Chuck’s Home World

After looking in the Windows Update for an mention of SP1 (Service Pack 1), I decided to see if I could download it from Microsoft. Well, I found the file I needed and downloaded it. The install is pretty big, about 450 MB or so and it took about 1/2 an hour or so to download the file. That’s pretty quick for my broadband access.

The install wouldn’t run on my everyday laptop. It told me that I needed to wait until the languages I had installed were available in the SP1. I didn’t want to wait so I removed the Spanish, French, German and Italian languages and left only English. After doing that, I checked out Windows update and there was the entry for Vista SP1 and it was only about 65MB. I chose to install it and about 15 minutes later the system was back and running with SP1.

Now one of the pet peeves that I have run into with Windows Vista is the amount of time it takes to open a ZIP archive file. It would take between 2 minutes to 10 or 20 minutes depending how many levels deep the files were. I found an open source application that handles the ZIP format and it opens and extracts the files in seconds.

After installing SP1 I though that it would be faster to unzip files. It is. However, it still takes too much time to extract files from a zip archive. I ran a test and found Vista extracting a zip of about 25 images took about 30 – 45 seconds. Faster than before SP1. However, I used the open source program I found and the dialog opened and then closed right away. It had done the exact same thing in less that 3 seconds.

Needless to say that I’ll continue to use the open source utility when handling my zip archives. That’s okay because I can use it for other archive file types like .rar and .arc. Oh, I guess I should let you know the program I use. Its called 7-Zip and can be found here.

I thought that I’d posted about this project a while back (2006) but I can’t seem to find any entries now. So I must have thought I did, but didn’t actually do it.

Working for my employer CAS Severn, Inc. last year I developed a spelling checker for a particular client out towards the west coast of the US. They desperately needed the ability to spell check their on-line web forms but didn’t want to use a per client type of software. They wanted more control over the vocabulary, adding the necessary terms for their particular needs but not allow just any one to do it. After looking into several existing server side spelling checkers, we couldn’t find a simple solution so I developed one.

So why am I bringing it up now? Well, we’re thinking of putting it into a project at the OpenNFT community. I’ll let OpenNTF explain what it is – the following is from their About page at OpenNFT.org:

“OpenNTF is a site devoted to getting groups of individuals all over the world to collaborate on Lotus Notes/Domino applications and release them as open source. Our mission is ‘to provide a framework for the community to develop open source applications for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino which may be freely distributed.’ Using open source applications can help organizations reduce the costs of software development and maintenance.”

The project was interesting in many respects. I learned about how SoundEx codes are created and used and also how Metaphones are used. SoundEx codes are simpler in the results. Words that sound alike will have the same SoundEx codes. SoundEx codes are generated by taking the first letter of the word and then removing all the vowels from the rest of the word. A 3 digit number is then generated to represent the remaining letters. So, for example, the SoundEx for “Chuck” is “C200″ and “Chuck’s” is also “C200″. This helps when a word is not recognized and the suggestions for “Chck” would include both “Chuck” and “Chuck’s”. The problem with simply using SoundEx is that it won’t suggest words that begin with other letters. So we also use Metaphone codes or more precisely, Double-Metaphone codes.

A Metaphone is another “encoding” method, using an phonetic algorithm, but accounts for letters that sound similar to have the same values. For example, in English, a “ph” has the same sound as “F” and sometimes “gh”. Metaphones can be more tedious to create because there are a lot of if this is in there, then do that, otherwise check if that is in there and do this. I was able to find a pretty good Metaphone generation routine for a Visual Basic and adjust it for my needs. The Metaphones for “Chuck “and “Chuck’s” are different, being “XK” and “XKS” respectively. However, “XK” is also the same Metaphone code for these words: swage, swag, check, cheek, cheeky, chic, chichi, chick, chock, choke, choky, shaky, shakya, sheikh, shock, and shuck.

So a good spelling checker needs to combine at least these two encoding methods to return a list that may contain the actual word you meant to use. Simply using the SoundEx code or the Metaphone codes isn’t enough. After doing some research on the web, I added a couple of more algorithms for finding words. I found a paper on the net titled “SSCS: A Smart Spell Checker System Implementation Using Adaptive Software Architecture” by Deepak Seth and Mieczyslaw M. Kokar. In it they describe a few algorithms for adding, removing, doubling and shifting of letters in words to find alternatives.

Then there is how to narrow down the suggestions so that you don’t return 100s or 1000s of words to suggest. Another algorithm is use to filter down the suggestions to make more sense and to weigh them so that the word your actually after is closer to the top of the list. Computing the Levenshtein Distance, (the number of changes required to go from one word to another) you can weigh the results of your suggestions against the unrecognized word and filter your suggestions. The fewer the keystrokes to go from the unrecognized word to the suggested word rates a higher position in the suggestions list.

So after I figured out some encoding for finding words, I needed a place to store and organize the vocabulary. Being a Domino developer, I decided to simply use a Notes Database file and organize the words using views. This works great if when using a fast server and have a strong connection. Its also very easy to create the user interface for those that will be maintaining the vocabulary lists.

I’d been thinking about it for a while and I got a pretty good deal (paying about $55 for the phone after my mail in rebate comes back). The great thing about this phone isn’t that it plays music and videos or that I can use up to 32GB of memory (as it becomes available, currently at 4GB now), but its a PDA running Windows Mobile 6.

The unit is slightly thinner than my RAZR (closed), but is wider and longer. With my calling plan I have unlimited data, but have to pay $0.15 per text message. That’s OK though, because I really don’t do text messaging. Once I get things hooked up I’ll be able to receive and send email from it and having a nice QWERTY style keyboard will be handy for that.I’ve had the phone for about a week now and so far, I’ve been very happy with it.

Well, almost daily. It does come out at least 4 times per week. Morgan Webb formerly of the Tech TV gang does a bang up job tell you what’s going on in the world of tech. Take a look at the WebbAlert netcast.

Yesterday, I was looking into the canvas object for a project and I stumbled across this really cool set of scripts. By using a JavaScript library and the Canvas object, images can become photos, buttons and more. Take a look at my photo albums to get the idea of the “instant” script. It give images that “Polaroid” look (white borders and some tilting with shadows.

You can find out all their scripts (free for non-commercial use unless otherwise stated) by clicking here.

I just switched my DNS servers to point to OpenDNS. What’s a DNS? DNS (Domain Name System) is an index of Domain Names (ie: google.com) and their equivalent numeric I.P. address. Whenever you point your browser to a website, the first thing that has to happen is to translate that address into a number. Many times you may have delays when that number to name can’t happen quickly enough or your internet connection may appear to be down because the DNS for your Internet service provider isn’t working.

OpenDNS is an open, completely free system (unless you decide to try out some of the paid features). There is no software to install, they don’t hosts websites or provide search engine. They make their money on advertisements that appear when it can’t determine where to direct your request. Its smart. You can enter “google.cmo” and you’ll still end up at “google.com”.

There are directions on the website to explain how to go about setting it up for yourself. I’m going to give a while and see how it goes. I’ve not been blocked or had any problems so far, but I’ve not visited every site that I like to go to either. I’ll report back in a few days to let you know how its going.

I know its been a few days since my last post. I actually started writing a post two or three times in the last week but never got very far. Its Sunday morning so I’ll take some time to write a bit.

This past Thursday (June 21st) was my 3rd year anniversary working with CAS Severn (CAS). Today is my 3rd year anniversary working as a contractor for Rohde & Schwarz (RSA). Just a couple of mile stones in my career journey.

Today is the company picnic and I’m not sure that I’m going. I should go and I feel obligated to go, but I’m not sure I’m going to go. It starts in a couple of hours so I’ll just wait and see. I usually don’t enjoy those kinds of things; I feel better when I’m running around helping than actually just visiting. My coworkers aren’t planning to go, so there will only be a few people that I know.

Yesterday I took the old laptop that I’d previously turned into a picture frame and turned it into a small Ubuntu Linux server so I can have a local web server similar to the one this page and my other sites are bing hosted on. This box isn’t a very powerful server, but it will be fine for my testing.

The server edition of Ubuntu Linux is full a LAMP* system so I have access to the necessary software automatically. I’ve installed some software that I’m working with over at RSA (a CMS** called “e107″) and I’m going to look around at some other technologies available.

* LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and a server programming language such as Perl, PHP or Python. ** CMS is an acronym for Content Management System, software for creating and maintaining content for the web without the need for a great amount of knowledge regarding web content editing.

I’ve been working quite a bit and the time I have at home has been spent trying to prepare for the upcoming Oakmont weekend (see other posts), which is only a couple of days away from starting. The other day I wrote a nice long post and lost it because I closed the browser before “posting”. I didn’t feel like rewriting it.

More room in my Guest Room
In preparation of the upcoming Oakmont Weekend, I’ve gone through some boxes in my guest room closet. I was able to consolidate and dispose of quite a bit of stuff that I knew I’d never need. I never knew that standard PC type power cords could reproduce. I had at least 10 or 12 of these cables. Most of them have now been tossed. I’ll save a couple, just hope they don’t get randy and reproduce again. In any case, the closet now has room to hang clothes.

I still have a bit of work to do around the house. I have a book shelf in my guest room with my computer books. I’m going to move it into my back room. That will open up the room a little bit. I also have a bunch of VHS tapes that I need to throw away. Most of the ones I’ll just toss are those that I recorded myself. Any movie that I want to keep I’ll either burn to dvd or repurchase on dvd.

More computers, fewer keyboards and meeces…
Synergy. I just installed a program that allows me to share keyboard and mouse across computers. Its not like other remote control software where you control another screen, but only the mouse and keyboard. Its rather small and its pretty cool. I can now control the Media PC with my laptop’s keyboard and mouse pad instead of another keyboard and mouse combination. What’s also great about this is that its cross platform too. You can have a Mac and a PC using the same keyboard and mouse and its all over network connections.

(From the Synergy Website)

Best of all? Synergy is an open source project and is totally free!

If you use Vista, you have another option in the Folder Options that allows you to use check boxes to select items in the Windows Explorer windows. This may be easier for some people to see than the highlighting of lines alone.

Use the folder options View tab to change how you select items.
You can find this in the Control Panel or by choosing “Folder and Search Options”
from the Organize dropdown menu at the top of the explorer window.

Once the option is set, as you hover over items, a check box appears
next to it. You can then select options using the check box.

Did you know that you can check the status of your tax filing on-line? Point your browser to www.irs.gov and follow the links that says “Wheres my Refund?” You’ll need your SSN, Filing Status (single, married, etc.) and your exact refund amount. Note that I won’t provide a direct link and you shouldn’t follow one if you get an email with it. This could be a turned into phishing scam so the extra work to find the correct link is worth it.

I’ve successfully downloaded Vista after buying it through the Windows Market Place. I actually bought two, the Ultimate version for my Toshiba Qosmio and the Home Premium for my HP desktop. I’ve tried to install it several times but after about 45 minutes or longer, I receive the error message “Windows could not update the computer’s boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed.” Installation then stops and closes down.

A search using Google, returned one match for the entire message. More searching on Microsoft’s site and its newsgroups offered a few suggestions.  From what I can find about this message its caused by several things. Anti-virus software monitoring is one. I disabled that and it didn’t help. Another suggested that a registry corruption may have happened and I did what I could to ensure it was a valid entry. It didn’t help. Another suggestion was in regards to the computer’s BIOS, many today are including some anti-virus protection. I looked in my BIOS and nothing there suggested I had such protection.  I’m going to give up for now on the laptop. I’ll continue to do some research as I feel up to it.

Before I upgrade the desktop I needed to make sure one piece of hardware had updated drivers.  I have a Netgear SC101, basically a couple of hard drives mounted in a networked box. I use it for back up and storage of large chunks of data.  Unfortunately, I can’t simply take the drives out of the box and plug them into the computer because they’re format is not directly compatible with the Windows OS. I’ll have to reformat them, but in the mean time I’ll need to put the information on them somewhere else. I can probably split it up over several other hard drives, but thats a good bit of work and I’m just not up to doing all that. Perhaps after I’ve fully recovered from my surgery.

I could go ahead and install Vista on the desktop since I’m  not able to install it onto the laptop at this point. I can use the laptop to access the information on the Netgear SC101. The main problem is that I’ll want to play with Vista and I can’t do that on the desktop because I’ll have to sit in a chair at the desk. I can only do that for a few minutes at this point.  I can however, use the Media Center aspects of it because that computer is in my bedroom and I use it for when I watch TV before going to bed. So perhaps I will install it on the desktop after all.

By the way, if you want to buy and download Vista instead of picking up a boxed version, keep in mind a couple of things. You don’t have to burn it to a DVD or CD if you don’t want to. You can install it off of your hard drive. That is unless you need to do a clean install (which I may end of having to do with the laptop). In that case you’ll need it on a DVD.  There may also be very little help available. I burned the downloaded files to a DVD and then realized that I need to run the .EXE file that was included to extract the Vista Setup files. Once I did that I had to burn another DVD with the extracted files.

If you’ve had your computer for quite sometime and have never taken the case apart, your system may not be getting the necessary airflow to keep it cool. Of course I’m talking about a desktop computer, not a notebook or laptop. Every few months, you should unplug your computer’s power cord, open its case and vacuum the insides out. If you don’t have a hose attachment for your vac, you can use canned air. If using the pressurized air, be sure to do it where you won’t mind the dust going all over the place. I suggest a balcony or some other outside area.