from Chips to Chips

for the die hard unix and linux fans out there who appreciate the use of symbolic links and hard links, there’s actually a Windows equivalent out there. (then again, if you a die hard fan… you may not use windows much… but for those who do… keep reading…)

All these years, I thought the closest thing to symbolic links in Windows will be the shortcuts. However, In Vista and Windows 7 there is actually a good support for symbolic links and hard links. The command line utility to create/manage these links are not there by default however. One will need to download a package from Microsoft.

Now, I’ve discovered that someone has actually developed a Windows explorer shell extension to create/manage symbolic/hard links. You can download the freeware here.

I’ve downloaded and installed the utility called Link Shell Extension (LSE in short), and it works nicely for me. Mind you, I strongly encourage you to read through the online manual to understand how to use it effectively. It also has a good coverage on the pitfalls in the earlier version of Windows.

For the benefits of you who do not know what are symbolic/hard links, these are references to files and directories in your computers. There are many usage for these links, and the most common scenario is this….

Imagine you have a file located in c:\users\hello\documents\download\section\blah\etc\here\thisfile.jpg

That is a very long reference to the file. To make things simple, you want the file to be available in c:\directory\thisfile.jpg but you need to keep a copy in the original location, and at the same time have c:\directory\thisfile.jpg as an exact copy. The traditional way is probably just to create a copy of the file, and anytime the original file is updated, we’ll just copy it again.

Now, imagine that we can create c:\directory\thisfile.jpg as a symbolic link to the original file. Access this symbolic link gives the exact same result as accessing the file directly. You can open, save, change the symbolic link just as if it’s a real file. And anytime the original file changes, you’ll get the update immediately. No need to copy the file over. In way, you save disk space as well, since there’s only one real copy of the file.

There’s a lot more to symbolic links and hard links, and you can easily find more information about them on the web.

Hope you’ll find this useful =)

I’ve been using XMBC on the XBOX for several months now… (yes it’s kinda late) but hey, it still rocks!!

Then recently, I moved the XBOX to the living room and for some reason the MP4 files would not play anymore. Everything else worked fine… but not MP4. I spent over a month troubleshooting it, re-installing XMBC, etc.. nothing worked. All I knew was that these files would play, when the XBOX was in my study & in the bedroom.

Finally, I was shown the light, by someone a lot less techy than me… my wife. I lamented to her about the unexplainable problem I was having with the XBOX. Then she asked… “is it because of the TV?” That literally lit up the bulb in my head and it lit up the path to the solution.

So, how does the TV have anything to do with the XBOX? What ever the XBOX should not be dependent on the TV. So, up front, that theory should have gone out the window… but not exactly. It was due to the TV, or rather… the xbox is connected to the TV using component cables. Everywhere else was using regular RCA. So… what’s the difference?

The difference was 1080i. Because the XBOX was using component cables, I had it configured to go up to 1080i. So, I turned of all hi-def resolutions (480p, 720p & 1080i) and tried. The movie played flawlessly. It was just that simple!! Further testing confirmed that MP4 would play in 480p and 720p… but not 1080i. That’s good enough… since my MP4 were all standard def anyway.

So, the month long troubleshooting, network testing, performance tuning, all went no where. It was simply just the XBOX settings for the TV.

Definitely learnt a new lesson about checking on the basics… even if it’s seemingly unrelated.

All thanks to my dear wife, Winny =)

was just on ebay looking for some cheap alternatives to buy HDMI cables… found some, quality was questionable… then I stumbled upon some people selling “HDMI to VGA/RCA” cables.

I was surprised for a moment. How’s that possible??

I should state that, it sure is possible to fabricate such a cable. It’s easy to just take any wire and put any sort of connectors at both ends. But watch out!! They are likely not to work.

The engineer in me knows that HDMI and VGA/RCA connections carry completely different type of signals. HDMI is pure digital and VGA/RCA are pure analog. There’s no way you can just take a cable, hook up the components and they will work.

For a start, if your equipment doesn’t get fried, you should already be lucky!

In reality, what you really need is a coverter box. A dedicated piece of equipment that converts HDMI signals to RCA or VGA.

So, be warned, don’t get suckered by simple cables that appear to do the trick. No such thing!!

just checked out the update to the iPhone’s Facebook app… the current version is 3.1.1.

What’s new? my favorite part… Contacts Sync. It’s a step in the direction which was default feature my wife’s HTC Hero. Though the iPhone’s sync is not as comprehensive (yet) as what’s in the Hero, it’s a step in the right direction.

So what the contact will do is compare the contacts in iPhone’s contact list and your friends in Facebook. If it has found matches, it will then download their facebook photos to the iPhone contact (there’s an option to prevent overwriting an existing photo), and it will add a “home page” entry in that contact, which links to the facebook page. Touching that entry will launch the facebook app and bring up your friend’s page in-app.

This is pretty cool, except there were a few misses…. here’s what I’m certain of… when either one of the below matches

• firstname & lastname
• email address (if shared with you)
• possible phone number as well (I don’t have enough information to validate)

I did have a mis-match… a  contact I had in my phone was matched up with someone in facebook with a completely different name, and I’m not even friends with the match. The only data in there was the phone number, and I can’t tell if that happened to have been the criteria of match. Anyhow, certainly a bug if you ask me.

So, how do you perform a sync? First a few things to do prior

1. sync your contacts to your PC/Google
2. create a backup copy of your contacts after the sync.. e.g. on Google, go to contacts and export everything
3. backup is crucial, in case some how the facebook sync screws up your precious contacts
4. go forth and make sure you have Facebook 3.1.1 installed

Having done the above, here it goes

1. Launch “Facebook” app on your iPhone
2. go to the app’s main menu by tapping the top left corner
3. touch on the “Friends” icon
   
4. touch “sync” on the top right of the page
   
5. slide “Syncing” to “ON” (notice that “Replace Photos” is “OFF” by default)
   
6. you’ll have to agree to proceed on, tap “I Agree” if you do
   
7. sync begins… take note though, if you have a lot of contacts and they match… expect this to take more then just a few minutes. Try to keep the phone from going to sleep when doing this, or it will slow down
   
8. however, if there’s any interruption, you just need to relaunch the app, and navigate to the sync page; and it should start syncing again from where it left off
   *note* some times I need to relaunch the app a few times before the sync will start on it’s own… haven’t figured out why yet.

I hope future updates can even identify changed contact information and the app can prompt for updates.

have fun!!

my first rant of 2010… actually been holding off this post for a while… but alas! I must put it out there…

so what’s irritating me? the use of the word “revert” in many many emails (To/Cc) I receive.

Before reading furthur, I would like you to sit back and think… what do you think the meaning of the word “revert” is?

…

…

…

Do you think that “revert” has a meaning like… “get back to”… as in like “reply”, “respond”?

Have you seen, or even written sentences similar to… “Please revert to me once you have a decision.” ?

…

Now, please read up on the definitions of the word “revert” as found by Google, here.

…

Welcome back, did you find any of the definitions there that meant “respond”, or anything similar?

No?

Well, “revert” really means something like “undo”, “roll back”, “to restore back to a previous state”.

It DOES NOT MEAN, “reply” or any way near the vicinity of the word.

Now, if I’ve made you aware what “revert” means… think back on the sentences where the word has been misused… don’t they seem strange?

I work in the IT industry, and frequently we encounter problems and they’ll need to be fixed… so the person who’s tasked to make the necessary fixes sends you a mail to tell you that the problem will be worked on and it ends off… “I’ll revert once the problem has been resolved.”

Now, doesn’t it sound funny? If you read the sentence to the true meaning of “revert”… it probably could be read that this person is trying to be funny… yes, the problem will be worked on… but once it’s fixed, it will be “reverted”. LOL!!

Well, hope you’ve learnt something new today, good for the new year.

this is an extension of the iPhone Calendar how-tos… in this post, I’ll describe the steps you need to perform to add someone else’s Google calendar to your iPhone Calendar app.

If you just want to add your own calendar, you may skip this and go to this post instead.

Now, the steps to add someone else’s calendar is very similar to add your own using the CalDAV method. The only thing that needs to be done prior to the config in the iPhone is that this person must first share the calendar with you.

I’m not going to re-invent the wheel here, so please follow Google’s Instructions on how to share your calendar. I discourage you from making your personal calendar public. To learn more, read another Google’s FAQ entry.

For the calendar to work, so that you can see something on the iPhone, you need to set the permission level to at least “See all event details”. If it’s set to “See only free/busy (hide details)”, you will be able to add the calendar via CalDAV, but nothing will show up in your calendar. If you are allowed to make changes even, then by all means go and set the permission to “Make changes to events”.  The ultimate you-have-it-all permission will be “Make changes AND manage sharing”, which I would think most people would not need.

If you are using Google Apps, and you can’t share beyond “only see free/busy information”, you’ll need to request your Administrator to increase the level of sharing allowed. This Google FAQ entry should help. *NOTE* after the administrator makes the changes, it will take a while before the system is updated and you can increase the level of detail to be shared on your calendar. This worked within 10mins during my testing.

Now, once the sharing is enabled, you can do a quick validation via your Gmail Calendar. See if the other person’s calendar is now showing up in your account as well. If yes, and you are not seeing “free/busy” information only, you are good.

The final step is to add the calendar to your iPhone’s setup. The steps are exactly the same as adding your own calendar via CalDAV (read this post), except in step 3, instead of using your own email address, you use the address of the person who had shared it with you. Follow through the rest of the steps, using your own Gmail login credentials, and you should be set!

At this point, your calendar should now show your own and the new calendar that was shared with you.

An additional tip for you… now that you have multiple entries from different calendars, it will be helpful to be able to visually identify easily which entries belongs to who. Fortunately, there’s a way to do this, but you’ll have to do this in Gmail Calendar’s web interface.

This is a very simple process, first just login to you Gmail Calendar. Next, on the left column of the page, find the calendar that you can see, and click on the little triangle next to it. A box will pop up and it will have several colors for your to choose from. Select the one you like and it’s done. In the iPhone Calendar, all entries belonging to that calendar will now have the color code you just picked.

if you’ve read my earlier post, my choice to sync my personal Google calendar with my iPhone 3GS is to use caldav. The other option is activesync (MS Exchange), which I used prior to OS3.0 on my iPhone 3G. To understand why, do read my earlier post here.

This post will specifically guide you, step by step, to be able to get your Google based calendar on your iPhone (with OS3.0+). The calendar app on the iPhone will be the default app, nothing additional you’ll need from the app store.

I will create another post to show you how to add other calendars to your iPhone, e.g. your spouse’s or your kid’s calendars.

1. first, you’ll need your email address… which would be something like “myemail@gmail.com”
   or “myemail@mysuperdomain.com” if you are on Google Apps
2. next, you’ll need to compose your own “server string”… it looks something like this
   https://www.google.com:443/calendar/dav/myemail@gmail.com/user
3. pretty much just simply replace the section “myemail@gmail.com” with your Google based email address, be it with “gmail.com” or “whatever.com”
4. If you’ve got email setup on your iPhone already, you can just email the “Server string” to yourself, which you can copy and paste later… or just type it out carefully on the phone
5. next, pick up your iPhone,  go into “Settings” -> “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” -> “Add Account…” -> “Other” -> “Add CalDAV Account”
6. here’s what you put in
   Server : paste or slowly thumb in the “server string” from above (customized with your own email address of course). When you move to the next field, it’s normal for the “server” to only show “www.google.com”, so don’t worry about it.
   User Name : your full email address, e.g. “myemail@whateverdomain.com”
   Password : the password to the account you put in above
   Description : what ever you’d like to call it, doesn’t matter what you put, it’s for your own identification
7. click “next” when done
8. If all went well, you’ll be taken back to the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” screen… if you had a typo in the “Server”, “User Name” or “Password” field.. then you’ll be stuck here. Just fix the typo and try again
9. Validation…. Launch the “Calendar” app
10. check and see if your calendar items are showing up, or if you have multiple calendars and it’s hard to validate you can select to see only one calendar
11. in the “Calendar” app, on the top left, tap the “Calendars” button
12. you’ll be presented with the list of Calendars you have configured, select the one you want to check
13. You should now see only the entries belonging to that calendar

have fun =)

since my son was born, there has become an increased number of items and toys around the house that needs batteries. Some toys drain batteries really fast and the cost of buying batteries just shoots to the roof.

So, I then discovered Sanyo’s Eneloop batteries. They are rechargeable batteries that comes in standard sizes, AA, AAA, C & D. These little wonders are different from the usual NI-CD, Mi-NH in the sense that they hold their charge for very very long time. A typical old school rechargeable will lose it’s charge in a matter of a few weeks and you’ll have to keep charging them very often.

The Eneloop series only lose about 10-20% of the charge A YEAR if kept on the shelf. This means that you can have a bunch of batteries kept away, and when you need them just take them out and start using. This vs having to charge them up first before use.

Also with their ability to hold charge, it means fewer recharge cycles and longer run time per usage. Now, for most of my household needs, I use only Eneloop batteries. Though each cell costs much more than a regular Alkaline battery, but over it’s life span it take the place of hundreds of batteries I’ll never need to buy again. All it costs me is 15mins and a few cents of electricty to charge up a set of 4 AA/AAA Eneloops! (a 15mins quick charger will be required)

In Singapore, the shop I’ve found with the best prices for Eneloop products is onlineshop.com.sg. That’s where I’ve ordered most of my Eneloop batteries. The even better news, the more you buy in each order, the cheaper the unit price of the product is.

For this holiday season, I’d recommend pairing up your new gadgets with Eneloop rechargebles.

ever since I upgraded my iPhone to OS3.0, I’ve been having trouble trying to get PPTP VPN to work. Never had the time to seriously look at it until now.

My VPN end point is a Linksys WRT54GL running with DD-WRT. I know that PPTP service works there as I can connect with my notebook, even with my 3G dongle.

Initial findings pointed towards the support for encryption on the DD-WRT implementation, and it has to be forced to “none” on the iPhone. Even that didn’t work.

With the release of OS 3.1, I started to tether my notebook to the iPhone, and through that, the PPTP will fail. That stumped me! Initially I thought could be due to the NAT implementation to enable tethering.

With trial and errors, I found out that over a WIFI connection, PPTP connection will work. Did I forget to mention that CISCO based IPSEC VPN to my office network works nicely over cellular and WIFI? That really baffled me. So, there’s something that’s in place that only works for IPSEC over cellular.

Finally, I came across some forum postings that lead me to the solution. There are many other people with similar issues in Canada and USA, and for some, they are able to tweak their APN on the phone to a different one and it worked for them. Of course they needed to be on different data subscription etc… for that to work.

I’m in Singapore, and my cellular provider is SingTel. I whipped out my iPhone 3GS and compared it’s APN settings to my 3G dongle for my notebook. Wallah! they are different, even though they are both with SingTel. I swapped in the new APN settings on to the iPhone, and PPTP started to work.

So, for all those in Singapore and on SingTel with similar needs and issues, the solution is to change the APN from “e-ideas” to “internet”. And here’s SingTel’s official instructions. BTW, these instructions are generic for all data devices.

For everyone else, what I realize from this is that some services/ports are controlled by the service provider. So, just by changing the APN won’t work if you don’t have access to the relevant APN.

If you need some guide on how to set your APN on your iPhone, the official Apple guide is found here.

*update 2009 Oct 09* after changing the APN, the “tethering” feature disappears. But if I reset the “Cellular Network” settings, “tethering” comes back. Got to figure out how to enable both.

I don’t know anyone who has a Windows computer that doesn’t come to a crawl after using it for about a year. The computer takes 5-10 mins, and in worse cases 20mins to boot up to a usable state.

This happens for several reasons, and one of the biggest reason is due to file fragmentation. The performance hit gets worse if your paging file (swap file) is fragmented as well.

Since nearly 2 years ago, I found a nice, free defragmentation utility on the web. Back then, it was known as JKDefrag. The idea was good and it worked by calling native Windows APIs. This means that the programmer leveraged a lot on Microsoft’s native functions to do the work. His utility just provided the brain and coordinate the whole activity.

This is a good design that the utility will not do anything out of Microsoft’s comfort zone. Meaning, all moving of the bits and pieces of the file is executed as safe as it gets. JKDefrag did not have to re-invent anything.

Now, a newer version has been released and I’ve used it. The utility has been renamed as MyDefrag (mydefrag.com) and it has a new feature. This introduces a new dimension to what JKDefrag did. MyDefrag will now optimize the files, in addition to just defragmentation.

The new optimization idea is great! It basically re-orders the files on the harddisk into zones, and depending on the type of the file, the frequency of access of the file, the files are organized into each zone. I will not go into the specifics here, so if you like to understand in greater details what is done, you may read up from the website.

I’ve installed and optimized on my desktop and 2 netbooks. The end result is phenomenal! I can actually feel that the boot up time of these computers are shorter, and general usage experience of the computers have improved.

For anyone who wants to squeeze more out of their computers, I would recommend trying this utility out.

This utility is free, and you have the freedom to make a donation to the author of the utility if you wish to. I’m in no way affiliated to this author, and I’m writing this just to share with you out there this great utility I’ve discovered.

So, if you do try out the utility, what you need to do after installation is to run “slow optimize” the very first time you use it. That basically does the initial job to re-order the entire harddisk. Be warned though, this can take a very very long time… on one of my netbooks, it took 2 days, and the other took only 3 hours. So it depends how much work needs to be done.

So, go forth and unleash some renewed performance to your computer