I am in the process of migrating my NAS content from a Synology RS-407 to the new QNAP TS-459U – very exciting. I will do performance comparisons soon, and the Synology device will end up on Ebay in a few weeks. For now I just want to report a small issue that cost me a [...]

Copying Visio 2007 drawings and embedding them into other documents can have startling effects. Lines can get routed differently, breaking a careful layout. Dotted lines can appear as solid lines, making it confusing to distringuish between different types of objects. There are 2 important things to know that can help avoid these issues.   Use the [...]

The mobile providers’ device lineups are ever-changing, and the forces that create the dynamics are difficult to understand. Six month ago, when the Google Nexus One was announced along with T-Mobile as the initial service provider, this subsidiary of the German Telekom appeared to be on the cutting edge of the promising Android market and [...]

“SQL error: not an error” is an odd SQLite error message that can be confusing. It stumped me for a moment. The fix is quite simple: C:\Android\android-sdk-windows\tools>adb -e shell # sqlite3 /data/data/com.pod.tripsnmiles/tripsnmiles/tripsnmiles sqlite3 /data/data/com.pod.tripsnmiles/tripsnmiles/tripsnmiles SQLite version 3.5.9 Enter “.help” for instructions sqlite> select * from trip; select * from trip; SQL error: not an error [...]

Trips’n’Miles for Android is available for download from the Android Market. Simply search for “tripsnmiles” on your device. Unlike with the Windows Mobile version, no separate database installation is required, which makes it much easier to install and use. Trips’n’Miles for Android has the same feature set as the Windows Mobile version and most of [...]

I followed the upgrade instructions in this post. There were no issues with my Nexus One. Everything worked as described. Rebooting took a while, but once it was back up, I was blown away. The performance is much better. I am working on my first Android app, and while I use the emulator for development [...]

I upgraded my FIOS service at home from 5/1 Mbps to 25/25 Mbps for almost the same cost ($10 more). This was a while ago, but for the first time today I actually measured transfer rates close to the nominal speed. I am not using the ActionTec router, but a Netgate M1n1wall running pfSense that [...]

Aero peek is the name for probably the most annoying feature in Windows 7. When you press and hold Alt-Tab, the task switcher pops up with little thumbnails for all your active windows.Unfortunately, after 1000 ms, aero peek kicks in, the task switcher disappears randomly and the currently selected window is shown in its full [...]

The SATA controller’s mode of operation cannot be changed to AHCI after Windows 7 is installed, because the AHCI driver will be missing and the system cannot boot. Here is how to address this without repairing or re-installing Windows. With the SATA controller still running in IDE mode, start the registry editor as administrator. To [...]

My last computer, purchased in January 2006, was a barebone kit from TigerDirect based on an Asus P5NSLI motherboard and a 3GHz Pentium D dual core processor. I added 2 XFX GForce 7600 graphics accelerators with SLI. It was reasonably fast back then and still is today. I am not a notorious gamer, but knowing [...]