ChessOps - A Basic Chess Openings Guide

As mentioned elsewhere I have begun playing chess a lot on Gameknot in order to improve my play (and my team rating) I have asked for advice from my team. They have almost unanimously suggested learning openings is the key. Here are two sites they suggested for this ChessOps and Chessgames

Fun and Games

A few of my favourite online games to pass a few spare moments Splash Back, Caramba and RocketMania!!.

Note that the last 2 use Java

Make Love not Warcraft

I have never been a huge fan of South Park though I do sometimes enjoy it. However they have recently surpassed themselves with the make love not Warcraft episode. Being a World of Warcraft player I found this hilarious. Not sure how much you will get out of this if you don't know the game.

I presume that Blizzard gave them permission in which case - well done Blizzard that demonstrates a refreshing attitude in these litigious times.

Mobile madness

Well after a lot of indecision I finally have a new mobile phone. I am a big fan of Sony Ericsson phones. At one time I had a t68i which I like a lot. Then when I took out a contract I got a Nokia 7610 (I think - their numbering system is even more confusing to me than the SE one) which at the time was supposed to be the best smartphone around. Although it had some very nice features - on the whole I hated it and got rid of it as soon as I could. My Mum still has it and likes it a lot! I then went back to SE with the K750 which I think is still a very good phone.

When it came to choosing time SE were about to bring out a whole slew of new phones. The P990 which I quite fancied, but as I have a Tungsten T3 there doesn't seem a lot of point, though the wireless networking could be nice at times. Then there is the W850 which I also quite fancied. I think it looks very smart and is a little unusual for me, though I don't often find myself listening to music on my phone. Sometimes the radio but if I want to listen to music it tends to be stuff I have on my PSP. Then there was the LG KG920 stunning in its ugliness but a good sounding spec. These are still like gold dust here at the moment.

I finally settled on the SE K800i which I wasn't sure was too much of a step up from my existing phone. I couldn't have been more wrong. It looks a lot bigger then my existing one but isn't really. The screen is quite a bit longer, a good few mm. and seems a lot clearer. The fact it uses a "real" flash is quite incredible, though I will sometimes miss the ability to turn the light on which was sometimes useful. Video calling is completely useless to me and frankly I can't see that ever changing. It has a nice little web browser built in and an RSS reader which is a cool feature - for me at least. It's also a little more polished than the 750, the plastic feels slightly "rubberised" which makes it nice to hold. Some of the buttons are a tiny bit smaller and the layout is slightly different which I think I will get used to quickly but is a tiny bit frustrating. I am also quite dissapointed that it didn't include one of the new Memory Stick micro's as these seem to be difficult to get hold of at the moment. All the usual suppliers are suggesting a delay ranging from a few days to a few weeks. Having said that it has taken almost everything from my k750 anyway.

On the whole after a couple of days I am delighted with this phone

The sun never sets

Just as a bit of fun, this is a map of all the countries I have been to so far. That's a suprising amount of red

You can create your own visited countries map

InternetFrog.com: Network Tools, Internet Speed Test and Website Tools

Internet Frog is one of those useful little sites that you don't need very often and can't find when you do. It has things like a broadband speed checker, WHOIS, an email blacklist checker and much more

Datagrids ruined my life!

I've been trying to setup an ASP.NET datagrid with dropdowns for data editing and as you will see from this link it took much longer than perhaps it should have done. The main problem being pre-selecting values. There seems to be a lot of conflicting advice and opinions on the best way to do this sort of thing. What I intend to do here is give a fairly generic solution that worked for me in this particular case.

• Setup your datagrid as normal. The columns you want drop downs for need to be made to template columns. The ones you don't want to be editable should be marked read only.


• Add an edit column as per normal


• In the template columns, put in your desired objects and layout and assign properties as per normal. This is what will appear in that column when the user hits edit and can contain pretty much any html or asp that you like.


• In my page behind code I added a new subroutine to bind data to whatever you want in your template(s) that you setup above. Essentially this code is the same as that you would use for binding data to the datagrid itself. (Presumably this can also be done by dragging and dropping the appropriate dataadapters etc. when you are editing the template but I prefer to do it in code.) The difference is that you need to be able to reference the objects that you have put into the template. This code needs to be called from the ItemDataBound event handler (where incidentally you can apply conditional formatting to cells but that is for another time). One of the parameters passed to this event handler is
  e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.DataGridItemEventArgs You can use this to find the controls you have put into your template. In my case I had a drop down in the template and so the declaration
  Dim MyDropDown As DropDownList = CType(e.Item.FindControl("MyTemplateDropDown"), DropDownList) generates a reference to the dropdown control which can now just be treated as a normal drop down object.
• To pre-select an existing value is now easy as it largely uses the code from the Microsoft site -
  If e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.EditItem Then
  BindDGRow(e) ' This is the call that binds the datarow as described above
  Dim drv As DataRowView = CType(e.Item.DataItem, DataRowView)
  Dim currentValueInDataGrid As String = CType(drv("MyColumnNameInUnderlyingData"), String)
  MyDropDown.SelectedIndex = MyDropDown.Items.IndexOf(MyDropDown.Items.FindByValue(currentValueInDataGrid))

Easy!

The best cocktails

I've discovered a fantastic site if you like cocktails. What I like is that you can tell it a few ingredients and it will come up with a list of cocktails you can make. You can also tell it to show some that you haven't listed ingredients for.

Over the weekend I wanted to make a cocktail using pineapple juice and tequila. This site came up with the goods and a good time was had by all.

It seems to me that the key to cocktails (and where a lot of people go wrong) is to not make them too strong. You want lots of juice/lemonade/whatever soft drink. A notable exception being a classic martini.

More ASP.NET datagrids

As I've stated elsewhere I am writing a web based application that is making use of datagrids (ASP.NET 1.1). As part of that I wanted to make some data editable and for the options to be limited to a drop down. I had great trouble getting this working and still am not sure why.

Essentially what I did in the end was to create an item template for the rows that need editing and add drop downs (and whatever else I needed).

My problem was referring to the drop downs and populating them. In the end I stumbled across this site which makes it look very simple, which of course it is.

I think part of the confusion is that there are so many ways you can do the same thing. In my case I prefer to create all the connections etc. in code.

While I was looking for the information I needed I came across a number of interesting suggestions on how to improve the datagrid by allowing click anywhere to select, scrolling them and making the whole grid editable. Personally I think these are great if you have the time to implement them.

More on Web 2 Applications

I've been looking at Web 2 applications again. One of the interesting ones is a personalised portal Protopage which lets you move things around on screen, nothing is in a fixed position unless you want it to be and you can play with it without registering. All of the others have a more structured layout. This one suits me better as you can have items overlapping. As well as multiple pages. I think it's just a bit nicer then others like Netvibes and Start

It looks very promising.

ASP.NET.datagrids

As I have said before I am no ASP guru but I have managed to create a datagrid that show database data, can be sorted (ascending or descending) or paged and allows editing and deletion of records. I have used a number of websites to get there but this is one series that I find invaluable ASP.NET.4GuysFromRolla.com: An Extensive Examination of the DataGrid Web Control I'll post full details in due course. I make no claims that this is good code, merely that it works for me

Lambs of Sheep Street

If you're ever in Stratford Upon Avon I can thoroughly recommend Lambs restaurant on Sheep Street. We went on a Sunday evening without a booking and I think we were lucky to get a table as a lot of people came soon after us and it appeared to be full.

The food, service, ambience and layout were all great, the best meal I have had in some considerable time. My wife rarely eats dessert but demolished the chocolate pudding with white chocolate ice cream

Adding some style

For the intranet project I am writing I have decided to add a style sheet before it gets too big. I think that the code for this will have to be done manually but at least Microsoft have come up with the goods for automatically adding a style sheet for all new Web forms I create HOW TO: Add a CSS Style Sheet Reference to All Web Forms in a Visual Basic .NET Web Project

More ASP.NET and HTML and some buttons

It seems the solution to the HTML issues were much simpler than I thought. It was just the Border setting that should be 0. For some reason when this was added in Visual Studio it wasn't propogating into the site straight away.

The other issue was the length of the boxes. With a width value that was consistent apart from in Opera but we can live with that.

The next stage was to get the button to react when Enter was pressed on the keyboard. Trawling Google suggested that the answer was something like

Page.RegisterHiddenField("__EVENTTARGET", Mybutton.ClientID)

It was then that I put out a plea for help only to get the most straightforward of answers, i.e. for this sort of thing you just need to set a SUBMIT button and turn it into a server control so that it can respond to events e.g.

<input type="submit" value="Send me your name!">

In theory this is a simple, effective solution but I still don't know at the moment as my version is not updating when I run it, build it, etc.

These controls are all in a user control. When I make changes to the user control they do not seem to propogate through unless they are in the code-behind page. I have tried building, rebuilding etc. In despair I will have to look at the MS site.

ASP.NET and HTML

I have created an ASP.NET 1.1 User control for logging in using forms authentication (fairly standard stuff). I used tables to lay it out and when I did my initial previews in IE 6 it was all fine.

On testing in other browsers later, i.e. Firefox and Opera I get issues.

In Firefox it looks like this -


and in Opera it looks even worse -



The HTML is pretty standard stuff I think -

<table style="WIDTH: 610px" tabIndex="0" borderColor="white" border="0" borderColorDark="#ffffff"
bgColor="#ffffff" borderColorLight="#ffffff">
<tr>
<td style="WIDTH: 151px"><asp:label id="lblUserName" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server">User Name:</asp:label></td>
<td align="right" width="144"><asp:textbox id="txtUser" tabIndex="1" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server" MaxLength="50" Width="160px"></asp:textbox></td>
<td width="200"><ASP:REQUIREDFIELDVALIDATOR id="Requiredfieldvalidator1" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtUser"
Display="Static" ErrorMessage="You must enter a user name"></ASP:REQUIREDFIELDVALIDATOR></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="WIDTH: 151px"><asp:label id="lblPassword" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server">Password:</asp:label></td>
<td align="right" width="144"><asp:textbox id="txtPass" tabIndex="2" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server" MaxLength="10" TextMode="Password"
Width="160px"></asp:textbox></td>
<td width="200"><ASP:REQUIREDFIELDVALIDATOR id="Requiredfieldvalidator2" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server" ControlToValidate="txtPass"
Display="Static" ErrorMessage="You must enter a password"></ASP:REQUIREDFIELDVALIDATOR></td>
</tr>
<TR>
<TD style="WIDTH: 151px"><asp:label id="lblConfirm" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server" Visible="False">Confirm Password</asp:label></TD>
<TD align="right" width="144"><asp:textbox id="txtPassConfirm" tabIndex="3" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server" MaxLength="10"
TextMode="Password" Visible="False" Width="160px"></asp:textbox></TD>
<TD width="200"><asp:label id="lblConfirmError" Font-Names="Arial" ForeColor="Red" runat="server" Visible="False">Passwords do not match</asp:label></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD borderColor="#ffffff" borderColorLight="#ffffff" bgColor="#ffffff" borderColorDark="#ffffff"
colSpan="3"><asp:checkbox id="chkRememberMe" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server" Text="Remember me on this computer"></asp:checkbox></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD colSpan="3"><asp:label id="lblMessage" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server"></asp:label></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD align="right" colSpan="2"><asp:button id="butLogin" onclick="butLogin_Click" tabIndex="3" Font-Names="Arial" runat="server"
text="Login" Width="64px"></asp:button></TD>
<td width="200"></td>
</TR>
</table>

When I find the solution to this I will post it here

And in case anyone is wondering how to post HTML on a web page, all I did was to copy the HTML into Notepad, then replace all "<" with "&lt;" and all ">" with "&gt;".

ISP

I have an account with a largely unknown but in my opinion pretty good ISP. Recently my broadband connection went down. It's amazing how much we rely on this technology and it only becomes apparent when it isn't available.



I wanted to get hold of the helpdesk number and so used my only means of web access (I'd looked in the Yellow pages and they weren't listed) that was available at that moment i.e. my mobile phone which has Mini Opera on it. This is a great little browser within the limitations of the small screen. Unfortunately my ISP's site isn't too easy to navigate on the small screen (though it is by no means the worst I have seen) and I failed to get hold of the number though I did manage to log a call on the web based system which is better then nothing. It was only from my work PC that I could even find their number to ring where of course it is easy. I can now ring them and hopefully resolve the issue.

Why don't ISP's have a single WAP site or similar to use in this sort of situation?

Sony 1 Microsoft 0

Well it seems that the much publicised Microsoft Graffiti was little more than an attempt to rejuvenate the tablet PC market.

One of the important things that I think that they appear to have failed to realise is that people rarely write by hand these days. Most of what I do is on a keyboard or a keypad of some sort. When I have to write by hand something barely recogniseable appears on paper and it's frustrating as I feel I can touch type quicker and more accurately. Perhaps most important it's pretty obvious when you have to make a correction to something handwritten. I have a Tungsten T3 PDA which I use a lot, although the handwriting recognition is acceptable, I invariably have to use the virtual keyboard to enter anything other than alphanumerics. On a keyboard I can find most of the odd keys I need such as exclamation marks, questions marks, comma's etc.

Although I understand that the Graffiti format is smaller and therefore more portable than a Tablet, it still doesn't fit into a pocket. This is where I think Sony wins with it's PSP. There have been rumours for over a year now that it is going to include office type software and email. It has a great screen and an (just about) acceptable method of text entry. If the text entry method could be improved to allow speedier entry I think that this machine could become unbeatable. The main limitation would be storage, although you can get 1Gb memory sticks quite cheaply and the capacity is rising I don't think this is the answer. Surely the answer is Web 2 applications. Your average road warrior then has real time access to whatever they need. 10 minutes to spare? Then fire up your enterprise Writely and finish the document you started when last at your office. When you've done that you can take a look at the latest sales figures from your Enterprise spreadsheet. There are plenty of such applications out there.

The NHS would be another good market for this sort of information. The NHS National Programme for IT would do well to look at the PSP as a potential device for use on the wards. The PSP could be wirelessly connected to all the information available for any given patient.

The size and quality of the PSP screen makes this a worthwhile consideration. If Sony would allow applications to be written to support it. UMD or Memory Sticks could be used to provide video assistance and tutorials.

Sony Ericsson Looking Good

Sony Ericsson have now announced the long awaited and much speculated over P990i smartphone. I'm delighted that they have put in a 2 megapixel camera and Wireless networking (pity it's apparently Wireless b but beggars can't be choosers). They have also shrunk the screen which is hardly suprising as there were some suggestions that the P900 and the P800 screens cracked a little too easily, it is however unfortunate for people like me who are slowly going blind in their old age that although the resolution is as good the screen is physically smaller. I also don't like the look of the qwerty keyboard and wonder why they didn't try the same keyboard as the M600i with 2 letters on each key. This seems a good compromise and I suspect will take off for portable computing/pda type devices.

Apparently this phone is due out about May this year. My contract runs out then so it will be good time for me to be one of the first in the queue to replace my k750i which I think is a great phone too.

Graphically Challenged

Well I've installed the card and it is fabulous. In World of Warcraft I turned everything up and the detail on the graphics was incredible. Unforunately at this level there was still jerkiness in some locations. Admittedly not as bad as before but it made my wife very unhappy. I've turned the settings down and she is a bit happier at least. I'm going to show her Half Life 2 soon that should blow her away.

She doesn't seem concerned that we now have our two desktops back. That's one of the things that pleases me most as it will help with video editing where I use the fantastic Adobe Premiere LE. As you will see from the website there is now version 2 available, I bought version 1 a year or so ago. I had previously used the full version so find this pretty easy to use. My only issues with it are that I am no creative genius so I tend to use Microsoft Movie Maker for the titles and there is no upgrade path. I realise it is inexpensive software but I would happily pay say £30 for an upgrade version. I won't however fork out for a complete new version until maybe version 3 or 4.

Making titles in Movie Maker is a doddle, in Premiere it is a bit of a faff though the options are far more powerful and flexible. I also came across Microsoft Photo Story which is a stunningly simple and effective way of turning your photo's into a video, it can even create music for you to your taste. Home videos will never be the same again. You could almost certainly do the same thing in Premiere LE but why bother when you can do it so easily with this program. Something else that is a bit of fun for this sort of thing is Morphing software

Faster tban a speeding...

Snail. OK so I'm being hard but not as hard as a lot of people.

Some time ago a good friend sold me (for a nominal fee) a graphics card he no longer wanted. It is one of the Matrox twin head range. If you haven't used this sort of setup believe me it's hard to go back to one screen. Initially, I had the original 17" CRT that came with the PC and I also had a spare 15" CRT. The setup was great.

Then a few months later a friend of my father-in-law asked for some advice. He was having great trouble with this new computer he had bought. The screen wasn't very stable. At first I suspected the monitor but then discovered that he had bought a new Philips one and the same happened on that. Dismissing the usual favourite explanation of sunspots I realised after further questioning that he lived very near to some high voltage electricity lines. I recommended that he buy an LCD panel as at the time they were just about becoming decent. This solved his problem. As a thankyou he very kindly gave me the (brand new) Philips monitor. So I then had two 17" CRT's attached to my computer. The huge amount of space they occupy was completely offset by the screen real estate.

Xmas 2004 my wife bought me Half Life 2 as a present. We had both enjoyed the original but what she hadn't realised was that our computer was then about 5 years old and there was no way you could play this game on it. We bought a new PC to play the game. The machine we bought has on board graphics which by definition aren't brilliant but were sufficient to play the game. Of course this meant that the twin monitor setup went out of the window. I got a lot of ear bending about this. Each time I explained we needed a Graphics card and each time we couldn't afford a decent one that would do what we wanted.

Just before Xmas 2005 the same friend who sold me the graphics card got me hooked on World of Warcraft. After a suprising amount of persuasion my wife had a go and she is now much more hooked than me. Occasionally the graphics are a bit jerky which I just put down to bandwidth and server use as it only seemed to happen where there were a lot of other characters around. Then we went to visit my wife's brother. He had it on his laptop. It was at that point my wife realised that the graphics on his laptop were massively better than on our machine. At the same time I realised that the jerkiness was probably to do with the frame rate. All of a sudden we had the money to buy a new Graphics card but only if it would support two monitors.

These days supporting two monitors is quite a common thing for a graphics card which meant I was spoiled for choice. The whole graphics card market is a nightmare. There are all sorts of subtle differences at all sorts of price points. In the end I decided that I would let someone else make the decision for me. I decided to contact Overclockers. In the back of my mind I knew I had heard of them before. I explained my requirements - two monitors, a bit of video editing, two games and it must be AGP as my machine doesn't support PCI Express. Given that PCI Express is starting to take off I figured that the price of AGP cards would start to rise so I should buy now with one eye on the future. They suggested the XFX GeForce 6600 GT 128MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP). After doing some research on it I decided that it was a decent purchase and it was about as future proof as I could get. Not only could I overclock it should I choose to but it could support two DVI-I monitors should I replace the CRT's.

I placed my order and it was duly acknowledged. When I placed it my wife was in the room and gave me her credit card, so I put it in her name. For us this is a fairly normal practice. I then put my work address for delivery. Big mistake! A day or two later I got an email saying that they could only deliver to the cardholders address do to the cost of the card. If I didn't acknowledge this email via their webnote system within 7 days the order would be cancelled. I was minorly annoyed at this as we both work and so delivering to home means that one of us has to take a day off. In my note I asked if the card could be delivered to a neighbour when the poor delivery guy discovered we weren't in. Fortunately they said yes.

It was at this point I decided to do some research on Overclockers. It didn't take long to discover a lot of unhappy customers. I guess that with the Internet this is pretty much the norm but was starting to get worried. Next day I had heard nothing so left another webnote which again was auto-acknowledged. By now it was Wednesday and the card should have been delivered on Monday or at the latest Tuesday. To my knowledge it wasn't even ready to go to the courier. On Thursday I got an email to say that it had been prepared for delivery and I got a link to the couriers site that was supposed to show the status of the parcel. When I clicked on this it said there was no such package. I happened to check again today (friday) and was relieved to see that the parcel was on it's way. When I got home there was a card to say that it was delivered to a neighbour. I write this while waiting for my wife to finish her WoW session so I can install the card.

In summary, well done Overclockers, you were as good as your word. It took longer than ideal to deliver but I can see that this is probably a security issue.

Tease Me!

It seems Microsoft are on the tease with a new site they have registered. I'm sure there will be a lot of speculation but my guess for what it's worth is that it will be a PSP killer.

Daxten 1 Kensington 0

At work we have a number of laptops. To save a bit of desk space we tend to use Daxten SCOUTCombo KVM switches and a docking station. The problem with this setup is that the docking stations are proprietary and tend to be expensive. So I decided to look at universal docking stations and bought a Kensington Portable Universal Docking Station for evaluation as it seemed to best fit our requirements and would mean that it could be used with any laptop with a USB port. This would mean that in future we wouldn't need to buy a docking station every time we buy a laptop. It even supports an ethernet connection.

When it came, it looks nice and compact and can be easily tucked out of the way. I plugged it into my laptop and connected it all up. This is when the problems began. In fact the KVM switch stopped working. After a bit of experimenting I realised that it only stopped working when the PS2 mouse connector was in the docking station. This suggested that the issue was with the docking station rather than the switch. I had been successfully using that (and other) switches for about a year.

I emailed both Kensington and Daxten. A couple of days later I got rather terse email back from Kensington stating that none of their equipment supports KVM switches.I can find no reference to this on the packaging that came with the unit, nor can I find any such infomrmation on their website, neither can Google.

Fortunately for me, during those same few days I had been in frequent communication with Daxten. Not only were they prompt but they were extremely helpful. I discovered that I could connect the USB connection from the KVM switch to the laptop and then the KVM switch would work as expected. Now this isn't ideal as if I want to take the laptop I have to unplug lots of connections rather than one (and in my experience frequent connecting and disconnecting is often the cause of failure in laptops) but at least it works.

I've since discovered that I can plug the usb connection from the switch into the docking station (and not the mouse and keyboard connections) and it all works as expected. At least this means that I only need to disconnect the USB and monitor connections from the laptop.

Needless to say we won't be buying any more Kensington equipment but I will be advocating that of Daxten. One of the really nice things about this particular KVM switch is that it has four USB ports on the front which means I can plug my memory stick/camera etc in and they can be seen from all the computers.

1001 uses for a memory stick part 2

I've just discovered a great little site called The Portable Freeware Collection. It has lots of portable applications listed and any instructions needed to make the application portable if it wasn't intended to be so by the author.

More Network Printing

I've now discovered what works for my network printing. If you run the belkin wizard, it should find the print server. Leave the encryption at none - the settings don't get overwritten as I previously thought. You also need to ensure that the printer is installed before running the wizard.

When the wizard completes it should all be setup ok apart from the following. On the printer settings (right click on the printer icon and click Properties). On the ports tab you need to make sure that bidirectional printing is off. You also need to click once on the port for your printer (belkin port) and then click on the Configure Port button. Click on the advanced options and if you have the printer connected to port 1 (the lower socket) in queue name put lp1 then click OK twice. On the advanced tab I have all the check boxes clear at the bottom. I'm not certain that any of this is essential but it works for me. The rest of the settings can be left at the default values.

Finally, most importantly, you need to cycle the power on the print server. This can be done either physically or remotely via the web interface and all should be well.

Network Printing

My wife is now studying for a Masters degree, so now the table in the dining room has been taken over, which is only fair given that the study has been taken over by computers so there is no room to put a book down. The table is massive, we once has 14 people sat around it in relative comfort. There is at least plenty of room for her.

We bought a laptop for her to use. This connects wirelessly as its quite a way to the dining room from the study and she refused to have cat 5 cable strewn around the house. She then complained that if she wanted to print she had to go to the study to collect it which would break her train of thought. Sharing the existing printer isn't ideal as the computer it's attached to isn't always turned on.

My first option was to buy another printer which would be convenient should the existing one pack up/run out of ink at a strategically important moment but it would also be relatively expensive as we would then have two printers to buy ink for etc. In addition she moves the laptop around a lot and I don't want her plugging more than necessary into it at a time. One answer to this might be a universal docking station such as the Kensington though there are other ones with slightly differing features. The issue with this would be that the laptop would have to be on for the other computers to print and it would be more expense.

This led to my second and (eventually) favoured option which was to buy a print server. I had read a lot about wireless print servers and noted that some of them were incompatible with certain printers. I also noticed that some of them were USB 1.1 which doesn't make a lot of sense given the prevalence of USB 2 now. Others were wireless b which again doesn't make sense. The final issue with this was about compatibility with my Netgear wireless kit. I first considered their wireless print server with 4 port switch. I couldn't find out if it was compatible with my HP 5650 and Netgear weren't forthcoming when I emailed them. I also considered buying another wireless access point the same as the one I had, using it as a bridge and connecting it with cat 5 to a print server. Then I read that this print server is particularly slow to print. My printer isn't a multi function but it does have a USB and a parallel port which means that I can use either. The advantage of the second Wireless access point would be that it would improve general wireless access around the house. The main disadvantage would be cost.

Under increasing pressure to resolve this and in desperation I went to my local PC world to see what they had. I've taken advantage of their collect@store before. In my case I bought World of Warcraft for £20 rather than the £35 or so that it was on the same shelves for. They had nothing but next door there is a Comet which sometimes has interesting stuff. They had a Linksys . I've always fancied their kit but never used it. It was a bit more than I wanted to pay but remember I was under pressure. As it was the only model of print server they had I asked the sales assistant if I could get a refund if it didn't work with my network/printer asI knew that was a potential issue. They said no - I couldn't. I decided it was a bit too expensive to use as a doorstop.

Later I went to my local Staples. They always have a good selection of networking kit and it was better priced than Comet. In the end I was spoilt for choice but plumped for a Belkin. I've read good things about their support, this device supports up to 2 printers and the price wasn't too bad compared to buying online. I decided that the compromise would be printing using USB 1.1 which still should be reasonably quick. They gave me up to 14 days to claim a refund and as they had others it was far less of an issue than Comet. I reasoned that if I couldn't get the Belkin to work that I would give the 3com a go. It was only £5 dearer and was USB 2, though only supporting 1 printer.

It's not the prettiest device ever but I started to set it up. Following the quickstart instructions, it wasn't recognised and it also only appeared to use WEP encryption. My network uses WPA so it would mean reconfiguration all round!! I connected it to my switch on a spare port, that showed that it did support WPA, it just didn't show in the installation wizard. It also showed that the device would only use wireless OR cat5, it can't use both at the same time, minorly irritating but understandable. At least it meant I could use it as a wired print server should I want/need too.

Connecting by cat5 was much more successful when I found the IP address, which defaults to 192.168.0.253. Having configured it, I still couldn't print. Hmm, Time to read the manual! That suggested that I run a program on the CD but this program continually gave me an error which appeared to be related to a help file and refused to run. Time for drastic measures, in a final attempt to get it working I switched encryption off on my Access Point and on the print server. Run the wizard from the CD and bingo the test page churns out. It was getting late so I left it like that until the next day, when I got it in the neck from my wife because her laptop couldn't get onto the web!

The installation puts it's own printer port driver onto the computer which also needs a little configuration particularly if you have two printers. I then reactivated WPA on the device, reactivated it on the Access Point (resulting in a happy wife!), recycled the power on the print server and again it worked. Fortunately you can save the print server settings to a separate file as a backup. I say this as to enable printing on any of my computers I will have to run the wizard which as I said doesn't allow WPA encryption but does overwrite the settings on the device. It's a shame that Belkin didn't have an option on the wizard to just install the print port driver. Other than that and the fact it is only USB 1.1 it seems to be a decent little gadget and when I have gone through the pain of setting it up, all should be well.

Whale Watching

I went whale watching in Juneau, Alaska last year. It was fabulous. We were with Captain Larry.
It was a modest sized boat. As you can see from the pictures they got pretty close. I thought at one time they were going to hit us!

We had bought a Panasonic camcorder specially for the trip. It's a great little device, small, light and decent enough quality for us.

It was a cool, damp day, when we got to where the whales were we all went outside to look at them. Quite a lot of people stood on the roof of the boat to get a better view. I stayed at the back where I was close to water level.

I was so excited when they came under the boat that I nearly dropped the camera. Humpack whales are enourmous. I only really saw what happened when I watched it back.

If you want to watch the video it can be found here . I'm afraid it's only in WMV format at the moment but if there is any interest I will convert it. It's best watched full screen on a broadband or faster connection.

Internet Explorer 7

I've just installed Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 and it's quite interesting. I've always felt in the past that when Mocrosoft have had serious competition they were at their best. They used to be good at stealing other people ideas and making them even better i.e. doing them right.

In my opinion they haven't really done this with IE7. If you take the tabbed browsing it seems a bit half hearted. Why couldn't it work like the tabs in an Excel sheet? I sometimes need to see pages side by side. With tabbed browsing this can be awkward, but only because they don't have the tile and cascade options that you get on most other applications, in particular the Office ones. I've posted this as a suggestion in the microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general newsgroups. Ironically I had to do it using Firefox as I couldn't get IE7 to work!

I also don't like having to go to a tab to close it by hitting the x. This is the feature of Netscape that I dislike - for me Firefox does it better by keeping the x in one place. Microsoft have done it properly in Visual Studio! Can we please have some consistency.

Finally I dislike the bar at the top. I like to have my menus at the top. When I tried to do this I lost them and it took a little while to find how to retrieve them (Tools (button)|ToolBars|Lock Bands). I also prefer the Google toolbar for searching as by hitting a different button I can search Google uk, or Google maps etc.

Recently I was starting to convert to Firefox especially with the IETab extension. Microsoft have done barely enough to make me decide either way.

Having said all this, the look of it is likely to be a hint of what's to come with Vista and on the whole I don't dislike the look, I'm sure I'll get used to it's quirks fairly soon. I've managed to crash it a couple of times but that is to be expected with a Beta. It's also a bit slow but again that is probably because it's a beta. It handles RSS feeds slightly differently to Firefox and I'm not sure if I like that or not. I'll reserve judgement for now.

To my mind one of the best things about it is the anti-phishing tool. Assuming this works as intended it's a brilliant idea.

Bigger isn't always better

I have mixed feelings about initiatives such as live.com, start.com, Writely etc. I really do like the idea of having this sort of thing hosted centrally. I think it would save a massive amount of time for IT support people though it does smack rather of the good old days of mainframes and dumb terminals.

I do however think that there is a seriously missed opportunity, particularly for Microsoft. I work for a large organisation in the UK, while I'm sure it would save a lot of money through the use of these sort of applications it would never be able to allow Microsoft to store it's data. The opportunity that is missed is for large enterprises to host these applications on their own servers so that they can be tied into the Intranet. This gives the Road Warriors even more flexibility. Working from home could become old fashioned, working from the beach could become reality!

It also could mean the end of drive mappings (finally!). In my experience one of the things that users get confused about is network drive mappings. If on saving you get a choice of "my personal stuff", "Stuff people in my section/department can see" or "stuff anyone can see" then you are halfway to better managed data storage.

In my department I have managed to convince users that saving all the correspondence with particular clients in their own folders on the departmental drive is a bad idea. We now have a structured system which puts all the correspondence for a particular client in one folder, regardless of who wrote it. This isn't rocket science and is probably normal practice in the rest of the world but in a lumbering organisation that is still living in the Stone Age it is a revelation. No longer do users have to search the whole of the drive (with its tens of thousands of files) every time they are looking for something. They can now search a smaller number of folders which saves everyone time. I've also created a little Word macro that takes the id of the client and saves the file in the correct location automagically and stores the fact it has done it in the central database. This now means that the database knows about the files as well as the data which means that we can make it accessible from our Intranet.

My question is - will I be able to do this with Writely or the other web 2 apps?

Has the worm turned

Microsoft are subject to a lot of criticism for a lot of things but this makes me wonder if things are starting to change. Of late I have started to use Firefox more than IE. My only objection to Firefox is that it takes longer to startup which is irritating when you are impatient. The IEView addon has removed any other objections I may have had.

PSP update

I've finally got my PSP to see my wireless network - which consists of a Netgear WG602 wireless access point connected to an ethernet switch. I couldn't get it to work with WEP and almost turned off encryption in despair. In the end I decided to plump for OS 2.6 despite the limitations it imposes, there were just enough extras to appeal including better support for wireless encryption and audio streaming via RSS. They aren't perfect but they are a step in the right direction.

I had to overcome some hurdles in all this. In order to download the software I needed to register my PSP with the Sony site. It appears that my PSP was an import as the model numnber wasn't on the drop down list that Sony provided. It is a 1000 model which is apprently the Japanese one. This wasn't made clear to me when I bought it but in this internet based world that should be a minor detail. Clearly Sony has other ideas. I tried the listed models with the serial number but it didn't work. Then I found a site on the same matter. I used the model number 1003 and altered the first two letters of my serial number to SB. This allowed me to register and to download the OS update.

Then the battery wasn't charged, so I had to do that AND leave the power plugged in to update the OS. I don't really understand why simply plugging the power in isn't sufficient to do an OS upgrade.

This finally gave me all the wizzy new features but - no suprise - it still wasn't connecting to the Wireless Access Point using WEP. Nor would it using WPA-PSK(AES) the highest level available even though this appeared to be supported by the PSP. This didn't bode well. Fortunately setting the access point and the PSP to WPA-PSK(TKIP) finally meant that they could connect. It's a bit quirky but on the whole it works quite well. Though for some reason it won't save my google bookmark.

I've just bought a new CD and ripped it to my PC using Windows Media Player ~(WMA format). The PSP is meant to handle this with OS 2.6. Bizarrely it needs to connect to the internet to do it.

You can stream RSS audio and video but finding something worthwhile to listen to is proving tricky. It's also rather irritating that you have to stream via a wireless network, surely when many people seem to be buying 1Gb memory sticks a podcasting system makes more sense.

I'm now looking to setup my own server so that I can steam my music to the PSP and anywhere else I choose. I may look into setting up my own RSS feed.

1001 Uses for a memory stick part 1

I have a 2Gb memory stick that I use at work. It's handy for quick backups of some of our databases or if I want to move them around without hitting the network. I also use it to archive some old files that no one is ever likely to want again but we daren't delete.

I've heard about people putting small versions of Linux on them so you can boot from it and use it to fix a broken machine.

The best use I've seen yet is portable applications, they come in Windows, Linux and Apple flavours. A lot of them are linked to from here. There are all sorts of things here, from office apps to PDF readers. This means you can just plug it into your computer and go.

If you combine this with web applications such as these you have pretty much everything you need. All of a sudden your expensive computer becomes an anorexic client.

Feelings of Guilt

I was starting to feel that I was being hard on Sony. As I have said I generally like their kit. Then I heard about the rootkit fiasco. One of the things that really annoys me about this article is the quote from "a company executive" that

"most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it"

To me this shows a complete arrogance and a disregard for people. Most people may not know what a Trojan virus is but it is cetainly something they should care about.

Do these people not realise that by doing this sort of thing they are encouraging people to download MP3's in preference to installing something unknown and potentially dangerous onto their computer. Do they not realise they are penalising the very people who are actually buying the CD's and not the pirates. People pay a lot of money for a computer and don't want it sabotaged. What makes this whole thing more laughable is that it is so simple to circumvent all this copyright protection using Sony equipment. I know someone who bought a copy protected CD that they wanted to put onto their Ipod. The copy protection was supposed to mean that this couldn't be done. The next day it had been using a very low tech solution. This is legitimate use.

More Sony fun and Games

Two things happened to me this weekend. Firstly my wife bought me GTA for my PSP as a suprise present. I Was delighted as I had already been considering buying this game as I am getting stuck on Wipeout.

Now the game wouldn't load without insisting on updating the OS. Although this is something that I had been considering I rather resent being forced into this position as it is certainly something that is not clear from the packaging of this game that this is the case. I particularly object to the precendent that this sets.

To add to my frustration I tried to get my (now with updated OS) PSP to see my Wireless Access Point. Now I know that the Access Point works fine as we have been using my laptop with it for a while on the highest security setting that the AP can take.

So I try to connect to the AP from the PSP and keep getting errors and timeouts. I check the encryption available on the PSP and reduce the encryption on the AP accordingly. It still doesn't work. I then found a document on the Netgear site that said that It will only work with WEP encryption. This is unacceptable. I'm not interested in blame. It seems to me that the simple fact is that either Netgear or Sony can't get their act together. Given that the AP works fine with my laptop and given that the PSP I have didn't originally support some of the encrytpion that the AP does, I personally would lay this at the door of Sony.

Tactics

I started playing chess again about a year ago now. I first learnt when I was little but my dad stopped playing me when I could beat him easily. Then I started again in the 6th form at school. There was me and another guy who were about the same level which meant we had some titanic struggles, often lasting for a couple of days as we only played in lunch hours.

After school I didn't really have any opponents for a long time, then I discovered chess on the web and in particular the Gameknot Site. I really like this site, more than any of the others I have tried. One of the things that I particularly like is that they keep working to improve the site. It has lots of features which are quite useful in play such as a game database and an analyse position feature, you can also add comments about a particular game, I use this to remind myself of what I am intending to do which is quite important when you have 40 games on the go at once.

Forty games may sound a lot but there is a minimum of three days and a maximum of fourteen to make a move. For me this tends to mean that I get to make a few moves a day.

So why do I enjoy the game? My rating on Gameknot fluctuates wildly which I find frustrating. I think the reason I like the game, and especially Gameknot, is that there is a "never ending" supply of opponents of a similar level. It makes me concentrate for the whole of the game if I want to win and it makes me think tactically and stratefically. I like to think that I can then apply some of this in every day life

Geeky Stuff

I work in IT and part of my role is to look after a couple of SQL Servers. In an attempt to improve the system I am trying to implement Reporting Services. The big problem being that we have to use forms authentication as that can let us emulate the application security. Microsoft now have an MSDN article that goes into this in some detail

Phones alive

I just discovered this site. it seems like the sort of site that you don't need very often but is really useful if you do. It gives you information about any phone in the world as well as some useful information on international dialling

What are Sony playing at?

Generally speaking I like Sony kit a lot and will certainly look at it when cost is not a consideration but I sometimes wonder if they are playing games with people.

Take the Sony memory stick. There is a plethora of memory cards around these days, I have SD, XD and Memory Stick based equipment and I find it ridiculous that I cannot use one card for everything. This can only happen in the world of computer related equipment. If all video recorders took different size/shaped tapes what would happen - I'm sure we all know the answer to that.

Given that Sony insist on pushing the Memory Stick you would think that they could have the decency to make its use compatible across their own equipment. For example, I have a Sony Ericsson K750i phone which I consider to be one of the best on the market still (I was an early adopter of this phone having previously had a T68i which in some ways was slightly better for me but more of that another time). This phone takes memory sticks and to be fair Sony provide one which is certainly sufficent for my needs with the phone. My phone has some MP3's on it, some video clips and some photo's as well as some calendar information etc - all pretty standard stuff these days.

I've very recently invested in a PSP which I am generally pleased with - it certainly relieved the tedium of flying to/from the US. However I am displeased with the memory stick and here's why. If I take the memory stick from my phone and put it into the PSP, it will show the photo's and that's it! No video and no MP3's (presumably unless they are in the right location/format). Is it just me or is this patently ridiculous. Just to add insult to injury the OS is being constantly upgraded so that people can't write their own software for it which means there will probably never be a calendar/contacts list/alarm/ other standard phone orPDA functionality.

You could argue that the PSP is primarily a multimedia machine but if that's the case why no radio or steaming of audio/video over the wireless connection? Why no Bluetooth or infra red? My phone can do pretty much all of these, the only thing it can't do is put them on a nice big screen.

Surely if Sony (and other companies) are going to force people to use essentially proprietry components they should at least make them work seamlessly across their equipment. Perhaps the PS3 is the answer to my prayers.

Oh No!

Well I've finally decided to go for it and create a blog. We live in interesting times!