Jimiz.net – Jim Becher on the web

Figure 1

I updated all devices at our house today. Ipads, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4s. Everyone now has ios 5 and all devices are backed up and have iCloud working. If you have not ever heard of all the “i” things can you imagine what I just said. Before the iPhone people did not even know what an app was… now we talk in clouds, sync, and siri.

If you are interested in cutting the cord and syncing with wifi here is a quick tutorial. We have many iOS devices in our house. I sync a few with my computer and a few with my wife’s. Our media server (windows media server) holds almost all the songs and videos. We just map a drive (that is a topic for another day). However the use of wifi sync is great. I have consolidated to the media server to be the itunes primary for a few devices. This allows for that machine to always run itunes (in the startup folder) and the devices to just connect to it via wireless.

Figure 2

To set this up you first have to enable wi-fi sync. Plug in your device and select the summary tab of your iOS device. Add a check box to the options area to “sync this iPad over Wi-Fi”.  (figure 1)
Once you have done this the basics are complete. Your next step is to connect your iphone or iPad to a power outlet and watch it sync over wifi. You need the iOS devices to be on the same wifi network as the computer that has iTunes. NOTE: also the computer should have iTunes already running before the sync will happen.

I’m not sure of why the device needs to be plugged in, but that is needed. Here is the screen from your iOS device (figure 2)

Here is a great video tour of Artprize 2011 from people in the crowd. What a great video.

The Art of Inspiration from Bill Bergen on Vimeo.

I decided to upgrade iTunes and also my iOS version to 5.   The install of iTunes version 10.5 took about 20 min to download and install.  The install of iOS 5 is taking a bit of time to install – 8 hours.  Eight hours, that is one heck of a long time.

I did a quick speed test just to validate that I had a good connection speed.    I had close to 17MB download speeds and it still shows about 8 hours to download.  How many people are downloading the iOS 5 version with me as well.  It would be great to see what kind of traffic that Apple is generating today.

For the last 2 months I have been standing up at work.  I’ve borrowed a rolling laptop cart to be my stand up desk.  You can see from the pictures that it is adjustable and also has a mouse tray to the side.

The stand I am using is an instand, deluxe with roller wheels. Using a standup desk has been a great learning experience.  The first week my feet were killing me.   At the end of the day all I wanted was to sit down and take off my shoes.   After about 5 days my feet got used to it.

I also found that people are very curious about the stand-up desk.  I work in a large corporation and there are many cubes in my area.   I would get about 1 person a week stopping over and asking me questions.  Most of the questions were regarding health.  Many people asked if I was doing this because of back issues.   I find that interesting that everyone relates standing to back pains.

The reason I decided to give this a try was from an old email I found.  I had wanted to know how long I had gmail and looked back at the oldest email I had in my account.   I had forwarded an article about a future treadmill desk from one of the furniture makers.  In that article they talked about the benefits of standing while working.    I did a few searches and found that it is a growing trend and a health one.  I’m not saying that I’ll die if I sit at work like this article, but standing could be healthier.

http://mashable.com/2011/04/22/standup-desks/#13017A-standup-desk-in-action

There are many solutions and desks available for standing, I chose this one because it wsa available.    The only issue I have is that there are 3 rollers on the bottom and because of where I have it positioned one sticks out towards me while I am working.

Overall I have found that standing is a great way to work.  I am not sure I could go back to sitting all the time.  I have found that for some tasks sitting is more appealing.  I find that I am most comfortable talking on the phone when seated.  I also realized that If I am doing any type of heavy mouse usage that sitting helps.

While starting to  write an android application I had to re-install the Android SDK on my new system.  When I did this and tried to execute the Emulator I go the following error:

"invalid command-line parameter: Files.

Hint: use '@foo' to launch a virtual device named 'foo'. please use -help for more information"

After some google searches and some testing I finally found a fix.  The issue it appears is the referenced path that Android is using.  Since I have an x64 system, the location that the default android install is : C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk

One of the posts and install documents I read was to add that directory to your “Path” in windows.  I made that change and still had the same issue.  After some more digging I found that the issue is related to the spaces in the folder path.   To solve this issue I added the “SFN” directory location into the PATH variables.

Short File name is sometimes called 8.3 file name.   Because it envokes a limit on the filename and extension length (wikipedia)

Since x64 machines place files that are 32bit into a different Program files directory the install location is : C:\Program Files (x86)\android\android-sdk

SO THE FIX IS:

Add the location sfn name into the path.  My 8.3 file location for the sdk is:

C:\PROGRA~2\android\android-sdk

This will remove the spaces from the path.  To add a folder location in your path on windows 7 you need to:

• go to control panel
• 
• System | Edit the System Environment Variables
• Click the Environment Variables button
• 
• Scroll Down under “system Variables” until you find path
• 
• Place a “;” before you add the path to the sdk folder (C:\PROGRA~2\android\android-sdk)
• 

I’m a huge fan of a tool called nmap (nmap.org).  It is a network tool that can do many things.  The most simple is to determine if a host is active.  Anytime I connect to any network I run a quick scan to see who my neighbors are on the network.

To do a network scan with nmap you only need one bit of information. Your IP address.  Below is a scan from my local network.  I was able to do a quick ipconfig to see my local IP was (192.168.2.118) armed with that information I can tell that the network segment is 192.168.2.1/24.

To scan the network you only need to issue the command

nmap -sP 192.168.2.1/24

Here is the result on my windows machine.

The scan took 9.16 seconds.  This is a pretty fast network scan.  In 9 seconds I was able to determine I have 12 devices connected, a few iphones, ipad, printer, and other machines.

I am always interested in performance and I wanted to see if my linux machine would do the scan faster.  (NOTE:  the windows machine is using a 802.11 G network and the linux machine is over the LAN bridge using Wireless G as well)

The Linux results of the same nmap command ran in 5.4 Seconds.  In this simple test the linux nmap process was a bit faster.

 Overall it is always a great idea to see what and how is around you when on a network.  I did not go into more detail but you can always use nmap to do more investigation.   I can cover that in a later article.

Happy scanning.

I think it is time to get a new chair for my home office.  I recently saw this chair posted on a site and have the desire to get it.  The problem is that we don’t use our office that much and a good chair seems like a waste.

http://www.westelm.com/products/wrap-office-chair-g047/?pkey=coffice-desks

Since we have all laptops in our home, I keep wondering if a laptop stand would not be a better option.   The ideal desk / chair would be an Eames chair.

http://www.dwr.com/product/eames-lounge-ottoman-vicenza.do

These all sound great, until you see how much they cost.  Well, I can always ask for this as a Christmas gift.  Or if anyone on the web feels like purchasing me one.

I’ve been really happy with the nuget platform for adding packages to VisualStudio.  If you have not yet tried nuget head on over to nuget.org.  One of the more recent packages I’ve been using is the mini-profiler.

It is a little plug-in (can’t think of another term) that allows you profile a page and elements that are executed.

Here is the blog post that I originally learned of this tool http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NuGetPackageOfTheWeek9ASPNETMiniProfilerFromStackExchangeRocksYourWorld.aspxYou can install the mini-profiler by running the following command in your nuget command prompt

PM>  nuget install-package miniprofiler

Once installed you add 2 elements into your global.asmx.  Once you add those commands you can invoke the profiler around any area of code you would like to profile.

To display on the page you just a jquery command.

I get all types of security questions from home users.  How do I secure my wireless so people can’t use it?  How can I make sure people can’t steal files on my computer?  How can I keep the kids from going to sites they are not suppose to be on?

For the last one, how to secure and block sites I recommend OpenDNS.  Not only does open dns allow you to speed up your surfing (more on that later). It also allows you to monitor, maintain, and block sites that are used from your network.

To utilize OpenDNS you need to set your router’s dns service to use OpenDNS. This is a fairly simple task if you know how to admin your home router. In most cases your router is a (netgear, linksys, or dlink device). OpenDNS has instructions for most versions. Once you add their Primary (208.67.222.222) and Secondary (208.67.220.220) ip address to your router you are almost done.

You then create an account at openDNS and setup your rules. I choose the moderate setting and then modified it to block adult content and removed Proxy / anonymous sites (since I use wifi-vpn.com)

customized Settings

With a simple DNS change on your router you can now block all types of sites and specific urls. Example, if you wanted to block some specific port site or other url (www.xxxsomething.com) you would add this to the open dns block list. One of my colleagues at work has blocked facebook when his kids did not meet the grades or rules.

Once you have set your rules / filters for OpenDNS you can now monitor what is being done on your network. OpenDNS has great reporting to show you how much traffic you have done and what domains people go to. Here is a sample of what people have gone to on our Family cottage wireless network.

Overall OpenDNS is a great tool for your home or business. It can block unwanted sites and also track usage and sites people should not go to.

How do you tell if an app has been compiled in 32bit, 64bit or any cpu.  There is a great little tools called corflags.  Corflags is built into visual studio.  You can open a visual studio command prompt to run this tools.  I created a vs2010 solution with 3 projects, the project were compiled with the above 3 options.  Here is the feed  back from corflags:

My applcations are capps32, cappsany, and capps.  I compiled each to a specific target compiled architecture.

the breakdown of how to determine if your application is compiled for any cpu , x86, or 64bit is

anycpu: PE = PE32 and 32BIT = 0
x86: PE = PE32 and 32BIT = 1
64-bit: PE = PE32+ and 32BIT = 0

If you use google apps and an iPhone or iPad you have probably tried to add other calendars to your in app calendar application.  A very simple way to do this is to use iphoneselect.   Iphone select allows you to select the calendars from a webpage and then configure your iPad or iPhone app to sync with them

Google APPS: https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/YOURDOMAINNAME/iphoneselect

Change YOURDOMAINName to the appropriate url mine is “jimiz.net”.

Gmail: https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect

You will then see your available calendars to sync with, the same selection you have in the gmail web application.  This great little url can quickly configure your calendar.

I recently configured my cousins google apps account and allowed him to sync the other team members.

I find myself in a command prompt in windows a lot.  I enjoy using it.  From simple items like getting an ip address or copying files (robocopy)  I use it a lot.   More recently I have been in powershell a lot more.  Powershell uses most of the same tricks as the command prompt.

I have used these tips and tricks from the command prompt - http://commandwindows.com/vista-tips.htm

Recently at teched I found another great tip the “F7″ key.  I think almost everyone knows that you can use the up arrow to get to your previous command.  ”F7″ allows you to list all your recent commands and then select them.  So image a long select script in power shell, you can hit “f7″ and look at the script.

It seems like just yesterday I upgraded to Vista x64.  It was a pain in the rear, display drivers did not work, things were a little difficult to get intalled (sharepoint development environment). Some of the main software I used did not work, like screen (screen capture app), pdfprinter, and even simple things like Cisco VPN.    It took some time but the x64 vista was worth it.  I had a machine with 6 gigs of ram and I could use it.  I was not hampered with using XP and limited to 3.something for RAM.

Today I was reading a quick link on twitter regarding x64 and the steam network. It seems that for windows users x64 has taken over 32bit.  Here is a link to their hardware survey that shows 40% of windows users being x64

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

That is pretty good.  Since Windows 7 has only been out for a short time.   My feeling is that most new computers are now coming with Win 7 x64.  In fact, I have not seen an add that did have 32bit any more.   Why would you, it limits the RAM usage to 3 gigs.

64 bit has gone a long way since I first switched.  I now use 8 gigs of ram and many virtual machines…  I would never want to switch back.

I was doing some quick calculations in an excel spreadsheet and wanted to multiple a value around the number of seconds in a year.   I did not know the number off the top of my head.  So the simple way to solve that issue was to do a fast google search.  I love the type ahead answers and google just answered the question for me, with out even having to go to a site

I did a search for “seconds in a year”  While looking at the results before mys search was done.  I wanted to compare if Bing or yahoo had that feature.  So I opened up a new tab and ran the same search.    Then something interesting happened.  I got 3 different results.   Google, yahoo, and bing all answered the search question of “seconds in a year” differently.    Before I go into my finding, I do want to recognize that the question can be disputed.  Because the definition of a year was not defined.  As you can see from the results I did not specifiy a calendar year, leap year or  Julian year.

Since my quick and dirty excel document was just a rough calculation I did not necessarly care about the type of year, only wanting the seconds.

Google answered:  1 year = 31 556 926 seconds – This is based on the Julian year (probably what I wanted)

Bing answered:  1 year = 31,536,000 seconds (calendar year)

Yahoo answered : 1 Second = 3.1688765E-8 Years.  I think yahoo was confused.  It thought I wanted to know how many years were in 1 second.

At the end of the day, I took the google answer and finished the task I set out to complete.  But this brought up a good conversation at work on what search engine to trust.   During this process I did read an article on calendar / seconds at answers.com.     Reminding myself what the Julian calendar was and leap year.

I am very pleased with my newer T410 laptop.  The only complaint I have found is the resolution.  It is set to 1280 x 800, which is not bad. It is a wide screen but not too high of a resolution.  I was used to a T61 with a 1680×1050 resolution WSXGA+.   It is amazing how you can miss that real estate.

When I started looking for a smaller laptop (14 or 13 inch), I was amazed that there were not that many high resolution machines to select from.  I was able to find a few T410′s with 1440 x 900 resolution but they tend to be a lot more expensive.  The T410s also had a higher resolution.

The question I have, is where have all the high resolution laptops gone? You can get a 15 inch or greater laptop with unreal resolution but the smaller (14 inch ) or less have limited resolution.   Is there a reason for this?

You can find this type of resolution on a laptop a few years old, but not too many new ones.  I’ve found it is difficult to get used to a smaller resolution, especially when using visual studio.  In fact I’ve been frustrated enough that I’ve been looking for any t410′s with 1440 resolution to purchase and sell my current one.