Mike's Musings

Spam and User Registration

admin — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:47:55 +0000

I’ve removed the ability for user’s to register on this blog. The level of spam has been unacceptable. Isn’t it sad that they can ruin the experience of the Internet?

Help Smartphone Users Save and Share Your Information

admin — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 02:16:51 +0000

Most smartphones have the ability to scan bar codes. The number of smartphone users is expected to be 1 billion by 2014. Why not make it easy for them to save and share your information with friends and colleagues? That is the purpose of “quick response” or QR-codes and they are easy to create.

QR-codes can contain text, links to websites, contact information among other things. They look something like the the following QR-code, which contains links to my website and blog.

Here are a couple of articles that mention why they may be useful:

Smartphone users that scan the image can save your contact information, access a specific website and share that information with their friends.

The good news is that you don’t need expensive software or a team of graphic artists to create them. There are a number of free websites and tools that can create them for you. Unfortunately, you need to be careful as some of the helpful tools may redirect the user to their site.

One tool you might want to check out is ZXing, which allows you to enter text, website URLs, contact information among other choices.

So, give your smartphone users something they can easily use and share!

Windows 7 “Checking Disk” Won’t Start at System Boot

admin — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:49:46 +0000

Yesterday I had to reboot my Windows 7 64-bit laptop after installing an update to a program. When the laptop started, I got a black screen saying that it had to check disk C: and that I could hit any key to skip the test. I decided to let it check for errors, but it only counted down to 1 second left to hit the key and froze or hung up.

This happened at every reboot. I feared my hard disk was failing or had failed. I stumbled upon a sequence that let me boot into Windows. Hitting F10 when Windows is starting on my laptop allowed me to access the BIOS setup screen and start a disk check. I let it do the quick check and then canceled the full check. After continuing, I was able to boot into Windows normally.

Still fearing a hard drive failure, I spent time backing up the drive as well as cloning the disk in preparation for buying a new drive.

Then I found a hot fix from Microsoft (from November 2009!) that addressed the issue. They fixed the issue over a year ago and didn’t distribute it with Windows Update! They are definitely pushing me to an alternative solution. Apple is much more expensive, or is it? I wasted almost 7 hours dealing with this issue. I hoping that Apple would not have had the issue at all or would have at least released a patch.

Anyway, after installing the patch, I started CMD as administrator and entered: chkdsk c: /f /r. This causes a disk check to be scheduled at the next reboot and runs all five levels of the check. The program found no errors. In the end it was just a bug in a Microsoft product that was patched over a year ago and the never released the fix!

Website refresh

admin — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:44:49 +0000

I updated the comIT, LLC website today. The style looks a bit better, to me anyway.

I used a CSS template designed by dcarter design. The solar theme struck me as a variation on comIT (comet).

However, the name comIT was chosen as a shorthand for commercial [quality] information technology (IT).

Anyway, take a look. I’ve added some additional customers and revamped some of the other pages as well.

New Grails Website Launched

admin — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:31:36 +0000

Just before Black Friday, a new consumer website went live. The website was developed using Grails, but wasn’t the typical build-from-scratch website. While the website makes use of Grails, various Grails plugins, jQuery and third party web services, it also accesses a legacy database on an IBM i server (also known as AS400 and iSeries).

comIT, LLC participated in the development, which was led by Denoncourt Consulting. New domain objects were introduced and integrated with existing tables/files on the IBM i. Being able to mix new domain objects, some of which extended existing legacy tables, integrate with third party web services as well as utilize Grails plugins, enabled this website’s development and deployment in a short time frame. The Grails ecosystem and community support continues to amaze me.

comIT, LLC assisted in areas of project management, continuous integration, design as well as implementation of various back-end services.

The website was developed for Kettler USA, which manufacturers products for bikes, fitness, patio, table tennis and toys. Stop by and check it out.

As time permits, I may write about some of the features I contributed. You may also want to check out Denoncourt’s Blog for information about how the project was developed.

Thanks to all the contributors to Grails and it’s plugins for enabling the team to make this project a success!