Random Bits of Randomness

I've discovered the reason Solid State Hard Drives are so expensive....  They have to pay for all the replacement drives that die within the warranty period.  

I have had a lot of people emailing me about SSLBuddy since my Arcana site has been under the weather (more news about that coming soon), so I figured I should probably do something about it.  

Someone posted version 1.0 out on Atozed’s blog a while ago (http://www.atozed.com/Intraweb/Blog/20080915.EN.aspx), but the latest version has been AWOL for some time.  So here you go.  The link at the bottom of this post is to version 1.5.  

For those who don’t know, SSLBuddy is a tool I wrote several years ago to help convert SSL certificates into the format required by Indy, Intraweb and Octagate. If you use these tools, then this program will come in handy, if not, then probably not.

Warning: Geek Content:  I’m always tinkering on the command line in windows and inevitably wish I could run a command with elevated rights.  In Linux and Mac this is easy with the sudo command but whenever I type sudo at the windows command prompt, I imagine Bill Gates laughing a little.

I decided to write a simple little utility that will elevate commands at the Vista / Windows 7 command prompt much like sudo on Linux.

Download sudo4linux

After installing this file you will be able to run commands at the command prompt with “sudo” (or for those of you who can’t remember sudo, you can use “elevate”).  So for example, if you wanted to open notepad from the command prompt to edit your hosts file, you could do the following:

  sudo notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

or alternatively

  elevate notepad c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

and obviously you could leave off the filename to just open notepad with elevated privledges:

  sudo notepad

you can also use sudo to open a new elevated command prompt by typing the following:

  sudo cmd

or use the shortcut command

  cmda

I hope this is as helpful for you as it is for me.

At the risk of getting too geeky, I figured I’d share a cool query that I put together to remove outliers when acting on a dataset.  It’s nothing too special and certainly not doing anything new mathematically, but I’ve never had to do it within a single query before.  It came together nicely and figured I’d share if anyone else needs to do something similar.

The query below will get the average weight from a fictional Scale table holding a single weigh-in for each person while not permitting those who are overly fat or thin to throw off the more realistic average:

select w.Gender, Avg(w.Weight) as AvgWeight
    from ScaleData w
    join ( select d.Gender, Avg(d.Weight) as AvgWeight, 
                  2*STDEVP(d.Weight) StdDeviation
             from ScaleData d
            group by d.Gender
         ) d
      on w.Gender = d.Gender
     and w.Weight between d.AvgWeight-d.StdDeviation 
                      and d.AvgWeight+d.StdDeviation
   group by w.Gender

There may be a better way to go about this, but it works and works well.  If you have come across another more efficient solution, I’d love to hear about it.

NOTE: the above removes the top and bottom 5% of outliers out of the picture for purpose of the Average. You can adjust the number of outliers removed by adjusting the 2* in the 2*STDEVP as per: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

Special thanks to buddies Komeh and Victor for the help in figuring this out.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2010/01/17/the-right-to-link/

A must read explanation of the Link Economy of new media and why Rupert Murdock is an idiot.

The most important video you will watch this year.

I know the year only began, but I guarantee that this video will change the way you think about technology, the internet, your government and where we head in the future.

I find SQL Server pricing to be very disturbing.

SQL Server Express is free for databases up to 4GB in size.  That’s fine and all, but think about this…  If you have a database that will grow to 24GB in size, it is actually cheaper to split your data in 4GB chunks across 6 rackmount servers (including purchasing new hardware) than it is to upgrade to a version of SQL Server than can handle the data.

Hey Microsoft, how about a version of SQL Server that is within range of us small business and hobbyist coders out here?  And is database size really the differentiator that you should be using to force people to upgrade?

I understand limiting the amount of RAM in use by SQL Server and even the number of cores that will be used by the free version, but it’s pretty easy to pass 4GB of data. In fact, I think the limitation is darn near unreasonable.

I thought I had found a great solution to the problem.  Microsoft’s website explains a product called SQL Server Web Edition which is priced at $15 per proc per month.  Unfortunately, a call to Microsoft clarified that since I own the server, that price is not available to me.  It can only be purchased as part of a hosting plan from a qualified web hosting service.  Seriously Microsoft?  Seriously???

I’d be happy to pay something reasonable on a subscription plan if it removed the restrictions and provided some sort of SLA with it.  Unfortunately, MS doesn’t want my money unless they get a whole bunch of it.

Guess it’s time to upgrade to MySQL, PostgreSQL or Firebird.

I’ve been using Android for over a year now, first with the G1 on TMobile and now with the DROID on Verizon.  A big part of the Android experience is in the apps.  I figured I’d write up a list of my favorite Android apps.  They are in alphabetical order, so no preference is to be inferred by the numbering.

1. AK Notepad - Simply the best notepad app for the Android.  Quick, simple, configurable and the data can be easily backed up and restored. - Free
2. AndroZip - A great file unzip utility. - Free
3. Better Keyboard - A great replacement for the built in keyboard.  Searching for this in the market is tough because of all of the skins, so look for the publisher “Better Android” - Paid but inexpensive.
4. Bubble Level -  The best bubble level app out there for Android. - Free
5. Google Voice - Absolutely fantasic integration with your Google Voice number… just wish it integrated better with SMS, at least as well as it does with the phone app. - Free
6. Linda File Manager - A great file manager for your phone.  The real reason to get this (or most any file manager) is that it permits you to download file types not registered with Android from the browser.  A must have. - Free
7. Listen - The best podcast catcher in the market. - Free
8. NewsRob - A terrific rss newsreader that syncs perfectly with Google Reader.  You will never miss a news article or spend time rereading through crap you’ve already read or skipped. - Paid but inexpensive.
9. PicUp - A great picture uploader.  Makes sending photos to Flickr, Twitter or Facebook extremely easy. - Paid but inexpensive
10. Qik - Send live video streams to your website from your phone’s camera.  Awesome.  - Free
11. Remote Desktop - This app from Xtralogic is simply a terrific way to get on to your windows machines remotely.  And now that Android supports VPNs there is no reason to be disconnected from work, ever. - Paid, not cheap.
12. Robo Defense - This game is a terrific tower defense game for Android.  Will occupy way too much of your time. - Free trial, Paid but inexpensive.
13. Speed Forge 3D - This game is an interesting flying/driving style game that uses the accelerometer to steer.  Very cool - Free trial.
14. Speed Test - A nice app to determine just how fast your 3G connection is running.  Uses SpeedTest.Net in the backend. - Free
15. Sports Tap - The best app to keep up to speed on the football scores and stats.  - Free
16. UStream Broadcaster - Much like Qik, this app permits you to broadcast your phone’s camera live to the web but over UStream. Free.
17. Where - The best local info app on the market.  Smartly uses locale information to provide everything from movie listings to yellow page lookups.  Terrific interface - Free.
18. — bonus pick — Moxier Mail - This application isn’t really one that I’ll use any longer now that I’m on the DROID, but if you are stuck on a pre Android 2.0 device and don’t have built-in exchange support, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Moxier.  It is a terrific exchange client supporting ActiveSync, Microsoft’s push technology.  - Paid and not cheap.

Hope this helps any new Android users out there.

Microsoft finally finds the Marketing Mojo.  This ad for Windows 7 is actually very well done and shows that Microsoft isn’t completely inept at marketing.  It’s no churro, but I like it.

No mention of CodeGear…