my Computer Quest: November 2011

30 November, 2011

The Free Emulator called KiTTY: Registry Setting

Image via Wikipedia29-Nov-2011

At this time of the year, majority in our team has already been given a laptop in exchange for the old desktops we have been using for years; it is a mixture of GX280s and GX520s.

For our group, who makes use of WRQ Reflection to access PROMIS running in VMS, we found some problem when doing remote access from home. The Reflection apps doesn’t run. Or if it does, it is only for one time – the first time – and then it is gone forever.

A supposedly workaround to this is installing a virtual machine where WRQ Reflection will run in.
That also is its own problem – very unstable and very dependent on network performance. And when at home, who can guarantee that?

We were all struggling with this, our team, and as for me, I was simply doing a remote access to the other desktops that we have in the office – through VNC. For that, I use both Real VNC and UltraVNC; these two are working nicely in Windows 7 and of course, in Windows XP.

Then one day, I thought of checking out PuTTY, which is the emulator being offered in our Citrix farm. Consequently, in my surfing and browsing, I stumbled upon KiTTY, the younger sister, and which is advertised to have some, wait, more offerings than it older brother PuTTY.

I tried it, and I liked it.

Then the agony.

For PuTTY, there are numerous help articles that can be found scattered all over the web. Not quite for KiTTY. Or at least, even if there isn’t much, at least we should have those that will take us up and running with this free emulator software.

A few more days after, and I kept on searching and browsing.

I finally found what I am looking for.

You see, PuTTY comes with a registry setting, so if you would want to migrate your own settings, or in my case, let my colleagues share with the discovery, I would just need to export my registry data for PuTTY, and that’s it!

It took me some time, but not very long, to discover that KiTTY also have a registry setting. And as it was leveraging from its older brother, whose registry path I already know, it was enough for me to get the path for KiTTY and can follow on from there:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\9bis.com\KiTTY

The pot of gold I found, and I immediately set to work on my other desktop that ‘s just waiting to receive KiTTY as its one and only terminal emulator.

I guess we can say goodbye to WRQ Reflection, which costs an arm and a leg for each user. I hope they’ll just give us that amount, now that we have an alternative, which costs nothing.

Hope this is a big help to all KiTTY users out there.

This is my source on the registry setting for KiTTY:
KiTTY: Automatic saving

The download site for the KiTTY is also from 9bis.com:
KiTTY: Download

Till then!

29 November, 2011

UltraCopier evaluated

Image via Wikipedia29-Nov-2011

I thought there is some promise coming from UltraCopier; or if ever there was, it was broken.

I mean, interface-wise, it is almost the same as SuperCopier, but UltraCopier falls behind. I would describe both as skinny and scrawny, and showing some sticks and bones here and there.

NiceCopier looks sleek and smooth.

The messages while in operation (success, failure, prompts, messages), they also need improvement.

And is it only the looks?

Today I got the PC which I was handed down from another colleague within our department, which I sent to our User Support team for formatting and migration to Windows 7. And I was in the process of installing, rebooting, updating – and copying – that I was able to test both UltraCopier and NiceCopier against each other.

I made mistakes of issuing a reboot, as required or requested by installations or updates, and that is while the copy process is going on. The copy was issued from another PC, the source PC, going into the ‘new’ PC (I should say refurbished).

UltraCopier stopped, and the error message was flagged, and that’s it. I tried to click on ‘Play’ button, but there is no resuscitating the activity. I quit the window and exited the application.
I then tried to see how NiceCopier will fare under the same situation.

NiceCopier stopped, threw an error message, and stayed frozen. When the refurbished PC went back up, I clicked on the ‘Retry’ button at the error message window, and the activity resumed.

Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention the time required to move files here and there. UltraCopier likes to measure in days. SuperCopier doesn't usually say anything, just indicate the progress through the progress bar. And of course, NiceCopier shows by progress bar and tells the remaining time to copy/move - in minutes!

So with three free file management applications evaluated, I would recommend NiceCopier.

To rank them, in descending order:

NiceCopier
SuperCopier
UltraCopier

Hope that this will be of help to many who are looking for file management apps that will be used in place of Windows 7’s built-in apps – which sucks!

Till then!

Alzheimer's GPS shoes to hit US

I'd say this is one breakthrough in the use of technologies... one that is more of a need than a luxury... who needs an iPad anyway?
-----

Posted: 23 October 2011

WASHINGTON: The first shoes with built-in GPS devices -- to help track down dementia-suffering seniors who wander off and get lost -- are set to hit the US market this month, the manufacturer says.

GTX Corp said the first batch of 3,000 pairs of shoes has been shipped to the footwear firm Aetrex Worldwide, two years after plans were announced to develop the product.

The shoes will sell at around $300 a pair and buyers will be able to set up a monitoring service to locate "wandering" seniors suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.

Andrew Carle, a professor at George Mason University's College of Health and Human Services who was an adviser on the project, said the shoes are likely to save lives and avoid embarrassing and costly incidents with the elderly.

"It's especially important for people in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's who are at the highest risk," Carle told AFP.

"They might be living in their home but they're confused. They go for a walk and they can get lost for days."

Carle said studies indicate more than five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's, a number expected to quadruple in the coming years. He said 60 percent of sufferers will wander and become lost and up to half of those lost who are not found within 24 hours may die, from dehydration, exposure or injury.

Other devices such as bracelets or pendants can provide similar protection but seniors often reject these.

"The primary reason is that paranoia is a manifestation of the disease," Carle said. "If you put something on someone with Alzeheimer's that they don't recognise, they remove it. If it's a wristwatch and it's not their wristwatch, they will take it off. So you have to hide it."

The GPS system, which is implanted in the heel of what appears to be a normal walking shoe, allows family members or carers to monitor the wearer and to set up a "geofence" that would trigger an alert if the person strays beyond a certain area.

The shoes are being developed by GTX Corp., which makes miniaturised Global Positioning Satellite tracking and location-transmitting technology, and Aetrex. They received certification from the Federal Communications Commission this year for the system.

The makers say the market for such shoes is growing, given the soaring costs of Alzheimer's.

"This is a significant milestone for both companies and while the $604 billion worldwide cost of dementia has become and will continue to be a significant fiscal challenge, the under $300 GPS enabled shoes will ease the enormous physical and emotional burden borne by Alzheimer's victims, caregivers and their geographically distant family members," said Patrick Bertagna, chief executive of GTX Corp.

Professor Carle said the original idea was to develop the shoes for children and long-distance runners but the makers changed the plan when he offered his advice, noting that the devices can also help ease a lot of anxiety about seniors who want to remain active.

"They feel a need to walk and it is good for them," he said. "They should take a walk. It's good for them."

- AFP/wk

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Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Alzheimer's GPS shoes to hit US

23 November, 2011

Mobile phone, cancer "no link"

Is this to say 'finally'?!
-----

Posted: 21 October 2011

PARIS: The largest study of its kind found no link between long-term use of mobile phones and increased risk of brain tumours, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reported on Friday.

Danish researchers found no evidence of enhanced risk among more than 350,000 mobile-phone subscribers whose health was monitored over 18 years.

Earlier research on the possible link between cell phone use and cancerous tumours has been inconclusive, partly due to lack of long-term data.

In June, the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified the radio-frequency electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile phones as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

The new study follows up an earlier investigation that compared the cancer risk faced by all mobile phone subscribers in Denmark -- some 420,000 people -- with the rest of the adult population.

Patrizia Frei, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Danish Cancer Society, and colleagues examined health records from 1990 to 2007 for 358,403 cell phone subscribers.

Overall, 10,729 tumours of the central nervous system were diagnosed.

But among people with the longest mobile phone use -- 13 years or more -- cancer rates were nearly the same as for non-subscribers.

"The extended follow-up allowed us to investigate effects in people who had used mobile phones for 10 years or more, and this long-term use was not associated with higher risks of cancer," the study concluded.

The findings, however, could not rule out the possibility of a "small to moderate increase in risk" for very heavy users, or people who have used cell phones for longer than 15 years.

"Further studies with large study populations where the potential for misclassification of exposure and selection bias is minimised are warranted," the researchers said.

In a commentary, Anders Ahlbom and Maria Feychting from Sweden's Karolinska Institute said the new evidence was reassuring but called for continued monitoring of health registers.

There are about five billion mobile phones registered in the world, a figure that continues to rise sharply along with the average amount of time spent using them.

The IARC does not issue formal recommendations, but its experts pointed in June to a number of ways consumers can reduce possible risk.

Texting and using hands-free sets for voice calls lower exposure to potentially harmful radiation, compared to device-to-ear voice calls, by at least 10-fold, they said.

- AFP/wk

-----
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Mobile phone, cancer "no link"

17 November, 2011

How to change the Visual Studio 2010 Registered User and Organization

Image via Wikipedia17-Nov-2011

I've been looking at my splash screen and About info, and all the while, I have been just ignoring the registered User and Organization info. Until lately. I thought I should get that info corrected, or, have it show the user and organization to my liking, whatever. Hey, I've come across one forum and one guy actually asked the same question, and he said that if that doesn't change, then whenever errors happen, and dumps are sent, then the user and organization will be Microsoft-Microsoft. I mean, he is saying that correcting those 2 values is to Microsoft's advantage.

Anyway, so many blogs copy from each other, and what's worse, they copy wrongly.

I have tried, and found that only the organization was changed. The company is correctly reflected, but the user remains the same. One blog after another. One article after another. All saying the same thing.

Until today.

I searched, and seems to me that the day is beginning nice.

Goalsontrack

Chinthaka Bandara wrote the same old stuff, and more. From his blog, entitled Changing Visual Studio 2010 Registered User & Organization, I've seen the complete solution to changing the user and organization info, in both the splash screen, and in the About details.

Premise:

During installation, you are not allowed to enter these values, the user and company/organization. These values are picked up from some registry settings.

Having said thus, we will need to modify the registry. So, edit at your own risk!

VS2010 About screen

On a x86 bit (32 bit OS) computer follow the below path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Registration\UserName
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\RegisteredOrganization

On a x64 bit (64 bit OS) computer follow the below path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Registration\UserName
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\RegisteredOrganization

You can click on the Close button (the Red button with an X on it at the top right of the registry editor windows), but as always, the recommended step to close the windows is through the menu: File > Exit.

Changing the UserName will change the first line in the help about dialog.
Changing the RegisteredOrganization will change the second line in the help about dialog.

VS2010 Splash screen

NOTE: This will reset the IDE settings, so you better do an export settings first, which, of course, you will restore by importing afterwards.

Open up a command prompt.

On a x86 bit (32 bit OS) computer go to below directory:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE

On a x64 bit (64 bit OS) computer go to below directory:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE

Type "devenv.exe /setup", then hit [Enter].

Did I mention that while doing this, VS2010 IDE should be closed?

Well, if not, then close the IDE, and do again from the start.

Smart Goal Setting Software

Now, when you activate the VS2010 IDE, take note of the spash screen. User and Organization values should now be changed. A couple of minutes later (longer if you have a slow computer), click on About to display VS2010 details, and voila! User and Organization info should also be changed.

For if not, how?

I do not know...

At least the steps here I have tried myself, on several computers, and they didn't fail me.

Till then!

11 November, 2011

Troubleshooting WebSite publishing in Windows 7

Image via Wikipedia11-Nov-2011

This is how I found out about the 'BIG' difference between 'COPYING' and 'COMPILING' when publishing a web site, in Windows 7.

Follow deployment tutorial from MSDN (compiled web site, published locally)
Error: ASP.NET 4.0 application error: Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'...
Change IIS DefaultAppPool .NET Framework Version to "4.xxx".
Error: HTTP Error 500.21 - Internal Server Error
Run "%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -i". This is to correct installation of ASP.NET
Error: none; website is displayed correctly, and working.

NOTE: \Framework\vN.xxx\ -> this is according to the version that is installed in your computer.
Check from the following folder: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\

I hope that this will be of help to many developers like me who struggles with using the latest technologies, but get stuck somewhere in the middle, one way or another...

Till then!

Publishing a Web Site in Windows 7

Image via Wikipedia11-Nov-2011

I think I have finally figured out how to publish a web site in Windows 7. I mean, I managed from my limited knowledge years ago to create a very simple web site that performs just a number of functions, put it in one of the desktop PCs, and since it is working as expected, forgot all about it, how I created it from scratch, how I put the things altogether, and finally, how to make it run.

Now, with the series of migration being done for at least 4 PCs from Windows XP to Windows 7, what is keeping me back from migrating all to Winows 7 is the simple web apps that I can't figure out anymore how I put up.

I have already spent many days (and weeks) testing, recreating, compiling, publishing, copying, running - all to no avail. The web apps run fine when run in debug mode, but once deployed, one error after another comes up. And even with the help that I get from the web, the errors don't go away. I'm stuck.

Today, I may just be fortunate to have some time to read again and again the tutorial on Walkthrough: Deploying a Web Site Project by Using the Publish Web Site Tool, which is from MSDN. Now, this is by way of publishing a web site. The one that I have always been testing and testing is publishing by Copy method.

Then, in one of the links of the related topics, I chanced upon a very simple revelation: publishing a web site by copy method means you need to have FrontPage Server Extensions. That would have been alright, since I immediately found it by way of a quick Google search. Then, boom! It is not free...

Anyway, I have already made the other method working for me, so I will nwo stick to the new method of web site publishing: Compiled Site.

I guess, that is due to some security issues, that while it is allowed (so easily) in Windows XP, being described a more secure OS, Windows 7 has to be right and rigid. And I got hit with that mantra. But now I know.

I'm now preparing to migrate my simple web site for publication in a PC running Windows 7. And all my codes can now safely run in that OS.

Till then!

03 November, 2011

File Manager other than Windows 7's Windows Explorer

Image representing Windows as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase I thought I have posted an article about file manager in Windows 7, but as I checked today, there is none!

Well, what prompted this search for an alternative file manager is the poor performance of the same application that is provided by Windows 7. I mean, the Windows Explorer is working fine in Windows XP, but when it comes to Windows 7 (I can’t remember how this fared in Windows Vista), the thing just sucks!

When does it not perform well? The performance is already bad even with a single-instance copy session. The worst comes when while that single-instance copy session is still ongoing, and you initiate another copy (or delete) session, then the duration or countdown to file transfer/delete completion skyrockets from minutes to hours! If you really want to ‘play with it’, add more file copy/move/delete session, and the numbers don’t move anymore.

I wanted to stop this there and then, because I cannot stop thinking why it behaves this way, the Windows 7 file manager. I searched the web, and I found several solutions, and of course, not all are acceptable, and while many work, not many are quite promising.

FastCopy – I couldn’t say anything about this application, because I can’t figure out much of its menu or instructions. I’m not being racist or whatever, but it is like flying a jet plane with all the button and switches written in another language. One wrong button and your plane will just crash!

NiceCopier – This I am using at home. I find that it is most advantageous when used for localized file activities. That means from locally-linked external drives, HDD, USB drives, SD cards, etc., it is most efficient, not to mention that the interface is nice and quite easy to understand. It is useable right out of the box.

SuperCopier – For wireless connections, NiceCopier seems to slow down, or its performance degrades. Without any change at all of the infrastructure, using SuperCopier does a better job. I used NiceCopier at first, and I find that the countdown goes up and down, and while the file transfer is progressing, there is just no telling when the activity will finish. Thus I used SuperCopier instead, and I am satisfied with the better performance. This is an A-okay application.

Today, I went to search for other applications that may come in handy, or may have other functionalities not present in NiceCopier or SuperCopier, and I found one that I immediately downloaded and installed. When I have used it for some time, I will write a review of it. It is UltraCopier. Hope that it is as good as NiceCopier or SuperCopier, at the very least.

Till then!

my Computer Quest

30 November, 2011

The Free Emulator called KiTTY: Registry Setting

29 November, 2011

UltraCopier evaluated

Alzheimer's GPS shoes to hit US

23 November, 2011

Mobile phone, cancer "no link"

17 November, 2011

How to change the Visual Studio 2010 Registered User and Organization

11 November, 2011

Troubleshooting WebSite publishing in Windows 7

Publishing a Web Site in Windows 7

03 November, 2011

File Manager other than Windows 7's Windows Explorer

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