Category: Geeky/Programming

Categories
Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

Trying Out Google Reader

I started reading blogs steady back around 2002-2003, and started my own in 2004. Since I started reading blogs, I have went through the gamut of readers…

First I started with SharpReader for a while, a fat client, that was OK..but a lot of feeds had errors..

I then started using RSS Bandit, which was good, but slow sometimes for the amount of feeds I had.

I then found Newsgator. Most people use Newsgator for just the online reader, but it is so much more. What it really is, is a online store for your feeds (OPML) that you can use between all their different clients, even the newest builds of RSS Bandit support the Newsgator sync framework.

I used Newsgator Inbox for a while, with Outlook, then I used Newsgator Online for a while, I tried their mobile version and Media Center editions, then I tried Feed Demon, which really rocks. And since my feeds are sync’d between all these platforms, when I read one here, it is marked read there, etc. Even on my mac I tried News Net Wire… and now they have an iPhone interface as well.

Since I took the plunge to GAFYD, and I am using Gmail, etc, I decided to try Google Reader….A few WTF’s….

One of the worst things is, I can’t sync my Newsgator feed with Google Reader. This is because Goog Reader has no or a crappy API, and Newsgator doesnt want to do anything to sync with them or whatever, just sucks though..

The other thing I have found, is that feeds don’t update fast enough. I read in the help if a feed doesnt have a lot of subs, then it wont update very often, and other feeds will update about once an hour. I feel sometimes like I am missing some stuff, especially on the weekend where I try to keep my feeds read up to date..

The sharing and starring is good, I will see how that works as I go, as they just added sharing via Google Talk as well..

One thing though to add to all of this is, I can’t use my GAFYD account with google reader, I had to sign up for ANOTHER Google account using my same email/password to kind of mimic it using the same account, just wacked…another weird thing with GAFYD…

Anyways, at this point I don’t see a lot of things that make the bloggers oooh and ahh over Google Reader compared to Newsgator… The trends are nice, but it isnt mind blowing… we will see…

, , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories
Geeky/Programming

HowTo: Migrate Hotmail to Gmail or Google Apps for Your Domain

Like I said previously, I just moved to GAFYD, which is the Google Apps version of Gmail. I needed to move my Hotmail (well, actually Windows Live Domain) emails over to gmail. How do you do this? Well there are a few ways….

#1 – Install Windows Live Mail Desktop, add your hotmail account, get all the messages downloaded. Then add your Gmail or GAFYD account using IMAP, then drag the messages over to the Gmail account, works slick.

#2 – Use Outlook – do basically the same thing, but use the Outlook Connector to get your hotmail account into outlook, then drag and drop

#3 – IMAP for Hotmail – if you are like me and used hotmail on your iPhone, using IzyMail, then you already had IMAP set up, you can then use any email client that supports IMAP (read: Thunderbird, or maybe Apple Mail) – then set up your hotmail account using IMAP, set up your Gmail or GAFYD account using IMAP and drag and drop the messages over.

I am sure there are other ways to do this all as well, but this seemed to work for me.

, , , , , , , , , ,
Categories
Geeky/Programming Product Reviews

Gmail's SPAM filtering – Not all it is cracked up to be

You can read all around the web, that Gmail has the best SPAM filtering. I call BS on that. I have been using Windows Live Domains for my email, running stevienova.com through Windows Live Domains, I get to use Windows Live Hotmail for my email. I have been using it for a year at least. I might get 1 spam a day in the junk mail, and none in the inbox.

This week I decided to switch my domain email over to Google Apps (Google Apps for Your Domain – GAFYD) – Now, I get 20+ spam a day in the Spam folder, and 1-2 a day in the inbox.

There is no way Gmail’s spam filter is better than Hotmails. Hotmail stopped more, and stopped more from showing up in the junk folder. Now I have to check my spam folder on Gmail every day to make sure there are no bogus ones in there, and it also lets junk through to the inbox. Not good!

I probably have around 10 more gripes with GAFYD, but I will save those for a later time.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories
Geeky/Programming

Testing Ecto Blog Tool

Testing the ecto blog tool on mac..

,
Categories
Geeky/Programming SQLServerPedia Syndication

SQL: Moving log files for an existing database to another drive

So today, Chris asked me how to move log files or data files on SQL to another drive. My first response was to use the GUI and just detach and then move the files, reattach using the GUI. But he wanted to move just the log files, I don’t think it is very intuitive with the GUI, if even possible.

The KB article from Microsoft shows you how to do with SQL commands (sp_attach_db and sp_detach_db), which is really the correct way, although, it doesn’t say how to do it if you have multiple log files or data files.

Books online shows us:

sp_attach_db [ @dbname= ] ‘dbname’         , [ @filename1= ] ‘filename_n’ [ ,…16 ]

[ @filename1= ] ‘filename_n’ Is the physical name, including path, of a database file. filename_n is nvarchar(260), with a default of NULL. Up to 16 file names can be specified. The parameter names start at @filename1 and increment to @filename16. The file name list must include at least the primary file. The primary file contains the system tables that point to other files in the database. The list must also include any files that were moved after the database was detached.

After all that, you should be good to, moving your data and log files around all you want! And as a side note, if you have SQL 2000, use Query Analyzer to connect and run the commands, if you have SQL 2005, use SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or SQL Server Management Studio Express (SSMSE) to connect and run the commands.

Technorati tags: , , , , ,
Categories
Geeky/Programming SQLServerPedia Syndication

Visual Studio 2008 and SQL 2005 Careful…

Since Visual Studio 2008 came out yesterday, I installed it. One gotcha – if you already have SQL 2005 installed, check custom on the install steps, because VS2008 will install SQL Express 2005 and start up an instance of that, I had to then uninstall SQL 2005 Express. PITA 🙂

Technorati tags: , , , ,
Categories
Business Intelligence Geeky/Programming SQLServerPedia Syndication

SSRS and SSAS Formatting Dates

Ok, add this one to the annoying bin. If you are writing SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) reports of a SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services) cube, and there is a time dim, you need to format the date parameters in the SSRS report to match the SSAS date format, as a string.

I started out doing this a while ago, like so:

=”[Time].[Calendar Date].&[“& Year(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())) &”-“& IIf(Len(Month(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now()))) < 2,Month(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())),”0″&Month(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now()))) &”-“& IIF(Len(Day(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())).ToString()) < 2,”0″ & Day(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())).ToString(),Day(DateAdd(“D”,-1,DateTime.Now())).ToString()) &”T00:00:00]”

Wow.. Ugly, hard to read, hard to debug. Just ran into issues, etc.

I decided to finally just write a function to do the same thing and make sure it is correct once and for all..

 

Function GetSSASDate(ByVal DateToRun As DateTime) As String
    Dim result As String = “[Time].[Calendar Date].&[”

    result = result & Year(DateToRun).ToString() & “-”

    If Month(DateToRun).ToString().Length < 2 Then
        result = result & “0”
    End If

    result = result & Month(DateToRun).ToString() & “-”

    If Day(DateToRun).ToString().Length < 2 Then
        result = result & “0”
    End If

    result = result & Day(DateToRun).ToString() & “T00:00:00]”
    Return result
End Function

then, I go to my report properties, Custom Code and add that function, then in my parameter I call it like so:

=Code.GetSSASDate(DateAdd(DateInterval.Day,-1,DateTime.Now()))

Much cleaner, easier and just all around good. If I wanted to take this a step further, I would actually just make an assembly with some useful functions and deploy to my SSRS server, but I will save that for a later time.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories
Geeky/Programming

iPhone: Firmware 1.0.2 Unlocked->Revirginized->Upgraded to Firmware 1.1.1 – Unlocked!!

So this weekend I decided to try to get my 1.0.2 FW iPhone to 1.1.1 FW, and unlock it again. Well, Since I unlocked it with the iUnlock method (before it was a GUI app), I knew my baseband was hosed, so I needed to revirginize it.

I followed this method. Your mileage may vary, but it worked for me. I think tried following other tutorials to upgrade, downgrade, upgrade, activate, unlock. I tried multiple methods, and even combined some methods to try to get it all to work. I got pretty far a few times, but missed something or something was screwed up here or there where it didn’t work.

Basically, once you have a “virgin” phone on 1.0.2, this is what I did, (there might be other methods, but this is what I did)

1) bonehead – RESTORED to 1.1.1. Doh! – don’t do this

2) once I was on 1.1.1 I was screwed, so I had to downgrade to 1.0.2 FW (with the update modem still from 1.1.1)

3) UPDATED to 1.1.1

4) Activated, Unlocked

Now that is the simple steps, there are about 1000 different ways to do most of everything. But in the end, I tried independence on my Mac after I was on 1.1.1 locked, and it activated, unlocked, installed apps, etc. So that was my final solution!

Some cool tricks learned…

If your phone is at the “activate now” screen, you can slide to emergency dial, dial *#307# and hit dial, it will call itself. Hit answer, and then hold button. It will call itself again. Decline, and you are on the contacts screen. Add a new contact, any name will do, as the URL for the homepage, put prefs://1F save contact, open url, and you end up getting to the settings screen, you can set up wifi, change settings, etc. Pretty crazy hack.

Some things with 1.1.1 – Installer.app works, SummerBoard works (the new version) – SSH, etc works, but most of the other apps I cant get to work, they just open and close. My guess is they are either not working with 1.1.1 or I need to enable execute on the directories on the phone, oh well, for another day.

I should have documented everything I did, but I didn’t I have a pretty good idea about everything so if you really have a problem you can give me a comment or email and I will give you some advice. Your best bet is to troll the forums, or other places. I have some links I could share as well, but I am not going to post them as some of them contradict each other. You basically just have to take the best stuff out of each one and combine. Not sure if you can get it working on Windows yet, with some luck I am sure..

Proof:

P1010310_Vga P1010311_Vga P1010312_Vga

Technorati tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories
Geeky/Programming

iPhone: SummerBoard won't install after updating to AppTapp version 3 (firmware 1.0.2)

Dang, so in my previous post I said the audio wouldn’t work. Mickey and I figured that it was a 3rd party app causing the issue, so I uninstalled everything but the installer and sources. I uninstalled SummerBoard, etc.

Well, after I solved the audio issue, I wanted to re-install. Thing is, my Installer.app (AppTapp) was updated to the latest version today, v3.0b3 , ok cool. But now SummerBoard wouldn’t install! It says you need Firmware 1.1.1. Woah, big time suckage. AppTapp should read your firmware version and then supply you with the version of an app that supports your firmware.

How do you get around this:

Download the .pxl for an older version of SummerBoard here

you need iBrickr installed, hook up your iPhone and then install manually, and it works! Neat.

Technorati tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories
Geeky/Programming

iPhone: I can't hear anything!

So today my iPhone started going wacky. Couldn’t hear anything when I called or got called and no sounds were coming out, iPod, keyboard clicks, etc. WTF? The headphones worked, the speakerphone worked, just regular calling didn’t work. It would ring when called, and then yes, it dawned on me..it must think the headphones are still plugged in! (The phone still rings when headphones are plugged in).

How to fix this DUMB issue:

1) put headphones in

2) pull out reaaaaaly slow, or really fast.

I tested by starting a track in the iPod, and then pulled out my headphones fast, it started playing.

yeeeeeessssss!

Technorati tags: ,