Canfield Research Group - From Visions to Reality

.NET critical update problems

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:28:06 -0700

A couple of "critical" updates I received on 7/11/2007 failed to install. The update is in regards to .net:

- KB92836
- KB92835

The following is the procedure I finally used to fix the problem. It is tedious and I am not alone in being adversely affected by this update. This is not the first time that a Microsoft update has bit me. I may have to turn off updates until they are proven to work. Having systems go down without notification due to a failed update is not acceptable.

You may wish to clone your drive first. This process worked for me but it may not work for you.
Turn OFF automatic updates. You do NOT want them happening while working on this process

Soundsnap launches!

Mon, 2 Jul 2007 14:41:38 -0700

Congratulations to all who worked on Soundsnap. The site launched this morning with approx 30,000 sound samples, all free for use. It streams previews using MP3, and the original high quality sounds are available as WAV or AIFF. Check it out!

Canfield Research Group provided the following technologies:

A revamped audio module capable of much finer grained control over theming
Support for new players based on the mime type
The CRG transcoder which converts files from one type to another on-demand and in batch mode with complete job control

Palm TX --> Bluetooth --> Blackberry 8800 --> TMobile

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:20:23 -0700

Blackberry 8800, Palm TX, Bluetooth, Internet and T-Mobile

Notes

- This setup worked for me as of 2007-04-13 from the Seattle area of Washington, USA.
- I suspect getting a Linux or Mac laptop to connect over Bluetooth will be basically the same process but I am out of time for that today.
- This web site is being migrated soon and is in a READ ONLY mode. Please post comments, suggestions, corrections to this thread on BlackberryForums

I have been struggling for a few hours to get my Palm TX to use the Blackberry 8800 as a modem to access the Internet. While some may find using a Palm and a Blackberry together it works very well for me. The Blackberry is a Phone / GPS / Messaging device and the Palm handles my heavy lifting for VPN, SSH, EBooks, Reference material (4 GB), and occasional games. While I may move from the Palm to 100% BB it will take a while to replace everything I have on the TX.

Drupal 5 and problems with domains that include ports

Wed, 7 Feb 2007 10:00:18 -0800

Drupal 5 changes the way the cookie domain is calculated. If you are using ports to direct traffic to systems behind a firewall (or for whatever reason) Drupal 5 will errantly add the port to the cookie domain. As far as I can tell the RFC that specifies how sessions are maintained (RFC 2109) does not allow port specifications. The PHP code used in Drupal 5 does NOT strip ports from the cookie_domain. The solutions I found are:

1. Comment or disable the code in session.php that modifies the cookie_domain. This makes it work somewhat like it did in Drupal 4.x from what I can tell.
2. Set the cookie_domain explicitly. I dislike this solution due to maintenance and site aliasing

Project Management Software

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:14:41 -0800

In Progress

This entry is not a formal review. It is just some quick notes I wanted to track as I researched project management software. Hopefully others with similar situation will find the information a useful starting point.

Project management can get complex very quickly and software to help manage projects is very useful. Even small projects can become tricky to monitor, especially when they are on a fast track or involve a lot of research dependencies. A recent project I am involved in fir this criteria perfectly.

I need to track a number of small (in many cases 4-8 hour tasks) that are experimental in nature. These tasks may or may not work out as hoped. To make matters worse these experiments are interrelated and spread across multiple people. And finally, they need to tie into the larger project so decisions can be made as to when to switch tracks and use different technologies.

Chief Architect wins against VectorWorks, with some regrets

Mon, 2 Oct 2006 09:43:52 -0700

I have chosen Chief Architect as my design tool for my Father's remodeling business. It beat out the other major competor VectorWorks. Chief Architect can do residential and interior design far faster and easier than VectorWorks can and residential design is what this evaluation was based on.

I personally prefer VectorWorks because it is a more of a platform. Eventually I, or others, could fill in all the holes I mention in my VectorWork review and it would be far supior to anything I have found on the market today. I could see writing Chief Architect in VectorWorks, if that gives you an idea of the platforms power. But I had to make a decision on the capabilties of the software today and could not justify the expense of custom macros for a staff of 1 drafter.

PVR (personal Video Records) and Media Centers

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 09:23:11 -0700

In general the state of PC based PVRs is a bit immature. These are general oberservation of the core software that PVR's are built upon, commercial or private. The lack of a CD Player option is very weird. When I or my Lady wishes to play a CD we bought the last thing I am going to do is try and explain to her how to rip it! A drop it in and it plays seems to be the "right way". The same applies to external media cards from cameras. Should the pictures be extracted and saved to a predetermine dlocation, possible by date? Almost anything is better than doing nothing! I get the feeling that PVRs are made for the uber geek (which some would accuse me of being). That's all fine and good but when the unit enters the living room it MUST be usable by all members and hopefully even guests. Oh well.

TV out and Nvidia Gforce Cards

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:07:44 -0700

I wanted to make use of the dual-head capability of my GForce card under MythTV. The utlimate goal is to use an always on LCD screen as the interface (Video, Music, etc.) and the TV for video. A GForce 4000 can do this after a bit of work.

To get this to work requires seperate displays where resolution can be independently set. The core of the documentation can be found at http://download.nvidia.com/solaris/1.0-8178/README/appendix-o.html. Note I do NOT use Twinview sicne I want seperate displays.

My operating system is Mandriva 2006.

The only trick is to make sure that the BusID line is set EVEN if you have only one card. Modify your XFConfig configuration per the nvidia.com instructions. To get your BusID use lspci. After that simply restart X and you will see to seperate KDE windows. The mouse moves between them BUT screens cannot be dragged across. Each screen can be independently set.

COM+ Errors

Sat, 1 Apr 2006 21:07:48 -0800

The following error was repeated many times in a client's event log:

The COM+ Event System attempted to fire the EventObjectChange::ChangedSubscription event but received a bad return code. HRESULT was 80040201.

After some research the solution was:

Delete the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\COM3
Delete all the directory and all files in: C:\WINDOWS\Registration
- If you cannot delete a file use http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/files/killbox.php, browse to the file/directory that could not be deleted and select the option to delete on next boot. Reboot.

Windows Updates Fail 0x80240020

Sat, 1 Apr 2006 21:04:00 -0800

On a client's system I could not get automatic updates to work. They would download but then fail to install.

I cleared the download cache first. Note that this does NOT solve the problem but does clean things up and that makes diagnosis easier.

Services / Automatic Updates / Stop
Delete the C:\windows\SoftwareDownloads directory
Services / Automatic Updates / Start

I then restored the SensLogn registra settings. These were totally absent (Notufy/SensLogn was missing). I have yet to determin what and when these went missing. See the following for details:

http://support

Links on project pages should be working now

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 17:52:29 -0800

Corrected some linking problems that occurred when I implemented the FloorPlan Wiki linking code. My Drupal modules can once again be accessed.

Google Toolbar - a security breach waiting to happen?

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:15:21 -0800

I love the idea of the Google Toolbar, especially the spell checker. But I had to wonder how it worked. Its not rocket science but it is a nice implantation of client/server code. The idea is that text is sent to Google via XML and returned to the toolbar via XML. For a moderately fast connection this is all very nice and can be extended to multiple operating systems easily.

The problem is that the text is sent clear-text to an organization that is not under the author's control. I can just imagine an author entering a legal brief into carefully secured CMS (Content Management Entry) on an internal web site and having all that text being sent clear-text to Google. With so little understanding of computers, or technology in general, I suspect many people will be using remote spell checkers without any idea how they work.

FloorPlan experimental Wiki Beta starts

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 18:46:41 -0800

I have set up an experimental Wiki for FloorPlan.

This is VERY experimental and needs some testing. Everyone can access the Wiki but only registered users can contribute. Register using the login box to the left. After registration you need to send me an email requesting WRITE access to the Wiki (the wiki is readable by all). I hope to remove this cumbersome process after the Beta.

If you are uncomfortable with Alpha/Beta I recomend not working with the Wiki until we iron out the bugs.

Thanks

Image Duplicate Scanners

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 21:25:19 -0800

Initial results of my search for an image scanner today. The criteria:

Able to handle large image sets (think Video Astronomy and way too many digital cameras)
Must compare images using tsomething other than CRC
- This means I cannot use a simple file comaprison tool since some images are in different formats or dimensions although they containt he "same" image.
Able to control simularity thresholds
Able to auto-select the images to delete
- I am not sure what criteria is best here; dimensions, image size (larger == better?), quality (how?)
Able to manualy choose from possible duplicates

FloorPlan stairs

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 22:49:51 -0800

Added a new article on FloorPlan stairs: Stair Rules.