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Beginning to ride bikes again….after 20 years

 Biking, Personal  No Responses »
Apr 192011
 

Well, I finally acquired a road bike, found it on a service called freecycle, which has a lot of stuff offered up by people that they no longer want or need and would like to see it go to a good home instead of the dump or sell it. The bike was a 1989 Fuji racer (similar to this one http://classicfuji.com/Ace_1989_Page.htm ), seems like an Ace but the coloring seems like it may be something else, although it does have the full complement of components that the Ace had. I spent the winter prepping it for riding, I tore it down to ball bearings and then put it back together again. I finally was able to get an extra tube for it a toolkit and a cycle computer for it and cannot wait to start logging miles on it. Today I am setting a goal of doing my first ever century next year in early May, it seems they have a Monument to Monument trip, a 94+ mile ride from the Washington monument in Baltimore to the Washington monument in DC and then back. I would love to ride that this year but there is no way I am ready for that. 20 years ago when I was commuting for miscellaneous reasons I could have easily ridden it, heck I was logging almost a thousand miles a month or so.

Well, guess I better get back to work now, enough mapping and looking for rides to take, I think I got the bug bad.

Will post updates as time goes on with trips etc or even if I just decided to throw my bike in the landfill.

 Posted by at 11:41 AM

I was just about to write a review or recommendation for Roboform but…..

 Computers, Personal, Software, Web Development  No Responses »
Mar 242011
 

I was preparing a review for another piece of software that I loved so much I had to buy it, roboform. But I have decided that I no longer like how they perform their upgrades. I have owned this software since about 2005 and have enjoyed updates for free since then, with very little problems. Was that part of my license? I am not sure but the free updates allowed me to keep myself and passwords secure while using the latest browsers, which are almost always more secure. Enter 2011, Roboform releases version 7 and sends an email saying it is released and that I can upgrade for a reduced rate, to which I say “nah, I cant afford it and version 7 doesn’t add enough functionality for me to actually start putting the money aside for it”. Ok, I was a bit put off having to pay for an upgrade for the first time ever, but I thought I would just be giving up the latest features which I would not use, so no biggee. Now, Firefox 4 is released, actually it has been out for a little while, so I waited until modt of my addons were compatible, especially Roboform, since it houses all of my passwords for almost all of my sites, and it seemed like it was. So I install Firefox 4 and Roboform has a little button instead of the toolbar, so now I start getting concerned, click the button and roboform wants to send me to a webpage with upgrade now links, so I send an email to Roboform, to which they reply with a canned answer “It is not compatible with Firefox 4 but you can very easily upgrade to version 7 for a reduced cost. Of course version 6 will still work in the old versions of Firefox”! Are you kidding me, that is bad business and it ticks me off a bit, I can understand wanting people to pay to upgrade, but to force them to upgrade if they want the latest most secure browser, PURE BS!! So now it is time to start looking at a new password manager…maybe http://keepass.info/ with a plugin for firefox which is still in the dev stages. I have not tested it to see how it does yet, but thanks to roboform’s crappy stinking support for their customers I need to do it!

(EDIT: Now to be fair and honest, late last night I received an email from roboform giving me a free license for either the desktop version or the everywhere version, which I chose everywhere version since I have 2 PCs with licenses for version 6 and the everywhere version works for multiple PCs and devices like IPhone etc as well as online, but I know they will hit me with a bill next year so I have a year to find a new password saving software, maybe lastpass or something like it. Looking at version 7 I like how it looks, but it still seems very much like it did before, so I still stand behind the impression I get that this was a ploy to raise some money from their users!! And it all seems a bit sketchy to me.)

Thanks for reading!

Another tool that I found so usefull I actually paid for it

 Computers, Software  No Responses »
Mar 072011
 

I rely on the quick launch of Windows to quickly launch all of the apps and programs I need to launch. I have been using it since around Windows 95, but found it was a bit limited in what it could do for me besides launch programs, so I went on the search for a quick launch replacement for Windows and found something called TrueLaunchBar in 2005 and have never looked back at the quick launch toolbar in windows again. It provides quite a large amount of functionality that you could only dream of on the quick launch bar. The plugins that are available are incredible and include items like calendars, clocks, system resources, media controls, clipboard monitoring, weather forecasts, as well as many others. Another thing about this bar, the author is VERY RESPONSIVE to anything you might have a question with or even suggestions and will quite amazingly work with you one on one if necessary to fix an issue.

The only thing you may want to keep in mind is if you have Windows 7 and want your taskbar at the bottom and your truelaunchbar at the side or top you will possible need to use the standalone version of his bar which is exactly the same, but it allows you to detach it from the taskbar.

So if you have a need to enhance and replace your quick launch bar in Windows, head over to http://www.truelaunchbar.com/ and grab a copy, they even have a free one available, although I think the pay one is worth the cost.

 

He also has a facebook page if you have an interest at http://www.facebook.com/pages/True-Launch-Bar/153398428046694

 Posted by at 12:06 PM

A great little tool I use almost every day for screenshots and color finding and even screen measuring

 Computers, Software, Web Development  No Responses »
Feb 232011
 

I have been using this little suite of tools for quite a while now and thought I should share it with other people. It is called PicPick and can be grabbed from http://picpick.wiziple.net/.This tool runs in your systray and has many tools that developers and other publishing types out there. The main tools I use are a color picker and the pixel ruler, the color picker will show you the HTML/RGB color code for the pixel that is under the cursor (which is in a zoomed window), the pixel ruler will give you measurements in pixels and has some other options like horizontal and vertical measuring as well as converting to other units. The other tools include an image editor, which can be fired off after a screen capture (nice fature in my opinion), a color pallete (which allows you to use a color wheel to pick a color and receive the HTML/RGB code for it), Magnifier, protractor (helps find angles on screen), crosshair (which lets you see what actual point on screen items are), and a whiteboard (which lets you scribble on your screen to draw attention to items etc). Another tool built in to picpick is the screen capture tool, which is probably where the tool began its life. This tool can take over your [ALT] [Print Screen] and [Print Screen] duties and can make it so the capture is stored automatically in files or on the clipboard or into the image editor built into this application. The image editor is not the most extravagant but it can more than get the job done. Another interesting thing about this tool is the licensing, if you use it for personal use it is free, but if you want to use it commercially for $22 which isn’t too bad for all you get.

If this tool sounds good to you head on over to http://picpick.wiziple.net/ and download a copy.

Enjoy

WM6 App for Weight Watchers Points Plus

 Computers, Software  3 Responses »
Feb 152011
 

Attached is an app I wrote that will give you an estimate of the Points Plus points for items you may buy in the store or anywhere that has the Fat, Carbohydrates, Fiber, and the Protein. Just place this on your Windows Mobile 5/6 phone with .net compact framework 3.5 and it should run fairly well. Just type in each of the fields and press enter and it will move to the next field. The order is based on labels.

Update:(2/15/11) I have made a change to this app, now when you enter the textbox it selects all of the values in it so you can just type instead of deleting first, if you like the value in the box just press enter. I also made it Samsung SAGA friendly so it now will automatically change the following keys to the number. e=1, r=2, t=3, d=4, f=5, g=6, x=7, c=8, v=9, and ,=. This way I do not need to switch to Fn keys everytime and if I do switch to Fn I can type a decimal without switching out of Fn. If you need custom key mapping let me know and I will take care of it.

Let me know if there are any issues

UPDATE: (6/7/2011) I found a small bug and have corrected it please re-download the app

WWPointsPlus with key mapping changes

WWPointsPlus-Generic without key mappings

Appreciate this application? Please help me defray some of my costs if you can.

Dropbox for backups

 Computers, Software, Web Development  No Responses »
Jan 172011
 

Have a free dropbox.com account? Upset at the limited backup selections you have at your disposal? You can work around that if you have Windows 7, Vista, Server 2008, or server 2008r2! The secret is in the mklink command line utility. Mklink creates symbolic links between directories on your computer, it will actually appear like you have that same directory in both places.

First: Open a command prompt by typing cmd in the run box and pressing enter.

Second: I find it easiest to cd to the directory where you want the link to show up. For instance, if I want the link in the c:\dropbox directory I would then cd .. until my command prompt showed c:\> then I would cd dropbox so that I my command prompt showed c:\dropbox>, so make sure you know where your dropbox directory is and cd to this directory.

Third: you would then type in mklink /D [New Name] [directory you want backed up in dropbox], just remember if you want spaces in either the New Name or the directory to back up has spaces you will need to surround either or both of them with ”

Fourth: Once that is done, if you go to your dropbox directory you should then see a directory that is called the New Name you gave it, and depending on size of directory and/or your bandwidth you may even see a blue circle on it showing it is syncing up to dropbox

Want to help both of us out, if you go to the following link and sign up for an account and install it on your PC we will both receive 250 MB extra space. That is the link they give us to invite.

http://db.tt/AK5MUjx

Hopefully that helps you with something I found a little missing in dropbox.

So long and thanks for all the fish Web Host 859compute

 Web Development  1 Response »
Jan 162011
 

Well it has finally come to an end, after years of having my site hosted online, I have finally just moved it to being hosted at home. You see it started when I was acquired by 859Compute.com from Michtinelabs.com from Rack something hosting, I kept getting moved around. I would have 2-3 days of downtime during that process which was just terrible. Now at 859Compute I have been without having MySQL working for over 5 days with a “I can’t promise a time it will work” So I said gimme my money back and now I have finally moved my URLs to my house and all of my data and all of my websites. Never paying for hosting again!!!!!

Enabling CO.CC URLs to route to a dynamic IP

 Web Development  10 Responses »
Jan 132011
 

Do you have a CO.CC or heck any other URL should work also as long as you have the ability to change your name server? I have tried and tried to find a way to make my URL point to a dynamic IP and have found nothing that helped me. You see I host web sites for personal reasons, whether it is just to run my mouth or to display weather data I collect, and like the simplicity and price of a CO.CC URL in order to access my stuff from anywhere. If this sounds good to you then follow the following steps below.

You need the following things to make this work: Dynamic DNS URL and updater, a DNS server, and a CO.CC URL

1: Check your router, if you have one, many have an automatic way to update a Dynamic DNS IP and you should really take advantage of that for this. My Linksys has settings for either DYNDNS.org or TZO.com, I use DYNDNS personally plus it is free. Go to either of these or any other dynamic DNS site you want and create a free account with a URL using anything you may want. Now if they provide you with a URL you can live with then great and you can just stop now, but normally they have some crappy URLs. which is why I went after a CO.CC URL. If you are using the router to automatically associate your IP with the URL then go ahead and set that up in the router, if not then you need to get an updater from the site and go from there. for example blog.myurl.tk

2: You will need a DNS server to make this work, windows server has this built in so you just need to turn it on depending on your server OS. Or you can go grab a software based one you install, which I have not personally done. Once you have that installed or turned on then move to the next step.

3: Now go to your domain provider and give the name server the URL you received from the free dynamic DNS service for example the blog.myurl.tk URL. So now when anyone types in your CO.CC URL like blog.CO.CC then it will look at the name server at your house or wherever and get the dynamic IP of the same place. Not too terribly difficult but works great for me right now.

Let me know if you have any questions

Another year another host

 Web Development  No Responses »
Jan 122011
 

Well, it seems that the new year has already started with difficulties, I received a hint when my bill for this year came from a different hosting company, I had in August been bought by Michtine Labs, which had great support and service. Now it is mid-January, my new host is 859compute, and have had a number of issues already, although most have been relatively quick to fix, others have taken a bit longer, granted one of them was my fault sorta the old host forced me to sFTP, when I moved to the new one, they neglected to say NO sFTP so their firewall started blocking me over and over. Now the issue I am having has to do with MySQL and having my PC actually sending data to my website, this has been going on for over 48 hours now and is getting a bit old, and since I have a weather station attached to this site I am not updating my DB right now, thank goodness for backup DBs. Now the quandary, should I keep waiting for them to fix the issue or should I just allow my $15 to go to waste and move everything home, which is actually about 75% ready to pick up the workload?? Which I will have a post in a few about….it will explain what you can do to have a co.cc route to an ever changing IP like you have with cable modems and DSL. Stay Tuned

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