Home ownership, bills, working a lot, puppy, more bills, working around the house…  It feels like I barely have time to breathe most of the time.  I guess that is what life is about, the next phase in a way.  Less time for friends, less time for family, building my own family, my own life.  Not being in college anymore is a total departure from what I have been come accustomed to.  It is nice on one hand.. no homework or projects sucking the life out of me..  Now it is just house projects and work projects doing that.  It was a trade of sorts.  I am happy with my job and it is a lot less time consuming than school was.

I was on a walk with the dog last night and I was remembering back when I was in High School; it seems like a lifetime ago.  A different town a different day.  I remember lifting weights in my parents basement at 1:00am listening to the radio.  It was just a neat time in my life.  I didn’t have many worries or concerns; I was young.

I have seen 1:00am only a couple times since I have been out on my “own”.  I think that is good having a schedule and such.

This post has nothing and everything to do with technology.  Technology is a passion in my life and it has taken me to where I am today, but technology is playing a different role in my life recently.  Since I have less time to see people that I have seen for years technology is a great way to keep in touch and see what people are up to.  Actually a friend I had in High School contacted me on Facebook yesterday, which was pretty cool.  I haven’t seen her in years.  She has a cute kid.

I have been on Facebook, Myspace, and other social networks for many years, but I think their role has changed.  I think when I was younger they were an addition to face to face encounters and now they take that place.  It is good, I think, because otherwise I would not no communication with my hectic schedule and life.

I don’t know if I am growing up or growing old.  Maybe neither.  I am changing because life is change.  It’s definitely not easy.  There are so many sacrifices that I am not used to.  With responsibility comes sacrifice to a degree.  I gain so much from my sacrifice though.  It’s a good trade.

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1)  Just use an old VCR!
2)  Just use an old computer!

End of thread…  End of post… That is where the story ends and it leaves a lot to be desired.  I have problems with both of these solutions.

1)  The VCR is archaic
2)  I don’t want to leave a computer running in a room that will be used sparingly
3)  I don’t want to wait for a computer to boot up

This can be negated if you have a cable box that already does that.  But there are still people out there without cable boxes.  Or don’t want a cable box in every room or on every device; I’m sure the cable companies want you to.  I can’t seem to justify the extra $30 + fees for the box to move away from basic cable.  Renting a cable box seems like a dirty tactic to me; in the long run they have to make a killing.

I have NetFlix so if I want to watch a movie I can just get it off of there.  Also, there is NetFlix streaming which is awesome.  I do not want to give the cable companies more money - it’s already highway robbery.

The problem with this is that projectors do not have a TV tuner.  It doesn’t know what to do with the coax connection.  Projectors cannot tune (most of them that are out there anyway).  But I believe there is a happy medium… a product by Ambery.com -> Super Video to WXGA Converter.  This device works much like a cable box expect that you can buy it and use it how you like.

It takes a coax connection (Clear QAM), it won’t decrypt any of the pay channels like a real cable box, and converts it to composite, VGA, or S-Video.  Composite will most likely be your best choice for a projector.  I believe they also have one with component connections.  If you are looking for HDMI I’m not sure what will be needed - I’m guessing an upconverter of some sort.

Clear QAM is important.  If the device is not Clear QAM then it will not be able to tune to the cable frequencies.  If you have been looking at the Analog-to-Digital most of the ones that I have found do not have clear QAM meaning they will not work with cable; you will need an antenna to retrieve the signals.

My coax cable runs into the Super Video to WXGA Converter and from there the S-Video runs into my projector.  I also have component cables for in the future.  There is also some HDMI lurking behind the panel, but I don’t think it will be needed for awhile.

This face plate comes from, LibertyCable, an interesting cable that does orders by the phone, but none-the-less has a really great product; not too many other choices out there.

So composite into the wall that runs up to the projector that is mounted on the ceiling.  It’s really that simple.

I hope that can add some clarity to a problem that can be over/under thought.  This is my geeky trade-off do-the-job kind of way of doing things.

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The problem I ran into was going to browse for media it would display a Page Not Found.  I’m guessing the method it was previously calling got depreciated.

Here’s where the error occurs:

flvplayer.js

function BrowseServer()
{
OpenServerBrowser(
‘flv’,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserURL,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserWindowWidth,
oEditor.FCKConfig.MediaBrowserWindowHeight ) ;
}

Replace that with the following:

flvplayer.js

function BrowseServer()
{
OpenServerBrowser(
‘flv’,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserURL,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserWindowWidth,
oEditor.FCKConfig.FlashBrowserWindowHeight ) ;
}

Voila!  This cleared everything up for me and I was off and running…

—update—

I see this update has already been add to the comments of the project on sourceforge, but it has not made it into the source code.  I wonder if the developer has abandoned it.

—end—

Another change that isn’t a bug that I made was automatically setting the width/height of the videos instead of having to enter that with every FLV file.

add the following:

new

flvplayer.js

// set default video height/width

var vWidth = 350;
var vHeight = 250;

replace the following:

old

flvplayer.html

<body scroll=”no”>

add the following:

new

flvplayer.html

<body scroll=”no” onLoad=”txtWidth.value=vWidth;txtHeight.value=vHeight;”>

Now the width and height will automatically be populated with the setting in the config file.  Just a quick change that I thought was cool.

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As I have stated many times before… I am an avid listener of podcasts and video podcasts.  I love them because they help me stay up-to-date in this frequently changing world of IT.  I would have to say my newest vidcast that I have been enjoying lately has been HAK5.  They are just a bunch of real down to earth people talking about technology!  They are a bit goofy but that’s okay with me.  I believe they were recently added to revision3, and I’m quite glad they were.

I really enjoyed the piece by Chris Gerling on reverse engineering on .NET applications (and more).  This is a very handy skill to have especially since I work with .NET.  As I watched the podcast I didn’t think much about it.  I found it to be very cool and engrossing; tres geek.  I like how they broke the segment down onto multiple episodes (inside of being deluged).

Come a few weeks later (now), a couple of the network guys came to my cube and asked me if I could help them with an application a previous developer wrote.  I politely said “Sure! Not a problem”, which they responded with “Great one catch though, all we have is the EXEcutable and we need it ASAP”.  I think that was actually two catches, but anyhow.

I said calm and coolly, “all we need to do is decompile the application get the source code and we’ll be ready to go”.  I suspect it was not the answer they were expecting.  I was calm and cool because I just watched the great hak5 episodes that involved reverse engineering!  Hot dog.  I earned major cred points for my attitude and how quickly I was able to reproduce the code for the problem.

After inspecting the code we found the problem to be a configuration code; not a development bug.  This was such a critical step the problem solving process.  This also proves that learning is a lifelong process that needs to continue beyond school and become apart of your life.

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There was a speaker, Advanced IT student, who gave a rousing speak on Project Management Software. It was an okay intro to that Software, but seemed to miss a lot of what’s happening right now. He gave some examples, but none with software development. I think software development is a totally different ballpark then for example winery. I think Agile Development is really changing what software we use and how we use it. Mingle is probably the “best” for Agile Development. I’ve used Agile Track to have management on an Agile project.

There was a web seminar on some new features of Visual Studio 2008. I’m quite excited about some of the cool new features. The one feature I am most excited about is Javascript Debugging! Debugging Javascript is so annoying… to be able to step through Javascript will save so much time. The split screen mode in 2008 also looks very promising.

I also won the main door prize! I got a wireless keyboard and some software (Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008). Visual Studio and SQL Server are both developers version while Windows Server is a year free trial. I’m going to try them out and see what they are all about.

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So I went to college to pursue the wonderful career of System Administrator.  This was pre 9/11, end of web 1.0, and the landscape was kind of shakey.  The web always interested me and I wanted to do some projects in the web space.  I started with PHP 3/4 and made my own CMS.  It wasn’t anything fancy… basically it was a web interface to edit txt files, which was basically a pseudo database.  I found myself dedicating a lot of time to programming and really enjoyed it.

I got my degree in System Administration, but had a great desire to continue programming.  Thus I went to Penn State to continue my education and learn how to become a Software Developer.  I learned a lot at Penn State.  About hard work, listening, understanding concepts… I learned that being a Software Developer isn’t so much about coding, but understanding the needs of people.  Coding is very important, but that is the easy stuff, the fun stuff!  To interpret the wants and demands of people that really have no idea what a database is.  It is a challenge, but it is something Penn State has prepared me for.

It has been a long challenging road, but it has all been worth it in the end.  The ends do justify the means in this case I dare say.  This was a quick narrative of my rise to Software Developerdum.  To say I have an affinity for programming is an under statement.  It is apart of me.  It is at the core of what I do.  I don’t really have a job or career, because I enjoy every single second of it.  It is a challenge that I love.

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More times than not you are going to have to dig through old crappy code with no documentation.  In the realm of .NET there will be times when you have to integrate classic ASP, .NET 1.1, and .NET 2.0.  What a fun time!  PHP will have to be migrated with PHP 3/4 and PHP 5.  Oh our functions are now reserved words.  Good times.  The trick to doing this is to use the code and see how it works.  Whatever the previous coder thought does not matter; it is about code execution.  It’s the ones and zeros that you need to care about.

I feel integration is the most overlooked part of any job; be it Network Admin or Developer.  It’s fairly easy to troubleshoot and develop something brand new.  You have a clean slate, which gives you a lot of flexibility to make changes on the fly.  With “old code” it is supporting unknown features or bugs that could cause potential downtime or corruption.  To integrate with something of the past and to enhance is like a work of art.  It is breathing life back into an application or hardware.  I’m not trying to make this sound like some kind of miracle, but integrating new code with “old code” is very overlooked.

I am referring to old code as “old code”, it is not a derogatory statement, but a loose hand reference.  Just because code is aged does not mean it is of no value or doesn’t work that well.  Some of the best code is “old code” do you think COBOL is dead?  It is an old language, but the applications work like a beast.

Some of the newer languages make things easier and obsolete older more lengthy code blocks, but it doesn’t make it run better (okay sometimes).  It may be a bit sexier, but such is life.  The code will still achieve core functionality just not all the bells and whistles.  toot toot.

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I really feel MSM is currently experiencing a slow painful death. I don’t think it will go away, but it needs to change and it will change (radio hasn’t died, yet). This post is really inspired by the death of Tim Russert. He was alright to watch on Sundays and his death was unfortunate for everyone; it was a great loss.

For those who are not familiar with MSM, it stands for Main Stream Media. I had to look it up, because I was quite confused; it happens.

I found out about Russert’s death via leo laporte on twitter; I think that alone is somewhat significant. There is a big problem in MSM right now. All the fear mongering, bias garbage, that they pass off as the news misses the mark of what’s happening in the world. There was a time when reporting was liberating and really made a difference in this country (USA) and the world. Blogging has really stepped up around the world to have a voice for people and to spread the truth (most of the time). A report out of Arstechnica shows that arrests of bloggers are up significantly. I think this is also somewhat significant and related. Blogging or just new media should be comparable to the printing press. It is revolutionary.

Welcome to the revolution.

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