Mark's Tech Notes

Here is a quick routine to read values from a Firebird Database into Delphi Prism.

uses FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient;

Tags: ASP.NET, delphi Prism, Firebird, pascal

Recently, I have done a lot of late night work, and done a lot of time in hospital rooms with various family members. My wife asked me to find a quiter mouse after one particularly bad stay in hospital where she was trying to sleep and I was trying to work quietly. It turns out that the hospital has great wireless connections, but a mouse click can be a really loud cutting noise in a quiet room.
I did a quick search and it turns out that there are actually very few companies that make quiet mice. What mistified me even more was that there were actually people going through the trouble to post that it was stupid because they didn’t need it.! While I understand that this does not bother most people, I have to admit that it is a great idea for my family.
This sounds like a great idea for anyone who wants to do computer work around other people in a quiet area.

Tags: hardware, Quiet Mouse

Well, my son got the “Age of Empires III – The Asian Dynasties expansion pack“ for Christmas and was really happy about that until he tried to play it. For some reason, the game plays for a little while (about 1/2 hour) then reboots the entire machine! We were not at all happy.

I found an AMD games forum that suggested that I needed to update my ATI Radeon 2600 video card drivers. I updated my drivers to version 8.8 pointed to by the AMD forum, rebooted, and the game now works great.

There is also a useful post on the World of Warcraft Forums about Radeon video card issues.

Check out Geekologie at http://www.geekologie.com. They have a wide range of wild uses and abuses of technology and are just plain odd. It is a fun read!

A friend of mine (maybe I wouldn’t go so far as friend Shawn), happened to mention a cool site to me today. It’s www.urbandictionary.com. It’s a dictionary site where users can define slang words used by them. Definitely not appropriate for all audiences, but mostly pretty harmless (Kris don’t even think about it!). Check out some of the definitions below: Yoink: An exclamation that, when uttered in conjunction with taking an object, immediately transfers ownership from the original owner to the person using the word regardless of previous property rights. Though I cherished my automobile, I had to purchase a new one when my second cousin came up from behind me and politely exclaimed, “Yoink” while taking my car keys. Bees Knees: When bees flit from flower to flower the nectar sticks to their legs. The phrase “bee’s knees” means sweet and good, because the knees of the bee are where all the sweet, good stuff is collected. You bought me a coffee? You’re the bee’s knees! Pac-manning: To drive right on the dotted white lane divider, which gives the same effect as Pac-Man eating dots. “Dude, quit pac-manning, you’re gonna hit that car!” Girlfriend voice: The change in pitch or tone of a man’s voice when talking to their significant other. The girlfriend voice is characterized by a higher pitch and a more effeminate tone with speech patterns scattered with pet names and childish words. This type of speech is usually frowned upon when used in the presence of other men. When another man uses this voice they will usually receive a fair amount of ridicule. “Did you hear Bob’s wicked girlfriend voice when he was talking to Lisa? Let’s whip his ass!” Site is mostly really cute. Check it out.

It seems like there are millions of Iphone and Ipod Applications. There are all kinds of games — even a thumb wars application that was invented by a mom who’s son had no partner to play thumb wars with! I guess making an application is alot easier than having another kid! I wish I had thought of that — lol. The company is called appsNminded and is run by 3 LA moms who donate their proceeds to the Humane Society and Make a Wish Foundation. Great causes and great apps, who could even asked for more? I can’t wait to see what they come up with next! They have really got some creative applications to make the Ipod and Iphone better than ever with even more ways to keep those kids busy and out of trouble.

I finally talked my boss into getting me a new laptop for work. I use my laptop a lot and working on my old one was just not as productive as it should be. It took a while but he finally got me a nice new shiny Dell Inspiron 1545. It is nice and fast with a large screen and a fair bit of power. I was really liking it and even willing to overlook the amazingly reflective screen (seriously, could you get more glare guys?).

Then I tried to use it. I don’t know what fool designed the keyboard, but they obviously never actually used it for more than goofing off and watching the odd movie. It turns out that to use the regular function keys, you have to hit a special function shift key every time! Now I use the F keys constantly and this is a real pain! Every laptop that I have used, has had some way to enable the function keys, so I looked and I looked. Then I asked a friend to look at it. Then I looked on line. I still could not figure it out.

Finally, I called the Dell help desk. The guy that I got seemed okay, but he just could not understand what I needed to be using the F keys for. Finally after 20 minutes on the phone with him, he had a urieka moment and told me to go to “http://www.randyrants.com/sharpkeys/” and use that program to hack the computer to make the F keys work properly! That is right, they told me to go use some untility to try to hack the computer if I want to use regular F keys! To top it off, I tried the tool, but they use non-standard codes and the tool that he told me to use will not even map thier keys, so now I have to download the code for the tool and rewrite it to allow Dell codes! What a pain.

I just started using Vista, and so far, so good. The biggest issue is that occassionally, when I go to connect to my office through VPN, it claims that “This connection requires an active Internet connection”. That would be reasonable if the next line didn’t show that I have an active internet connection! I can surf and use the Internet for anything but VPN. It turns out that if you use a loopback driver or VmWare, Vista sometimes gets confused and refuses to connect. There are a couple solutions: 1) Disable VmWare or the loopback. Of course if you actually want to use these apps (which I presume you do if you installed them), then this is not a great answer. 2)You can try changing the order of the network connection bindings. Sometimes this works. To change your bindings:

• Open up the list of “Network Connections,”
• Press the alt key
• Click Advanced
• Select Advanced Settings
• Select the Adapters and Bindings tab

There is another useful post about this at “Vista VPN, loopback adapter & “requires active connection” error!“

Well, I just got nailed by Delphi again… In Delphi 2007 (I use RAD Architect), if you are working on ASP.NET pages, there is a nasty gotcha.

If you are run your website from Delphi, then try to flip between the desing and aspx tabs in Delphi, the next time that you compile, it will clear most of the InitializeComponent section (everything but the Page_load). This means that all your buttons and dropdowns will no longer have events tied to them. If you are paying attention, the compiler does give you a warning about functions that are declared but not used.

The end result is that you suddenly have an ASP.NET page that compiles with a few warnings, but none of the events fire. There is also another case where it just dumps all the events for controls inside a given panel.

This bug has been around quite a while, but for some reason they do not seem interested in fixing it (most reciently posted as QC 65972).

Tags: ASP.NET, Delphi, Delphi RAD, Programming

For a while I have been meaning to get on of these, but the last time my daughter was in the hospital was the last straw and I finally got a Quiet Mouse. While most computer mice make little click sounds, this one is silent.

This is one of those gadgets that you either love or can not understand.

For me, I often work on a laptop in the living room while my wife watches TV. It lets me hang out with her without having to pay attention to some of the programs. Also, in the last year, I have had a couple family members in hospital for a total of about 3-4 weeks. In these cases, sometimes you just want to turn off that annoying click sound.

The Quiet Mouse is great. I have to admit that it took a bit to get used to it. Not only do I not get that loud click (if you don’t think it is loud try it in a hospital room next to someone sleeping), but it also does not quite feel the same. Once you get used to that though, it is a great mouse. My wife likes it because she can not hear a thing as I go surfing the net.

I would definitely suggest this for anyone who finds themselves somewhere that their mouse is bothering others.