Marc's Musings Reality from Marc's point of view!

Has anybody out there noticed that the upload speed results achieved using testmy.net are significantly depressed using Google Chrome?

My upload speed is supposed to be 3 Mbits/second. Using Comcast’s own speed test and Speakeasy’ I typically get results in this range.

But I like testmy.net’s approach and have always had great confidence in their results. But since using Google Chrome my results have been less than stellar. This has been since at least the beginning of December 2010. I’ve been using Chrome for a lot longer than that but I don’t know that I was paying particular attention to the upload speeds until recently.
I was beginning to believe Comcast was actually gaming the other two speed test results and hadn’t figured out how to mess with testmy.net’s. That does speak volumes about my opinion of Comcast. But I was inspired a few minutes ago to crack open Firefox and try the test with them and the results are consistent with those other test sites.

So it would seem that either Google Chrome or my settings for Google Chrome is at issue.

Testmy.net results with Firefox:

Testmy.net results with Chrome:

Posted under Chrome, Firefox, Tech Stuff

I have a Samsung LN52A650 TV on which I view Netflix and other assorted broadcasts via my Media PC. The PC itself is a Dell Inspiron 530 to which has been added (swapped really) a Radeon HD4670 graphics card. For the best possible picture and sound I use an HDMI connection. This was the reason for the updated video card, the one that came with the Dell in the first place did not have an HDMI out.

The operating system is still Windows Vista 32-bit which I have had no real issues with in spite of the many complaints that I’ve heard about Vista over the years.

The other day I saw that there were software updates outstanding so I allowed it to go ahead and apply a bunch of security updates. Under the optional updates section I saw that there were updated drivers for the video card so I let that go ahead too.

After upgrading I found that all edges of the screen image (at 1920 by 1080) as viewed on the Samsung were cut off. I first experimented with my computer’s display settings in case any were set back to some kind of default state during the upgrade and found that everything was still set up correctly. Being more of a moving forward rather than a falling back kind of guy, I went to the ATI site and manually downloaded and installed the most current drivers for my OS/Video card (dated 11/17/2010 I believe). This also had no impact.

The solution was straightforward. For some reason my TV was overscanning the incoming image. I suppose the older drivers must have been outputting a signal for which this was necessary?

Anyway, on the the TV, go to Menu > Picture > Picture Options > Size . The setting was showing 16:9, changing this to “Just Scan” solved the problem. As an added bonus the PC image displayed on the TV looked absolutely amazing clear. Obviously the difference from whatever was going on with the 16:9 setting to the 1 to 1 pixel matching that “Just Scan” allowed.

Posted under Tech Stuff

I’m not the most paranoid person in the world, but I *do* believe in safeguarding my critical files. If my computer is ever compromised I like to ensure that as much as possible, all of my personal information, financial records, etc. are encrypted.

To this end I make use of TrueCrypt. This is such a useful utility that I have also gone ahead and made a donation to support the author. I *highly* recommend you get TrueCrypt and use it to safeguard your own information.

I’ve created a batch file which I execute whenever I want to use Quicken that will mount my encrypted volume, open Quicken, then dismount the volume when Quicken exits

Part of TrueCrypt’s mandate is to try to also thwart folks from figuring out what files you’re using by not updating the timestamps of volume container files when they’ve been modified. I don’t need quite this level of protection, but in command-line mode I can’t get away from it.

My nightly backup solution depends upon timestamps in order to determine what should be backed up. Of course one thing I don’t ever want skipped in my nightly backup is my financial stuff.

So I found a great little Freeware Touch utility written by Steve Miller. It is a part of his “Win32 Console ToolBox 1.0 (Item 10)”.

My final batch file looks like this and works like a charm. It will mount my volume on the Q: drive, prompt me for my password, run Quicken, dismount the drive then update the modified timestamp for me.

“C:\Program Files (x86)\TrueCrypt\truecrypt.exe” /v c:\nameofmyquickenvolumehere /l Q /q

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Quicken\qw.exe”

“C:\Program Files (x86)\TrueCrypt\truecrypt.exe” /d Q /q

“C:\bin\touch.exe” /m c:\nameofmyquickenvolumehere

Posted under Tech Stuff, Utils / Tools

Computers don’t die, they only fade away… to become household servers so it seems. A computer typically lasts me about 3-5 years of primary use before it becomes old enough where it just can’t drive the software and / or the operating system that I want to use. Then I tend to purchase an extra hard drive for it, toss on an FTP server and make it a backup server for the house. Having these computers all running would just be a waste of energy so I’m taking advantage of their standby abilities and, where possible, their Wake On LAN ability.

My primary machine an Alienware Aurora Desktop which, through Windows 7, offers a great modified standby feature called “Hybrid Sleep”. This is similar to the well known “Standby”  - meaning that the system will come back to life very quickly and pick up right where you left off.  The “Hybrid” aspect has the computer also dumping its memory to disk a la hibernation in case the power should fail. This causes the computer to take a bit longer to power down – and I don’t need to care because I don’t have to wait for this – but after a power failure restarting the computer also will bring you right back to where you left off without losing anything.

My former primary computer is now a media center PC in my TV room and it’s configured to go into hybrid sleep mode too after about an hour of non use.

My PC prior to that (a PowerSpec 8922) well.. it would be nice if it could work as nicely as the others, it just exists as a host my laser printer but it must be shut down and restarted as I need to print documents (see why below).

Whenever I’m finished using my primary machine, I hit the power button and it goes into Hybrid Sleep mode. I manually turn off the monitors since, even in “powersave mode” they consume about 20 watts apiece.  The power use is absolutely negligible once I’ve done this. Very early each morning, a scheduled task will run that will wake the PC, send a Wake On LAN command to wake up my Media Center PC and then back up my system. When complete both systems go back to sleep. When I get up in the morning I see the reports from the backup waiting for me and I know that all is well.

The Wake on LAN command is sent using a free utility from here. I just unzipped the executable into my bin directory, created a simple batch file that is executed by my backup software as a “program to execute before backing up” and the media center is up and running waiting for the backup process. It works like a charm. My wife’s laptop executes an identical batch file before it starts its backup as well and has no problems.

Quirks:

The PowerSpec 8922 (Running Windows XP) has the annoying habit of going into sleep mode and then NEVER COMING BACK. Whenever I print something I stroll to the back room and boot it up (it’s a 2004 vintage and does not have WOL even if it could come back from standby anyway). Window’s print spooler is patient enough to wait for the PowerSpec to start up and then continue with the print job. I have not been able to find a better solution for this. If the computer is put into sleep the power must be disconnected and reconnected to force it to restart and come back to life.

The Dell Inspiron 530 (Media Center PC running Windows Vista 32 bit) will not go into standby manually. If I click “standby” from the start menu or if I invoke standby by setting the power button to do so it will enter sleep mode and then, maybe a minute later wake up again for no discernible reason. So I just leave it alone and let the power setting time out after an hour and it goes to sleep just fine after that.

On awakening, the AlienWare Aurora Desktop (Windows 7, 64 bit) shows 4 issues:

- The Alienware Thermal controller will fail with the error: System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: An invalid argument was supplied

I have found no solution to this yet.

- Windows Microsoft .NET Framework dies, again indicating that “An invalid argument was supplied.”

I have found neither any solution nor any downstream issues caused by this and so have not been motivated to resolve.

- Upon starting iTunes, it reports that the Bonjour service that it relies upon to share music (notably with my Roku sound bridge) has “been disabled“.

For this I created a batch file consisting solely of the following two commands:

Net Stop “Bonjour Service”

Net Start “Bonjour Service”

I then used the Task Scheduler to create a task that ran when it detected that the computer was woken up from sleep which executed this batch file and iTunes has been fine ever since

Trigger
Begin the task: On an Event
Log: System
Source: Power-Troubleshooter
EventID: 1

- Firefox, if it was open, would be unable to connect to the internet.

Restarting Firefox corrects this (I picked up an add on for Firefox to do this via a button on the tool bar). But I became tired of this silly behavior and have since switched to Google Chrome and have fewer issues.

Clearly a lot more work needs to be done by either Alienware, Microsoft or both in sorting these issues out. For me, I’ve got workarounds that are satisfactory for me so I am not hampered by these problems. If there is a problem that I suspect may have something to do with the computer having been in standby, I will reboot it and see if that resolves the issue.

Posted under Tech Stuff, Utils / Tools

I’m about to trade in my BlackBerry Torch 9800 for a couple of HTC EVO devices from Sprint. The job I’m moving to, while still a BlackBerry shop, does not provide them for my position (yet…).

But I’ve been refining my collection of BlackBerry apps for a while now. Mostly with my Bold 9000 but these apps have served me well on the Torch for the brief time that I’ve enjoyed using it.

As you check out the list below, remember that my BlackBerry device is primarily a business tool needed for communicating day-to-day support issues plus nightly oncall support notifications. So it needs to be available for all this – sometimes 24 x 7 – and it needs to do all this and be a reliable telephone to boot.

In order of usefulness and not including standard apps that come with the phone :

Pocket Informant: (in app store) Without hesitation the most useful application I have. It replaces the default calendar, tasks and contacts applications and expresses daily commitments in a clear and useful manner. I can quickly see what scheduled calendar entries I have for any day along with relevant tasks so I can work through them as the day progresses. I favor the agenda view as being most suitable for my needs.

BerryWeather: (in app store) A great weather app that I have set to show the current conditions on the home screen as well as a tiny little icon showing temperature in the icon strip. I have mine configured so that my current GPS location (updated every hour) is considered my “home” location and is what displays on the home screen. Then I keep track of my actual house location and Toronto (so I know how lucky I am to be living here). It also shows weather advisories as they are made available.

BatteryBooster: Actually, I only got BatterBooster because I wanted to get SmartWiFi but BatteryBooster was being offered for 1/2 of SmartWiFi’s price and had SmartWiFi bundled in as a package deal. BatteryBooster looks like it would probably help somewhat but many of the options did things like turn off the phone radio if the signal strength dropped too low or (with another bundled piece called PowerControl) it can turn off the whole unit at various times during the day. Since I often have a 24×7 requirement for my BlackBerry, this doesn’t benefit me at all. But the SmartWiFi app is great. Basically it figures out what cell towers are near WiFi spots you use. If you move away from those cell towers it turns off the WiFi radio. Likewise when you return to those cell towers it reenables the WiFi and reestablishes contact – completely transparently to me. I just happen to notice that my device is browsing the web MUCH faster when I get within range of those hotspots and I can see that I’m not wasting my WiFi power otherwise.

MailMinder: I make copious use of Profiles and filters on my blackberry. But the simple distinction between “normal” messages and “Level 1″ was not quite what I needed. I have things set so most messages just appear on my device and I’ll get to them when I get to them. But I wanted to be able to distinguish between different kinds of high priority messages since, depending on the situation, I may or may not need to address them right away. So I use MailMinder to draw distinctions between messages from certain friends, warnings from the servers that I monitor, critical issues from the servers that I monitor, messages from my wife and notifications from my personal calendar on Google Calendar. MailMinder allows me to have distinct tones and LED colors for all of the above. Especially handy when I’m on call and the only thing I want to wake me up are critical server issues (and maybe messages from my wife…). If I’m in a meeting, the device can silently let me know just by its LED that a message has arrived from a friend and I can ignore it without even touching the BlackBerry. However a server failure worthy of interrupting the meeting will give me a blip and a red LED and I must be on my way.

RingScheduler: Another great app for someone with differing notification needs throughout the day. I have mine set so that it uses the “Normal” profile as its default. Every evening at 10 pm it switches to the “Phone only” profile until 8 am. On nights when I am oncall, I have oncall scheduled in my calendar as a 10 pm – 8 am meeting. RingScheduler sees the keyword “oncall” in the meeting and automatically switches me over to a custom “oncall” profile that I created. If I have an ad-hoc meeting or simply want to ensure that the BlackBerry will not disturb folks around me for a period of time, I can select the “Schedule Ringer Now” menu option that is available nearly everywhere in the device and set it to hold any of my profiles for a selectable period of time (a few minutes, a few hours), then the BlackBerry will switch back to whatever profile makes sense (default, timed, meeting based) when the ad hoc period ends. Very good if you have ever silenced your device while in a movie or a meeting and then forgotten to reset it and missed those phone calls or emails afterwards.

Ascendo DataVault: A worthy replacement for MiniSafe. It follows the same paradigms. My passwords, logon information, bank account information, etc. are stored in an encrypted file on my BlackBerry – available to me at any time. I bought the bundle that syncs the data with a desktop companion so I can more easily update and reference the same information when I’m working on my PC. It also boasts the ability to fill forms for you on your PC but I use a different app for that so I haven’t tried that functionality.

Twitter (from RIM): I’m not a power Twitter user by any stretch of the imagination so my needs are simple. I tried other offerings such as “Uber Twitter” and a couple of others whose names escape me now and they were not as good as this simple app made by RIM. It actually works in the background to refresh tweets – something the others seemed to have problems with – and it integrates very nicely with my messaging app so I can see that I have new tweets just by inspecting my inbox. And the notification is removed from my inbox when I return from Twitter. Simple and functional.

Bloomberg Mobile: Pretty clean, easy to set up and accurate. It’s amazing how hard it is to get a decent stock price app. I have concerns about battery drain with this app so I always exit out of it so it is not constantly running. But I like how it presents my data.

Facebook (by RIM): While I am sure there are probably better Facebook apps out there, this one from RIM is pretty straightforward, allowing me to post simple updates and pictures without any fuss at all as well as read items from my friends. It lacks the ability to honor the  filters I have set up on the web version to ignore crap such as game updates from bored folks but fortunately not too many of my friends are that desperate for stuff to do…

Google Sync: I only use this to sync calendar entries (not contacts) so I can speak solely to that half of its functionality. If you sync with another calendar system, Google Sync will recognize that fact and will not sync those entries with your Google Calendar. Have a LOT of experience working with corporate calendaring systems I can appreciate that there are probably huge complications that this avoids. But I put it to you that Google should develop read-only calendar entries so that so that your *complete* calendar can be reflected in Google Calendar and be available to aid in planning. As it is, I must choose what calendar to update for what events so that my wife or coworkers can see my busy times. Fortunately the BlackBerry *does* show all entries from all platforms, so I work mostly out of pocket informant.

Vlingo (Professional): I went crazy and sprang for the full version of Vlingo. Seduced as I was by the prospect of being able to largely dictate my emails. Two things: First – If you are in a modestly technical environment and you use a fair amount of jargon in your messages, especially names (people or computer names) then you’ll spend plenty of time manually correcting these. Vlingo’s “learning” ability seems to be more about grammar and sentence structure than individual words. No matter how often I corrected it, it never managed to spell my name correctly.  Second – I really don’t think that voice recognition is quite there yet. This app is amazingly good compared to other versions I’ve experimented with even in the past few years, but it either gets my words almost exactly right or laughably wrong. There does not seem to be a middle ground here yet. My favorite use for this app is to read incoming SMS text messages to me while I drive. The free version will accomplish this for you.

Gmail app: As I have my BlackBerry configured I really can’t work properly with Gmail using the native BlackBerry messaging application. In searching for the link for Gmail Mobile I see that there may be remedies out there for this but it’s a bit too late for me now. I review new messages on my handheld and then delete them permanently (handheld & mailbox) or just off the device (handheld only) if I want to add a label in Gmail later and then archive it. I use the Gmail app because there really isn’t a practical way to keep Gmail messages on the device in the default app and the Gmail app allows me access to search my entire Gmail mail database.

Evernote: I use Evernote on my PC a fair amount. I thought I’d use it more on my BlackBerry than I do, but even with the Torch device – which sports a respectable enough camera – Evernote takes such poor pictures that it is really only useful for non-text grossly obvious subjects. But the ability to search Evernote is handy.

Pandora: I’m of mixed opinions about using my SmartPhone as a music player. The idea of my phone being dead because I was listening to the latest “Katie Melua” song seems distasteful to me. Especially when I actually *do* have an iPod available to me. But the iPod’s weakness is that it cannot introduce me to new music and Pandora does a great job of that. This app doesn’t seem to have buffering issues (that I’ve noticed) and the commercials are not a nuisance. I may even upgrade my Pandora subscription to a paid membership if the Android version of this app is as good as this one.

BeamExplorer: If I really want to manipulate files on my handheld I plug it into my computer and use “mass storage mode”. But this little app is useful when you’re on the road and you want to find or move something other than a straight media file around.

Remember all of these are apps that I use pretty regularly and they are all worthwhile. My needs are more oriented towards business and communication and I think the apps that I favor reflect that. YMMV but I would not hesitate to recommend these apps for the right needs. Most of them I feel are best of breed except where I’ve indicated otherwise.

Posted under Blackberry, Opinions, Utils / Tools

On my PC, I love using Google Reader to aggregate my RSS feeds. I used to have (it’s probably still current) a paid-for copy of “NewGator” and I’ve tried several other alternatives, but the one that just worked the way I do was the Google product.

When I started using my new Torch BlackBerry device I noted that it had a “Social Feeds” application that really isn’t up to the standard that I felt RIM’s other, similar applications are. i.e. Facebook, Twitter and BB/Enterprise Messenger – all of which I use and like. This integrated tool while sporting some of my criteria for a good RSS reader, fell quite short of the mark.

What I am looking for:

• Syncs with Google Reader (I don’t want to have to figure out where I left off on a feed whenever I move to a different platform – It might not have to be Google’s product, but I want multiplatform synching)
• Removes read articles (or at least hides them)
• Notifies me when new articles are available
• Caches the articles / information on the BlackBerry rather than making me wait for each article while I’m reading them. Or at least intelligently caches the next few while I’m reading the current one so I can zip through them at my speed, not AT&T’s.
• Same as above for pictures associated with the articles – I have an unlimited data plan, *some* extra bandwidth consumption is an OK price to keep up the reading momentum.
• Shows me an abstract and lets me easily open the full article if I decide to move forward.

I’ve had Viigo on my various BlackBerrys for a while now. It was OK but there were a lot of flaws that I finally grew weary of working around:

• Every time I updated Viigo I would have to re-enter my credentials (they tend to update a lot)
• Also it would lose my feed position and everything would show as unread again on each update
• Before I got my “touch” device it was a pain navigating because they were unable to navigate a page at a time using the space bar like every other app on the BlackBerry
• With my Torch I find that every article is just a little too big to view on the screen and I have to “pinch” EVERY ONE OF THEM before reading – even in landscape mode
• If I follow any link in a Viigo article, I can not get back to the article, I have to close it, and open a previous one, *then* open the original one. And I’m not where I left off but back at the top (needing to pinch it again)
• Viigo never seemed to actually do anything in the background even though that’s how I had it configured so feeds only updated when I re-opened the app
• There were far too many layers in Viigo, most of which I never used but had to navigate through and I can’t get rid of them. I think there were a lot of plans to expand that never really took off.

So Viigo is not really very efficient for RSS reading.

So I downloaded the latest version of BerryReader. I heard good things about this app’s ability to sync with Google Reader. But I found the interface absolutely useless – certainly no touch ability – but I found it really didn’t work for me at all. It *did* seem to sync with Google so I’ll give it that much.

I went to try out “Feeds” but they have no free trial, so even though I have heard good things about it I don’t try ANYTHING on my BlackBerry anymore without a trial. Too many apps are designed to work only in very niche ways that you either love or hate. That’s kind of why there are so many apps out there for all these devices.

I then tried “Unread” (cute play on current zombie craze I believe) and it was certainly better than BerryReader, but took a long time to load up (I only have 118 subscriptions). It actually nicely mirrored the subscriptions (folders/labels) of my Google Reader, but it was cumbersome in that it can’t hide stuff you’ve already seen. So each time I open it I end up wading through a bunch of stuff I’ve already read before. I had other issues with it but I was basically just frustrated by this point

So I opened the Google Reader URL and, now that I have the new Web Kit Browser that comes with OS 6, it’s actually pretty good. It automatically figures out that you’re on a mobile so no need to figure out a special URL for it. One really nice thing is, besides being 100% synchronized with Google Reader (because it *is* Google Reader) most of the features that I am looking for are part of this package. Of course I’d still prefer to have a dedicated app that integrated with my message application so that I can see when new items become available, and I still have to retrieve everything live, but so far no other app has stepped up and distinguished itself as being superior to Google’s free offering.

So color me satisfied. I’ll check again in another 6 months or so to see if anything has improved, but this seems to be a vastly underrepresented corner of the app market.

Posted under Blackberry, Tech Stuff

I’ve had my BlackBerry Bold (9000) for a few years now and it was starting to show some signs of age (besides its rather beat up case), dropping calls more and more often and rebooting spontaneously during the day.

So I put in for the new AT&T BlackBerry Torch (9800), being the BlackBerry administrator for your company does have a few perks and occasionally testing cool equipment for use at the company is one of them.

A while ago I had the Storm 2 in my hands for about 1/2 hour when I gave it back saying there is no way I’d recommend that device in our organization and I kept my venerable Bold. Of course some poor souls went ahead and ordered the Storm 2 anyway. I think it was one of the more “swapped” devices in our company as people quickly realized that it was a miserable end user experience unless you spend your entire day consuming “Youtube” videos.

I had the chance to briefly play with a Torch device early last month when a RIM rep came by the office to introduce himself and I was suitably impressed. Having the keyboard as a fallback is ideal because I create a reasonable amount of content with my device and my emails are not just one liners but often span a couple of paragraphs of detail. Not something lightly undertaken with a screen keyboard.

I’ve had the device for a little over a day now and my opinion of it is mostly positive. The Bold is sitting mere inches away from me in case I should change my mind, but the Torch is winning me over.

I had a couple of hiccoughs getting the device set up. After the device transfer wizard and enterprise activation were completed I noticed that none of my email filters had come across. I ended up calling RIM and working with them. Eventually a battery pull and a slow synch resolved that issue for me. Probably the biggest mini nuisance is the fact that OS 6 changed out all the sounds. My beloved “Sonar” was gone and all the dings and tones to which I’d become accustomed were replaced with new ones. While I’ve kept some of these new tones I was able to find a zip file that lets me get many of my favorites back. “Sonar” is short and poignant and has yet to be rivaled as an alert that one of my servers is in distress.

Something that surprised me – and this seems to be OS related rather than anything else – is that all the sounds are initially VERY muted. This can be remedied by going into your profiles and raising them from the “inaudible in a business environment” 2 (which was what “low” seems to have been translated to) up to a 6 or 7. Then things are fine. But I thought my alarms must be failing at first because I was not hearing them above the every day hubbub of my co-workers.

The large screen is really nice. I’ve been using FaceBook and Twitter for a while now and was singularly unimpressed with that experience on my Bold. On the Torch the same apps have much more breathing room and they really lend themselves to the touch screen.

And even over the same network and with a reportedly lackluster processor, moving through posts in either of those apps is very satisfying. I used to just forward any posts that contained links to my email account because reading the linked-to items was annoying. The zoom of the Bold browser (this was with the 4.5 OS – the 5 OS was *just* released this past week by AT&T for the Bold 9000 – laggards) invariably ended up making the text a little too wide to be seen on the screen without swinging the cursor from side to side to see the ends of the sentences. The OS6 browser (combined with the length / width of the Torch screen) AND the infinitely controllable pinch zoom makes that a thing of the past.

And the rendering of web pages appears to be much better as claimed. “Nearly Perky” would be my characterization. In spite of the purportedly overloaded AT&T network and the commoditized processor, the web experience is satisfactory.

The only places where this unit does not shine are:

1) Periodic lapses in performance in the screen interface handling. Sometimes you press a dialog button with your finger and nothing will happen – no feedback, nothing – and then several seconds later that buffered input plus the several other attempts to hit the button will manifest – to your displeasure. And flicking the menus screens with your fingers is often a little sluggish. Not a show stopper but definitely a point on which I will agree with reviews that I have seen that is a low-light in an otherwise satisfactory product.

2) The Keyboard is actually a little hard to slide open. There is no notch or any readily apparent place to easily slide the screen to reveal the keyboard. Maybe I’ll figure out a technique for this but I use Google Voice and HAVE to press 1,2,3 or 4 to acknowledge a call before I can talk to the other party. I’ve set my phone to answer on sliding out the keyboard which speeds up the process but opening the phone with one hand is not an easy prospect. I somehow think a slight notch just below the trackpad would simplify this, but then I’m not a usability expert.

Overall still very happy with this unit and I believe I’ll be recommending it as our “Go To” device (as much as my folks will listen to their technical support services folks…). The acid test will be next week in the business environment. Can I use it as handily as my old unit? I’m confident that it will be up to the task.

Posted under Blackberry, Tech Stuff