Resetting broadband routers back to factory settings

I was looking for instructions on resetting a very old broadband router this morning and stumbled upon a nice resource put out by Sony for EQ2 players on resetting tons of different routers back to default specs. You can find the page here.

Dell Laptop Battery Recall

The big news recently is the Sony batteries that have been recalled by Dell and Apple, but up until today I hadn’t actually seen pictures of the event that spurred the recalls. The Inq is carrying the story with the pictures. Talk about scary.

The Inq

Strange SQL Error

I setup a DTS package in SQL 2000 yesterday to make a mirror of the live database for an app that I maintain. The goal was to have an exact copy of the live data for the dev environment so I can start coding a new release. I set the DTS package to run every 4 hours. Little did I know the columns specified as primary keys didn’t retain that property. When I went in to look at the data there was all sorts of duplicates. Attempting to delete these records threw the following error:

The row value(s) updated or deleted either do not make the row unique or they alter multiple rows.

I ran across this site that had a fix for my boneheadedness (now I’m making up words). I used the 3rd solution where you add a new field and set it as a key which allows you to delete the duplicate data, remove the new column, and re-set your primary key as the primary key.

Solution 3

This solution is a yet another way to approach this problem.  In this approach you use the query below to create a new column that numbers your records 1, 2, 3, etc.  This will get rid of the duplication and allow you to delete the records or update them as you need.  After you fix the duplication problem, just remember to delete the column.

 

ALTER TABLE Table1

ADD TempID int IDENTITY(1, 1)

Thanks to Allen Buckley for that one. I was scratching my head.

No HD in 32 bit Vista

Just another case of the content industries making others play by their rules. MS has agreed to prevent playback of next gen HD content on the 32 bit versions of Vista citing concerns that the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around copy protection. I have a news flash for everyone, the crackers and the hackers will still find a way to get around copy protection. Name one copy protection scheme that has remained uncracked to date? Didn’t think so.

Source: Slashdot

Netflix a Monopoly?

Give me a break. The fact that Blockbuster, a company not known for being nice to the competition, is suing someone in an AntiTrust suit is just laughable. So this is what happens when someone gets knocked off their high horse by a company without a strong physical presence.

Source: Ars

Would you pay $999 for shoes?

I am all about the shoes. I love shoes. I especially love a slick pair of Adidas. I am also frugal. So while browsing around online I run across these. I am stunned. Someone tell me why those superstars are worth $1k and what boneheads bought them all up so they are sold out.

Gay Marriage Ban

In the same discussion that I just posted about below Lauren and I got on the topic of Gay Marriage. Now honestly I right of center on the political spectrum, but I think it's just silly that the government is legislating on personal preference. I think it goes against what our country stands for, but whatever. The curious thing to me is that as a gay person in this country and an alleged supporter for gay marriage, why would they try and get this law passed with a Republican President AND Congress? They had to know it would fail miserably. Lauren and I came to the conclusion that the left may have encouraged it knowing it would crash and burn so they wouldn't have to re-address it the next time a Democrat was in power. Is it possible to think that the issue was forced to get it out of the limelight? I certainly think so.

The Future of American Politics: 5 Parties?

I listen to the radio a lot and I pretty much only listen to talk radio at this point, which typically focuses around politics. A term I have heard tossed around quite freqently is NeoCon which is short for Neo-Conservative. While at lunch this weekend with my family, my wife and I got onto the subject of politics and it became more clear to me that while the US currently embodies a 2 party system, we may be on the path to a 4 or 5 party system. Let me explain. The "NeoCons" are the ones pushing the Republican party further and further to the right. This is eventually going to alienate the just right of center members of the party which could force the Republican party to splinter into 2 or 3 factions. The factions could potentially be, starting from way out to the right, the NeoCons then the traditional Republicans and then a very moderate bunch right in the middle. It is feasible that the same thing could or would happen on the left side of the spectrum. In the end you are left with 2 varying degress of our current parties with a big pile of moderates in the middle that would probably band together.

Obviously this is just my wild speculation, but what would the future of American politics look like if we had 5 parties? Would the elections be a madhouse?

What would you do...

if you were pranked into believing that your mom or girlfriend was a stripper?


Do You Really Think You Know Her? - video powered by Metacafe

How NOT to release a Leopard

Here's a great idea. Let's let this Leopard go, but first let me piss it off with a stick and then we will let it go and have our window down. Nevermind it's a lightning fast cat with huge teeth and claws.

Google's Real Motive

Every so often the mass concerns about Google and the data they collect rear their ugly head. Accusations that Google is tracking anything and everything about us yadda yadda yadda. I find it interesting that nobody drew that link regarding the recent MySpace Google deal. Google PAYS MySpace $900M in order to provide them a service? Isn’t that kind of like paying someone to come to work? Did it ever dawn on anyone that Google might have ulterior motives?

With an estimated 100 million profiles Google could easily use the data on these people’s profile pages in conjunction with their search history to completely map out who these people are, with photos, and what their taste, interests, and habits are? It also shows who their friends are, again with pictures, etc etc. The list of how this social site is linked together gives Google access to far more personal data than anything they have done to date.

I don’t know about you, but that puts them in a pretty powerful position.

Soda leads to obesity?

My wife saw a story on the news yesterday that some researchers at Harvard have been looking into the link between drinking soda and obesity. Apparently 1 soda per day isn’t going to have a detrimental effect, but a 2nd soda per day can lead to as much as a 15 pound weight increase over the course of 1 year. Yikes. Now imagine that many people drink 3–5 sodas per day. I think it’s no wonder the average weight in the US is on the rise.

RSS Bandit rocks

To track the sites that I read I use the customized Google homepage at http://www.google.com/ig. I have basically run out of screen real estate and so the need for an RSS Feed Aggregrator has arisen. I tried out a few products and settled on RSS Bandit and boy does it rock. I was worried I would have to shell out $20 or so for a decent product, but the Open Source community didn’t disappoint me with this product. If you are looking for a reader I suggest looking no further than RSS Bandit.

http://www.rssbandit.com

GetWebKit Pre Alpha

It looks like someone is finally taking WebKit, the rendering engine for Apple’s Safari browser, and making a Windows based browser out of it. If this thing ever becomes stable I could definitely see using it so that I could test compatability with the sites that I develop. I’ll keep my eye on this as it is still a 0.1 pre version, which means it’s prone to crashing.

GetWebKit!

More Social Networking Bookmarklets

I got a little curious this morning and went ahead and made bookmarklets for del.icio.us, reddit, and wists today:

del.icio.us

reddit

wists

I haven't actually tested these so I may make a few changes throughout the day.

Pear DB and MDB2

So today I decided to look into standardized classes for DB access so that my sites had more portable code and weren’t tied to a single type of database server. My search led me to the DB and MDB2 Pear modules for PHP. After much reconfiguration of my setup at 1&1 I got Pear and the DB and MDB2 modules installed and running.

The following is a snippit of code that shows the same query run with both modules and gives you a framework for how you can start using it:

require_once("DB.php");
require_once("MDB2.php");

function dump_users( $type )
{
  $dsn = array(
  'phptype'  => 'mysql',
  'hostspec' => 'localhost',
  'database' => 'db_name',
  'username' => 'db_user_name',
  'password' => 'db_user_password'
  );

  if($type == "DB")
  {
    $db = DB::connect($dsn);
    if (PEAR::isError($db)) { die($db->getMessage()); }
    $db->setFetchMode(DB_FETCHMODE_ASSOC);
    $res = $db->query( 'SELECT * FROM users');

    if (PEAR::isError($res)) {
      die($res->getMessage());
    }
    echo ‘<pre>’;
    while( $res->fetchInto( $row ) ) {
      print_R($row);
    }
    echo ‘</pre>’;
  } else if($type == "MDB2") {
    $mdb2 =& MDB2::connect($dsn);
    if (PEAR::isError($mdb2)) { die($mdb2->getMessage()); }

    $res = $mdb2->query( 'SELECT * FROM users');

    // Always check that result is not an error
    if (PEAR::isError($res)) {
      die($res->getMessage());
    }

    echo ‘<pre>’;
    while ($row = $res->fetchRow(MDB2_FETCHMODE_ASSOC)) {
      print_R($row);
    }
    echo ‘</pre>’;
  }
}

dump_users('DB');
dump_users('MDB2');

Obviously you need to set the settings for the above $dsn variable as well as execute a valid query. To read more about these modules you can check out their respective pages: DB and MDB2*.

* When installing MDB2, you must also install the driver for your respective database application such as mdb2_driver_mysql. You can find all the drivers listed here.

Browser Window Sizes

I obviously do a lot of work on the web and I continually forget that my resolution (1280x1024) is not the most common resolution for my readers. That leads me to use the WebDev toolbar for Firefox which has a handy feature of letting me resize my browser to see what users of different resolutions would see. As a note to myself and anyone else that might need it, here are the resolutions for a few different browser windows. Take note that the vertical pixel count will be different for you as I have 3 additional toolbars on my browser.

800 x 600 has a viewport size of 792 x 412
1024 x 768 has a viewport size of 1016 x 580
1280 x 1024 has a viewport size of 1272 x 836

Also keep in mind that this includes having a scrollbar.

Ranbow Gallery

I saw this link on digg.com this morning and thought it had some gorgeous images that I wanted to share.

Ranbow Gallery

Vista Upgrade Matrix

On Sunday Microsoft released the Vista upgrade matrix which tells you which OS can be upgraded to which version of Vista. I personally will be purchasing the Ultimate version and will do a clean install just to be safe. I would recommend a clean install to anyone moving to Vista. As far as which version you will be needing, that is a question you have to determine on your own.

You can check out the graph over at Ars.

Blogger busted?

So, my blog appears to be totally non functional at the present time.