mix-and-Match 802.11 antennas, at least under the FCC juristiction have been illegal. Until now according to WiFiNetNews

GROKLAW - On Standards

The LawBlog of GROKLAW has a good look at the law relating to standards. Specifically it looks at the SCO assertation that it owns something about the ELF format used by Linux along with other POSIX systems.

This is of interest since standards may be copyrightable, but the information inside them is not. Subtle point, but copyright only ever covers the expression of an idea, and not the idea itself. Patents are used for that reason.

Music in my Car: More of REM

Mostly impressed with DELL...

I am mostly impressed with DELL. Two days ago I ordered a computer online. For some reason they need to ring me to confirm things - which they did yesterday. Fine. I thought that this would cause a delay in getting the computer. Anyway I logged on to the DELL Web Site today to check shipping, and it told me that the computer had passed all the stages within Dell. There is less data available than the last time I ordered I think.

In fact the unit has been shipped. I suspect that means it shipped last night some time. The data is not on the BaxGlobal Web Site yet - I dont know who to blame for this - BAX or DELL. I suspect that BAX was chosen on the basis of cost. Need I say more.

PCB

At great expense I got the attached PCB made by one of the local PCB suppliers. According to Sydney Folk Lore, PCB's are an Australian Invention. Little confirmation of this is available.



The board has all of five capacitors, an IC, some resistors, a couple of LED's and a couple of connectors. Rather a simple design, but it works well. AceTronics did a really good job with it.

I should say that the free Gold Plating was a nice touch... I really should thank Kevin here for the work he did on the PCB. Great work.

Eyes

I got my eyes tested today. They are basically the same as they were last, which basically means that I need to just rest my eyes and the eyestrain will get better. It is getting better all the time, but it goes up and down.

The optometrist suggested that a Closed Circuit TV may not be the best idea since it does not give sterioscopic vision. A clasic magnifier is probably better.

Google Me

Google Circa 1960

Google for Hackers

The Daily Blog

Other Languages

I can only speak in English. Some people even dispute that. So today one of my Jobs was to do some work in New Caledonia. French New Caledonia. This was via VNC, so i was not actually there. Just on the phone, using VNC.

And one of the items was using software that I had written. And it was rather strange. The software was all in french. All of it. I found this rather strange. Not that I wanted it in english, but I have not needed to use it in other languages before. I did get someone to translate the software for me so it was not unexpected, but it was strange anyway

FedEx

Sometimes I love FedEx. I needed to ship a parcel to Israel for repair. Fine. I lodge it all online. Done. Then FedEx arrive at my door a couple of hours later. So I hand the parcel to the driver. Then he says he has a parcel for me too. It is rare that I get a parcel from FedEx. Maybe once every couple of months. So he has this parcel for me. Even better he reminds me that I really should get the supplier (Microsoft) to use the street address rather than the POBox, since if he is sick or on holidays he would not remember where I lived. This is someone who would only get to see the POBox address every 6 months or so, and he remembers it. I am impressed.

Acetronics

I needed to pick up some PCB's today. They did a really nice job. I should admit that the gold plating on the solder pads was a really nice touch. Looks really colour coordinated. Now I just need to build some up for testing. Oh. One other point. DB15 Right angle plugs are not available anywhere. It is a problem when Farnell does not have them. So I used a Socket on the board. And use a DB15 Gender Bender. Would you believe that DB15 Gender Benders are missing pin 9. Strange. Criminal.

Lookout - Gone...

According to Joel on Software, Lookout has removed their software from their Web Site. This is a horrible thing to say since I am loving their outlook tool. Since the story broke a few days back, everyone it seems has been linking to their software. But things get a bit icky when you look below the surface. You see, aparently the software uses the Apache Lucene.NET Full Text Retrieval Engine. which is written in Java.

OOps. That means that microsoft cannot sell that part of it. I dont think there are any issues that are really big actually selling it as Lookout used to actually sell it. But this is embarrasing, since Apache is the mortal enemy of Microsoft with the IIS Web Server.

Joel has suggested that this is a grab for the people working on the project to assist with the MSN search engine. The real question is why? Why would microsoft go buy a company just for that when there are lots of people with more experience. Or are there? Since white slavery is illegal, even in Redmond, there must be some inducments for the key players to stay with the company.

None of that solves the problem of course of the lack of download of Lookout. That we can fix here. You can download it from us at Radioactive Networks for non-commercial use on the basis that the product is not available at the moment.

With any luck it will soon be back ready for downloads.

GPRS

New Caledonia finally has GPRS, at least for testing. This has only taken a month or two longer than it is supposed to. Right now apparently the plans are 'All you can eat' rather than charging by the byte. And it is Firewalled. YUK.
 
 

DSE annoys me

OK. Saturday I went to Dick Smith Eletronics (DSE) to buy a set of verniers. Sure, they had some, at $40 instead of $10 as advertised in Silicom Chip magazine. A copy of the advert is in the graphic.

 
OK. I must had got things mixed up. So this time I take the magazine advert down to Dick Smith. This time the person goes to see the manager about the price difference. After many minutes, he comes out telling me there is an error with the Ad, and that there is an apology at the front of the store.
 
I ask to see the manager. I see him and we do not agree with things of course. He cannot even give me a discount on the items. So lame. Time to check what the Trade Practices Act says.
 

Update

 
I decided to look at what the law said. On the Fair Trading Web Site, there was a link to the Fair Trading Act 1987. Section 51 is rather intersting. It states...
 
A person who has, in trade or commerce, advertised goods or services for supply at a specified price shall offer the goods or services for supply at that price for a period that is, and in quantities that are, reasonable having regard to the nature of the market in which the person carries on business and the nature of the advertisement.
 
The only exceptions are when a supplier offers to supply at the same price the items later, or a similar product at the same price. So I rang DSE to complain. We will see how things go when they ring back.

Sensis

I have contacted Sensis once more. Same story as before. They wanted to take my details. Told them no, I wanted to speak to someone. This time the person was helpful and found that the person was not in right then. Promised to chase things up. Let us just see. The phone number for Sensis is 1800 819 471 since it is not on their Web Site. Heard back from them finally. Their charges are high, but the capability is there.
 

Getting sense out of Sensis

I hate dealing with Sensis. I have just contacted them a third time wanting to use one of their products for my business. I know that they offer the product. What I hate is being told when I ring up is that they do not offer it. Then when I tell them that it that they do they check. They take my phone number for a third time, and tell me that they are going to pass it onto the team responsible, and that team will decide if they will let me buy their service.

I wonder what the Trade Practices Act would say about that. It seems to me that Sensis have got the worst part of Telstra in it, with the worst part of other organizations.

Unable to build project output group 'Content Files from SOMEWEB (Active)'

I have been working on one of my projects in VB. Working on getting the application running as an install process. When I started trying to compile, I started getting the following error:-
Unable to build project output group 'Content Files from SOMEWEB (Active)'

Doing a search on the Web I found a page that helps. It is on Artima, and tells me that this is Microsoft's way of telling me that it cannot find some sort of content file. The solution is simple once you know. All you need to do is to turn on 'Show All Files' and open every folder until you find one with the Yellow Yield Icon. This subtle tip is telling you that this file doesn't exist on disk, but it does exist in the Project. Right-Click on it and Exclude From Project.

When the MSI Installer builder can't find a file marked as Content, it borks.

Microsoft Global Briefing

Have a look at this Microsoft Site.. There is a cute foto there of the backstage area. There is a lot in the photo if you look carefully. Nothing I suspect is Microsoft Confidential, but anyway.

Note that I am not a Microsoft person, and did not visit MGB in Atlanta, and I have never been to one. But I have been to one for another similarly sized high-tech company a few years back. Being under NDA, and being before the tech-crash, I was not game to take any photos back stage, and only took very limited photos of the stage, and not when many people were there. I saw and heard some things that I was not meant to see and hear, but that is what NDA's are for.

1. On the scaffolding on the top right are high-performance video projectors, two of them. They are paralelled to get the light output, and are back projected. Just behind those two in the photo there are another couple. This is so that they can have two images of the same thing on each side of the stage.

2. On the left of the photo on the tables there are another three sets of paralelled video projectors. Same reason as above. These are likely at stage level and are to provide backdrops behind presenters.

3. Not shown, but it is likely that Picture in Picture is being used for some of the video projectors. Here they project a black square with the main big projector, and then project a higher res smaller image into the black area.

4. Video production is fairly easy to see. That is where all the monitors are. There will also be an audio console nearby.

5. I would guess that the production budget would be somewhere arroung US$5-10m.

6. The area is a 25-30,000 capacity arena - one of the dome style ones. Then they have curtained off about 10,000 of the seats, and put the production back behind that.

Pretty Icon Maker Products

Short advert here for a product that I am evaluating at the moment. It is Pretty Icon Maker and is one of the few shareware programs that allows us users to actually do cute things such as import a BMP file and make it into an Icon. I got a graphic artist to do some design work for me for one of my products, and I needed to evaluate a few designs for my use in the product. PretyIconMaker seems to be the best of them.

Uploading the Graphics

OK... My hosting provider for some of my WebSite is PowWeb. They have FrontPage extensions installed. Bits of this is known as WebDav. Basically this allows me to explore the WWW site by using WebDrive or UNC naming. Really cute. The only problem is that FrontPage needs to have its own password on PowWeb, and they do not tell you what your username is. Therefore if you forget your user name, they get you to uninstall and reinstall the extensions. Not a problem, but it could be simpler.

Lookout email search for Microsoft Outlook - Lookout Software

After a few false starts I got Lookout for Outlook running yesterday, and I am fairly impressed. I can see great things for this product, once it gets integrated into the core application of Microsoft Outlook. I can see where Microsoft wants to take this product, and for once I am really happy about them buying a small company.

Lookout is installed easally. You dont even need to close outlook. It finishes reinstalling when you restart outlook. You then need to set up what folders are needed for searching. This is fairly easy, and allows you to search DOC and XLS files as well as TXT and some others. Aparently you can do PDF but I cannot see the results in any of the searches that I have done.

The first few indexing attempts failed. I am not sure why, but it was only on the last folder. I have since broken down the initial indexing into three parts and it worked fairly well. I should point out that I have email going back to 1990 all in outlook so this would have been a lot of work for the software to index. [No, I was not Using outlook back then... I was using MAILX under UNIX on an AMDAHL running UTS].

Searching is fast, but the retrieval of the headers takes a bit longer. A simple of two words took 0.04 seconds, and then the displaying took maybe another second. My thought Also the results display in their own window, not inside Outlook so things can be a pain. AutoPreview could be really good... It would save me from opening up all the messages.

Another thing missing is the ability to right click delete messages... I just found 5 copies of the same spreadsheet with my MP3 collection in it. So now I need to open everyone and delete them in turn.

Overall rating 4.5/5. Future rating, 5/5.

Music: REM: Best Of - even if it is missing a couple of their best songs

Radioactive Networks: Home

#1, Microsoft might have finally caught some intelligence and has purchased LookOut, a company that provides search tools for Outlook. Right now their tools seem to be free, and it would seem that Microsoft are looking at including this as part of the core outlook product.

If I was a betting man, my guess would be that the business plan for the company was to get purchased by Microsoft - one hint is that their Web Site makes a comment like the following for an Email address XXX - need pr address .

#2, Microsoft Training

I got a package yesterday from Microsoft. As an Australian promotion, they offered us developers a book and a CD a few days ago with a delivery of 5-6 weeks. It has been less than 5-6 days. I got the book and the CD. I am happy. Still waiting for my ISV Welcome pack though.

#3 Jaycar battery Club

Remember the old TANDY battery club? Well, jaycar has just added a Battery Club for us people with Trade Cards. It only lasts for 3 months, but it really is something that takes me back. No battery club since I was about 12. Boy, I am getting old.

#4 Surface Mount

I got most of the first of the surface mount boards done today. With some minor things it worked well. I needed to hack a file to record one of the message roms. This involved a text editor changing the path for a file, but I had to remember that the app did not support long file names. Not fun. The other issue was that I needed to fix a weather station device I have been working on. It was returned faulty... The problem was we worked out what it was doing after about 30 minutes... The person had not tested it with an actual weather station, so the device was just saying it was there and not anything else. That was the failure mode we chose if no current data was available. And we forgot... Oh, and we programmed the Power LED as a PTT light... Which caught us too...

#5 Solder Oven

I have priced an oven for my surface mount work - all of $94. A Kambrook somthing 500. It is rated at 1100-1200w. Looks nice. I might pick it up before the end of the month so I get the shareholders discount. Then I might actually build the thing :-)

#6 Lake Technology

I got a letter today from some horrible stockmarket company. They informed me that Dolby had got 90% of the shares in Lake and were going to acquire my shares. Well, thank you. I will make a huge loss on the deal, and I was quite happy to wait until the price went up. The company had the audacity to request that I ring them. Get Lost. They can expend as much money and time forcing the issue. I intend to be one of their last shareholders...

#7 Police

Coming home this evening just after the M5 off-ramp at Ingleburn, I saw a police car with lights on in my rear view mirror. Fine, I was in the right lane and pulled over to the left. Then they flashed their lights, and I pulled over where it was safe. The police pulled next to me, and I put my window over. They then appologised saying that they were after someone else in a car like mine. And then they took off and did a U-Turn at the round-about and went racing back the other way. I have only been requested to pull over by the police twice, apart from an RBT, and they were both at this same spot.

Music: The Corrs. Whatever their new album is.

Couriers Business Processes

One thing that never fails to surprise me is the lack of workflow processes in couriers. They seem to attempt to do the impossible, with stupid things like attempting to deliver parcels to post office boxes. I mean the couriers attempt to deliver the parcels and then after the courier has attempted to deliver the parcel I get a phone call asking for the address.

It would not be so bad if it only happened occasionally. But it happens too often - with small and big companies. FedEx is just one of the companies like this. I would have thought that in their electronic business process they would have a workflow before the parcel arrives where they get the address. Mind you, the FedEx guy remembers where i live so it happens less now.

Another strange thing is with the Microsoft BETA program for the Compact Net Framework beta. You go to their site to request a CD or something, and they want your 25 character product ID. It is written 5-5-5-5-5, but when you go to enter it, you need to enter it 5-3-10-2 or something like that. Notice that I only entered the first 20 characters. The last 5 were not able to be entered.

Strange Web Site Request

In my business I get all strange requests. This is more strange than normal.

This is an unusual request. Searching the Internet I discovered your web site. Your business seems to have the experience to perhaps answer this very unusual daunting question. Are there GPS tracking devices small enough to be placed inside of a piece of jewelry such as ring worn on a finger? Implanted under the skin? It should have to have the ability to be tracked via the Internet, or to record data as to it's movements & time that could be downloaded later?

This very small device would be applied for a very unusual but perhaps important scientific experiment. I am a member of xxxxxx, a UFO organization. For many years there have been all over the world claims by individuals of being abducted aboard UFO's. The problem has been acquiring hard scientific evidence to support these extraordinary claims. So far only hypnosis by trained specialists to retrieve blocked memories have been possible. These abductees or 'experiancers' as they are often referred to, claim 'missing time' while they have been abducted. Some abductees have had many repeated 'experiances'.

Is there a GPS tracking device available or soon to be available in development, that could be implanted into the bodies of people to track their movements or lack of movement during their 'missing time' experiences? Is their a tiny implant recording device that might be undetectable that could record GPS tracking movements and time to be downloaded later for research? They have GPS tracking devices for children, is there something that could be developed for tracking UFO abductees?

Kind Regards,

Top Secret Microsoft Job...

Job Details - Microsoft Careers: "Why settle for working on an established product that everyone knows about when you can work on a top secret project that has not yet been announced. You can enjoy saying phrases like 'I could tell you, but I would have to ... you' and 'Hey, you can't tell anyone what I do'. The project for which this job relates is one of them. Core requirements for a development position on this team are ability to work in a high paced environment as a contributing developer, very strong C++ design, analysis, coding, and debugging, strong communication and ability to work with other team members and groups, excellence in engineering, knowledge of Unix and/or Linux system-level functionality (threading, signal handling, memory management, for example), familiarity with server technologies such as Apache, IIS, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, web-services, and determination to make our platform the best in the world. Also required are a Bachelor's or Master's Degree in Computer Science or related discipline and a minimum of 4 years industry experience. Experience with and assembly level debugging skills on Power and SPARC processors are definitely a plus. Psst, hey buddy, want to work on something cool and top secret?"

Microsoft Project (or FrontPage) Can't Load Speech Recognition Files...

There is an entry in the Microsoft Knowledge Base about 827388 - You Receive a "Microsoft FrontPage Can't Load Speech Recognition Files..." Message When You Start FrontPage. The solution to this is to Just Say No.

Like many things, just saying no does not always work too well. In this case the message comes up after *EVERY* dialog box. Annoying.

The correct way to fix things. Go into Microsoft Office under Add/Remove Programs. Then UPDATE the install. Do a custom modification, and look at Shared Tools. Then Alternate Input Devices. And then select Voice Recognition, and give it a big cross. Then say OK. This will fix it.

Travel in September

I dont think I have mentioned this before but I am planning a small trip in September. Depending on work I will be planning to go arround the world. Possible destinations include

• New Caledonia
  
• Tahiti
  
• Los Angeles
  
• Des Moines - for the TAPR DCC Conference
  
• Washington DC
  
• London - Museums
  
• Paris - Moulin Rouge, The Louve, Eifle Tower
  
• Italy - Rome; and maybe a tour up to Venice
  
• Hong Kong or Singapore
  

This would be a big trip, but it would be fun. I would get to meet some clients. I am still working out where and when. More details later. My schedule is open so right now I can add things... But I really need to firm up the dates soon.

Industrial Web Tablet

Waterproof, drop resistant, cheap. What more could I ask, apart from a sample :-)

Linux.com | Mondo Rescue LiveCD backup: a nugget of gold

I just found a cute article on LINUX.Com with the title Mondo Rescue LiveCD backup: a nugget of gold. As far as I can tell, this is something like Ghost for Linux. Looks a bit more powerful than Ghost actualy. As soon as I rebuild my Linux box with SUSE, this is definitely being installed on it.

It might actually become a Backup Stratergy.

VB @ The Movies

I already knew about this... But... Microsoft has comissioned 101 short movies about VB. You can download them from the Visual Basic: Download the Movies Web Site.

There are some things missing, like script/code links. That would help. I have found myself having to copy code from the paused movie so that I can work out what is happening...

The Microsoft ISV Show

OK... For some reason I seem to be pulled into the microsoft world more and more. They seem to be providing me with the sort of support that I need as a developer. But finding out about things is not easy. I think I really need to subcribe to the MSDN magazine - but I am not really sure that it will help.

The latest thing that I have found is The Microsoft ISV Show. The efficacy of these presentations vary with the subject being spoken about. They seem to be slanted towards the larger companies looking at venture capital. ISV does not stand for Independant Software Vendor in the ISV Show. It stands for Innovation, Startups and Venture Capital.

We will see...

Eyestrain - 0603 and 0805 parts

I have been doing some surface mount work for a friend. For those that have not seen SMD parts, open up any modern piece of machinery. Look at the circuit board, and find the smallest parts on the circuit board. Those are the things that I have been soldering by hand. Right now I am rather tired from working on them last night. I think I gave myself eyestrain.

Some of the parts are shown on this site about0603, 0606, & 0805 Profile Surface Mount SurfLED� LEDs. Common parts are 0603. That is 0.06" x 0.03". This is TOO small. The latest issue of Circuit Cellar as an article on building a solder oven for under $1. Looks like a wise investment.

Overengineered Devices

I got a return on a mobile data terminal from a client that I have lent the unit to. He hooked up an external modem backwards. I mean the power backwards. I have opened up the unit and found some blown fusable links. So far I found about 30 or more. That really is just a guess. Not sure how many really - Just a lot.

The equipment now needs to be returned to Israel for repair. Oops.

Micorsoft is adopting me...

I love SharpReader, the RSS Reader. It allows me to keep up to date with a whole lot of stuff. And do it fairly effectively. Imagine my surprise when I see a strange new article on CNET, a news source that I normally only look at if it is a link of SlashDot.Org. Anyway there are an item there about new Microsoft ISV offerings. One of them was a new license structure for including microsoft products with my products. Ho, Hum.

The next was a program by microsoft to adopt one of us poor ISV's. Now, this is amazing. A large company like Microsoft caring about me. Yeah. Sure. And Bill Gates is inviting me for sunday lunch. Sure enough... So I went to MSDN and registered. I was not expecting much. And a few minutes later came back an email saying that a person in microsoft (who I will not name at the moment, but who does Blog) has chosen me as an adoptee.

Sure, then I needed to provide some more details, but it is a start. I am impressed. I have yet to hear from this person in real life, but I would not expect anything but good things now that I have got this far. The reports are that there are so far 800 people who are prepared to be buddies in Microsoft already. Cool. Although I suspect that the demand will out-strip the supply

MSDE Plus: Cool MSDE tool from the backwaters of the Internet

Back in 1994 I guess it was I used to access email through an ISP called Zeta. They were small, and charged by the hour I believe. I cannot even remember if they had full-time internet. I am not sure that they did. They used to have dialin access to UTS to get USENET news, and I loved this. Thinking back it may have even been 1993. Sure takes me back :-)

Anyway I have kept looking for tools for MSDE. EVERYTHING on the market has been lacking. The MSDE.BIZ tool is slightly buggy, and lacking ability to add permissions to database objects. This is sort of essential in my view. So I keep looking.

And I have just found a cute tool on my old ISP - Zeta. One of their older members sells a tool that looks better than the other ones on the market. Sure, it is on one of those domains that has the tilde which is quite unfashionable these days, but it works, and seems to work well. There are a few small UI issues here and there that I do not like - like the fact that you have to click cancel after you have finished a backup to exit the backup area, but I would probably program it the same way.

So, where can you get this tool? http://www.zeta.org.au/~extrasql/

Be your own teddy Bear

From The Sells Spout

Be Your Own Teddy Bear
Wed, 10/17/01

According to legend, the TA office next to the Stanford computer science lab is guarded by a teddy bear. Before a student is allowed to consume valuable time asking a question of the TA, they must first explain it to the teddy bear. Apparently the bear is able to answer 80% of the questions that students ask, saving time for the TAs to play Unreal Tournament.

I often feel like I act as the teddy bear for the COM community. I get several email messages a day from folks that consider the mailings lists (resources set up to answer just these kinds of questions) to be too slow, so they ask me directly. If I don't know the answer off of the top of my head, I often respond with the following phrase:

"Can you send me a tiny, tiny project that reproduces the problem? --Chris"

This, of course, implies that I will actually build and debug the project. And 20% of the time, I do. The other 80% of the time, by the time folks have reduced the problem enough to demonstrate it for me, they've already solved it, saving me the time (thank goodness).

Knowing that this is the case, I recommend that you become your own teddy bear. A whiteboard is handy for explaining the problem to yourself and Microsoft development tools are now so handy that you can typically whip out a small reproduction project very quickly. These very activities will often solve the problem, but even if they don't, you've got a concise description of the problem and a small repro case to send to your friends or to post to the list.

netAPRS

People

I have just uploaded a new copy of netAPRS. Because of the nature of the changes I believe that you will all need to download the full install. I have added some GPS features. They are not fully debugged, but are getting there.

Changes in this relase

1. Basic beaconing. VERY basic. And it only allows the use of AGWPE.
   
2. Loading GPS positions and displaying them on a display with satellite constellation shown. This is the reason that you need the full install.
   
3. New menu to find a map at the current location. [Coming later will be a function to find the best map in Ozi] [Sorry Brian, finding a location in Ozi is not something that I can do at the moment]
   
4. Implemented Compressed packets.
   

There are also numerous other changes. The software can be downloaded from
http://www.radio-active.net.au/web/tracking/netaprs.html

Other things... Blogs

I am now running a BLOG. This is sort of an on-line diary. You can read it by looking at www.radio-active.net.au\blog\ - but I normally use a program such as SharpReader and feed in a strange URL such as http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http%3A//www.radio-active.net.au/blog/atom.xml and it will tell you when I have written something new... It is sort of like Email without the email.

And I would encourage you all to visit Blogger.com and have a think about starting your own Blog. But make sure you tell me about it too.

GPRS...

Most of you know that I do GPS tracking for a living... This includes building custom hardware and software... Current cute projects include building a cute GPRS tracker with my own software inside. This device will even connect direct to APRS.NET and send the positions to the server itself when on the road. And if it is down, it will know and send it to a backup machine.

Right now I am not sending the data to APRS.NET but to my own server. What I am playing with is WebServices, where users load a small version of netAPRS on their own PC, and it grabs all the positions every 30 seconds over the web. And it only sends positions for vehicles you are authorized which makes things good in the commercial environment. When I have more information I will let you all know about it. I am not trying to sell it to the members of this list (although I would be happy to tell you about the details off-list) - I want people to realize where the tracking world is going...

Darryl

Microsoft Development

There are times that I am happy with the way that microsoft are doing things. Then there are times that I feel like pulling my hair out. This is one of the latter. Frequent readers will know that I am writing a web-services application.

Now, this should be fairly simple. I have a number of seperate components, and want to debug an application. Now, WebServices application MUST be run in a VirtualDirectory under IIS as far as I can tell. This would not be too bad. So I simply made c:\My Programming\VB.Net simply pointed to by http://localhost/local. This should make developing WebServices applications relatively easy.

But, This does not really work, at least not with the applications I am working with. I have not quite worked it out.

MSDE

One of the other issues in getting this application ready for use is to get the packaging done, and done so that it is cheap to use. This means using MSDE rather than SQLserver. This itself is not an issue. The administration of the MSDE is. There are some issues in the form of marketing from Microsoft. This means that Microsoft does not provide a GUI to administer the database.

Well, that is not entirely correct. They do provode a GUI. But one that you install as part of IIS, to a directory that they dont tell you about. So I have not been able to work out where it is installed to yet. Oh, and you are not permitted to re-distribute this application. Users must basically download it from microsoft if they want to use it.

OK. So ASPEnterpriseManager looks really good. User Interface is there. But it has not been worked on for about 12 months even though it is a SourceForge project. Again it needs to be at the root level of IIS. And just to make things simple databases are created in Access format, not MSDE/SQLserver format. Oh, well. Next try.

The last of the options is MSDE.Biz which I have spoken about before. I can redistribute this provided I supply copyright messages and the like. Suits me. It will add about $US20 to the cost of the application, but that is not much really. It will add some paperwork. But I dont think there is any option. C'est La Vie.

Tools to admin the free Microsoft Database MSDE

I have been looking at MSDE for a little while, for some projects. There is an issue with the lack of a user interface. This is not too hard to fix. There are several that are free or cheap. I have highlighted the following three. The first two are free, and the third is something like $22 depending on the version and the currency. I am thinking that ASP Enterprise Manager looks cool, and somewhat professional. And it is under the GPL too, allowing it to be redistributed. I just need to make sure that if I redistribute it then I need to make it clear what parts are what. That is no big issue.

• ASP.Net Enterprise Manager - SQL Server - MSDE
  
• SQL-Server Web Data Administrator
  
• MSDE.BIZ
  

Licensing with XP... TCP Connections

I have been doing a bit of research as to what the license restrictions are on XP. Specifically with TCP servers. Firstly have a look at the EULA for XP Home. The XP Pro is the same but it substitutes 10 connections. It says

1.3 Device Connections. You may permit a maximum of five (5) computers or other electronic devices (each a "Device") to connect to the Workstation Computer to utilize one or more of the following services of the Software: File Services, Print Services, Internet Information Services, and remote access (including connection sharing and telephony services). The five connection maximum includes any indirect connections made through "multiplexing" or other software or hardware which pools or aggregates connections. This five connection maximum does not apply to any other uses of the Software.

Contrast this with the Knowledgebase which states
For Windows XP Professional, the maximum number of other computers that are permitted to simultaneously connect over the network is ten. This limit includes all transports and resource sharing protocols combined. For Windows XP Home Edition, the maximum number of other computers that are permitted to simultaneously connect over the network is five.

The person who wrote the knowledgebase article needs to re-read the EULA. Specifically the license says that the limit does not apply to any other uses of the software apart from IIS, Remote Access, File and Print Sharing, specifically using Microsoft supplied software. Since other TRANSPORTS includes TCP, the knowledgebase infers that I cannot create a server to accept connections from 1000 devices without violating the license.

This is not correct. The knowledgebase is wrong. Lets see if Microsoft is willing to update it.

To increase the number of concurrent connections to IIS,
Click here

MSDN Connection - RFID

I got my first piece of correspondence from Microsoft yesterdat from their ISV programme. It included my MSDN Connection ID Card... There are some interesting implications though. Right now I am a Recognised Developer

The first implication is that they provide a whole lot of stickers to place on the card stating which User Group you wish to be associated with. As far as I can tell all these groups are free, and are sponsored by microsoft and companies. The one at Wollongong looks like it is the best for my needs.

More importantly, when I got the card I was surprised. These days most cards have a magnetic strip, or bar code, or something. But all this one has is a number on the front - my MSDN Connection Number - and a small serial number on the back. Both are too small to be used for anything like access control or much else.

I have seen cards where the Magnetic Strip has been hidden under a very thin layer of plastic. Normally you could look closely and find the stip, but nothing. Then I noticed a small deformation in the card on the top right corner of the card. It was about 5mm x 5mm. It is more on the front than the back. I have seen marks like this made with normal heat printing processes. So all was fine.

All was fine until I visited the Wollongong NET User Group site, and found that Microsoft had provided an RFID reader. Ahh... So this is an RFID card. A Contactless card. Interesting privacy implications I would say...

CoverYourASP - by James Shaw

I found a cute WWW site - CoverYourASP - by James Shaw. The reason I found this is that I was looking for the options for hosting Microsoft Web Services. I would love to try Apache under Windows, BUT it looks that it is not quite so possible, at least without Cassini, which can be found on ASP.net. This needs to use Apache as a proxy for incoming requests. Not really a good solution.

On IIS Resources I found the following comment
XP Pro allows 10 connections. This limit is installed by default in the metabase key MaxConnections for W3SVC, and there is no user interface method for modifying the setting. You can change this setting to any number less than 40 and it works, but that is not widely advertised.

Forward Proxy under Apache

Related is an article on
The Code Project about how to get the Cassini WWW server to work with Apache. The feedthough is sort of cute too.

Microsoft Channel9: Converting a Laptop to a Picture Frame - and Millenium TV Show

From the Microsoft Web Site is a great story on how to convert a Laptop into a picture frame.

Millenium TV Script

On the approach to the Millenium, I really enjoyed the TV Show "MilleniuM", featuring Lance Henriksen and others. Anyway, there were three series actually filmed, with the fourth never writter. To provide closure for the series, some people who loved the series wrote the last 22 episodes. The scripts can be found on The Millenium Compendium

D-Link and MSN, Desktop XML Metadata

According to D-Link, the DSL-500 ADSL Router/Modem does not work too well with MSN Messenger. The release information for the upgrade is rather cryptic - "Revision info: MSN Messenger 6 fix ". There is a bit more information for the DSL-604 - "4. Fix MSN 5.0/6.0 cause device get into debug mode. 5. Add MSN messenger File Transfer when two pc's behind the router".

Looking at Sentry.Org I found a page on the D-Link. There is also a link on Whirlpool dealing with lockups of the modem. What I have been able to work out is that the current version of MSN Messenger kills the modem when you try to do a file transfer. This could be related to the DNS Proxy, but I doubt it. I suspect that it is more likely to be related to weird microsoft packets.

There is some more information on an iiNet site about how to upgrade. I should note that the DSL-500 is one of the most reliable pieces of hardware I have found. It just goes and goes and goes. It needs an occasional restart I think, but looking back now I suspect that it didnt really need anything. It just works.

Desktop XML

Useful Inc has an interesting article on using XML to store MetaData, or data about data. In this case it is data about files, including sizes, application type, icon, manufacturer. All the useful stuff that microsoft would have included in the file itself, so that it did not get lost. Whilst I like this idea, there are certain advantages to me with this system. I could use this data format as part of my document software as a standard for when I have drilled down to files from folders. It might make the XML file large, but I dont need to use all the tags when I am creating a file. And it provides expandability.

The article goes onto speak about RDF, and this is a technology I need to look more at too.

More XML code

OK... I have some more code for my XML project. It still needs to be modified, but the idea is to create a usable user interface. I think I found this code on MSDN but I cannot really remember. It was a month or two back, and is actually code from netAPRS.

    Private Sub LoadTreeViewFromXmlFile(ByVal file_name As _
        String, ByVal trv As TreeView)
        ' Load the XML document.
        Dim xml_doc As New XmlDocument
        xml_doc.Load(file_name)

        ' Add the root node's children to the TreeView.
        trv.Nodes.Clear()
        AddTreeViewChildNodes(trv.Nodes, _
            xml_doc.DocumentElement)
    End Sub
    ' Add the children of this XML node 
    ' to this child nodes collection.
    Private Sub AddTreeViewChildNodes(ByVal parent_nodes As _
        TreeNodeCollection, ByVal xml_node As XmlNode)
        For Each child_node As XmlNode In xml_node.ChildNodes
            ' Make the new TreeView node.
            Dim new_node As TreeNode = _
                                parent_nodes.Add(child_node.Attributes.Item(0).Value)
            new_node.Tag = child_node.Attributes.Item(1).Value
            AddTreeViewChildNodes(new_node.Nodes, child_node)
            If new_node.Nodes.Count = 0 Then _
                new_node.EnsureVisible()


            ' If this is a leaf node, make sure it's visible.
        Next child_node
    End Sub

netAPRS software...

netAPRS: From OzAPRS Mailing List

netAPRS is being expanded all the time. I have added basic beaconing through AGWPE, but only in the Italian version... and only under very limited distribution [ Hey, the guys in Italy were the ones who really pushed for that feature]

There are probably bugs in the software... And if something is not working please let me know. Also please let me know about any other features that you would like. Anyone who as looked at the menus in netAPRS will see areas that code can be added... So force me to add the code :-)

Darryl

CNC Mill

With work on the business I may have the need to get a milling machine. For those not in the know, these machines are cool... They are a moveable plate, and have a drill bit... And the plate moves sideways so that bits of materials are removed. This is cool for things like engraving panels, carving wood and the like. They can be cheap or expensive - just depending.

TAIG has a kit that is fairly cheap - relatively anyway. The details are available on the TAIG site

Programming Notes - Directory to XML recursive

Converting a Directory Structure to XML in VB.NET

There is an article on Builder.Com.Com showing how to convert a directory structure to XML. Unfortunately it is not a recursive function, but how hard can that be? OK, well I know how hard it can be, but it should not be too hard. We will see.

There were some issues, but I got it to work. It is a start at least.

Public Function DirectoryStart(ByVal path As String) As String
Dim sw As New StringWriter
Dim xmlwriter As New XmlTextWriter(sw)
xmlwriter.WriteStartDocument()
DirectoryRecurse(path, xmlwriter)
xmlwriter.WriteEndDocument()
xmlwriter.Close()
Return sw.ToString
End Function

Public Sub DirectoryRecurse(ByVal path As String, ByVal xmlw As XmlWriter)
Dim filename As String ' , path As String
Dim dir As New DirectoryInfo(path)
Dim xtw As XmlTextWriter
With xmlw
.WriteComment(" Content of the " & Chr(34) & path & Chr(34) & " folder ")
.WriteStartElement("folders")
.WriteAttributeString("path", path)
.WriteAttributeString("count", dir.GetDirectories().Length.ToString())
For Each d As DirectoryInfo In dir.GetDirectories()
.WriteStartElement("folder")
.WriteAttributeString("name", d.Name)
.WriteAttributeString("accessed", d.LastAccessTime.ToString())
.WriteString("Content of " + d.Name)
.WriteEndElement()
DirectoryRecurse(d.FullName, xmlw)
Next
.WriteEndElement()
End With
End Sub

Programming Awareness, and a GMAIL account

OK - I have been doing some VB.NET today - and it has been interesting. I am finding problems without aparent solutions everywhere, and the occasional solution without a problem. More the the first though.

From The Code Project via Google,

Note: When you compile your application, VS.NET will automatically create a file called [your application name].exe.config in your bin\debug folder. The contents of the app.config will be automatically copied to this new config file when you compile the application. When you deliver the application to the end user, you have to deliver the exe and this new config file called .exe.config and NOT the app.config. Users can modify the data in .exe.config file and application will read the data from the config file, when restarted.

What I was seeing was that a file TCPServer.exe.config in the BIN directory of the application environment was being deleted every time I ran the program, but just before the program finds running. It took me about an hour to find out why. All I needed to do was create a file called app.config, and the software would do the rest. And I had forgotten to include one file. Oops.

Microsoft in their own way neglect the user interface details. They concentrate on what else you need to do behind the scenes.

Missing Events

So part one fixed itself, and now part two causes a problem. I really hate fighting languages. All I want to do is to monitor if a TCP connection has seen no data in x seconds, and kill it off with prejudice. Sounds simple. That is the problem with object oriented code, with automatic garbage collection. The simple is hard, and the hard is simple.

When the TCP connections are created, they are created in an object, and there are no referenced kept to the new object, since the application knows that it will commit suicide when it is no longer needed. Fine. I think, this is all object oriented, and we can do things programatically now.

So into the class library, I put the following code

Private WithEvents t_timer As Timer

Public Sub New(ByRef Socket As Tcp, ByRef Server As Server, ByRef frmMain As frmTCPServer)
Dim t_timer As New Timer
t_timer.Interval = 30000
t_timer.Enabled = True
End Sub

Private Sub KillOld(ByVal myObject As Object, ByVal myEventArgs As EventArgs) Handles t_timer.Tick
If d_DateTime.AddSeconds(15) < Now Then
m_Tcp.Close()
End If
t_timer.Enabled = True
End Sub

According to my view of the world, this should work. It certainly does not cause problems. Apart from one major point. It never actually calls the KillOld routine. It complained when I did not have the paramaters correct. But it does not actually get called.

GMail Account

I am now one of the chosen few... I have a GMail account. Most of the good names were already gone... Those who need to know it will get the address... The system looks cool... And very fast. Quite impressed. Now if they would only start giving out more accounts...

Work, Links and Document Management

There are days that I get a lot of work done. Unfortunately today was not really one of them. I guess I am just feeling a bit tired.

Links

Anyway. Some links and more. There is a cool site for a lot of the common things in VisualStudio 2003 that I do not need to do each day, but often need. It is on GotDotNet.Com and contains a lot of stuff.

Another interesting site is Learn247.net which is basically a microsoft partnership that produces some cool DVDs, if only I could get my hands on them. Supply is *VERY* limited.

Document Management

In my *SPARE* time I am looking at writing a Document Management program. Sure they exist, but they are not cheap. And they attempt to do everything... No details yet, but mine will be different...