Category: Technology

All things geeky.

  • I don’t earn enough for proper telecommunications!

    I thought my cell phone addiction would be satiated the day I can upgrade to a Treo 650 but noooo! Some clown has to one up me with a $300,000 cell phone! Guess I’d better get to saving. Sorry about college kids. You know.. the phone.

    Thank you blogj!

  • Help! I’m trapped in an Apple store.

    meatapple

    Sarah is at a Podcasting class as part of Apple Camp at the new West Town Mall Apple store. I thought I could drop and run but they require a parent to stay present during the workshops.

    Today Sarah is with 3 other students that look 8, 19 and 12. Their focus is audio podcasting. I want to get each of the family members their own MacBook. That would be sweet!

    There are other workshops.

    You know… Makes this a little ironic!

  • Fish n’ Flush

    fish n flush

    They end up in the toilet anyway!

    Developed by California-based Aqua One Technologies, the FnF is a filtered acrylic aquarium wrapped around an integrated flush-tank core. The aquarium exists independently of the toilet’s reservoir, so you won’t annihilate your buddies after every urination. But, to keep things interesting, the flush valve does launch a jet stream into the tank that swirls the fish. [Source]

    Thank you c|net

  • Today’s technical challenge

    Today I get to figure out why ColdFusion server is having mail get stuck in spool.

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  • Things I do

    Yesterday I had the pleasure of building a form on website A that used javascript to create an encoded url which was then sent along with the form data to website B which processed the data then landed the customer at website C to complete the product purchase.

    Today, unrelated to yesterday’s mail work, I had to get a Windows server using IIS’ SMTP to resend mail caught in the badmail folder. If you end up with mail in the badmail folder (typically c:\inetpub\mailroot\badmail\ ) follow these steps:

    1. Move the contents of your inetpub/mailroot/badmail folder to a temporary location (I chose c:\temp\reprocessmail\)
    2. Remove the .bad extension from all of the files (resulting in no extension for these files) (the other files *.bdp and *.bdr can be discarded. For good measure I put them into c:\temp\reprocessmail\brd\ The bdr files contain the reason the mail failed to process.)
    3. Move the contents of your temporary folder to the inetpub/mailroot/pickup folder
  • Typing those international characters in windows

    Since I sometimes invoice and quote in GBP, I find myself searching for the £ in a document so I can cut and paste it. No more! These fine instructions explain how to turn your standard US keyboard into a US-International keyboard. I’m also installing the US-Dvorak keyboard for fun.

  • The Ipod + Nike thing

    Can someone explain to me why Apple wants to put something in your shoe? I could understand if it was an ipod in the shoe that used bluetooth to send the sounds to wireless ear pieces but the pictures seem to imply that you still have an iPod nano, something plugged into the nano, and the thing in your shoe. What am I missing?

    I get it! While running the device in your shoe reports your speed, distance, heart rate, etc. to you via the iPod Nano. I like it!

  • Fake a Left Outer Join with ColdFusion’s Query of Query

    Since a Query of Query only supports INNER JOIN syntax, many developers are left frustrated because the incredibly useful LEFT OUTER JOIN is unavailable. Alistair Davidson has come up with a solution using the support UNION syntax.

    For those of you now asking "what is an inner join? What is a left outer join?" I have provided an explanation in pictures and words. (complete with a typo of the word "columns")

  • Windows XP fails all updates error 0x80240020

    One machine I’ve cleaned of viruses and was trying to get the latest security patches has been giving me huge fits of grief with the WindowsUpdate.log growing large with error 0x80240020. Finally I discovered this registry change that seems to have fixed the problem!

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  • The 2 second tent

    I want a tent that pitches itself when you pitch it in the air.

  • Understanding CRONTAB

    Time to write cron job to make sure a process fires every morning on a linux server. This sums it up quite well!

    * * * * * command to be executed
    – – – – –
    | | | | |
    | | | | —– day of week (0 – 6) (Sunday=0)
    | | | ——- month (1 – 12)
    | | ——— day of month (1 – 31)
    | ———– hour (0 – 23)
    ————- min (0 – 59)

    So I’m looking at:
    0 1 * * * /usr/bin/wget -q -O- myfile.php
    To run every morning at 1am.

  • Clean that machine!

    One of the things I can do well is bring a PC back to life that has been so heavily attacked with viruses, malware, spyware, and adware that it can’t even boot. I charge $95 to clean the machine and ask that you let me bring it to my house since it usually takes 5 or more hours.

    Right now I have one that is giving me a hard way to go because of something called Surf SideKick. Here’s a list of the baddies:

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  • Electro-graf from Graffiti Research Lab

    This video is fascinating on many different levels. I am in wonder at the ingenuity of the circuitry. I’m impressed at the skill of the artist and the time put into his work. The video editing with the side notes and smaller video is well done. I caught myself rewatching parts just to consume all the juicy information such as the links to more information like http://stencilrevolution.com/.

    Warning! The audio portion of this video contains adult language used by the US president, GW Bush, and may be offensive to some. The video itself contains nothing inappropriate and can be enjoyed by those with sensitive ears and virgin minds by simply turning down your speakers.

  • Bloggers are terrorists

    There you have it!

    The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding a new research area that includes a study of blogs. Blog research may provide information analysts and warfighters with invaluable help in fighting the war on terrorism.

    The cost of this study is $450,000! You know, I do good research For $450,000 I could give them some very pretty reports. Thanks to Newscoma for pointing this one out!

    3-year project entitled "Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information."

    One of the problems analysts may have with blog monitoring, Ulicny noted, is there is too much actionable information for the analyst to properly analyze.

    “We are developing an automated tool to tell analysts what bloggers are most interested in at a point in time,” Ulicny said.

    Does this sound a lot like Technorati? Maybe they should just buy Technorati.