Samuel’s HQ

I got to find about Eric Sink’s blog today… Better late than never

He is writing about a lot of interesting topics related to software engineering.

My favorite column from his blog:

• http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Closing_the_Gap_Part_1.html (54 hits)
• http://www.ericsink.com/bos/Closing_the_Gap_Part_2.html (44 hits)

Even on happycoders.org, we saw a difference in the daily average of spam received:

• before: Received 149MB 26945 3841
• after:Received 109MB 10351 1563

More details:

• http://hostexploit.com/downloads/Hostexploit%20Cyber%20Crime%20USA%20v%202.0%201108.pdf (112 hits)

21st century is here… it’s now computer warfare!

Georgia Under Online Assault | Danger Room from Wired.com (192 hits)

Here is an incredible subject for a movie… unfortunately it’s not fiction it’s reality…

• S.F. officials locked out of computer network (198 hits)
• http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/sf-city-charged.html (226 hits)

I recently came to cross the name “Hungarian Notation”. I found it quite funny as I know this method for long time but I didn’t even know it has a name… If you are a geek check this:

Hungarian notation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (212 hits)

And if you have really too much time, and you don’t know what to do, check this document:

http://www.coding-guidelines.com/cbook/sent792.pdf (137 hits)

(85 hits)

Here is the reason why I tried to demo a website from powerpoint (149 hits)… I needed to demonstrate how to use a new Unix application, but I wanted to do that from my powerpoint presentation. After some time spent on google, I didn’t find any way to integrate a ‘unix terminal’ component in a power point slide.

So my solution was to use the embedded browser and use Ajaxterm to connect to a remote linux host… This works… but there is a limitation as it’s not possible to use PageUp, PageDown to go up and down in your terminal… In order to fix that, you can start ’screen’ on your unix host, and then you can navigate in your terminal using Ctrl+b, Ctrl+f.

I believe that there is a cleaner to connect to a unix host from powerpoint… but I didn’t find it. If you know other solution… please share

Some links to finish, I didn’t try anyterm but it looks cool too…

• Ajaxterm (163 hits)
• Anyterm (181 hits)
• Gnu-Screen (163 hits)

Problem: You are giving a powerpoint presentation, and during this presentation you need to show/browse a website. The solution that most of the persons will chose will be to hit “alt+tab” to switch the focus to their browser… Yes that does the trick… But you may want to show the website from your powerpoint to keep your audience captivated. I personally think that people has a tendency to get distracted when you switch away from your fullscreen powerpoint.
(79 hits)

My solution is to integrate a “Microsoft Web browser” component on your slide, so you can use it to browse a website. Start by adding the component as shown in this screen shot.



(84 hits)

Then you can put several buttons on your slide to control your embedded browser. It should look like on this screenshot.


Finally you will have to add some Visual Basic code to your button’s callbacks. Something like:

Private Sub FontDecrease_Click()
    Dim Z As Variant
    WebBrowser1.ExecWB OLECMDID_ZOOM, OLECMDEXECOPT_DONTPROMPTUSER, Null, Z
 
    If Z > 0 Then
        Z = Z - 1
    Else
        Z = 0
    End If
    WebBrowser1.ExecWB OLECMDID_ZOOM, OLECMDEXECOPT_DONTPROMPTUSER, Z, Null
End Sub
 
Private Sub FontIncrease_Click()
    Dim Z As Variant
    WebBrowser1.ExecWB OLECMDID_ZOOM, OLECMDEXECOPT_DONTPROMPTUSER, Null, Z
 
    If Z < 4 Then
        Z = Z + 1
    Else
        Z = 4
    End If
    WebBrowser1.ExecWB OLECMDID_ZOOM, OLECMDEXECOPT_DONTPROMPTUSER, Z, Null
End Sub
 
Private Sub StartDemo_Click()
    WebBrowser1.Navigate ("http://samuel.happycoders.org/")
End Sub
 

Download this code: test-www-ppt.pas (127 hits)

And here is the result:
(76 hits)

Download the example (117 hits)

In the next post I will explain why I wanted to do that… I have a really geeky reason

For the last 3 years, I was using a “happy hacking” keyboard. This keyboard is really small and looks
like a laptop keyboard. I really liked it and was able type really fast with it. Unfortunately, after spending too
much time behind a keyboard I started to feel wrist pain. This keyboard is comfortable, but on the long run I realized that I was typing with my left hand turned to the outside.


I finally decided to try the kinesis advantage keyboard. I’m now using it for a month and here is my first feelings about it.

• I’m using the qwerty mapping
• I found it really hard to use at the beginning. I switched to it in one week, and as recommended in the guide, I didn’t use any other keyboard the first week. The hardest is the frustration of not being able to type as fast as before…
• I started to do the exercises given with the keyboard but quickly stopped the second day… I used http://www.goodtyping.com/ (176 hits)which was really really useful
• The default mapping was not optimal for me, I had to remap some of the keys.
• The arrows are at a very bad location… but I’m started to get used to it.
• The {, }, [ and ] are really are to type… which can be a problem when coding.
• I’m still slower than with my previous keyboard
• I really found this keyboard comfortable, and it’s true that it’s hard to get back to a classic keyboard once you are used to this one.
• Since I’m using it, I don’t have pain anymore

Next status in one month… hopefully I will get back to my full typing speed

Some links:

• Description of the kinesis advantage keyboard (208 hits)
• Kinesis website (141 hits)
• Website to buy the happy hacking keyboard (234 hits)
• Happy hacking keyboard on wikipedia (161 hits)
• http://www.goodtyping.com/ (123 hits)

Another operating systems for cisco….
» Cisco introduces ‘Entertainment operating system’ | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com (300 hits)