I’m sick of this piece of crap router that I got from Vonage. It’s the WRTP54G, and it really is a piece of trash. For no reason, the wireless keeps dropping, and requires a reboot every few days. I’ve had to resort to using standard wired ethernet, which isn’t the end of the world, but heck, this is supposed to be a wireless router. Combined with the fact that Vonage is crap, I wish I’d just got a standard wireless router from Belkin or D-Link.
It’s not just me. A friend of mine bought a Linksys Wireless router too and had exactly the same problem, and it seems like Omar has had problems with Linksys too. Considering the company is part of Cisco, you’d really think they could sort their crap out.
Oh, and if you’re thinking of joining Vonage, you might want to reconsider that too. Only got the wireless router because it was free after rebate, though it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting my $100 anytime soon. In fact, a couple of friends told me to give up. They haven’t got any rebate from Vonage and have been with them much, much longer than me. If I knew this lame router was gonna cost me $100, I’d have got something that wasn’t Linksys.
The only reason I’m with Vonage though, is because of the free calls to the UK, so I can call my family back home regularly, though I’m strongly considering leaving. They simply don’t live up to the hype. Seems like a lot of other people think Vonage sucks too.
Tags: linksys, vonage
I’m working on a classic ASP project at the moment, where the previous developer’s code is amongst the worst code I’ve ever had to work with. The project has practically no include files, no code libraries, tons of code repetition, terrible HTML, etc.
One of the big annoyances is the complete lack of structure in the ASP code. There’s illogical indentation, variables scattered everywhere, server.transfers used liberally, multiple recordsets opened at the same time, the list goes on…
My first action on any project involving working on someone else’s code is to clean things up. It’s absolutely shocking how many developers don’t use logical file structures, and put files everywhere. The best way to get started is to figure out which files aren’t used by the application and move them out of the main folder (usually into a subfolder called _old). Out of sight, but still available in case you need them. A good find and replace tool like the one built into Homesite, or Eluent Tools can be very helpful at this stage.
On a previous project, I once removed a file called test.asp which had a bunch of code, without comments and appearing to do nothing. It later turned out to be used by the VB application to authenticate! Fortunately, getting things working involved simply moving the file back to the root folder. The moral of this story: keep old files easily accessible, and don’t assume that filenames are always indicative of what a file is doing.
In the case of this current project, to try and speed up the process of getting to grips with the code, I began looking at source code beautifiers, to help make some sense of the code. According to some statistic, developers waste 50% of their time just looking at old code trying to understand it, and anything which can reduce that helps.
Unfortunately, there’s not many applications out there which help with ASP code beautification. Perhaps because the majority of ASP developers don’t code in a structured manner, and their code tends to be spaghetti, messy beyond the point where it can be beautified, by a computer anyway. Incidentally, outside of my team, I’ve never worked with anyone using VBScript classes in their code, despite this being part of ASP 3.0 and available to developers for many years now.
Eventually, I settled on SourceFormatX. After trying the demo, it looked like it would vaguely do what I needed, so I ordered a copy. But, I must admit, it’s far from impressive. There’s absolutely no way of modifying the way it formats code, other than a few limited options within the application.
I would have liked to see the formatting controlled from external configuration files, which would allow more granular control of the process. This combined with the fact that the company sent me a licence for a previous customer by accident, and the link in the about box for support forums goes to a latin website, make this company seem quite unprofessional, and makes the product look bad too. I expect more for my $37.
However, a new version is in the pipeline, so perhaps they’ll fix these issues then, though I wouldn’t bet on it. It would be good to see another company create an ASP code beautifier. But sadly, with all the hype around ASP.NET nowadays, Classic ASP seems to have been forgotten, even though there’s many companies out there still using it, with no immediate plans to change.
I guess I’ll just have to beautify the code myself then 
Update – 14 December 2006: In hindsight, this application was a waste of money, and is not good for use on web applications (though that’s not to say it doesn’t well work on other things, I just haven’t tried it). Unfortunately, they don’t offer refunds, but if you’re looking for classic ASP code beautification, I’d recommend you don’t waste your time or money with this product.
Tags: classic asp, development, code beautifier, sourceformatx
Not sure what’s going on with Google Desktop. There was a post on the Google blog saying that version 4.5 has been released, though it looks the the post has been pulled because it points to a 404 error now.
One of the biggest thing that annoys me about Google Desktop is the lack of version information. You can check which version you’re using by right-clicking on the icon in the system tray and going to About, which will launch your browser with the version number in tiny text at the bottom of the screen. But, good luck finding what the current version is – the Google Desktop website doesn’t show it anywhere!
Heck, if Google can integrate Google Desktop with their main search, they can damn well check the version number on the download page and tell us whether we’re using the most current version or not, or at least show us the friggin’ version number so we know whether we’re using the most recent version and whether we need to upgrade!
But that aside, it’s a great product and I love it. Has saved me quite a few times, and the Outlook plugin is fantastic.
Tags: google, desktop, search
After all the years of fussing about how using your mobile phone on an airplane can cause problems, Emirates have signed a deal with Aeromobile to allow passengers to make calls on planes, with the service launching on one it’s 777 aircraft early next year.
The full scoop is at the BBC, Emirates to debut mobile calls.
Now when is the aircraft industry going to make internet access widespread?! That would be a lot more useful than being able to use your mobile phone. Let’s not forget all those ringing phones, and sitting next to the passenger who spends the whole flight on their phone (or the one with the really annoying ringtone).
It’s bad enough going through that sitting for 20 minutes in a London bus. The thought of going through that on a long haul flight, or heck, even a short haul flight, is not reassuring. If anything, it would make me reluctant to fly on such an aircraft. Maybe they’ll make it like smoking… the plane should definitely have a no-phone zone.
It’s noisy on planes, just like it is on trains, so hopefully people won’t use their mobiles too much, and we won’t see this mobile technology in new quiet aircraft (which might not be far away) in such a rush.
Tags: mobile, phone, emirates
I’ve tried various backup solutions over the years, and never found anything that quite fits my needs. Eventually, I resorted to using Foldershare to keep my files in sync between my desktop machine and server, which worked but seemed like a very basic solution (if one disk crashes, the other would have a backup).
Been using a combination of Carbonite and SynbackSE with an external hard disk for a few months, and it’s working out to be a really good cost-effective solution. This screen makes my heart jump with joy…
At only $50 per year for unlimited storage, Carbonite really is a brilliant and cost-effective way to backup. I’ve been recommending this solution to everyone I know. It’s so easy to use that even my Dad could backup, and he’s not at all technically inclined. It’s a great way to backup those important files and digital photographs.
In addition to this, I use SyncBackSE to backup all my important files to a Freecom Classic SL 320gb External Hard Disk every few days. In the event of a disk failure, I don’t particularly want to days downloading all my data from Carbonite (especially when time is money).
One thing SynbackSE and Carbonite both can’t do at present is keep versions of files, though the developers of SyncBackSE are working on it for the next release. At the moment, my SyncBackSE backup involves keeping a maximum of 14 backups or 14 days (whichever is greater) of my data, in conjunction with a windows script which executes after each backup to ensure that the zip files are named according to their datestamps, and that old files are deleted – ie. those older than 14 days, if there are more than 14 backups.
The disk drive is a 320gb Freecom Classic SL External USB 2.0 model, and was bought in the UK for £110. It’s been discontinued, but I would guess that you could buy a similar drive here in the US for about $150. Carbonite costs $50 per year for unlimited storage, and SyncBackSE is $25, totalling $225 – which is a very cheap price for peace of mind knowing your data is safe!
On the subject of backups though, just found out from Techcrunch that Omnidrive have announced their launch, and Omnidrive have said on their blog that they will open the floodgates tomorrow and start accepting registrations. It’s going to be free for 1gb of space, and $40 per year for 10gb. Bit disappointing, as I’d like to see more space, not least because my backup size on Carbonite is 25gb! I’ll probably give it a whirl though as it does seem more feature packed than Carbonite.
Tags: backup, carbonite, syncbackse, omnidrive