Bill Morefield My thoughts, discoveries, and occasional rambiings.

September 21, 2011

Code Never Dies

Filed under: Programming — Tags: , , — Bill Morefield @ 8:36 pm

I spent much of the afternoon working on a new VBScript script.  Why would anyone do such a thing?  Because more than seven years ago I’d written a VBScript that did everything I wanted except output the data in the correct format.

The original code was a simple connector module that took a feed out of one system and loaded the data into a database meant for another system.  It has been running for most of those seven years and hasn’t been updated since the source system changed about three years ago.  It works and honestly there is no need to rewrite the program in a newer language since it’s simple, works, and isn’t a high priority process.

So today I needed to take that same source and produce a text file with a small subset of the data.  I could have written and tested a new script in PowerShell or a program in C#, but in reality I just needed to change the output from a database to a CSV file.  It took about an hour to rewrite and another hour to test.  It would have taken at least twice as long to write from scratch.

The lessons are that so much old legacy cold stays around is that it works.  The original script has more than three years of successful runs behind it with real data.  Testing can give you confidence, but working in production is hard to beat.

It’s also nice not to reinvent the wheel.  This is a once a year process that has been done manually more often than not.  It took about four hours to manually handle last year so this year I spent two hours to automate it.  Next year it will run in a few minutes.  That’s a good savings in time and effort.

August 23, 2011

Life with MacBook

Filed under: apple — Bill Morefield @ 5:40 pm

It’s been a month now since I bought the MacBook Pro and I’m about to make it my primary portable computer.  It’s not any one thing and I’m not sold on the Mac is greatest and Windows stinks.  My Windows laptop still gets almost as much use as the Mac and my Windows desktop gets more use than both.  What I’ve found though is the combination of light weight and small size make it perfect as the “put in the bag and go” computer that I need.  If anything it may reduce my use of the iPad more than other computers.

I do plan to try moving my Windows development environment, my primary use for the Windows laptop, over the MacBook running as a virtual machine.  I’m not sure if that will stick both due to the memory in the computer and due to the smaller screen size.  I’ve gotten used to this for email and editing files, but not sure how it will look editing code.  Time will tell.

I can’t deny there is an element of sexiness to the MacBook.  Taking it out of the case just looks better than my PC.  Last Friday a friend came over to work on a project together.  She ran a little late and while waiting I went through email and when she arrived left the MacBook sitting on my couch.  She noticed it and commented on it.  Now she is a long time Mac user, but I know that a new PC would not have gotten the same reaction.

So a month into the MacBook it’s winning me over.  The next couple of weeks where I try to move my PC related tasks to it will tell much.

August 13, 2011

Now Running on WordPress

Filed under: blog — Tags: , — Bill Morefield @ 11:00 am

I’ve moved my personal website and blog over to WordPress.  I’ve done little work with WordPress until a few months ago, but recently used it for a new project and liked what I found.  I see a lot of places where I think it fits in very well, and I think my web site works as one of those places.  It’ll also give me the chance to become more familar with WordPress.

Previously I’d been using BlogEngine.NET for my blog.  The migration went pretty smoothly using the directions I found at http://www.craigbailey.net/migrating-from-blogengine-net-to-wordpress/.  The only significant change from his instructions I did was to download the BlogML import plugin from the WordPress site instead of the one linked from that article.  For the redirects from the old links to the new links for articles I used the Redirection plugin from http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/.

As part of the update I also revived a few blog posts that had vanished from the blog due to a bad setting.

July 17, 2011

I Own a MacBook

Filed under: apple — Bill Morefield @ 11:16 am

The iPad was a gateway drug.  Sure I found it useful and helpful, but I now see it was just the first step in Apple’s master plan.  October I got an iPad.  February I buy an iPhone.  Now I’m in the Apple world with two feet.  Five months later in mid July I am now the owner of a MacBook Pro.

I’ve been travelling a bit more than normal over the last month and I do love the iPad for mobility.  It works well if you just want to catch up on email and web while sitting in a coffee shop, but the Achilles heel of the iPad is content creation.  I did get a keyboard case that helps with this, but sometimes you need a litter bigger screen or the workhorse programs.  I’ve been thinking of getting a new laptop to travel with as my current HP workhorse laptop model is a bit bulky and getting a bit creaky.  I got the change to pick up a 13" Macbook Pro this weekend at a very good price and it seemed to fit my needs perfectly.

I’m planning to use it as my primary laptop for everything other than .NET development for a couple weeks to determine if I really will keep it or resell it.  I already see that my first software purchase will be either Parallels or VMWare Fusion to get access to my missing PC Apps.

May 21, 2011

There’s Going to be a Jailbreak

Filed under: apple,iPhone — Bill Morefield @ 1:43 pm

Updated this post in August 2011 with a few other jailbreak apps that I’ve installed since May

I did jailbreak my iPhone.  Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t admit that online.

In any case I’ve had a jailbroken phone for a few weeks and have found a few apps that I think improved the experience:

Action Menu Plus – Just handy that adds some extra options to the standard copy/cut/paste options

CameraLock – Puts a link to start the camera on the lock screen.  Pretty much taken from iOS 5

Five Icon Dock – Lets you keep an extra app in the dock

Five Icon Switcher – Adds extra icon to the switcher

Infinifolders – Probably my favorite app as I have way too many apps on my iPhone and this lets me organize them better

ManualCorrect Pro – Never again send an inappropriate text message to someone

MobileNotifier – Another one that probably becomes obsolete in iOS 5.  Makes notifications less of a pain

My3G – Let’s you convince the phone it’s on wireless when its not

PkgBackup – I just like knowing all the stuff on my phone is backed up.  Backed up to the cloud is even better.

QuickReply – Makes replying to text messages faster

April 16, 2011

My First Couple Months with an iPhone

Filed under: apple,iPhone,mobile technology — Bill Morefield @ 6:43 pm

A couple weeks after getting an iPhone in mid-February, I wrote up a few thoughts on the new phone.  I thought that I’d add a few thoughts now that I’ve had more time to get used to the phone and really integrate it into my life.

In short I love the iPhone more now than then.  I’ve used a smartphone since getting a Motorola MPx220 that ran Windows Mobile back around 2004.  The iPhone works better than any phone I’ve had for just about everything.  With every other smartphone I’ve owned I’ve restarted it at least every once a week.  I have probably restarted the iPhone a couple of times in four months.  Using the phone just feels natural.

I really think that apps do much to improve the experience.  Without apps, the iPhone would just be a nice phone and not as useful as it’s become.  Actually the apps are half the story and the other part would be data.  Before I just used data for email and web browsing.  Now I use data all the time for Twitter, maps, and really everything.

Most of the concerns that I mentioned in my first post still bother me.  I did figure out how to get the alerts the way that I wanted, but I still feel it could be more flexible.  Six years of having phones that managed being silent or making noise when appropriate spoiled me.  I still find myself forgetting to set the phone to vibrate or, more often, forgetting to turn sound back on after a meeting.  One feature my earlier phone had was the ability to set the phone to be silent for a set period of time when you could estimate how long you’d want quiet such as when going into a restaurant or movie and then it would turn sound back on automatically.  I’d like to see that option.

The texting interface has grown on me.  I’m using texting more now and I’m not sure if the iPhone has led to more texting or if my greater texting led to me getting more used to the iPhone interface.

I decided to Jailbreak my phone and will be looking at the Cydia store to round off some of the rough edges.  Will report on what I find then.

February 26, 2011

Two Weeks with the iPhone

Filed under: mobile technology — Bill Morefield @ 9:00 am

I’d never been that impressed with the iPhone until the iPhone 4 came out last year and I had the change to play with a friend’s phone.  The only problem was the AT&T exclusivity and my issues with AT&T locally had led me to Verizon after a number of years as an AT&T wireless customer.  AT&T has improved since then, but not enough to make me switch back (though they did finally deploy 3G data here back in early January).  So I was happy to hear the iPhone come to Verizon in early February.

I purchased an iPad last fall and it had largely converted me into the iOS camp.  I have no plans to replace my Windows computers with a Mac for day to day use, but using the iPad made me appreciate the simplicity of the system and the convenience of having a small and long life device for things like email, reading PDF documents, and the like.  I’ve really noticed some amazing benefits of integrating it into my work life, but that’s another post.

Still the experience with the iPad had me ready to look at an iPhone when it came time for a new phone in June.  The decision came a little earlier as the issues my phone had experienced since going for a little swim in a creek in the late summer had become much worse.  Finally they reached a point of becoming too annoying two weeks ago so I walked out into a Best Buy one Saturday afternoon and walked out with a 32 GB iPhone 4.

I like it.  The convenience of the apps cannot be overstated.  As a phone the iPhone really isn’t any better than the Windows Mobile phone it replaced, but the interface is smoother and the apps make the thing a true PDA in addition to a phone.  I’d have trouble going back even after just two weeks.

Even though I do love the phone I am surprised at some simple things the phone cannot do and may look into Jailbreaking to implement some of these.  First the texting interface is a bit weak to me.  I’m not a large text message user, but something about it just doesn’t working right for me.

I’m also amazed that the phone doesn’t have any way to automatically set it to vibrate or silent when my calendar shows me busy.  My much derided Windows Mobile phone could do this before the first iPhone even came out.  In addition the ability to configure alerts is weak.  I really don’t want to hear a tone if I get an email at 5 AM, but I would like the phone to ring or alert me to a text message.  I had an application on my Windows Mobile phone that would go to a silent mode at night for everything except phone calls for example and turn off bluetooth to save battery.  So far I’ve not been able to find anything like this for the iPhone that doesn’t involve hacking the phone.

These are mostly minor things and they don’t dampen my overall enjoyment of the phone, but I’d really like to see some of these added in the next iOS version.  And if I’ve missed any obvious fixes for the above problem, feel free to point them out in the comments.

February 14, 2011

Why I’m Not Sure I’ll Miss Borders

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Morefield @ 10:13 pm

Understand that I’m a reader.  I love books, have books, and will often buy a book that looks interesting knowing that I probably won’t be able to get around to reading it for weeks or months.  When I travel I love to find a used bookstore and can spent a couple hours going through and leave with a stack of books so large that they have to be shipped home instead of packing in my luggage.

When I read the news that Borders is expected to file for bankruptcy this week it surprised me then my reaction was largely, “Meh.”  It’s not that I dislike Borders, but honestly I just don’t go there for books that often.  A lot of blame for the demise of Borders is being placed on the “Internet” much like it’s some vague evil force.  In truth I’ll expect in the end management mistakes and being late to get into the online sales routes did most of the work to take Borders down this road.  For me Borders never competed against the Internet.  For me Borders competed against the fact that the nearest store is about an hour’s drive from my house and to be honest if I want a book it’s only about a fifty-fifty chance they’ll have it unless it’s the newest Stephen King or latest hot business book.  Sure they can order it, but I can do that myself from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Books-A-Million and have it at my home in a few days.

In fact since I got a Kindle about a year ago, unless it’s a book I expect to reference certain ways, I’m just as likely to just buy the eBook and have it in a few minutes.  I enjoy the book experience, but I’m finding more the ability to carry an entire library with me anywhere is just too much of a benefit to ignore.  The ability to reference a book any time without having to remember where I’ve stored it means I’m re-visiting books that I’ve already read more than before.  The ability to take time that otherwise felt wasted (waiting on an oil change or at the doctor’s office) and read instead makes me feel more productive and I am getting more read thanks to these small moments.  Now that my phone has a Kindle app, I expect I’ll do this even more and not just when I expect to be waiting.

I don’t think books will go away and I don’t want them too.  The truth is though that a lot of books are read, digested, and then simply shelved or resold.  Something is lost perhaps in the move to eBooks, but I think more will be gained.  I hope the used bookstore with the musty smell and surprise finds never goes away.  I do think that the traditional bookstore will change, but I don’t think that they will all go away.  Some will thought and it appears Borders might be the first.

October 23, 2010

GoToMeeting Codec

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Morefield @ 2:23 pm

I tried to watch a recorded screencast yesterday only to keep getting an error that the correct codec wasn’t available.  After some checking I figured out the video had been recorded using GoToMeeting and I did not have that installed on my new machine.  If anyone else ever runs into that problem, you can download the codec at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/codec.

August 13, 2010

Updated and Cleaned Up

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bill Morefield @ 12:13 am

Sorry the spam had gotten a little out of hand.  It should be cleaned up now.  I’ve been tied up with some changes at work involving adding a new area to the one I already managed and had neglected the blog a bit.  Also updated the blog software and made a few changes that I hope will keep things under control better in the future.

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