Technology

Stand up desk

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 …

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Android SDK Windows 7 (x64) – “invalid command-line parameter” Error

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 …

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Random Post of Links

I often find myself following a link from a twitter post or some other blog.  Not having the time to read it immediatly I either add it to Readitlater or I email myself.  I normally don’t add any comments just the link.   What often happens is a few weeks / days / months later I get to reading these links …

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Find all computers on a network – Using Nmap – free tool

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 …

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Office Chair envy

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 …

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Deploying MVC 3 Razor – Bin issues

The current application I’m working on requires me to publish an MVC 3 Razor web application.  I’m using sFTP as the protocol to my hosting provider.  After the first publish I was unable to run the application.   It kept throwing errors that I was missing assemblies.    The first error I got was that the application was missing the Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.dll.   I …

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MVC – Mini Profiler

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 …

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Windows Phone 7 Dev – Images and ApplicationBarIconButton

I have been working on a windows 7 phone application. I know, many of you may give me a hard time about developing for winphone7 vs iPhone or android. Well, I’m working on getting to each of them eventually. Currently Phone 7 made sense. So far development has been pretty straight forward. I was adding an application bar to the bottom …

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Secure your home network – Block sites – OpenDNS

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. …

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iPhone and iPod sync multiple calendars – google apps

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 …

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Command Line tips

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 …

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64 bit has become the norm…

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 …

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Google vs Bing vs Yahoo – Seconds in a year

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 …

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High Resolution Laptop

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 …

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Zoom it – Presentation Zoom

I was at teched 2011 and almost every presenter at the conference did a quick zoom in on a section of code or area of their screen.   I thought it was on of the simplest and best things I had seen in a while.  I know that Win7 has a zoom feature, but this was different.   An example I give is …

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