Technical thoughts

Windows Vista SP1 without connection to Internet Solved

2008-10-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

Today I have had an important problem with my Windows Vista SP1, with a simple solution:
netsh winsock reset

(source, that has saved my life, and Vista to be changed to XP is: Repair and Reset Windows Vista TCP/IP Winsock Catalog Corruption... Thank you!)

Form the post and the date of the post it seems to be an error of Vista and not of SP1.

the set of errors I have had include (free translations from Spanish) :
- the client DHCP was down
- unable to start Windows Socket interface
- error with the RPC service

The reparation mechanism of Vista doesn't work because it tries to repair the the DHCP client, which is not working but for other reason.

The real reason is that the TCP/IP stack Winsock settings get corrupted with wrong LSP (Layered Service Providers (?)). No idea what this means... but you can list the catalog of LSPs with: netsh winsock show catalog.

This has been one of these few times that I find a useful solution searching for a complex problem in Internet. Thanks again to the people of My Digital Life.

Excel: copy the exact content of cells

2008-10-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

Here a couple of tips to copy the exact content/formula of a range of cells in Microsoft Excel. First some introduction and later the tricks

Some thoughts...
As you probably know, Excel has a lot of possibilities in terms of copy cells (copy only values, formula, create a reference to the other cell, transmute the content, etc).
But when you copy a formula in fact excel keeps the relative references (what is in general the expected behaviour)...
Excel has a different behaviour if you move the cells (Cut&Paste), then it move the formula as it is without changing the references.

Trick 1
1. Select and copy (Ctrl+C) the range of cells you want to copy. (we call this area: range1)
2. Use an empty region of the sheet to paste (Ctrl+V) that content temporally. (we call this area: range2)
3. Select again the original region (range1) but this time move the cells to the region you want to copy the exact formulas. (Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V)
4. And now copy back the cell range in point 2. (what we called region2) back to the original region (range1).

... and you have it (just remove the temporal region range2).

Trick 2
This one use VBA macro script to copy the formulas:


With Sheets("Sheet1")
  .Range("A11:D20").Formula = .Range("A1:D10").Formula
End With

(source: Excel User Tips)

Future Book

2008-10-08T16:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a friend's blog I have discovered that the book "Market-Oriented Grid and Utility Computing" (in which I'm co-author of a chapter "Service Level Agreements in the Grid Environment", wow! :) ) is announced in Amazon.

My first book (sniff!). ;)

The book is expected in February, btw.

iPhone development without spend 100$

2008-09-13T00:53:00.001-07:00

If you, like me, just want to learn how to develop applications for the iPhone (and with luck even create one) but don't want to spend 100$ of the apple program for developers, There are very clear instructions in 246nt.com (http://www.246tnt.com/iPhone/), maintained by Sylvain Munaut, about how to use XCode with a Pwned iPhone and be able to make Build&Go and also debug the program in the terminal (this work from firware 2.0.0 to 2.0.2, as far as I know).

The process is easy to follow, but you need SSH access to the iPhone and also hack the iPhone installer and the SpringBoard (also included in the instructions).

There are very clever people out there.

Missing functionality in Nozbe

2008-09-11T01:53:00.000-07:00

I use this short perl program to have all the projects and tasks in Nozbe listed in one document, this perl program generates a .txt and a .rtf document... So, you can review your tasks at a glance:


$|=1;
use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use JSON;
use RTFUtil;

my $content = get("http://www.nozbe.com/api/projects/key-here_your_key");

print "$content\n";

my $json = new JSON;
my $projects = $json->decode($content);
print "\n ---\n";
print "".@$projects."\n";

open FILE, ">tareas.txt" or die $!;
rtf_create("tareas.rtf");
my $num=1;
foreach my $project (@$projects) {
 print $$project{name}."\n";
 print FILE " == ".$$project{"name"}." (".$$project{count}.") ==\n";
 rtf_print_bold(" == ".$$project{"name"}." (".$$project{count}.") ==");
 if($$project{count}==0){next;}
 $content = get("http://www.nozbe.com/api/actions/what-project/id-".$$project{"id"}."/key-here_your_key");
 my $tasks = $json->decode($content);
 foreach my $task (@$tasks) {
   if($$task{done}==0){
     print FILE $num.". ".$$task{name}."\n";
     rtf_print($num++.". ".$$task{name});
   }
 }
 print FILE "\n";
 rtf_print();
}

rtf_close();

You can see the Nozbe API here and your key here in the extra section under the API key label (to replace "here_your_key" in the code).

It would be fantastic to have this functionality directly available in the web interface.

Cheers.

Updated: Now done tasks are not included.

Lithium-ion battery conservation

2008-06-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

I have found a very well written article about how to use lithium-ion battery "Lithium-ion batteries: Myths and Legends" (Spanish) to enlarge the batteries' life. This article has broken some preconceived ideas I had about how to recharge and use this kind of batteries:
1. you don't have to follow full charge-discharge cycles, in fact this is bad for the battery life, it's better to make partial recharges.
2. heat is very harmful for batteries, some web pages recommend to remove the battery from the laptop when the computer is running on fixed power.

The previous article is based on this one from BatteryUniversity.com which also contains very valuable information.
As an additional reference, the page of the Lithium-ion battery in Wikipedia, which also includes guidelines for prolonging Li-ion battery life.

Cool iPhone application design

2008-06-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this "Things Touch" by CulturedCode is going to become a real application... but I have to admit that the design is really cool. ;)

Lost productivity caused by email and other electronic interruptions

2008-06-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

An interesting article in the New York Times "Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast" describes what all people knows: that email (and the addiction to check for new emails every minute) and instant messages are causing important lost of productivity, and money.
In my personal experience I really try to delay the response when something is not important, but as I commented in my previous entry and it's described in the article, I suffering of "e-mail bankruptcy" ("getting so far behind in responding to e-mail messages that it becomes necessary to delete them all and start over") or "e-mail apnea"... you are so overwhelmed by email that you are unable to process them.

... clearly we are losing the battle against email.

Update: googling about "email bankruptcy" I have found this article "Declaring e-mail bankruptcy" reviewing important e-mail bankruptcy declarations in the pass.

The impossible INBOX

2008-05-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

Now I have surrendered, it's impossible to keep my inbox with zero emails. I have read lot of techniques, see presentation in youtube and google video but anything works. My problem is that I receive such amount of emails that I can spent all the day only processing it. If I don't do it (because I'm supposed to do also some "practical" work) then the email get in the inbox for ever... the most worrying situation is that from time to time I lose some important information in one email never or quickly read and soon forgotten.
As I said I have surrendered so I'll start organizing by emails by months instead of with any useful method. This way sure I can keep my inbox with zero messages.

Task organization

2008-05-31T12:13:00.000-07:00

Today I have seen one interesting blog entry about how AK, the woman author of the blog, organizes her tasks using Moleskine notebooks. Very impressive technique, but it doesn't fix with my way of doing things.

Nozbe, Organizing tasks (To-DO)

2008-03-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

It’s always a nightmare trying to organize the every days tasks, I have tried different methods and different tools, the classical to-do list has been very useful to me I have tried to write all the tasks in the list to don’t keep them in my mind, but at the end, especially when you accumulate a great number of tasks is difficult to manage (you write down repeated tasks, and it’s not easy to see the set of tasks related with the same activity)... any way this not very sophisticated method has worked. Then I have switched to “Remember the Milk”, this tool is more powerful and useful than the first impression you get. You can group tasks by different groups and apply the typical priorities and due dates, etc. But it has a very interesting option, you can tag you tasks so is like a more tine grouping of your tasks.
My last discovery is Nozbe, it applies the famous method of GTD: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, that you can find stated in so many web tools but poorly implemented, except in Nozbe. From the first time it’s evident that is a very well done site. And my first impressions using it are very good. It seems the creator of the website is from Poland, that probably explains the awful name he has selected... but anyway :) a fantastic tool.

the problem of no keyboards

2008-02-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

Microsoft wants to use speech and touch screen to replace the keyboard, this is cool just as the iPhone or this multi-touch coffee table from Microsoft do, but it has a problem as you can see in this iPhone simulator.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

2008-02-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

Indiana Jones...

Virtual Desktop: CubeDesktop

2008-02-08T13:40:00.000-08:00

I have just tested the Virtual Desktop software from CubeDesktop and is really impressive!!. Different 3D effects to change among virtual desktops and super-fast implementation. it runs incredible quickly in my old laptop 1.1GHz, 760MB of RAM... worth a try!.

Oh come on, nobody thinks Google is scary

2008-01-31T14:32:00.000-08:00

Funny video about the potential of Google.

1 Million Missing iPhones

2008-01-29T04:18:00.000-08:00

This interesting article "Good News in the 1 Million Missing iPhones" tries to explain why Apple has sold 3.75 million iPhones and AT&T has activated only 2 million phones... well, the explanation is easy, isn't it?

MacBook Air

2008-01-16T14:25:00.000-08:00

How I like this guy, what a wonderful machine...

It has lot of downsides, the only important one to me is you cannot change the battery. 5h. of autonomy is not so bad but currently I can work the full day unplugged (like the music) with my Dell.

We can say officially that iPhones and iPod Touch are PDAs

2007-10-18T00:05:00.000-07:00

Apple to Open iPhone Programming to Outsiders, there is a clear interest on developers to create new applications for the iPhone, as they are currently duing using installer.app. And there is already a huge numbers of Web 2.0 applications for the iPhone (in most of the cases works also in Safari)... Also curious is how people install in the iPod touch all the applications that apple has artificially removed from the iPhone.
The new SDK is a good thing that adds lot of value to these gadgets.

Interview with kernel developer Con Kolivas: "Why I quit"

2007-08-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

A very interesting interview with Con Colivas about why he quitted the Linux kernel development. He has been working patching the kernel to make it better in the Desktop, to improve the user experience... and how he fails to get his patches in the mainline kernel.

He talks about the not so idyllic and wonderful part of the open source development.

Inbox zero

2007-07-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

I usually read this blog, Naked Translations, and the last entry (at this time) "How to organise your emails - update" was a very interesting entry about how to keep your Inbox empty (I currently have around 800 emails in my Inbox so I read the articles with lot of interest).

This article leads to other two:
- Geek to Live: Empty your inbox with the Trusted Trio, that basically describes a system with only three folders: Action, for the tasks you must complete; Archive, for long-term store of emails and Hold, for actions you will handler during the next days. :(
- Separate your email from your to-do's, this article is the interesting one, because it comes to the method that I'm currently using (without success). It basically says something evident "email isn't a good task manager", the subject of a email doesn't express the thing you have to do, you need to reread the chain of emails to realize what is you task. What it proposes is to keep a separated list of TO-DO where you write the task you have to do (you stop using the email as a task manager) and also rename the Action folder to FOLLOWUP, here you'll store the emails that need a replay, making also a notation in your TO-DO list: ... (followup)... to know the email is in that folder.

I think that the FOLLOWUP folder is a good idea, I'll try, let see.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs interview

2007-06-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

You can find a interview with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs together in D5.

I have a PC, as most people do, but I have to confess that I have always felt admiration for Apple and their products. I have an iPod an it's incledible easy to use compare with other MP3 players, and people who have Macs are very vehement about how wonderful is a Mac... I'm personally feel a bit scare about the price and software available.

Anyway, What will Microsoft do without Apple? ;)

CPI (Curioso pero inútil)

2007-05-29T14:56:00.000-07:00

CPI(spanish) "Curious but useless", a blog about scientific disquisitions, intesting books, and analysis of the hoaxs we sometimes receive in our inbox. They also have a forum where any people can make questions that they try to solve.

MICRON Grid

2007-03-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

During the EGEE Industry Day past 1st of March, organised by CETA-Ciemat I saw a presentation by Brooklin Gore about the Computing Grid internally used by MICRON (a world wide company manufacturer of chips/flash memories...). They use the idle Desktop PCs to execute jobs. All the Grid infrastructure is based on CONDOR.

One kind of jobs ('portable' I think was the name) are moving around the World meanwhile people slept using the computational power. :) ... "Follow-the-moon" job in the article bellow.

I have found this link (A Peek into Micron's Grid Infrastructure) where you can find more detailed information about the MICRON Grid.

In any case, very different from the Grid envisioned by Akogrimo or BREIN.

send SMS to install programs in Vista

2007-02-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

I have to search a little bit through Internet, but my brother had to send two SMS and receive and authorization code to be authorized by Windows Vista to install Azurius and other program (which name I don't remember)... amazing!!

XML a high level protocol

2007-02-09T12:52:00.000-08:00

I have started to think that the great success of XML and the Web Services, beside the fact that is slow and chatty protocol is because XML is a high level protocol (the same way Java is a high level programming language).
I don-t imaging myself changing the CORBA protocol to add certain feature... but things changes when we talk about XML. It's not a human readable but more readable that binary protocols, and easier to change: yes. That's the success and the strength of XML....
We have just to wait to see how the performance problem of XML are solved... and in my opinion has a lot.