CodeView: Another Blast from the Past

August 12, 2004
Books, Uncategorized
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A post on the Windows Off Topic mailing list today on multi-monitor reminded me of the fun we had debugging Windows 3.0 applications. In the early DOS and Windows days (I did this with Windows/386 and up) you could have both a EGA, CGA, or VGA adapter and a Hercules monochrome adapter in your system. The CodeView debugger could be configured to run on the monochrome monitor freeing the Windows GUI from the debugger. You could …Continue reading →

Stargazing: Astronomy software is just amazing

August 11, 2004
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When I married my wife Julie I inherited some close family friends of hers: the Bisque family. A big family with so many names that I’ll just focus on the 4 brothers who I have deep respect for: Steve, Tom, Dan, and Matt. In 1991 when I first met the guys at Software Bisque, they had two products: A DOS based astronomy packaged called The_Sky and some funky financial modelling package they had built for my …Continue reading →

Building a new desktop

August 11, 2004
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Like many enthusiasts, I tend to build my own PCs rather than purchase them from OEMs. A few times in the past I’ve gone the other way and bought a DELL, HP, or other brand-name PC, but in the end I always regretted it. Invariably I would crack open the case right away anyway to change something…the video card, a hard disk or two, whatever. Then I’d want to upgrade the CPU or memory only …Continue reading →

MCE Controller doc ommission

August 10, 2004
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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I forgot to mention a key (pun intended) command that MCE Controller supports in the 1.0.3 documentation. The “key:” command allows you to simulate any alphanumeric keyboard key press. For example “key:3” is the same thing as pressing the 3 key on the keyboard. This command is implemented internally in MCE Controller rather than via the MCEControl.commands configuration file; which is why I forgot to document it. I will update the readme file next time …Continue reading →

My contributions to the evolution of mascara in Windows UI

July 29, 2004
Coding
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Raymond has a fun story about “The evolution of mascara in Windows UI“. Reminded me of my early days of Windows programming. Before I was at Microsoft (and for a bit after) I developed a few (mildly successful) shareware applications for Windows. I think I was one of the very first people to apply 3D effects to controls in Windows applications! In 1989 I developed at DLL that I used in all of my applications …Continue reading →

New MCE Controller sample available

July 29, 2004
Coding, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Multiple people have asked me for a sample that illustrates how to talk to MCE Controller from Crestron using SIMPL Windows. Ask no more: On the MCE Controller site, I’ve added a SIMPL Windows sample program that illustrates using MCE Controller with a Crestron processor. This sample illustrates using MCE Controller in client mode with a CP2E processor (which is the way that I use it).

Live Security Camera Feeds with Windows Media Services 9

July 27, 2004
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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When I built my house a few years ago I installed several video cameras for security monitoring. Until recently I was only capturing still images from these. I archived the still images and published the most recent via a URL on my website allowing me to see “the latest” while away from home. I’ve been using a very nice shareware program to accomplish all of this called SupervisionCam by Peter Kirst. I originally used SupervisionCam …Continue reading →

Make your own parts

July 16, 2004
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From the this is just plain cool department: eMachineShop allows you to design any physical “part” you want using a CAD program you download and then submit the plans to them. They will machine the part using any number of processes and ship it to you. You can do quantity one or 1000s. You can use just about any material you can think of. Now I gotta think of some project that would require me to …Continue reading →

Blogging pictures

July 14, 2004
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I typically just use .Text’s standard edit form for creating my posts, but it does not deal with images well (see my posts from Asia and you’ll know what I mean. I’ve tried both BlogJet (in fact I’m typing this in BlogJet) and w.Bloggar, but they don’t do what I want either. What I want is to be able to point to a picture on my local machine and have the following happen: A low …Continue reading →

Enthusiast Geeks

July 14, 2004
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I’ve been thinking a lot about technical enthusaists lately. And I’m really struggling with it. The problem is I’m a super-hard-core technical enthusiast. Probably close to as hard core as you can get. And I know many, many people just like me. This makes me biased. Add to that the fact that I work for Microsoft and live technology. I should get it out front that I believe “geek“ is synonymous for “technical enthusiast”. Some …Continue reading →

Tokyo!

June 26, 2004
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I arrived at the Narita Airport about 2 hours ago after a 2 hour flight from Shanghai. We then took a train (the “Narita Express”) to downtown Tokyo, about 1 mile from the hotel. The train took about 90 minutes.   However, the REAL train story happened yesterday! In Shanghai they have the world’s only MagLev train (Magnetic Levitation). It goes from the Shanghai airport for about kilometers. The best part is that this train …Continue reading →

Peking Duck

June 22, 2004
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Last night our hosts took us out to dinner at a Peking Duck restraunt here in Beijing where we had some amazing Chinese fare, including Peking duck. I sampled duck tongue (yuk), duck liver pâté (yum), an amazing orange peel cod dish, and more. The first picture is the disgusting duck tongue. Makes me ill just looking at the picture! 🙂 I will pretty much try anything. Once. And there are not many foods I …Continue reading →

In Beijing

June 20, 2004
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Last night at about 10pm local time I arrived in Beijing China. We flew from Seattle to Narita/Tokyo and then to Beijing. This morning I woke up at about 6am, walked 3 mintues out the front door of my hotel (the Kerry Centre) and got a triple-grande-latte from Starbucks. Tastes just like home! I’ll be in Asia for about 10 days. We start here in Beijing, then go to Shanghai, and then a few days …Continue reading →

Wireless Woes

June 10, 2004
Smart Home
5 Comments

My 802.11b wireless network drives me nuts. I bought a new Linksys G AP because I was experiencing drop-outs with my 4 (that’s right 4) other APs. I set the new AP up (in B mode only) is less than 10’ from my notebook, with no other access points or wireless devices enabled (except my neighbor who gives me a single bar on the XP signal strength thing). Using the built-in adapter in my Acer C110 Tablet PC (Intel Centrino …Continue reading →

STOP 0xC2 aka BAD_POOL_CALLER Blue Screen and bad memory

May 26, 2004
How To
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My computer bluescreened with a STOP 0xC2, BAD_POOL_CALLER fault. I discovered the reason was some memory chips had failed. This post describes what happened and how you can figure out if this is why you are getting this error. See the details below, but the summary is: In almost all cases the STOP 0xC2, BAD_BOOL_CALLER blue-screen indicates failed or failing RAM (random access memory) in your computer. You can easily test the memory in your …Continue reading →

Geeks

April 30, 2004
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First, it should be obvious that I consider myself a geek. I think I’m a pretty big geek. My sister Laurie is constantly calling me a geek; the funny thing is she thinks she’s insulting me! But I don’t hold a candle to Phillip Torrone who runs www.flashenabled.com. Wow. This is now one of my favorite sites for blowing time on. Regarding the term “Geek”, last week there was a thread on channel9 about arrogance. …Continue reading →

Regex

April 22, 2004
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I’m still an absolute n00b when it comes to regex. Even after reading Mastering Regular Expressions. But man, is it powerful. Tonight my wife asked me to help her create name badge labels for an org she’s in. All she had was an email that had a list of names like this: DI- PAID IN FULLLynn Melton 2Judy Pake 3EO-PAID IN FULLPeggy Ponto 9ES – PAID IN FULLJanice Norman 2Janice Benson 3… Where the first …Continue reading →

Page 23

April 21, 2004
Books
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From Larry Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 23. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions. “Right,” I said. “And in Star Wars, no one was from Earth, so everyone, technically, was an alien.” This is from Agent to The Stars by John Scalzi. I went to high-school with John, but haven’t talked with since. My buddy Robert Takata (where’s your blog …Continue reading →

Domain DFS from a non-domain joined client

April 21, 2004
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As I mentioned before I use DFS on my home network to help manage my storage resources. Almost all of my machines at home are domain joined. You get a lot of management benefits from doing this. You can make Windows Software Update Services (SUS) automatically apply patches to all machines, you can apply Group Policy across machines (e.g. to enforce password complexity requirements, re-directed My Documents, etc…) However, in one case I have choosen …Continue reading →

Distributed File System (DFS)

April 21, 2004
Smart Home
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If you have a network with lots of storage that includes a Windows 2000 or W2K3 Server the Distributed File System (DFS) is your friend. This very cool technology makes it easy to move around where you store stuff physically while retaining a consistent namespace for your clients. For example, on my network at home I have several servers, each with many hundreds of GB of strorage. As my data needs grow (and they are …Continue reading →