March 18, 2007
Posted at: 8:02 am by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
I needed to set up a VPN connection to my work today on Vista and was unsure of how to do it. If you are unfamiliar with the term VPN, it is a Virtual Private Network. A VPN is a private communications network often used by companies or organizations, to communicate confidentially over a public network. Your internet connection creates a tunnel into a specific network that is encrypted and secure. After researching, I have compiled a list of steps to follow.
1. Click on the Start button and then right click on network
2. Choose Properties
3. Click on Connect to a Workplace
4. Type in the IP address to connect to and describe the location (note: IP address is just an example - random numbers)
5. Type your username and password
6. The domain can be optional
7. Finally Click on Connect and wait until you are connected to the VPN
8. Congratulations, you are done!!
connection, network, tunnel, virtual private network, vista, VPN, windows, windows vista
March 16, 2007
Posted at: 11:13 pm by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
Download Current Version: 1.0
ClickHeat is an amazing product for Web Developers who are trying to establish high probability click areas. This is very useful during beta testing when you want to know the location of link placement. Currently I am just starting to use it, but the concept of the application can greatly improve the GUI design. It will allow you to take your design and test it against real users during testing. It is greatly important for development, when a user clicks a part of the page that they feel should be a link, and in fact it isn’t. If there are enough clicks to that same location, you might want to rethink that part of the design. You can also generate a heat map which will give you hot and cold click zones. The installation was very easy and in a few lines of code you can have it up and running.
The only downside is that the logs are done as text files instead of being inserted into a database. You would be able to do a whole lot more and taking up less room on the file system. That would be a suggestion that I have to them however, for the knowledge that it can give you, it is a downside that I can overlook for now.
analysis, click, click heat, developers, heat, heat sensing, sites, tech, web, web developer
March 10, 2007
Posted at: 11:12 pm by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
RFID chips are very small, small enough to embed one into someone’s finger that are 0.4 x 0.4 millimeters. However, technology sure knows how to advance and very quickly. Powder RFID chips which will be put into production in about 2 years are chips 64 times smaller than they currently are. The new RFID chips (left) will be 0.05 x 0.05 millimeters
The new RFID chips have a 128-bit ROM for storing a unique 38 digit number, like their predecessor. Hitachi used semiconductor miniaturization technology and electron beams to write data on the chip substrates to achieve the new, smaller size.
Hitachi’s mu-chips are already in production; they were used to prevent ticket forgery at last year’s Aichi international technology exposition. RFID ‘powder,’ on the other hand, is so much smaller that it can easily be incorporated into thin paper, like that used in paper currency and gift certificates.
Science fiction fans will have a field day with this new technology. In his 1998 novel Distraction, Bruce Sterling referred to “bugged money”
These tiny RFID tags could be worked into any product; combined with RFID readers built into doorways, theft of consumer goods would be practically impossible. It’s not clear from the references provided, but even if this chip needs an external antenna, the attached antenna would be a tiny ribbon of wire more narrow than a human hair and only a fraction of an inch long.
How far away could you be, and still read the information from this “powder RFID?” The source article is very thin; however, the mu-chip mentioned earlier is readable from a distance of 25 centimeters (about ten inches) with an external antenna like the one mentioned in the preceding paragraph. This doesn’t sound like much, but it’s certainly enough to read people going through doorways, for example.
These devices could also be used to identify and track people. For example, suppose you participated in some sort of protest or other organized activity. If police agencies sprinkled these tags around, every individual could be tracked and later identified at leisure, with powerful enough tag scanners.
For more information on the new RFID chips, check out the article by MSNBC
big brother, cash, chips, circuits, hair, human hair, ids, money, radio frequency, rfid, small
March 10, 2007
Posted at: 12:55 pm by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
Yesterday, Zach asked me a question about a weird issue he was having with Pixie. Since we both use Pixie for our web development, I was interested to see if it was a flaw or just an interesting situation.
Situation: Both Zach and I use Synergy to connect our keyboard and mouse together between the PC and Mac making working with two platforms very easy. Zach had Pixie open and moved his mouse off his PC and onto his Mac when he noticed that the color displaying on Pixie was a peach color. This was very weird because his background on his desktop was a picture of San Diego at night which means there was a lot of black. When he moved it back on to the PC, it changed the Pixie color to which ever color he was on. One more time he moved it off screen onto the Mac to find that peach color appear again.
My Experiment: I started changing my background image to figure out if it was Zach’s background that had an outside border of peach for some reason. When I changed my background, I opened up Pixie and moved it onto my Mac and I got a a different color than Zach did, but my color made sense. It was a blue to match with the background color, however, here is where it got interesting. When I moved the mouse off screen where it was white, I still got that same blue that I did the first time. After trying it about four or five more times, I was able to figure out what happened.
Conclusion: While using Pixie and Synergy, if you move the cursor off the screen of a PC (Pixie is a Windows Application) onto any other platform, Pixie will display the first color that it registered as you move it onto the other platform when it was first opened. After you move it off the screen that first time, it somewhere registers that color and will display it while on the other platform. In Zach’s case, the first color that he hit was Peach (Lights of a building in San Diego) and that is what it stuck with for as long as Pixie was open. Pixie is not flawed, it is just an situation that I thought was interesting. I highly recommend Pixie for color picking if you do any web development. Download it Now
color, development, hex, nattyware, pixie, rgb, synergy, tool, tools, web, web development, weird, zach
February 28, 2007
Posted at: 11:52 pm by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
Google has decided to make driving much easier since they added real-time traffic indicators. I was driving home today and I checked Google Maps before, I was able to figure out which parts of my drive were going to be slow and not be frustrated. It would be easier and more useful if you had wireless internet in your car or on a blackberry/internet ready phone.
Legend
Green: more than 50 miles per hour
Yellow: 25 - 50 miles per hour
Red: less than 25 miles per hour
Gray: no data available
The following image does not show as much information as it could but over time the data will get better.
boston, google, google maps, maps, real-time, realtime traffic, traffic
February 27, 2007
Posted at: 3:43 pm by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
I was blogging the other day and in the middle of writing the article, I hit the browser back button on my IBM Thinkpad Laptop and I lost the page. However it wasn’t all bad because I am using wordpress 2.1 which auto saves my drafts and I only lost a few sentences. I wanted to know if there was a way to turn it off or change it so I went onto IBM’s website and found an application that allows for that. Keyboard Customizer allows me to change the way my keyboard functions to fit my needs. I would highly recommend this application for anyone who has an IBM laptop.
This package provides ThinkPad Keyboard Customizer Utility for Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP users.
ThinkPad Keyboard Customizer Utility enables predefined assignments for:
- A Windows key and an Application key on the ThinkPad keyboard.
- Audio volume control buttons, mute button, ThinkPad button/Access IBM button, Suspend/Hibernate, Wireless Radio Control, EasyEject, Full Screen Magnifier, and Presentation Director on the external keyboard.
Download FTP
Download HTTP
If you click on “Key Sensitivity”, you can enable Browser Keys or adjust the sensitivity for the pressing of the keys.
The following ThinkPad models support the Keyboard Customizer:
* ThinkPad A20m, A20p, A21e, A21m, A21p, A22m, A22p, A22e
* ThinkPad A30, A30p, A31, A31p
* ThinkPad G40, G41
* ThinkPad R30, R31, R32
* ThinkPad R40, R40e
* ThinkPad R50, R50e, R50p, R51, R51e, R52
* ThinkPad R60, R60e
* ThinkPad T20, T21, T22, T23
* ThinkPad T30
* ThinkPad T40, T40p, T41, T41p, T42, T42p, T43, T43p
* ThinkPad T60, T60p
* ThinkPad X20, X21, X22, X23, X24
* ThinkPad X30, X31, X32
* ThinkPad X40, X41, X41 Tablet
* ThinkPad X60, X60s, X60 Tablet
* ThinkPad Z60m, Z60t, Z61e, Z61m, Z61p, Z61t
Download FTP
Download HTTP
browser keys, ibm, ibm thinkpad, keyboard, keyboard customizer, laptop, thinkpad
February 21, 2007
Posted at: 10:53 am by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
My friend Keith gave me his old laptop because the screen no longer worked and it was useless to him. I was not going to let a possibly good laptop go to waste because of a dull screen. I had never fixed a laptop with this problem before and I figured it was worth a shot. This will be a basic rundown on how to fix a dull LCD screen on a (gateway) laptop.
*NOTE: This is not an advanced description on fixing a laptop LCD screen. It is a recreation of a situation that happened to me and how I went about fixing it. Also, I had already fixed the laptop before I wrote this post so some of the pictures already have the fix applied.
1. Remove the screws that are on the bottom of the monitor.
2. Using a sharp object, remove the protective casing around the LCD monitor.
3. Above the power button and a little to the left is the location of the chip that powers the brightness of the LCD. For me, that chip had fallen off and was just sitting there. However, if the chip is either not there at all or is broken, you will need to purchase a chip before you can continue.
4. Once you have the chip ready to be reconnected, you will need to solder it to the circuit board. In my situation, the chip was going to be too hard to solder directly on the board. I took two wires from a CAT-5e network cable, stripped the wire casing and soldered the wires directly onto the board for easier handling.
5. Next I soldered the other end of the wires to the chip. Turn the computer on to make sure the solder worked. After the soldering was complete and it was secure enough, I gave it extra protection by taping the wires around the chip. (I would not recommend doing this if you are trying for a proper fix)
6. Stuff the chip and wires into the area where the circuit board is and reconnect the monitor casing.
7. Finally, screw in all of screws that you took out at the beginning and you are done.
computer, dull screen, fix, laptop, lcd, screen
February 20, 2007
Posted at: 10:48 am by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
While trying to setup an application for work, I needed to install a mysql server. In the process I realized that the server’s firewall was blocking port 3306 which is why I was unable to access it from any other computer. Zach asked me to write up documentation so that when he needed a reminder, he didn’t have to search very far.
Iptables is used to set up, maintain, and inspect the tables of IP packet filter rules in the Linux kernel. Several different tables may be defined. Each table contains a number of built-in chains and may also contain user-defined chains. Each chain is a list of rules which can match a set of packets. Each rule specifies what to do with a packet that matches. This is called a ‘target’, which may be a jump to a user-defined chain in the same table.
The detailed syntax of the iptables command is documented in its man page, which can be displayed by typing the command “man iptables”.
[root@host /]# vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
or the location of your iptables setup
The Rule: -A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 3306 -j ACCEPT
Note: the bold item is the rule that I added for my situation.
*filter
:INPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0]
:OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
:RH-Firewall-1-INPUT - [0:0]
-A INPUT -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
-A FORWARD -j RH-Firewall-1-INPUT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p icmp –icmp-type any -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 50 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p 51 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp –dport 5353 -d 224.0.0.251 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -p udp -m udp –dport 631 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 22 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 80 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8080 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 8887 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 3306 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -j REJECT –reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
COMMIT
Once you add the rules in, you need to restart the firewall by doing the following command:
[root@host /]# service iptables restart
accept, dport, firewall, iptables, linux, mysql, ports, red hat, reject, rules, server, state, system administration, tcp, unix
January 30, 2007
Posted at: 3:00 pm by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
Version Number Update: 1.4 (2/2/07)
Incompatible with Wordpress 2.3: old category table.1 Possibly incompatible: upgrade-functions.php.
*** NOTE: Category Converter compatible with mysql server versions 4.0 and greater ***
When you begin blogging, you think about the types of genres you want to write about…what interests you…but over time those ideas change and you branch out. Well if you established categories in your blog when you first started, those might not be what you are blogging about any more. What about if you wanted to condense categories, it is very time consuming.
I have been in that situation where I wanted to condense my 25 categories into 7-10 categories. Up until now, there were no tools to help you accomplish this goal.
I decided to write a Wordpress plugin Called: Category Converter
Downloaded a total of 3655 times
Category Converter Features:
- Condense wordpress categories
- Rename categories
- Add categories
- Delete moved categories
Installation:
1. Download the Category Converter Plugin
2. Unzip the file and put category_converter.php into wp-content/plugins/
3. Click on the Plugins tab in the Admin panel and activate the Category Converter plugin.
Useage:
1. After the plugin is activated, click on “Go To Plugin” to use it. (Also in Options tab under Category Converter)
2. Under the category that you would like to move, click “move to”
3. Choose the category you would like to move to and then hit submit
4. Enjoy!!
*Note: The following images are from two different blogs, but the concept of the plugin is shown:
Before
After
blog, blogging, categories, category converter, converter, ella, plugins, wordpress, wordpress 2.1
January 09, 2007
Posted at: 3:23 pm by Timothy Haroutunian
Categories: Professional, Tech and Web
Wordpress is the blogging software that I use and absolutely love. They keep expanding upon the features and it is very easy to use. Currently, they working on version 2.2 and would like to invite users to submit Ideas to them for possible entry into the next version which is coming out in late April. Other users will vote on these entries and the most popular ideas will get added into the next version.
…However, just because what we’ve done has worked in the past doesn’t mean it’s the best for the future. We have to take a self-critical look at assumptions we have about our development process and WP itself. The upcoming release, which has been long coming, is a perfect time to focus on WP’s secret ingredient… you.
If you could add anything in the world to WordPress, what would it be? If you could name the thing that frustrates you the most about WP, what would that be?
Add an Idea of your own
blog, blogging, ideas, version 2.2, wordpress
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