omniplex

iPad2 and new toys

omniplex — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:50:09 +0000

I decided it was time to do some technology upgrades around the house. My wife has an olde iPad and would like a new one as well as getting a new phone. I figured since I need to also replace my phone I might as well get her an iPad2 and iPhone 4S. I also ended up getting myself an iPhone 4S to replace my blackberry as well as an iPad2 for myself. I also picked up a Samsung Galaxy SII Skyrocket and love it. The iPhone 4S is kind of ok, but the multitasking as far superior
on the Galaxy. Well I do miss some features of my BB like BBM, but iMessage seems to be similar and offers similar functionality. I do like Samsung’s Social Hub. Premium, which is the name and doesn’t cost anything is pretty nice and fills in the void of what I miss on the BB. That void was the ability to have emails “pushed” rather than requiring the device to “pull” the emails. With cellular networks networking can be spotty in areas and some applications have trouble switching between wifi and cellular networking. I do notice some lag on the iPhone in receiving emails where I never had that issue with the BB and don’t seem to have that issue with the Galaxy either.

Almost a year …

omniplex — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Its been almost a year at HP and I have some mixed feelings about it. The job is fine and I have been re-orged into a role where I dole out tasks to developers and do some development myself. I am ok with that and it will be a different challenge for me, but I am hitting some roadblocks in developing new software that is really needed. There seems to be huge resistance to automation and starting from scratch. Currently using what we use now is very cumbersome and painful and we could be helped with a more streamlined process and set of tools. Hopefully I will have better luck after I put together requirements.

HP Enterprise Services

omniplex — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:15:04 +0000

I’m enjoying my new job and the group I am in seems pretty good, though they could use with a lot more automation than they are using.
Right now I do design work for client applications that require load balancing with the F5 load balancer, or global load balancing with the GTM and former 3DNS product line.
The work is fun, and gets busy fast which is good.

I also got my friend a contract position there as well and it will be fun to work with some people again.

With some of my friends added to the team, I’m going to start working on automation applications to help streamline the processes we use so that more work can be done and fewer errors can be introduced.

New Year New Job

omniplex — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 06:44:18 +0000

On December 17th, it was my last day at my old job. I have left there and it’s diversity to focus more on networking and working with F5 load balancers. I personally feel that the F5s are the best load balancers in the business, especially when compared to things like the Cisco ACE, Coyote, or even the Citrix NetScaler. Part of my bias may be because I haved used the F5s in all sorts of configurations and rather extensively in the past few years. The iRule engine is very powerful, and the core of the F5 is linux. I will most likely continue to create software around the F5s, though there doesn’t seem to be much need for it where I am working.

F5 however did release a virtual machine load balancer that runs within VMWare. With some tweaking, it will also run inside Virtual Box. I will have to use the virtual machine version to test my code against as I don’t have access to load balancers that would be available to me to use to break my code with.

My switch back to Comcast

omniplex — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 05:56:13 +0000

Since the grandmother in-law is unable to live by herself anymore she has been staying with us since March. Unfortunately our townhouse was not the best place for her to stay especially with her in-ability to go up stairs. This required that she basically stay in a 360 sqft room and couldn’t move about the house. her bed and TV were in the same room. This room was also unfortunately right off the front door so people coming and going would intrude on her while she was sleeping or just hanging around.

To help with this and allow her to be more comfortable, she purchased a house we could all live in after she sold her old house. Unfortunately this also means I had to give up Verizon’s FiOS service and switch back to Comcast/Xfinity. I honestly didn’t realize how much Comcast sucked until we got FiOS service and have had to give that up.

Comcast/Xfinity service is ok, but could be better. I purchased the 105/10 internet connection. While it’s fast the start-up speed for downloads and just the overall speed and response times are somewhat slower compared to the Verizon 30/20 that I was paying for.

Comcast/Xfinity HD channels are horrible. The quality is worse compared to Verizons FiOS. Also Comcast has fewer HD channels compared to FiOS. With FiOS there were a whole slew of HBO HD, Cinimax HD, and Starz HD channels. Unfortunately on Comcast there appears to be about 1 HD channel per major movie channel.

The last thing to compare against is the cable boxes. The UI for the cable boxes Comcast uses is horrible. They pretty much just suck. I never would have thought that I would have cared, but after using the Verizon cable boxes the UI is 100% better with FiOS compared to Comcast.

I think I will have to take a serious look into Direct TV.

WPF and new Windows.

omniplex — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:46:17 +0000

So I’m learning to program a GUI with WPF and most of the examples that I have seen don’t include alot of real navigation unless you are using a Page and treating it more like a browser page. However I have been trying to use “Windows” with “Grid” containers to do Navigation similar to how Windows Media Center does it’s navigation. Since I’m still learning WPF I don’t know all the ins and outs yet. However, I did find this little tidbit.

If I have a main Window with a grid container I can clear the contents of the container and load it with the contents of another xaml file as a child. However, what I found was that I could not reload the original window contents without very well. One of the primary reasons is that I need to detach the new window and then close it. I can detach the window by assigning the Content to null. Then I would call the .Close() method to close it out. If I do not do this, when I terminate the application it leaves the GUI thread hanging and doesn’t actually close out the process.

Here is the sample code:

AdminWindow myAdmin = new AdminWindow();
 object content = myAdmin.Content;
 myAdmin.Content = null;
 myAdmin.Close();
 _Grid.Children.Clear();
 _Grid.Children.Add(content as UIElement);

Hopefully that makes sense to everyone. I’m still working on my writing and trying to get information out.

MediaCenter Project

omniplex — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:18:45 +0000

A friend and I have been working slowly on our MediaCenter project. So far the features that are being worked on is mostly the back end stuff. Interaction with IMDB, database connectivity with MySQL ( other databases will be supported ), and finally interaction and control of uTorrent for torrent downloads.

I know that this isn’t a lot of stuff, but we are working on it slowly and it’s starting to get there. Hopefully around the end of this month i can start working on the UI part. For this part we plan on incorporating and using Video Lan Client as the media player. By using the Video Lan Client we will be able to not worry about making sure a lot of common codecs are installed as that will be handled by VLC instead of the Operating System.

Hopefully we will be further along by the end of this year.

Barnes And Noble.. The Nook

omniplex — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:23:51 +0000

So my wife wanted to get an eReader. We had previously looked at them and had decided on the Nook from Barnes and Noble. Then iPad came on the scene, but low battery life and back lit screen actually made it unappealing. The Sony eReader is a good choice, however its lack of tie in to an actual store made it slightly unappealing. Amazons Kindle was a semi-choice, however it’s ability to revoke purchased books and lack of support for other formats really made it unappealing as well.

In the end I bought both of us the Nook and I am loving the device. It has a long battery life and supports multiple formats allowing me to purchase books from multiple places and read them on the Nook. Also the local library appears to support the Nook and lets me check out books onto it. Though I have not tried this feature out I will give it a test this week.

Change in Business Focus

omniplex — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:38:49 +0000

I’m going to start changing my personal business and development direction and start building and creating software for the Enterprise. I will focus on small and medium Enterprises rather then the large Enterprises. Though recently there was an article about building Enterprise applications and having to dumb it down and make it generic so that it will fit into the Enterprise tool sets. Unfortunately there seems to be some real logic to that statement. From some of the Enterprises I have dealt with, they purchase some of the most horrible software on the market. The software doesn’t really do a lot, but costs a lot. Hopefully I can change a small segment of that by starting off with some open source tools for handling the F5 and making that a framework that can be extended.

We will see how it goes.

April

omniplex — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:27:16 +0000

April is starting off decently. I was in New York for a week observing and hosting training for other co-workers using the DynaTrace software. i did however not get to goto the gym while in New York and i think I am slowly suffering. My weight has gone up, however it wasn’t all in fat. Some if it is in muscle mass. I am starting to increase the amount of time I spend in the gym. I really want to catch up to where I should be and drop my weight like I should.

I am also going to start running on the street to build up my leg muscles and endurance. it is also good cardio when i can’t ride my bike. It is also time for me to start working on my upper body instead of just doing cardio.

I will post updates on how things are going, but currently I am hovering around 245 pounds and looking to drop to 160-180 by the end of the year.