Entries Tagged 'tech' ↓

Wow. It’s been so long since I posted that there is a drastic change in Wordpress versions. Let’s hope I can even figure out how to publish this. I’ve been keep busy over the last 6 months or so that I haven’t posted. However, I’m finally done school for the year with the exception of taking 1 course in the summer. Here is just a quick overview of the past 6 months, and what I’m currently working on.

• As mentioned above, I’m taking one (1) course, CP317: Software Engineering. I think I’m making a fairly good move by taking it in the summer. There are only 12 people in my class, including me, and the main focus of the course is to use the knowledge taught to complete one large group project. We decided to develop a multi-player networked tank game in Java.
• I’ve been working on a side project through my business EdgeLink Consulting dealing with VoIP and Asterisk. This is a very neat technology with a very wide range of capabilities that I’m very excited to be working with. Expect a post in the next couple of days about Asterisk.
• I was very busy throughout the fall and early winter with the musical that I’m in every year with Laurier Musical Theatre. This year it was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. It went very well and I’m looking forward to the musical next year.
• I’m also working on some other side projects that you may or may not hear about in the future.

That’s about it for now. You should see something in the next few days on Asterisk and VoIP.

A few months ago I started using a program called MindManager. It’s a very powerful program used to create very aesthetically pleasing mind maps. I’ve been using it as a primary method of note taking in most of my classes. It doesn’t work so well for math, but for anything else, it’s a great option. I like it particularly because it easily allows me to link ideas together by adding relationships within the map, which aids me in recalling the information later.

There is also a feature that lets you add attachments to topics within the map, so that you can add pictures, or anything else that is appropriate. The reason I started using this to take notes was because I watched this video, which is a very good example of how students can make use of this program.

However, it’s not only useful for students, it can be used for anything. I’ve also been using this program to plan out various projects at work, and the recipients of these maps have been very impressed.

I’ve tried out several free alternatives for mind mapping, including FreeMind, but none of them make the maps look as good as MindManager does. It is definitely worth the investment for the product.

MindManager is available for both Windows and Mac.

Microsoft Office 2007 is by far one of the best products Microsoft has ever made, with the exception of one thing. Microsoft decided it was necessary to introduce a new document format. These include xlsx, pptx, and docx. For the longest time, their Office products have used the doc, ppt, and xls formats. In addition to this change, none of these new formats are backwards compatible with Microsoft’s older Office products, which has caused a lot of people undue stress.

I’ve had several clients and co-workers wondering why they can’t open their Office 2007 documents from anywhere else except their own computer. One of my professors upgraded to Office 2007 and posted a docx file to the course management software. The entire lecture the next day was in uproar saying that they couldn’t open the file.

Luckily there is a way around this so that you can still have the great functionality of the software, without losing the portability.

1. Every time you do a “Save As” you can change the drop down menu to save as a .doc (Microsoft 97/2000/2003 Compatible) instead of a .docx
2. You can change the default save options to automatically save as a format of your choosing.

Microsoft has an article in their knowledge base about making this change. For your convenience, here is the rundown for making the change in Microsoft Word 2007. The article also explains how to do it in Excel and Powerpoint.

1. Double-click Microsoft Office Word 2007, double-click Word Options, and click Save.
2. In the right pane, right-click Save files in this format, and select Properties.
3. In Save files in this format, select Enabled.
4. In the drop-down box, select a default file save format.
5. Click Apply to save the settings.

I’m sorry Microsoft, but the world needs a new document format, like the United States needs Bush in power for another 4 years. (Oops, probably shouldn’t have said that.)

I’d like to thank Phil and Warren for helping me test this process.

Yesterday I read a post on 43Folders about having a paperless office. It also mentioned a very affordable and hassle-free way to backup the data on your computer. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and JungleDisk provide such a solution. JungleDisk is a utility for Mac OS X that interfaces with Amazon S3. You can configure it to automatically synchronize certain folders on your computer at a time of your choosing. To give you an idea of how cheap it is, here is their pricing:

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

To give you an idea, I backed up all of my personal files; iTunes library, photos, documents, and emails, which is about 8.07GB of data, and it cost me $1.15. I think that might even be in USD, so really, I’m paying probably $0.02CAD by the time I get the bill.

If you’re looking for a hassle-free, dirt cheap(I even told Jake I think dirt is more expensive) way to backup your data, I definitely recommend this solution.

UPDATE: Fixed some formatting on the price list. Thanks Phil for pointing it out.

This past week marked the start of my re-entry into the world of Java programming. My first assignment in CP213: Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming was due today. I learned a few neat things while doing this assignment so I’m going to try to outline some of them in this post.

• Java has a very useful feature called Generics, and Eclipse will yell at you if you don’t use it.
  Generics allows you to define classes without a specified type. Instead, you can specify the type of an object by parameterizing it when it is initialized. This ensures that only objects of the specified type are inserted or removed from the initialized object. For this example I’ll use a stack:

  Stack<String> = new Stack<String>();

  As I’ve mentioned before, Eclipse is a very useful IDE, and thus is very strongly suggests parameterizing your stacks.

  

  Using code such as the above will yield the following:

  “Stack is a raw type. References to generic type Stack<E> should be parameterized”

  This can be easily fixed by parameterizing the code, as mentioned above.

  

  Not only will Eclipse not yell at you for using the latter code versus the former, but the latter will help ensure that only the appropriate data is inserted and removed from the stack.

• When using Javadoc, don’t use the @version tag.
  After struggling with Javadoc for a while trying to figure out why it wouldn’t properly display the version tag, just as a displays the author tag, I decided to do a little bit of googling on the subject. Eclipsepedia gave me a simple answer.

  

  Using the @version tag sort of works, but it doesn’t look as nice as the @author, or any of the other tags.

  

  Does anyone know of any way to get this to work properly? It does make sense to have a version tag for classes, so I’m not sure why it doesn’t work properly.

That about wraps it up for the tips I learned from this assignment. As I hack around with Java more, I’m going to try to post various tips that I come across.

If anyone has any tips to add to the above, or information pertaining to the @version tag, please let me know.