Musings of a Software Engineer

Windows Firewall

Wow its been a long time since I wrote something.  My plan was to attempt to write a post every day!!! Seems like that idea has gone out of the window.  Its amazing how time seems to fly by then its the summer months and time to do postings just do not seem to happen even with having my iPhone at hand every day.

Anyway the reason for posting, firewalls!!! Now I’ve been trying alot today to get firewalls to do what I want and stop blocking ntp traffic away from my windows machine.  Firstly it seems odd to block the 123 ntp port why on earth would you do that with the firewall blocking incoming traffic maybe but not allowing UDP traffic out on 123 seems odd.  Secondly why are firewalls all so different to configure and not just different software vendors different versions.

I’ve spent more time this morning trying to add a new rule to a firewall product that should be easier than it is.  Now I know for a lot of people they probably should not be messing around in the area of firewalls but that shouldn’t mean that you make it almost impossible to find the correct dialog box to add a rule.

Rant over, at least its syncing with the time server now and all looks happy

PS: One last thing I know I have a logo of windows firewall but it wasn’t windows firewall that was the problem software!

Open University

Its amazing the number of anniversaries are happening this year.  There must be something in the water every time we reach the end of a decade!  There are a number of obvious anniversaries that are happening and some not so obvious.  Below is my list of anniversaries that are happening this year:

Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger) – 10th

Would you believe it its been 10 years since the first MSN Messenger hit the scene back in 1999.  Since then its grown and grown and of course has now been rebranded into Windows Live Messenger like alot of other MS products.  There is now a website devoted to the 10 years anniversary with a timeline of all the releases

http://windowslive.com/Desktop/Messenger/Campaign/TenYear

Gameboy release – 20th

20 years ago the first good hand held gamer came onto the market, with its lovely black and green screen to sweeped the market and continued as a market leader for many many years.  I did not like the game boy when I got to the age of being able to buy one, I prefered the Sega Game Gear because it had a colour screen.  Sadly I think the Game Gear was to early into the market because battery life was not good enough.

Man on the Moon – 40th

The obvious one that you cannot miss at the moment is the first landing of man on the moon.

Open University – 40th

The Open university started in this year and is still going strong across the BBC and online.  Not plugging them but there are some good courses out there.

CICS – 40th

IBM released one of there first produces 40 years ago called CICS, which runs half the banks around the world!

The interesting question that I’m thinking about is what is the big thing from this year that we are going to see in 10, 20 maybe even 30 years time.  But I wonder with the way that technology moves on these days will there be many computer programs / services getting to be 30 years or older…..

Only time will tell.

Spam, can it get any worse?

Wow its amazing how time has flown by over the last couple of weeks, it does not seem that long ago that I was writing about ringtones.  Its been a busy couple of weeks due to one thing and another and I’ve not had chance to get back to the blog to write anything.  So I decided to make an effort today to write about anniversaries of products.

So I went through the usual of logon to the wordpress admin and was just about to press the Add New post button when I noticed the number of comments in the pending state, 68 to be precise.  Now since I have the approval stuff turned on wouldnt you think it was a complete waste of time sending strange spam comments!

Maybe I’ve missed a trick somewhere but since I just do a batch delete all of spam messages no-one ever sees them.  The people who do the spamming must know that they are not getting posted as comments, so why bother.  Its a really shame that the internet has gotten itself into this strange state, I’m sure I read a fact about email that 90% of it was spam or some silly number like that.  I wonder what the percentage of blog comments are spam?  Maybe some researcher can have a look into this.

Its something we just have to live with and cannot get any worse…… can it?

Ringtones

After abit of hunting around the internet I found a really good post that explained how to create ringtones with music that already exists within iTunes.  Since it would normally cost to buy a ringtone from Apple its a nice idea to be able to take music that you already have and create a ringtone from it.  I’ve not looked to see whether its possible to purchase ringtones from other people, but I assume this isn’t possible (not to be picky put isn’t this a monopoly! but that’s an arguement for another day).

So how do you go about creating a ringtone in itunes, well its a shame its not as simple as right click create ringtone its abit more difficult than that.

Here is the step by step guide of how to create the ringtones from a record track within your music library:

1. Select the song that you want and right click and select “Get Info”.
2. This will display the track information, go to the options tab of the track.  On this options tab there is the start time and end time of the track.  Select the checkboxes next to both of these and select the 30 second segment that you would like to be your ringtone.  A ringtone must be 30 seconds or less, but in reality 20 seconds is the max before the phone will go to voicemail.  Click “Ok” to return back to the library
3. Right click on the song that you have just changed the length of the song.  This should show a menu with a convert selection to AAC  (If the dropdown menu item does not contain “Convert Selection to AAC” and reads “Convert Slection to MP3″ (or some other format) go to iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing and change the “Import Using” drop down menu to “AAC Encoder”).  Once the song has been encoded go back to the Get Info and uncheck the start time / end time.
4. Find the location that this encoded will have been created, this will normally be in the same location as original music track.  It will be named as *.m3u.  Rename the file to being *.m3r (which is the itunes ringtone extension).
5. Finally the last stage go back into itunes and import the file into iTunes.  This should now add it into the ringtone section of iTunes.

Probably not as easy as it should be, but I suppose Apple are out to make money!

Transport Tycoon

Out of chance I found OpenTTD yesterday which is an open source implementation of Transport Tycoon deluxe, probably one of the best games that has been made for the PC.  Its quite sad actually because I also found out today that TTDX was first released in 1996!

OpenTTD is not just an open source version of the orginial it has extended it with extra features and usability enhancements.  It does require the original CD function because it needs the graphic files.  I have the CD around somewhere but can I find it (sadly I downloaded it from the internet in the end!).

After installing the new version its like being a kid all over again, I never seem to tyer of playing this game its great.  All thought trains, planes, boats and buses / goods vehicles to control.  The maps it generates are never EVEN bigger than before.

Apple have tied down the iPhone meaning that no other software can be installed onto the device without it being approved by the Apple team and therefore means that some things are never going to get the ok.  This to me seems to be abit of a monolopy over the iPhone / iPod ranges by using the iTunes store as the only way to get things onto the system.  I assume that everything purchased from the store gets some money going into Mr Jobs pocket.

Not surprising along came jailbreaking of an iPhone / iPod Touch, this voids the warranty of the phone and is most probably illegal since its hacking into the iPhone software using illegal entry to allow it to run other applications.  Now on the one hand I can see that this should not be done because of the voiding of the warranty and the potential other risks involved.  But on the other hand I can completely understand why people do it because there is some very good software available for example mPlayer (linux media player), OpenSSH and a ftp server.

Looking at software that is available if the phone is jailbroken, there is a good one called SBSettings that allows the user to easily toggle Wifi, Phone, 3G and others all with a simple swipe across the status bar at the top.  The great thing about this is that it runs in any application.

So how does jailbreaking work?

Well its quite a “simple” process, using a security exposure in the software to install a piece of software.  This software then allows you to install a package installer.  The one of choice at the moment is cydia and this allows users to install unix style packages for extra functionality.

On my way home from the pub last night I had wireless enabled on my phone and was shocked that in the short distance between the pub and my house there was 3 unsecure wireless networks.  It certainly surprised me of the number of wireless networks that were on my way home probably around a dozen or so that I could see (not including the ones I was not allowed to see).

Having an unsecure home wireless network these days is unforgiveable, I know that not everyone is computer literate but its something that is very simple to setup and a must for all home owners.  Having an unsecure network means that anyone could download data that should not be allowed but they would be held responsible for it.  I’ve had a wireless network for almost 5 years now and everything is secure and the SSID is hidden.  Hiding the SSID is a simple option to do and just adds that little bit extra of security because people have to search abit more for it.  I know that doing this and not have security is still not good enough, as I found out when I was having trouble with my linux server when it was using the wireless network I download a piece of software and it was able to see the hidden SSID.

It was interesting to note that most of the secure ones were labelled as BThomehub-nnnnnnn which is good to see that by default most of the new home hubs are correctly secure.  Even more interesting was the number of SSIDS like linksys-nnnn which were not secure, meaning someone has purchased this over the counter and does not have the full understanding of how to setup the router.

If anyone out there is reading this then make sure that you setup is secure.

Phone Mast

After purchasing the iPhone I have been abit disappointed by the lack of 3G receiption that I’ve been getting when being out and about with it.  Well as if by some devine wind I was reading the register today and they had an article about ofcom publishing maps of 3G covered and I have to admit I was slightly shocked that O2 has what looks to be the worse coverage of the big networks.

The full pdf can be download from here.  It is interesting looking at the maps to see the cover or lack there of for O2, but the maps really do remind me of a three year old that has been trying to colour-in maps of the UK with a purple pen!!

Borland Delphi 7

I got into delphi a number of years ago when I started to help developer an online tool called Samurize.  Its a fantastically customisable tool for your desktop definitely something I would recommend.  Anyway that was my first exposure to delphi programming writing plugins and new code for samurize, before that it had been mostly java and C.  I think delphi is probably the best language still on the market and the IDE is fantastic and was miles ahead of its time.

I stopped doing much programming at home because of other commitments but just recently I’ve started to get back into it.  First I loaded turbo delphi explorer (free) which can be used for free, it was great playing with delphi again (shame about the interface or maybe I’m just so use to delphi 7!!!!).  Also the other problem with turbo delphi and one of the really pluses of delphi is the third part components, turbo delphi does not allow these to be installed which is a really shame.

So over the last couple of days I’ve been setup myself to be able to use delphi 7 again (I wish I could afford a new delphi 2009 licence but not at £500 each!!!).  Its possible some more of these posts might turn into taking about delphi coding and delphi snippets if I get time to do it.

After following the instructions on the google website about how to setup your iPhone to sync with google calendars (instructions) I managed to get my personal calendar sorted out so that I could see it.  Unfortunately for some reason I could not see three other calendars that I also maintain.

So to solve the problem, took me a google or two to find the answer but yes it is possible to sync multiple calendars onto the iPhone.  On the phone load up safari and go to:

http://m.google.com/sync

This will give a mobile page providing a number of links (I’ll try and post some screenshots later on).  It also allows you to sign into your google account.  Sign in and the page that it provides shows all the calendars that you have and its possible to check the ones that you want to sync with.  I’m not sure whether I missed this on the google page but I did not see information about this.