Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
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!
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. 
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.
Using MSN for Adium Offline
If all your MSN friends keep telling you that you appear offline even though Adium shows you online, it might be because your MSN account is by default logging in “Appear Offline”.
I encountered this problem and no matter what I tried my friends still said I appeared offline.
To fix this problem, find a Windows machine and change how you login to be “Online”. Now when you log into Adium, you won’t login offline anymore.
How to setup up an IT infrastructure from scratch
Working at a startup, you literally start with nothing. NOTHING! The full effect of “nothing-ness” doesn’t hit you until you sit down and start to plan out what you’ll need. Since I’m the tech guy, this post will focus on the technical side of starting up a company. If you’re here looking for information on operations, well… better find another blog.
Once you realize you have nothing, that’s when when you realize how much work the IT department of a company does to setup an IT infrastructure. Luckily if this is something you’re interested in, as I am, then it’s also quite fun to pick and choose your new toys.
So what kind of IT resources does a start up need? Let’s see…
- Web Server
- Email Server
- File Server
- Backup Resources
- Test Servers
- Production Servers
- Network Services
- Hosting Services
- Networking Equipment.
- Source Control System
- Issue Tracking System
- Workstations
- Laptops
- Wireless Communication
Of course whether you need all these resources depends on your company. For my start up, we definitely needed all of these. Technology is so essential in any modern-day business, you’ll most likely need at least one or two of these items no matter what kind of company you’re starting.
Now that you have a list of technologies you’ll need, it’s time to take the next step: cut as much as you can! Yep, you read that right. Since a start up starts with very limited funds, you’ll need to do your best to save on everything. Thus it’s crucial that you save, scrimp, clip, do whatever it takes to get by with the bare minimum, even with technology. Ideally, you want to save as much as you can now, while also picking the right technology that will allow you to easily scale down the road. Stay tuned as that will be the topic of the next post. 
Firefox 3
Just installed Firefox 3 and so far I’m impressed. I opened up a bunch of tabs (28 to be exact) right away just to test out the speed and memory usage. I’m glad to say all the tabs loaded really quick and used about ~100mb of RAM. Not too shabby!
Only one addon that I regularly use didn’t make it past the upgrade: CTC. That’s not too bad and hopefully an update will be on the way.
One thing I noticed with FF3 for Windows is that it will hijack your default browser. Um.. where’s my dialog box that disables this? I thought we were over this browser-war-hijack-default-browser-stuff? FF3 for Mac doesn’t have this problem. Whoever created the Windows installer needs to be fired (that is if he’s being paid)!
All in all, my first impression of FF3 is that it’s a great upgrade for everyone who uses Firefox. Too bad the Windows version is marred by the setup faux pas. Remember to download your copy today to help Mozilla’s attempt at the world record!
EDIT: Just downloaded FF3 again and noticed a default checkbox that would let me disable default functionality. Much better!
Watching a random user use Vista
Posted by eric in Programming, Software on October 9th, 2007
I was sitting in the library earlier today when I noticed someone sitting in front of me with her computer on. While laptops in the library are commonplace these days, what was especially interesting about her computer was that it was running Vista. So out of curiosity, I decided to watch Jane Doe for a few minutes to see what her experience with Vista was like (Yes I’m nosy, but this is for an educational experiment. And if you’re the person who I was watching, I apologize. Don’t worry, I was too far to see anything meaningful! ).
Jane had a Sony laptop running Vista Premium. Let’s see what she was doing while I was watching:
1. Getting Connected
Shi Da (師大) has a wireless network across campus. The first thing I saw Jane do was try to get connected to the wireless network. She stayed on the wireless network dialog for a while (probably a good 2 minutes), which I’m guessing because the connection wasn’t connecting.
2. Media Player
After getting connected, she restored an already open Windows Media Player window which means she was listening to music. I noticed headphones on so that seemed like a valid assumption.
3. Messenger
Of course who doesn’t use IM these days? She popped open MSN messenger next to check on who’s online… well that was the original intention at least. The window stopped functioning during login and then the crashed dialog opened up showing the window had stopped functioning. I couldn’t see which option she clicked, but the progress bar started going afterwards.
4. Browser
Jane opened up an Internet Explorer window, but unfortunately this one also stopped functioning. She typed, clicked on the window without any response. Then the crashed dialog opened up showing the window stopped accepting input from the user. She clicked it and the progress bar started again.
5. Waiting
She went back to her studies while waiting for the close dialog to turn off. About 3 minutes later they finally closed. She opened up another browser window and this time no crashes. She typed in Facebook’s URL and started checking someone’s profile (couldn’t see from where I was sitting).
6. Torrents
She opened up another browser and this time opened up a torrent tracking site. She downloaded a torrent and started downloading some file (once again, couldn’t see exactly from where I was sitting).
7. Switching back and forth
For the next few minutes, Jane switched back from Facebook, to Media Player, torrent status, and back to Facebook.
8. Back to networking
About 5 minutes later, the browser stopped loading web pages. So she went back to the wireless network dialog to check on the network status. About 30 seconds later, the network was back up so she went back to Facebook.
At this point, I stopped watching as she was just browsing Facebook now.
One question comes into mind: did she use any of the “new” features of Vista? Absolutely not. Everything that I watched her do on her computer, XP could have handled perfectly if not better than the Vista equivalents. For example, the sidebar was left in the default state with the picture and clock gadget. The sidebar was left uncustomized and was just sitting there taking up screen real estate. Flip3D? Might as well not exist as she used the task bar to change windows.
So what did I learn from watching this random computer user using her computer running Vista for a couple of minutes? I learned that the flashy Vista or the new UI means nothing to the user. The user only wants to be able to accomplish a task: chat, read web sites, listen to music, …. While I learned this lesson previously through my past work experience, watching this random user today just reinforced this idea in my mind. I believe all software developers should watch a user use a computer before programming professionally. Of course I mean a “typical” user, not your project partner who’s hacking away at a bash script. 
Watching a user gives a lot of insight into how to design software for the user and not for the programmer.
The Vista VirtualStore
Since I will be traveling for the foreseeable future, I’ve recently transitioned my main machine to my new laptop: an Asus G1S.
One of the first things I normally do with a new system (2nd time for me because of this) is copy over all my news feeds. I use the awesome, free feed reader GreatNews. After installing the latest version and then copying over my existing feed database (GreatNews.ini and newsfeed.db), GN refused to recognize the updated files. Thinking this was a problem with GN didn’t solve the problem for me.
After digging around my backup files, I finally noticed what the problem was. Because Vista uses the universally-hated UAC, by default your admin account does not have permissions to write to the “C:\Program Files” folder. So what Vista does is shadow the folder to your “C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files” folder.
So looking up this folder under profile, I indeed found my INI and DB file in here with the out-of-the-box default file. After replacing these files with my backed up INI and DB file, GN is now able to load up all my existing feeds and settings.
Learning on the web
Posted by eric in Commentary, Software on June 26th, 2008
Being an on-off amateur photographer, one of the first things I installed on my MacBook Pro was Aperture. Since I’m new to Aperture, I decided to check out the tutorials link.
Clicking the link opened up my browser and navigated me to the Aperture Tutorial website with numerous videos about 1 to 3 minutes long. After watching a couple of videos, I realized how easy it is to learn from this website.
Now I’ve seen many webcast/video tutorials before, especially Microsoft ones. What makes the Apple one different, and better than the Microsoft ones?
The tutorial website is really well designed. True to Apple’s design, there is no clutter on the website and it is clear where you go and how to select videos to watch. Compare this with Microsoft’s Office website:
Seriously, how long will it take you to find the tutorials link on that page? There’s even advertisements on the Office homepage!
Another important factor to easy web learning is short and to the point videos. There is no marketing fluff in Apple’s tutorial videos. When you click on a video, you know exactly what you are watching. Each video shows you what the feature is and how to perform it and quickly ends.
Once again, let’s compare to Microsoft’s Office website. After 20-30 seconds of hunting, I finally find the Training link. From there I click on the “Popular” link showing a video on “SharePoint document libraries”. Now being on a Mac, I don’t have Windows Media Player to play the video, but just looking at that page with the “20-30 minutes” timer makes me want to close the browser. This is actually pretty good for a Microsoft video as normally Microsoft videos that I’ve watched in the past are over an hour long minimum!
Why are long videos useless? First of all, everyone is busy so no one has the time nor the patience to sit through an hour-long lecture. Second, long videos are long typically because it’s jam packed with lots of information. Thus it’s really easy to get overwhelmed and forget most of what was discussed in the video.
Another nice feature of Apple’s tutorial website is this:
Since there are numerous videos, Apple’s website helps you keep track of videos you have seen, have not seen. Wow, nice touch! These check marks even persist after you close the browser (through cookie’s I’m assuming). Come back to the website a few days later and you’ll see your check marks still there! Good luck trying to remember which videos you’ve seen/not seen on Microsoft’s website.
I used to dread watching video tutorials based on bad past experiences. Apple’s Aperture tutorial website has completely changed my perception. Now, I rather enjoy watching Apple’s video clip tutorials: I don’t have to waste time finding the videos and I get to control how much time I want to spend. And if i decide to take a break and come back the next day, I won’t have to waste time watching the same videos because I forgot I had already watched them!
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