Tjitjing Blog

Brilliant and Exciting Electric Car Project

2009-02-26T07:09:00.011+01:00

A few months ago I saw a video about Shai Agassi's new electric car project - Better Place - and I still think it's a very exciting and brilliant concept.
Our neighbor Denmark have already signed up for this and I hope it will also come to Sweden - and the world! - eventually.
I can't wait to drive a zero emission vehicle!

The project/company started late 2007. I don't know why have not heard about it earlier, to many of you this is probably old news.
If you haven't already heard about it you can read more in this Wired Magazine article or visit Better Place's homepage.
Shai Agassi is a former SAP top executive.

What I love about this project:

- New and easy cost model based on the model for cell phone subscriptions: Free or very low cost car, pay per mile. And get this: the mileage cost will be considerably lower than for the car you are driving today. I think this is key - there is no monetary penalty for consumers to go green, only advantages.

- Open standard - Existing battery manufacturers will be making the batteries. Existing car manufacturers will be making the cars. This means no strange new models to get used to. Nissan/Renault already have cars ready for production.

- Only non-carbon, renewable energy sources will be used (solar, wind, water etc)

- The grid thought. With all the batteries in cars and Battery Exchange stations there will be a huge distributed energy system that can be used to fill up when energy is cheap during night time (ie. not in high demand) and redistribute it during daytime.
Eg. your car's battery is fully loaded during night but your on-board system knows you will actually only be needing about 50% battery capacity so during the day when your car is parked and plugged in the other 50% of your energy can be redistributed to other cars or sold on the market.

- The grand scale and time frame. The ambition is to do this for the world. Already signed up: Israel, Denmark, Australia, California, Hawaii and Canada.
And this is happening now! Quote from Wired Magazine: "Better Place expects to have close to 100,000 vehicles by the end of 2011"

I also love this quote from the 4-minute intro video on Better Place's web site: "Hi, I'm Shai Agassi and I'm the end of oil"

The biggest weak point as I see it is the cost for building the infrastructure.
But for recharging stations I'm sure the existing power grid will be used and for Battery Exchange stations I'm sure there will be an incentive for existing filling stations to come on board. After all, the countries that have signed up for the project have agreed to tax cuts for electric cars and tax raises for traditional cars, this in combination with the new pay model (free or very cheap car and low mileage cost) should be able to quickly move a lot of people to electric.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this project will actually work, it would have great impact on our co2 emissions!

Side note:
I can't help but thinking maybe there is another motive behind this project too. When I read that Israel is the first country that signed up to do this I can't help but thinking that there could be another great motive for them apart from the environmental: If this project succeeds and break most of the world's oil dependence, as a side effect Israels enemies funding (which of course comes from oil) will also be cut off.
If my conspiracy theory has any truth to it I think this is a very smart move by Israel. And I say this without taking sides in the mid east debate/conflict, I think the sad situation there is far too complex for me to fully comprehend.

Low Volume on my Realtek Acer Laptop

2009-01-18T15:51:00.003+01:00

I've always thought the sound volume on my Acer TravelMate 5530G has been very low even if I turned everything up to 100%. It has been ok and only a little bit annoying, but a few days ago we moved to another house for a month (we're currently travelling in Thailand) with no TV so now the family have to watch movies on the laptop...

Anyway, I found the solution thanks to this post by brielle128 at Notebookreview.com. It seems to be related to Realtek drivers on Windows Vista.

The solution:
- Have song playing so you can here the difference.
- Right click on the speaker icon in the task bar and select Playback Devices (or find it in the Windows Control Panel) The Sound dialog box opens up.
- From the Playback tab select the Playback device being used, in my case Speakers Realtek High Definition Audio (marked with a green checkbox) and click the Properties button. A new dialog box - Speaker Properties - opens up.
- On the Enhancements tab make sure Disable All Sound Effects and Immediate Mode are both unchecked. Check Loudness Equalization (on my setup all other unchecked) and hit Apply.
- Bingo! Sound volume is up a lot, maybe 50%!

I actually think my wife's Acer Aspire One (also Realtek Sound card) running Windows XP has the same problem but unfortunately I could not find any similar settings there.

Copy MySQL Database Structure without Data

2009-01-12T02:42:00.003+01:00

Three easy steps to copy the structure of a MySQL database, i.e. the table definitions but no rows/records/data:

1. Create the new database, either from MySQL Query Browser (part of MySQL GUI Tools) or MySQL Command Line:

CREATE DATABASE `new_database_name`;

2. Copy the database structure using the mysqldump command from a dos command prompt. Note: If MySQL is not in your path you will have to navigate to the MySQL bin directory, on my machine this is in C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin.

mysqldump -d -u root -p -v original_database_name > c:\temp\dbstruct.sql

3. Restore the copied database structure to your new database from the same dos command prompt as in step 2.

mysql.exe -uroot -p new_database_name < c:\temp\dbstruct.sql

Done!

Some notes:
- I used MySQL Server 5.1 when testing this but should work also with earlier versions. If you can or cannot get it to work with another version please add a comment.
- In this example I used root as user but any user with read and create permissions would work.

Mobile internet in Thailand

2008-12-01T09:10:00.004+01:00

I am currently in Thailand for three months with my family :)
We're at the island of Koh Lanta which is in southern Thailand, close to Krabi and Puket (Phuket).

I'm trying to work from here but getting a decent internet connection has been a hassle. Internet is generally very cheap (compared to Sweden anyway) but slow. These are the options I have found and tried:

Internet café and Wirelsess access points

There are lots of these everywhere but it's slow. Normal fee is about 1 Baht (THB) per minute for internet café. Wireless access is usually free at cafes when you eat or drink something. But at least here in Koh Lanta it's very slow even though they use ADSL connections. This island - Koh Lanta - got electricity and telephone lines just about five years ago so maybe there is just not enough bandwidth to the main land.

Mobile internet GPRS and EDGE (aka 2.5G)

Bring a handset-to-computer cable to connect your mobile phone to your laptop or use Bluetooth if both your cell and laptop support that.

Then simply buy a prepaid card from a store (50-100 Baht). I have tried 1-2-Call (AIS) and Happy (DTAC) and both work fine. Call the operators service number to find out how to set up GPRS/EDGE, what the cost is and if they have any promotions. When you call the operator service line listen for what key to press to get an English speaking service representative. The service is good and they will help you get setup right away.

As an example: I use DTAC/Happy, they have a package where you buy 1 month/max 20 hours (unlimited traffic) of GPRS and EDGE internet access for 100 Baht. Currently they have a promotion where you get double max time (40 hours). If you use up all your time before the month is up you can call and buy the package again.
Just remember to keep track of how much connection time you have used up, when it is used up you are automatically back to standard fee which is 1 Baht per 10 kB. I didn't notice my time was up and quickly used up the 200 Baht I had left on my prepaid - instead of the 80 hours connect time that money would have bought me I got about 1 hour.

Even though I find surfing etc very slow on EDGE/GPRS I was amazed to see that I could actually make video calls with Skype using this connection! Quality was not 100% but it was working quite ok. I guess this is more thanks to great Skype algorithms than connection speed.

Service number for Happy (DTAC): 1678
Service number for 1-2-Call (AIS): 1175

Mobile broadband/High Speed Mobile internet 3G/CDMA

There are two operators providing high speed mobile internet: CAT and Hutch.
It seems Hutch is covering the central part of Thailand and CAT is covering the southern and northern part.

My neighbour here has a USB modem from CAT which I have borrowed and even though it is not superfast it is the fastest option compared to anything else I have tried here including the ADSL from the wireless cafes. CAT have their own outlets and the closest one is in Krabi but through my neighbour I have now arranged to have one sent here which I hope to get in a few days.
I will pay about 11.000 Baht for the USB modem and 700 Baht per month for unlimited internet access. I was hoping I could use my 3G phone (Sony Ericsson Z770i) as modem but I checked the specs and it supports the HSDPA and WCDMA 3G-standards but both CAT and Hutch use the CDMA2000 standard and I don't think they are compatible. Also CAT does not use SIM cards but the SIM is built in to the modem.

Hutch's mobile internet service is called MBI and is available both as prepaid and postpaid. Hutch have better prices than CAT and from their homepage at first it seems you could use their services in CAT's network. But after emailing their customer service to double check I got the reply that everything but mobile internet works in CAT's network but it seems this will change later on. Hutch is mainly sold though their own shops but you can also buy online (or at least semi-online) using this form that I found well hidden on their home page.

CAT's web site has very limited information in English: CTA
You can call their service center at 1322 where they can assist you.
Telephone number to the CAT outlet in Krabi is 075620588.

Hutch's web site has lots of information in English: www.hutch.co.th
Their call center is at telephone 1128 or use this contact form.

Happy surfing!

[Update: In the end I had to go to CAT in Krabi myself to buy the thing. The CAT office is located on the main road in Krabi Town, about 500 meters north of the hospital, on the opposite side of the road.
The CAT staff was very friendly and helpful and I bought a Novatel Wireless MC727 modem device for 8.500 Baht (which was cheaper than the 11.000 Baht a sign on a display said, I don't know if this was a time limited offer or why I paid less) Unlimited internet access is 850 Baht per month. Make sure you bring your passport as it is not pre-paid but a subscription/post-paid. I only had to pay for exact amount of days I wished for, so they started the subscription the day of my visit and it will end at the exact day I go back home in February.
Back at the house in Koh Lanta I plugged it in to my computer and it installed and connected without any problems! (My neighbour has the CCU-680 modem but they both seem to be working equally well.)

I think I could probably have bought just a SIM and used with my Sony Ericsson 3G handset as they did sell normal 3G phones with SIM cards, even though the MC727 modem was without SIM. I'm not sure about this but I think the CDMA2000 they refer to is probably not a standard but CDMA on the 2000 MHz band which my phone may support.

Another note which I missed in my original post is that there currently seems to be no High Speed/HSDPA/Turbo-3G, which is 7.2 Mbit/s only normal 3G 3.2 Mbit/s (using a standard called EVDO revision A)]

BC30560: 'MySqlConnection' is ambiguous in the namespace 'MySql.Data.MySqlClient'.

2008-12-01T01:18:00.004+01:00

I got this error in one of my ASP.NET web sites after uploading a new version:

BC30560: 'MySqlConnection' is ambiguous in the namespace 'MySql.Data.MySqlClient'.

It worked fine on my development machine but not on the production server. I could not figure out what it was for quite some time. Turned out I had added the mysql.dll to bin directory of my project and at the same time was referencing a shared (GAC) version of the same dll. I had made this and some other changes on the development machine that I had forgot about. The only thing that differed from the development and production machines was the web.config which I obviously did not check well enough.

Posting this here if someonelse or myself makes this stupid mistake again...

Lotus Notes data directory on Windows Vista

2008-11-09T19:41:00.003+01:00

Just installed and old CD with Lotus Notes 7.02 on my Windows Vista laptop.
Could not find notes.ini, names.nsf in the file system, apparently it's no longer stored in C:\Program Files\Lotus\Notes\Data. After some searching I found it here: C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\lotus\notes\data>

Convert Accented Characters to ASCII

2008-10-24T23:42:00.004+02:00

It is pretty simple in .NET to convert Western Unicode (non-ASCII, accented, diacritics) to ASCII, but regardless I had a hard time figuring it out it so I'm posting here for my own future reference.

Dim strTest as String = "Any string containing accented characters, e.g. åäöéèêÅÄÖÉÈÊ"
strTest = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(1251).GetBytes(strTest))

Looking for Credential Tiles hangs Remote Desktop

2008-10-18T16:26:00.004+02:00

On my new Acer TravelMate 5530G I run Windows Vista Home Premium. I use Windows Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) to connect to my server which has been working just fine.

But this weekend after setting up a new Windows 2008 server and trying to connect to it, RDC shows a dialog "Looking for Credential Tiles". The dialog is up for ever and if I click cancel instead of getting a login screen RDC hangs and I have to shut it down from the Task Manager.

The workaround seems to be to enter the correct credentials into Vistas Advanced User Accounts panel (I later changed password on my server and had the same problem all over again)

This solution is thanks to Denz and can be found as a comment to this Terminal Services Team blog post

1. Type control userpasswords2 into the Start menu search box and hit Enter

2.On the resulting User Accounts screen, click on the Advanced tab and then click the Manage Passwords button

3. On the Stored User Names and Passwords window, click Add button

4. On the Log on to: Type the IP of your server or the Server name, and user name and password

5. Denz instructions says to choose "A Windows Logon Credential" but this option is greyed out for me. However "A web site or program credential" works fine too

Denz and others also have Acer TravelMate laptops (but other models than me) so my theory is that this is a problem with the Acer software that comes with their laptops. Maybe the Bio protection software (fingerprint scanner).

[Update: I can confirm that the problem is related to the Acer fingerprint software. After uninstalling Acer Bio Protection ATU the issue is solved. I had Acer Bio Protection ATU version 6.0.00.16 installed which is the latest version available from Acer at this time]

Copy Outlook Signatures

2008-08-27T09:45:00.005+02:00

I just got a new laptop running Vista so I wanted to backup and transfer all my Outlook signatures from my old XP laptop. Both are running Outlook 2007.

Outlook 2007 Signature file locations in Windows Vista and XP:

Vista:
%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures
(usually C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures)

XP:
%USERPROFILE%\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures
(C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures)

From that directory, just copy everything to your new computer.

I also wanted to transfer my POP3 account settings, but as of Outlook 2007 you can no longer do that :( Don't ask me why Microsoft decided to remove this feature. There seems to be various workarounds and 3rd party tools but I chose to just enter my 10 POP3 accounts all over again.

Punycode in VB.NET for IDN domains

2008-06-24T14:42:00.000+02:00

On one of my web sites I noticed that IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) don't work when I do Response.Redirect in VB.NET.

IDNs are used to allow accented and other special international characters (non-Ascii) to be used in domain names. Since Domain Name Servers (DNS) only support Ascii, any IDN is encoded in Punycode.

To encode a string as Punycode in VB.NET simply do this:

Dim strUrl As String = "http://idn-example-åäö.com"
Dim idn As System.Globalization.IdnMapping = New System.Globalization.IdnMapping
strUrl = idn.GetAscii(strUrl)

Firefox 3 - huge security hole!?

2008-06-18T08:06:00.006+02:00

I just downloaded the new Firefox 3 and after using it for five minutes my first impression is that it's super fast.

But during these five minutes I already found what to me seems like a huge security flaw:

Click on the site icon in the address bar + click More Information button + click Show Passwords button. This will show any passwords you have saved for a site in clear text!

This means for example that if I borrow a friend's computer I will be able to see his or hers stored usernames and passwords in clear text.

How many normal users will know about this security hole when they select to have firefox remember their username and password? Not many.

I have not played around with FireFox 3 long enough to see if there is a way to turn this feature off, but by default it is obviously on.

This does not seem thought thru at all...

Ps: I have no idea how passwords are stored in the file system in FF2 or FF3 but I always supposed that it was somehow encrypted but maybe it has always been in clear text?

[Update:

I have now been told and checked that it also worked like this in FF2 only that you had to go to Tools + Options + Security to see them. To prevent others from seeing your passwords you should set a Master Password from Tools + Options + Security.

I have not yet examined the file system but from what I have read passwords are encrypted and stored in two files: key3.db and signons.txt.

From a quick look in Internet Explorer 7 I cannot find my stored passwords anywhere so it seems this is handled more securely there. But maybe it's there only I cannot find it? I ran Firefox 2 for a long time without noticing my passwords were available for anyone using my computer to see...

In my opinion this is still a huge security hole and I cannot understand why Firefox works this way. The least I would expect would be a clear warning every time you are asked to store a password (without having your Master Password set) ]

Duplicates using ActiveSync and PC Suite from Sony Ericsson

2008-05-28T11:34:00.007+02:00

Today I connected my z770 cell phone to my Windows Vista PC with the non-included USB cable.
In the manual it says it should be included but to the manual there is also a single-sheet addendum correcting the "typo" in the manual: "using the included USB cable" should read "using a USB cable" etc. :)

Anyway, I have been syncing with ActiveSync which does an ok (not great) job at syncing email, contacts and calendar. But ActiveSync in Sony Ericsson world is only for syncing OTA (Over the Air). To Sync with your PC you need to use Sony Ericsson's synchronization software - PC Suite.

First of all you have to download it because there is no CD included. I don't mind that because I always want to download the latest version anyway, but I found it a bit strange that no CD was there. But then again there was no USB cable either.

I have owned Sony Ericsson phones before and I was a bit skeptical to installing their software because it has made my computers behave strange in the past. But besides that the installation program seemed to be in a 30 minutes long endless loop installing drivers before I shut it down, it seems to be working fine.

When starting to sync I got questions asking me (I guess I should be happy it at least asks) to confirm whether entries are the same. There was no way to cancel so instead of clicking Yes or No, I hit Escape which closed the window and I thought would be the same as "skip" but when I finally succeed in hitting Cancel on the background window it turns out lots of duplicate entries have been created in my Contacts and Calendar in Outlook. It also seems that for each Contact where I have entered a birthday a duplicate birthday entry is created in my calendar. :(

Contacts
On Contacts Active Sync have synced not the Email address field but the Display as field, e.g. Email contains "bill.gates@microsoft.com" and the Display as "Bill Gates (bill.gates@microsoft.com)".
This I have already noticed because when you try to send an email to a contact with multiple email addresses from your phone it gets very difficult to select email address because the screen only shows the first x characters. But PC suite sync on the email address field and therefore gives you the question for each entry if it is the same or not.
I guess a solution for contacts could be to change Outlook settings to only show email address in the Display as field and then change it in your existing contacts, but I have not tried this.

Calendar
Just as on Contacts there seem to be a difference between ActiveSync and PC Suite when syncing Calendar. The fields Notes and Classification (internal field?) are handled differently.

Email
PC Sync don't sync email at all for some reason so there is no problem here.

I called the Sony Ericsson help line and the person I spoke with seemed surprised I even tried to sync with both ActiveSync and PC Suite, "I advice you not to do that".
So basically there seems to be no plans to fix this and the workaround is to sync your stuff either with Active Sync or PC Suite.

Since you can check what things to sync where you can for example select to sync only email with Active Sync and the rest with PC Suite.
With ActiveSync you have the options to sync Email, Calendar and/or Contacts.
With PC Suite you have the options to sync Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes and/or Bookmarks.

I miss my Windows Mobile phone...

UFOs - I love this stuff

2008-05-16T15:52:00.002+02:00

I just read in Swedish techie newspaper Ny Teknik that British Department of Defense has released all their previously secret UFO reports since 1978. They have now made them publicly available on the web because all requests for them amounted to too much xeroxing work... :)

Exchange Session Failed Communication Interrupted

2008-05-15T16:19:00.005+02:00

Yesterday I went ahead and bought the new Sony Ericsson z770i that I blogged about some time ago. I have been waiting a few weeks to get it in black instead of silver and during that time they announced another model - z780i - that should be all that the z770i is but also with a built in GPS. It seems there is always another model being announced, so even if I would have preferred the z780i I wasn't prepared to wait any longer. I also hear that it will not be sold on the Swedish market for some reason (maybe because they just started shipping the z770)

Last night after I put the children to bed I played around with it and tried to get ActiveSync to work. I filled out the info in the Synchronization settings and connected but only got "Exchange Session failed Communication interrupted" (or since I have Swedish selected as language: "Exchange Sessionen misslyckades Kommunikationen avbröts")

I searched the Sony Ericsson Support Knowledge base - not a single hit for neither Exchange, ActiveSync nor Active Sync! :(

Thanks to Google and this thread by dmwood at Microsoft Technet, Goran at my Hosted Exchange 2007 provider managed to solve this for me late last night. In my Hosted Exchange Control Panel the ActiveSync Policey "Allow Non-provisionable devices" was unchecked. Once Goran checked that option for me everything started to work. Thanks Goran for working late and helping me out!

I also sent an email to Sony Ericsson support and this is their reply this morning:

Confirm with your IT staff that device security settings on the server allow access to devices that do not fully support password settings. This option is available in:

Exchange System Manager > Global Settings > Mobile Services > Device Security

If this checkbox was unchecked, you will get a connection failed, although a Windows Mobile device would still sync properly.

The following security settings are supported:
Wipe: PIM data and settings are supported.
Exchange 2003 Device security Settings: NOT supported.
Exchange 2007 Additional Security settings: NOT supported.

I will probably get back with a post on the differences between using Windows Mobile ActiveSync and non-Windows Moible/Sony Ericsson ActiveSync, there are a few.

Office 2003 menu in Office 2007 ribbon?

2008-04-28T12:28:00.005+02:00

I know Microsoft says that the new Office 2007 ribbon is more productive than the old menus. I for one don't buy it, I still spend way too much time in Word or Excel 2007 trying how to figure out how to do the simplest thing that I've always known how to do in previous versions...

I have yet to find the function where you turn on the old Office 2003 menus in Office 2007 but I have finally found the next best thing - the reference that maps Office 2003 menu commands to the Office 2007 ribbon!

Excel 2003 to 2007 version here and Word 2003 to 2007 version here

Bookmarked, blogged and to be used many times!

Find an Active Sync Mobile Phone

2008-04-18T10:20:00.006+02:00

How do you find a new cell phone that can sync well with Exchange?

I love my Qtek 8500 (HTC StrTrk). Even though it has now been over two years since I first got it I haven't been able to find anything like it to replace it. And it needs to be replaced. Not only because I like new gadgets but also because the front panel came off and I had to glue it back on myself, the extra memory card has stopped working, the signal fails all the time, it hangs and last week a sat on it so the external display is now broken.

So what's so great about it? I would say three things

Exchange synchronization, i.e. Email, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks
The small clam shell/flip flop form factor. Before this phone I had never had one but now I would never want to go back
Windows Contacts navigation - I love the way results show up as you type. This must be a Microsoft patent as no one else uses this great navigation/look up functionality

Why is it so hard to find a replacement? Well, first of all I want it to be a Windows Mobile which directly limits the choice. Then add that I want it to be clam shell and this limits the choice to almost nothing.

There has been rumors of a 8500 successor, a 3G version - the HTC S420 Erato. But the rumor has been going for over a year and the expected release date has been postponed time after time after time... And there is yet to be an official announcement from HTC.

So, I have decided to give in on it having to be a Windows phone as long as it has good Exchange Synchronization.

But why is it so hard to find out what phones are Windows Mobile or support Active Sync?

On Microsoft's Windows Mobile Homepage you can search for devices but it is far from complete (at least for Sweden)
Samsung have Windows Mobile phones, but I cannot find a way to find out which from their home page (Swedish market)
I know Nokia has phones with Active Sync but how can I find out which?
It is the same with Sony Ericsson, they have Active Sync support for some phones, but how can I find them? They have also announced their first Windows Mobile phone, the Xperia X1 which should be available later this year.

I emailed Sony Ericsson and got a reply where they in fact confirm that this information cannot be found for all models on their home page. But they also gave me a list of current phones with Active Sync:

That last one - the z770 - looks like something I might actually want.

The only question that remains - is Active Sync on other brands as good as it is on Windows Mobile?

Import Excel Data into MySQL in 5 Easy Steps

2008-02-29T15:06:00.004+01:00

This is probably nothing new to many, but I spent quite some time to figure it out so I thought I'd post my notes on it.

To import data from Excel (or any other program that can produce a text file) is very simple using the LOAD DATA command from the MySQL Command prompt.

Save your Excel data as a csv file (In Excel 2007 using Save As)

Check the saved file using a text editor such as Notepad to see what it actually looks like, i.e. what delimiter was used etc.

Start the MySQL Command Prompt (I'm lazy so I usually do this from the MySQL Query Browser - Tools - MySQL Command Line Client to avoid having to enter username and password etc.)

Enter this command:
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE 'C:\\temp\\yourfile.csv' INTO TABLE database.table FIELDS TERMINATED BY ';' ENCLOSED BY '"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n' (field1, field2);

Done!

Very quick and simple once you know it :)

Some notes from my own import - may not apply to you if you run a different language version, MySQL version, Excel version etc...

TERMINATED BY - this is why I included step 2. I thought a csv would default to comma separated but at least in my case semicolon was the deafult

ENCLOSED BY - my data was not enclosed by anything so I left this as empty string ''

LINES TERMINATED BY - at first I tried with only '\n' but had to add the '\r' to get rid of a carriage return character being imported into the database

Also make sure that if you do not import into the primary key field/column that it has auto increment on, otherwhise only the first row will be imported

Facebook Photos to your Windows Mobile Cell Phone

2008-02-06T10:19:00.000+01:00

I just stumbled over this cool tool - OutSync - from Mel Sampat who's a Windows Mobile Program Manager at Microsoft.

It allows you to sync the photos of your Facebook contacts to Outlook and then on to your Windows mobile cell phone (or other phone if you have sync software that synchronizes photos)

I always wanted to have some photos in Outlook and my phone but never really got around to trying it out. Also it would be too much work to get photos of everyone but this tool solves that quite nicely - at least if you use Facebook.

It's easy to install and worked right away for me on my Vista and Outlook 2007 setup.

There are some things that I would like to see improved, mainly that it only matches on name so your contact has to have the exact same spelling in Outlook as in Facebook. It should be able to match on email (but I think the problem here is that the Facebook API does not allow this) or let you do a manual match. A feature that is listed as "coming soon" is birthday synchronization.

I also wish there was a similar tool for syncing Outlook and Live Messenger, but maybe there already is?

Partial Restore of Mysqldump Backup

2008-01-04T14:41:00.000+01:00

Just recently I started making backups of my MySQL databases using mysqldump.
I have a small batch/command file running on my Windows based MySQL Server, scheduled to every night backup all of my databases to a file named backup_all_dbs.sql:

"C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin\mysqldump" --all-databases -u username --password="password" > c:\backup\%DATE%\Backup_MySQL\backup_all_dbs.sql

A few weeks ago I finally upgraded my MySQL server from 4.1 to 5.0. For once I did everything by the book which included backing up all my databases using the backup tool in MySQL Administrator, installing the new server version and then restoring all databases.

Today however I just realized that somehow two tables in one of the databases did not get backed up and hence not restored. Fortunately I still had the nightly backup from the day before upgrading.

So I thought I'd just do a selective restore from the mysqldump file using MySQL Administrator (part if the MySQL GUI Tools) Turns out MySQL Administrator does not read files created with mysqldump.
And worse: a quick Google reveals that mysqldumps cannot be partially restored :(

My next couple of hours I spent installing and uninstalling various text editors that could open my 500+MB backup file from mysqldump. I finally found one that could, even though it took a while... (using a Windows Vista machine with 2GB RAM) - NoteTab Light 5.5 (freeware)

Using this I opened the backup file created with mysqldump and sure enough it was a text file containing SQL statements (too bad MySQL Administrator could not open it, hopefully it will in a future version).
I simply deleted the SQL statements for all databases except the one I wanted to partially restore. Then I restored it on my development machine using this command:

"C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin\mysql.exe" -uusername -p dbname < c:\backup\2007-12-13\backup_all_dbs.sql

Important note: If you have backed up full databases (not just tables) then it seems the dbname parameter doesn't matter, it still restores to the original database name - lucky me I did it on my development machine!

After the restore I did a partial backup using MySQL Administrator. Moved that backup file to my production server and did a restore using MySQL Administrator on that machine. Voìla!

So, to sum up:
1) Open your dump file in a large file text editor and delete everything except what you want to restore.
2) On a non-production machine (recommended) do a restore.
3) Make a partial backup using MySQL Administrator from your non-production machine
4) Restore the partial backup using MySQL Administrator on your production server.

Job done, finally I can get back to work!

Of course you can skip step 2 and 3 (and/or just restore the specific tables you want) if you like living dangerously ;)

Happy New Year!

IE7 performance problems

2007-10-15T08:48:00.000+02:00

I have been having some serious performance problems with my Windows XP laptop the last 6+ months. This is a few years old machine, 1GB RAM and Celeron processor.
I did a lot of upgrading around that same time - Office 2007 incl. Groove 2007 and the new Desktop Search and also upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Ever since, I've been trying to figure out which upgrade is draining my performance (or if it was just time for the annual Windows format at reinstall...)
They are all great upgrades feature wise but I wish Microsoft would focus a bit more on performance and not only features.

A few weeks back I switched from IE7 to Firefox 2 as my default browser and almost all of my performance problems are gone!

On my Vista machine I have had a problem with IE7 that when a popup window opens IE7 crashes. I haven't researched this enough but I get a feeling that this occurs when using javascript to open a new window.
Changed from IE7 to Firefox 2 on my Vista machine too and problem gone. No big change in performance on this machine though.

One thing I like about Firefox is the crash recovery feature - if Windows crashes (Firefox itself has not yet crashed on me) or your laptop runs out of batteries etc, when you restart Firefox it asks you if you want to restore all tabs the way they were before the crash. Excellent feature!!

One thing I dislike - or at least have not yet learned to like - is the way Firefox handles drop down menus. In IE I am used to just type the first few letters of whatever I want to navigate to in the drop down. Then I can navigate using the keyboards up and down arrow to navigate the previous or next entry in the list. This keyboard navigation does not work in Firefox, I have to use the mouse to scroll up and down in the list. Also it's not enough to select an entry in the list to trigger changes to the page (Javascript onBlur not triggered?) but I have to either hit the Enter key or navigate to another field.
Also Firefox does not seem to be able to open pdf files/Acrobat Reader in a browser window which is a bit annoying.

Anyway so far there are more positive things than negative with Firefox and I'm happy I finally made the move from IE.

Outlook Consumes 100% CPU and Stuck at 99% Send/Recieve

2007-07-27T07:21:00.000+02:00

For a long time I had a problem where my Outlook client would get stuck at 99% Send/Recieve and at the same time consume 100% (or as much as it can) CPU.

I have two different computers (XP and Vista) running Outlook 2007 against Exchange 2007 (Hosted Exchange) wich had the exact same problem.

When I looked at the Send/Recieve Details it usually said something like "Synchronizing Hierarchy" or just "Updating Inbox". If I did Cancel Send/Recieve the CPU went down to normal.

After looking at the Synchronization Log messages in the Sync Issues folder I found a zillion messages like this:

08:46:56 Synchronizer Version 12.0.4518
08:46:56 Synchronizing Mailbox 'Max Flodén'
08:46:56 Synchronizing Hierarchy
08:47:09 Synchronizing server changes in folder 'Inbox'
08:47:09 Downloading from server 'ex2.myisp.se'
08:48:02 69 item(s) added to offline folder
08:48:04 Synchronizing server changes in folder 'Deleted Items'
08:48:04 Downloading from server 'ex2.myisp.se'
08:48:05 Done
08:48:20 Microsoft Exchange offline address book
08:48:20 Not downloading Offline address book files. A server (URL) could not be located.
08:48:20 0X8004010F

So, the problem seemed to be with the Offline Address Book (OAB).

To make a long story short - after working back and forth with my Hosted Exchange ISP, Googling, creating and recreating Outlook profiles etc - the solution turned out to be that I needed to add a DNS entry for my domain in order for Outlook to Autodiscover which was the problem all along.

Autodiscover CNAME autodiscoverredirect.myisp.se

After adding this DNS entry for my domain it did not even take a minute before I got a dialog box asking me "Allow this website to configure max.floden@mydomain.se server settings?"

And that was it - no more stuck at 99% and no more Outlook consuming all CPU. Finally!

[Update: Found a Microsoft Knowledge Base article that describes this in more detail: A new feature is available that enables Outlook 2007 to use DNS Service Location (SRV) records to locate the Exchange Autodiscover service ]

Word as Editor in Lotus Notes

2007-07-25T17:59:00.000+02:00

I have just started a new project at OpenNTF, the Lotus Notes Open Source community.

The base is a project that I in part developed together with SKF about 18 months ago. Thanks to SKF and Gunilla Darrell for agreeing to donate this code to the OpenNTF community.

The aim was to enhance current functionality when using Word as editor in Notes and be able to use Microsoft Word 2003 functionality such as the Research Pane and Smart Tags (but also simpler things such as the spell checker) to boost user productivity.
Other practical things were addressed, for example that in current functionality Notes sends an email created with Word both as Rich Text and as an OLE object which increases email size by a factor 10-100.

There is one Word as Editor template for OpenNTF Mail Experience and one for standard R6 mail.

Notes uses OLE Automation for it's Word integration and this of course has its limitations. I did manage to work around many of them but I'm sure others will emerge that will need to be addressed.

Development was done using Microsoft Word 2003 and Lotus Notes 6.
Notes 7 and Notes 8 (currently in public beta) together with Word 2007 will with all certainty add new possibilities yet to be explored.

I hope other organizations will find the project interesting and maybe even useful :)

I am looking for an OpenNTF "co-chef" for this project as I currently don't have that much time to spend on it. Let me know if you want to contribute to this project.

Click here for the Word as Editor projects homepage at OpenNTF.

New blog design

2007-07-25T17:33:00.000+02:00

For you who have visited before you will notice that I've changed my blog design from an all grey to all white...

It's difficult to change and find design templates for Blogger. I'm thinking maybe I picked the wrong blog system and should have chosen Word Press or one of the others instead.

I've spent the last hour trying to get my new template to work. I did not realize I had made that many changes to my old template. I went in to the office today even though I'm on holiday to do some important "can't wait" stuff and this is what I spend my time doing. And it's not even the template I want. I wanted one of these cool designs where the comments pop up like in the comic books.

Well, I guess I'll just have to keep searching.

Outlook and outgoing SMTP servers

2007-07-25T15:28:00.000+02:00

I have just moved and changed my ISP to one that not only blocks port 25 but also only allows their SMTP relay server to be accessed from within their own network.

When I'm at home with my laptop I have set my outgoing SMTP server as smtp.myhome-isp.com and all is fine. But when I want to work out of my office I have to change it (for all my seven accounts) to smtp.myoffice-isp.com.

I looked and asked around for some smart solution to this problem but found none except the advice to setup my own mailserver or subscribe to a mailserver service.

So, I did the same thing that I did years back when I had the same ISP (and the same problem) - I created two hosts files where I put the IP adresses to respective ISP's SMTP relay servers. (The hosts file is where your computer goes before it goes out to the DNS to lookup an ip adress.)

Goto c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc and make two copies of the hosts file and call them for example hosts.myhome-isp and hosts.myoffice-isp

Edit the files and add an entry to each file for your home and office isp's SMTP relay servers and add the hostname as mailout. You have to enter the IP address of the SMTP relay server (eg 10.10.10.1 not smtp.myhome-isp.com) if you don't know it do a ping or nslookup to find out.

On the desktop (or a location of your choice) create two new batch files, eg. MyHome ISP SMTP.cmd and MyOffice ISP.cmd and add these three lines of code to each:

cd c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
copy hosts.myhome-isp hosts
pause

(Line two above should read "copy hosts.myoffice-isp hosts" for MyOffice ISP.cmd)

In Outlook set outgoing SMTP server to mailout

Whenever you move from home to the office run MyOffice ISP.cmd and vice versa. It may not be the ultimate solution but it works (at least for Outlook 2003 and 2007)

Windows DNS fails with SPF/TXT too long

2007-04-19T00:31:00.000+02:00

I run my own DNS for some of my domains. My primary DNS is the built-in DNS service in Windows 2003 SP1 and as backup/secondary DNS I'm using a free service from Twisted4Life. I've been using SPF for a couple of years and it has been working fine.
(SPF - Sender Policy Framework - is way to prevent spam by entering into your DNS what SMTP servers are allowed to send email for your domain. Some email systems such as Hotmail rely in part on SPF when deciding if your email should be placed in the recipients Inbox or Junk mail folder.)

My ISP has been recommending me to use a new SMTP server when sending out email from one of my email lists. So two days ago I added a few new SMTP servers to my SPF record in my DNS (by updating the DNS file in my \Windows\System32\DNS directory and then doing Reload from the DNS console, dnsmgmt.exe) A quick look and everything seemed just fine.

Normally when sending my email list, which contains a bit over 20k recipients, it takes about 10-20 minutes to actually send the batch and then during the next 10 minutes I get about 4-500 error emails telling me stuff like "user is over quota", "no such user" (I use these to clean my email list after each batch).
This time I only got about 15 error messages per hour and it took 36 hours before all had arrived in my inbox!
During this 36 hour period I called my ISP and told them there has to be something wrong with the new SMTP server that they had recommended I switch to. I also did send a test batch using the old SMTP server and it was lightning fast as always.

Today I noticed that I had not recieved any emails from a colleague who is using another email system than me. He told me that he sent me several emails yesterday and this morning and had not recieved any error messages. I told him to call his ISP because my email was working fine, I had emailed back and forth with several people and had no problem.

Then this evening it struck me - I had completely forgot that I made changes to my DNS records. Could I have put something wrong in my SPF records? But why would that effect my incoming email?

First I just did a nslookup using centralops.net online nslookup. This tool reported "Name server failed" for my domains! I quickly tried another online nslookup tool from network-tools.com and this tools reported no errors, it worked fine.

I went in to my server and opened the DNS console. And there, on the line showing the TXT record I use for my SPF string there was a blank space about ten characters into the string, in the middle of one of my SMTP server entries. At the end of the string there was some kind of special character, represented by a "square box". I then looked at the DNS data file at \Windows\system32\DNS but that still looked exactly like it should, without any blank spaces or special characters. Strange...

I then updated the data file from the DNS console (instead of the other way around that I usually do).
When I checked the DNS data file, my TXT record was split into several lines, with line breaks between them, each line starting and ending with a quotation mark. However some characters were missing at the line breaks so I reverted back to the original errornous case, ie where the DNS data file looks fine but in the DNS console there is a blank space and a special character.

Then I went to kitterman.com's SPF validation tool to validate my SPF string. The actual string validated fine. But then, using the same tool, I asked it to validate my domain using a DNS lookup it failed.

Finally, I deleted a few old SMTP servers from my SPF string in the DNS data files and did Reload on the DNS console. Ran my checks again and everything worked fine. And as I'm typing this blog post emails up to 48 hours old have started to enter my inbox.

My conclusion is that using a string that is too long (I have not done any extensive search on this problem, so I don't know how long a string is allowed to be) in a TXT record corrupts the string. This is obviously a bug Windows DNS server.
But the thing that is strange to me is that to some DNS clients, the answer my DNS server sent them was ok and to some unacceptable. I also don't understand why the SMTP servers reacted this way - no delivery I could understand, but extremely slow delivery?

Well, I'm a novice at both DNS and SMTP, so to others this may be crystal clear - please enlighten me!