Author Archive
Vista SP2: Now with more free space!
Just did the Vista SP2 upgrade on one of my PC’s and, just like the rumors, got some extra hard drive space back. Neat!
Before
After
Here’s to hoping Windows 7 will at least keep the same size!
Star Trek Movie
Posted by eric in Commentary on May 7th, 2009
Went to see the new Star Trek movie today on an IMAX screen.
Fun movie. Not geeky like the original movie/series. More mainstream plot/acting to appeal to the masses. Even so, they did include lots of hints/references to the original Star Trek for Trekkie fans.
Don’t like how they keep changing the Star Trek story line with each new show/movie, but oh well… what can I do about it?
Hot day in LA
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on April 6th, 2009
Super hot day in socal today! Unfortunately the rest of the week doesn’t look as good. 
Skype on iPhone
My initial reactions to using Skype on the iPhone:
- The sound quality is about the same as using the AT&T 3G network. Not as clear as Skype is on the desktop. Better than using Skype through Fring. I was hoping for desktop sound quality, but oh well.
- Not being able to run programs in the background, Skype will only work when the program is activated. Therefore it can’t work as an alternate phone line.
- Chat is saved on the Skype server. If you lookup your chat history on your desktop Skype, the chat through the iPhone will be there as well.
- There’s no shortcuts for smileys on iPhone Skype. You’ll just have to remember the shortcuts to use your favorite emoticons.
- There’s no sound effect to notify you of new chat messages. You’ll just have to look at the screen to see the chat count. This isn’t so bad since you have to keep Skype open anyways to chat, but kind of annoying this behavior forces you to check your screen every few seconds if you’re engaged in a chat with a buddy.
Oh well, not bad for version 1. Hopefully with iPhone 3.0 and updates, Skype on iPhone will become even better soon!
Deleting a Stubborn File
During the past week, I was consolidating a bunch of files from my smaller external drives onto a new, larger drive (more on this in a future post!). The new drive is formatted as HFS+ (Mac) while the smaller drives are formatted as NTFS (Windows). I didn’t pay attention to the copying, just dragged and dropped from the source (NTFS) to the destination (HFS+).
While going through the files on the new drive, I noticed some duplicate files. Even though the new drive is much larger, of course I still want to save space! Weird thing is trying to delete these files: Finder would ask for my password (sudo?), and afterwards do something, but the file remains… it refused to be deleted!
Perplexed, I thought it might have been a permissions problem:
But as you can see, I am the owner and I have the permissions.
Wondering if it has something to do with Finder, I dropped into Terminal and tried to delete the file manually:
OK, Operation not permitted… perhaps I need to be a super user?
Gah.. still no luck. So getting frustrated now, I started browsing around to find some answers. Not finding anything and finally about to give up thinking there’s some NTFS -> HFS+ or file system error, I just happened to look up and noticed the icon for the parent folder has a small… padlock?
Going up a level, and looking at the info for the parent folder revealed that the folder was Locked.
So I unchecked this and BAM, I was able to delete the file now. So turns out the “Locked” folder causes anything inside to become read-only. Besides being a nub and not knowing about the locked feature, I was assuming the behavior would be similar to Windows. In Windows, a “Read-only” file/folder can still be modified by just accepting an extra message box. In OS X with Finder, anything locked is seriously “locked” making everything read-only until it is “unlocked”.
Some more noob info about the Locked feature in Finder:
- Contents of a locked folder cannot be modified. This means nothing can be added, modified, or deleted. Right clicking the contents of the folder shows a different set of options.
- Corollary to the previous rule, contents of a locked folder cannot be moved to another folder. Contents can only be copied. Using the CMD key while dragging will not force a move.
- Locked Folder A with Folder B inside. Any files/folders inside Folder B are excluded from the locked rules. That is they can be modified without any restrictions.
So if you are having trouble deleting a file in Mac OS X, try checking if the folder is Locked! Don’t make the same nub mistake as I did. 
Hello x4
Posted by eric in Miscellaneous on February 9th, 2009
Yet again, I have to say Hello World on my blog… fourth time now?
For a few weeks, my blog here has been showing:
After researching the problem, it looks like the database was completely emptied out. Perhaps a hack, or perhaps a misconfiguration. In any case, 4 years of blogs gone.
As I look for old backups to restore my old posts, I took the opportunity to move my blog from the previous incompetent web host to a brand new host.
So, Hello World x4 with more security, hopefully. 
Olympics 2008
Posted by eric in Commentary on August 8th, 2008
Just finished watching the Opening Ceremony for this years Olympics on NBC. I think we (the U.S.) are one of the last people in the world to see the ceremony due to the time difference (12-14 hours) and NBC not releasing the video until Friday night (Saturday morning in China). Sure I could have watched the opening ceremony on Youtube, but why would I watch a crappy flash video when I can watch it on TV in HD.
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the ceremonies yet and don’t want it spoiled, do not read on!
The commercials are annoying. There seems to be a 5 minute commercial for every 10 minutes of videos. Then when the athletes come in, they break for the “smaller” countries while staying for the larger ones. Since this is pre-recorded 12 hours ago, do they really need to time the commercials? Oh well, NBC wants to make their profit.
Speaking of annoying commercials, at least there were some good ones. The Budweiser commercial with the training horse was hilarious. After looking it up on Youtube, looks like it was actually a commercial made for the SuperBowl. Oh well, still good nonetheless. Another funny one was the Comcast/Mario Kart commercial. At first I thought it was a Nintendo commercial. Turns out it was just a commercial for the Comcast/Wii promotion.
In regards to the show, it was amazing! The chinese performers were amazing. The coordination with all the performances were stunning. The pyrotechnics and technologies used in the show were awe-inspiring. The finale left me speechless! Thank goodness this was all in HD!
One of the things I like todo is watch what kind of gadgets the athletes use when they walk into the stadium. There were lots of camcorders and cameras. Saw some iPod headphones, although why the guy had them on, I have no idea. I saw a couple of Nokia N95’s as well. Neat!
Those girls dancing/cheering the athletes coming in must have super endurance. Dancing/cheering for ~2 hours in 90 degrees heat (so says the NBC guys). You can see them getting tired 30 minutes in. But all that was gone once the China athletes came in.
Well that was great. Now for 16 more days of HD-sports goodness!
SQL Server 2008 with Visual Studio 2008
The current release of SQL Server 2008 will not work/install if you have Visual Studio 2008 installed. For those who are planning to try this, do not install SQL 2008 with Visual Studio 2008 on the same machine until a patch is released!
I tried installing the MSDN version of SQL Server 2008 today and went as far as the Installation Rules screen. Here, setup refused to continue because I had an “old” version of Visual Studio 2008 installed.
I say “old” because at this time, there’s only Visual Studio 2008 RTM which is what I have installed. SP1 is in beta at the time of this post.
As you can see above, setup will not let me continue (Next button is disabled) until I fix this problem. So I went ahead and downloaded and installed SP1 Beta for Visual Studio 2008. The deceptively small download (450KB) took an hour to download and install.
Oh well, it took an hour, but finally I’ll be able to continue with my setup, right? After installing SP1 Beta, I clicked the “Re-run” button in SQL setup. Nope, no good. The same error kept showing up. I clicked Back and Next to try to refresh the scan. Still no good. Finally I just cancelled the setup and restarted it. Doing that will cause you to have to redo everything in SQL setup. Even though that’s a pain, what’s worst is when I came to this screen, it still failed!
Great. Well that was a complete waste of 4 hours of my time! So, for those thinking of doing this setup, you have been warned!
EDIT: Looks like someone @ MS has noticed this problem and has posted some notes about it. Also a KB article. Now for the waiting game on when things go RTM. Sigh… yet another MS “release” when it’s not really complete.
EDIT: By uninstalling Visual Studio 2008, I was able to install SQL 2008. However, the reason why I wanted to install SQL 2008 in the first place was to try out the new developer features. Kind of beats the point. Oh well.
Basic Rider Course
Posted by eric in Commentary on July 31st, 2008
On Sunday, I finally completed the MSF Basic Rider Course on my quest to learn how to ride a motorcycle.
It was a great experience. There was a total of 10 students in my class. The class was broken down into 3 sessions: classroom, range & classroom, and range. During the classroom part of the course, we watched some videos and reviewed a motorcycle handbook containing rules and tips on riding safely. On the range, we put those tips/tricks into practice by actually riding on the bikes. We started with learning how to start a bike and getting used to the friction zone on the clutch. We ended the range with learning how to maneuver the Box of Love and how to stop properly in a turn. Finally, the last hour was a riding test where we were graded on maneuvering 4 obstacle courses.
Throughout the course, the instructors drilled into our heads to always keep heads up and pointed towards the direction to go. Always look ahead and use the SEE (Search, Evaluate, Execute) strategy. Ease the brakes and clutch and never jerk them. Mental preparation is the key to riding safely. Speed is good on a bike. And of course, having the proper gear can save your life! I still can’t believe Utah doesn’t have a helmet law! I feel scared for those of you who ride on the highway going 80+ mph without a helmet!
Out of all the exercises, I would say the Box of Love was the most difficult. You have to maneuver the clutch to second gear, then make two tight turns in a small box without going outside of the lines. Sure it might sound easy to a seasoned pro, but for someone who just started riding a couple of hours ago, it was hard!
The only improvement I see to make the class better is to just extend the class. 15 hours was way too short! A lot of the exercises in the range I felt I needed more practice to get right, but couldn’t get that practice in due to the short amount of time. Since there were 10 students in the class and we all had to take turns, that made it even more difficult to put in that extra practice effort.
For anyone thinking of riding a bike, I would definitely recommend taking this class first! Besides the scorching heat (90+ degrees F), the class was a great way to meet other motorcycle noobs and to learn basic skills from the pros. It was fun meeting you guys and thanks to Dave and Kris for the excellent and fun 15 hours of lessons!
Now to complete the written portion to get my license and to get a bike!
WWDC 2009 Keynote Reactions
Posted by eric in Commentary on June 8th, 2009
The live coverage blogs
Kind of fun to see where the bloggers are sitting by viewing the perspectives from their pictures. The AJAX auto updating blogs are awesome. Those that require refreshing… not as much. Also the picture qualities are very different. You can tell which site has the bigger budget with the quality of their pictures.
One of the live blogs I was monitoring died towards the end of the keynote while the other 2 kept going. Turns out they were relying on the WWDC network to stream their live blog while the other 2 must have had their own network. Shows who is more prepared!
New MBP
Although the updated battery life is appreciated, I just feel this is another typical Apple move: milking the consumers once more. Although I have to say by dropping the prices this time around instead of introducing another insanely priced product, it makes the move a bit more tolerable.
OS X and Snow Leopard
Funny that they highlight Exchange support as one of the major features of the new OS. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Exchange a Microsoft thing? hm…
Over 6 GB in extra HD space. That’s nice! Too bad the same can’t be said of Windows, exponentially increasing size with each upgrade.
New Chinese input is really cool. I’m sure my Chinese friends will love that! Doesn’t work for those of us who suck at writing though… I hope the existing input methods are still there!
Expose from the Dock for an application sounds familiar… what happened to trash talking Windows 7?
64-bit, finally catching up to Microsoft!
$29 upgrade price is great! I don’t think Microsoft would do anything like that. They would slap on some new “UI Improvements” and charge another $100 to upgrade. Although this point is debatable since sometimes Microsoft introduces new technologies for free with Service Packs (ie. XP SP2). I’d say those occasions are rare and most of the time Microsoft would charge the typical $100 for upgrades. Let’s see if those Best Buy Vista/Win7 upgrade prices rumors are true.
Exchange Support
Fill in email and password, and set across all 3 apps! Sucks since Outlook is just 1 app! I guess it’s a “better than nothing” approach without building another Outlook.
iPhone
Great that they acknowledged the developers. It is the developers that helped Apple make iPhone the platform it is today.
AT&T, the worst part of the iPhone experience in the U.S. No mention of MMS nor tethering. Get ready to turn in your first born in order to get such features.
Nice Safari improvements.
FindMyiPhone… an awesome service on the crappy MobileMe.
C’mon hackers! Find a way to use this without Apple’s MobileMe!
The doctor app for the iPhone looks amazing. I’m sure a specific doctor friend will love it.
Sucks some of the demo’s failed. Oh well, it happens.
All the new features rumored (besides video chat) are there. Good that the prices have remained the same… now it’s up to AT&T to see who qualifies for this “upgrade” price and how much the rest of will be paying. Monopolies suck!
Tags: mac, osx
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