Glass Ocean

Cascading Asynchronous Javascript and HTML (AJAH) Regions

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Perry under Blog
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This blog post is a snippet from my Cascading Asynchronous Javascript and HTML (AJAH) Regions sketch that was recently published to Google Drive.

Office 2010 Breaks Backwards Compatibility With Certain VBA Projects

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Perry under Blog
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So it seems that Microsoft has gone ahead and “done us all a favor” by having Office 2010 now save any type libraries that have been referenced in the Visual Basic Editor with the document itself to further improve compatibility between different versions of Office. What this actually ends up doing is completely breaking our VBA macros and sometimes the entire document becomes unusable on any computer running a previous version of Office.

We developed the Excel file on a computer with Office 2007, making a reference to the “Microsoft Word 12.0 Object Library” because we wanted to send some data from the Excel file out to a Word document using VBA, something like a simple “Generate Report” button. This worked and we were able to open the Excel file on computers running both Office 2007 and Office 2010, as well as generate the report.

But here’s the problem…Once the Excel file was opened then saved using Excel 2010 – without having any changes to the VBA code – the “Microsoft Word 12.0 Object Library” reference that was specifically added disappears and gets automatically replaced with a “Microsoft Word 14.0 Object Library” reference. Now when we open the Excel file on a computer with Excel 2007 it will try (and fail) to load the Word 2010 (14.0) Object Library and this results in a few serious problems:

Opening the file in Excel 2007 is very slow and causes the program to stop responding.
Attempting to correct the reference through the Visual Basic Editor is a no-go. The reference appears as “MISSING: Microsoft Word 14.0 Object Library” with a check mark. Attempting to clear the check to remove the reference results in an error: “Can’t perform requested operation”. Microsoft says this error happens when doing something illegal during VBA code execution, but we are simply opening the file and trying to remove the reference – we are not in break mode and no code is being executed!

Don’t Fear the July 9th Internet Doomsday, Take Action Now!

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Perry under Blog
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On July 9th, 2012 the FBI will shut down a group of servers operated by a cyber crime ring who they’ve recently dismantled. These rogue criminals have jointly infected over 500,000 computer systems in the United States alone with variants of the “TDSS Alureon” malware. This malware redirects your computer’s internet traffic to servers that are run by those criminals, where they tailor your web browsing experience by injecting their own (risky and sometimes dangerous) search results, advertisements, products and services, hoping you’ll give them your money in one way or another.

Dell: Repeat It Using Phonetics

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Perry under Blog
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“Dell Notebook” image courtesy of Break.com

Fun encounter with Dell tech support today. I called in with a service tag and the agent simply stated:

“You have to read it to me using phonetics.”

Woah there buddy, I speak English and if you can’t understand me then perhaps you should read back what I just said to clarify? My brain doesn’t enter military speech very easily; I cannot conjure up alpha bravo charlies at your discretion.

After converting what I could to phonetics, he just said the same thing:

“You have to read it to me using phonetics.”

Now looking like a fool myself, I just hung up on the guy. Dude, I just got Dell’t.

WordPress Trouble: No plugins match your request

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Perry under Blog
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UPDATE: From the WordPress team: “This is a problem with api.wordpress.org. We’re working on it and should have it resolved momentarily.”

UPDATE 2: Issue has been fixed! I can now search plugins from the backend.

Woops! It looks like something broke with the core WordPress plugin search feature that is powered by WordPress.org.

One minute I was searching and installing plugins like normal and the next minute I was greeted with a confusing message:

“No plugins match your request.”

I was sure the plugin still exists so I went to WordPress.org to verify and sure enough it was there.

A few other users are actively reporting this problem at the WordPress.org forums. Check there to see what I and others are currently saying about it.

This is breaking news so I’m doing a quick post to help anyone else who might be searching Google for a solution. I’ll post an update once I know of one myself but I think it’s safe to say their search is broken for now!

Google Chrome + Gmail Super Slow? avast! WebRep May Be the Culprit…

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Perry under Blog
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Google Chrome is my current browser of choice due to the bloat/crashes surrounding the latest versions of Firefox (I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the unavoidable Adobe Flash plugin). Lately though, I have been experiencing a tremendous amount of lag when clicking between emails in my Gmail Inbox simply to read them. I first checked Resource Monitor and noticed my CPU was spiking to 100% every time I clicked on an email.

I wondered if this was due to a plugin so I opened a Chrome Incognito window (which disables plugins) and checked Gmail performance again. Sure enough, the lag was gone! I disabled my plugins one by one, each time checking performance in Gmail. I found the avast! WebRep plugin to be the culprit in my case. Simply disabling the plugin makes the lag go away. Too bad, I was really liking avast! and everything it has to offer for free…

Changes Ahead for GlassOcean

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Perry under Blog
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There will be some changes coming to GlassOcean.net as I am transitioning into a new field of work, but I assure you that nothing will be lost! I plan to use this domain and website to promote my new side business: Advanced Concepts in Web Development and Design. The existing blog content and tutorials here on GlassOcean.net will be moved to PerryButler.net to maintain some separation between my formal business and my informal blogging efforts.

See you on the flip side…

How to Disable Outbound Links in Embedded SWF

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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Over the last couple months I’ve been developing some digital signage kiosk software for shopping malls in Southern California. One requirement of this software is that it should cycle content (advertisements, coupons, videos, etc) and provide touchscreen features (print coupons, signup for mall events) on-demand without ever being interrupted.

The kiosks should NEVER be instructed to navigate to an external website or URL because this would break the automated content cycle.

As we progressed through several development phases, what initially seemed easy – keeping the kiosk cycle running 24/7 – soon became a difficult task. We also had the problem of getting people to actually use the kiosks. Who wants to be sucked into an advertising loop anyhow? So we started adding more features in order to bring awareness and attention to the usefulness of the kiosks.

Why Carrier IQ’s “Cell Phone Spying Rootkit Software” is a Bad Thing Contrary to Expert Analysis

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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One statement that is constantly thrown out there to make Carrier IQ’s software seem legitimate is this:

“Three of the main complaints we hear from mobile device users are (1) dropped calls, (2) poor customer service, and (3) having to constantly recharge the device. Our software allows Operators to figure out why problems are occurring, why calls are dropped, and how to extend the life of the battery. When a user calls to complain about a problem, our software helps Operators’ customer service more quickly identify the specific issue with the phone.”

If it sounds useful to you, that’s because it is! Every device should have self check and correction mechanisms in place. We have these in software programming, they’re called error handlers. In other applications, we may just have to log some data to visualize trends over time for an accurate diagnosis of existing problems or potential points of optimization.

My problem is not whether Carrier IQ may be “snooping” on people. As with any communications/telephony issue, these are the real security implications that I can see: Continue reading

Blackberry Outage Is Affecting Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) Users

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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Over the past three days, millions of Blackberry users have been unable to send/receive email and surf the web. Now it’s a global problem with every major news channel and radio station touting the severity.

RIM has posted an official response which is being updated regularly, summing up the problem to an oversight with their email backup system.

Businesses who host their own Blackberry services using Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) usually get by unscathed, since global outages like this rarely affect the synchronization infrastructure between a Blackberry employee and the company’s BES server.

However, today I can confirm that our BES system is being affected by this outage.

ComputerWorldUK also reports that BES users are being hit by the outage.

UPDATE: Service has been restored!!! Some time in the afternoon yesterday (~3:00 PM PST), all of the emails which had been held up on our BES system finally synced up with our handhelds.

Kelly Thomas, a Man From My Community, Was Beaten To Death By 6 Fullerton Police Officers On July 5th, 2011

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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Why does it take SIX police officers to apprehend ONE 160 lb. schizophrenic homeless man, and WHY DON’T THEY PROCEED TO CUFF HIM AT ANY POINT?

Kelly was brutally murdered while terrified and crying for help.

On July 5, 2011 six police were caught on tape beating Kelly Thomas, a “peaceful homeless man” into a coma while he was screaming “Dad! Dad! Dad!” for help.

I’d like to know what procedure it was that instructed Police Officers to bash Kelly’s head in and tazer him repeatedly while more cops show up to participate, NOT ONCE PUTTING CUFFS ON HIM, until the still, lifeless body of a brain damaged man lay there on the concrete?

Turns out Kelly’s dad is an ex-police officer of the Fullerton Police Department and teaches police procedures. When he was interviewed about the killing he stated that police procedures were certainly not followed. Apparently, the Fullerton Police Department and the Orange County District Attorney are close friends. The city of Fullerton already tried to pay off Kelly’s family with $900,000. Because of this, the FBI is now involved.

Need A Website Designed?

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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I recently landed some freelance work doing websites for people, and after fulfilling their wishes I’ve been able to expand my business in this area through more work and new opportunities recommended to me by happy customers.

I am excited to begin offering Web Design Services!

As a promo deal, I’m giving 20% off my regular price until the end of July 2011.

Hop over to my Web Design Services page for more information.

Free Album Stream – DAL Music – “Music” the EP by DAL

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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DAL released his first DUBSTEP/ELECTRO album for free last week. Simply titled “Music” the EP, I think it’s accurate to say that this album is inspired by cutting edge dubstep and electro producers. It blurs the line between house, glitch, funk, dance, and psychedelic.

And I can attest to his production skills as I have seen them first hand; he is highly talented! If you’re a fan of electronic music in any way, you definitely don’t want to miss this one…head on over to his official website and and snatch up your free album before it goes retail. Or become a follower and stay up to date on news and releases at one of the many DAL Music fan pages.

Official DAL website – stream the entire album for free.
DAL on Soundcloud – stream the entire album for free.
DAL on Facebook – become a follower; stay up to date on news and releases.
DAL on Twitter – become a follower; stay up to date on news and releases.

For his debut, I posted a small press release on Reddit.com where his album has received excellent feedback and thousands of listens so far. It even got re-posted by someone else on Reddit.com to the dubstep channel, where it gained more momentum. Join the discussion on Reddit!

FL Studio 10 Released!

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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My software of choice for composing music, FL Studio 10 has just been released! Previously known as FruityLoops, it started out as a sound looping program for creating grooves and patterns, but earned a poor reputation from critics and elitists for its amateur “toy-like” interface and capabilities, which is probably why those misinformed ignorants still consider the software to be of questionable quality, claiming it does not compare to a professional DAW used in a real studio. Are we still living in 1992?

The very passionate development team at Image-Line continually expanded upon FruityLoops until it became the fully fledged digital audio workstation behemoth that it is today, far more capable than FruityLoops ever was. It rivals even the best DAW software around (ProTools, Logic, I’m lookin’ at you!) and it does so at a very cut-throat price. If you’re looking for the most affordable DAW that will do practically everything, FL Studio is choice.

FL Studio has played a key role in my own music productions throughout the years, and I personally can’t wait to try out the exciting new features. Auto-tune (Newtone), here I come!

Perry’s ID3 Tag Library

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Perry under Blog, Free Software, Software Development
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ID3v2 Perry’s ID3 Tag Library is a free ID3v1 and ID3v2 tag parsing utility for MP3 files that has been tested to work with Visual Studio, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Visual Basic for Applications and VBScript.

Use the library as a reference in your own Visual Studio project to parse ID3 tag data embedded in MP3 files, or use the ActiveX control to give familiar Microsoft Office products such as Word and Excel the ability to parse ID3 tags. This library is useful for anyone looking to implement ID3 tag capabilities in their own custom solutions and applications.

You might be interested in Perry’s ID3 Tag Viewer which is a full implementation of the current ID3 Tag Library version.

Tag Writing is currently in the works as of May 2012!

The ID3TagLibrary is pretty simple to use:


Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
  ' create an mp3 object from a file on the hard drive
  Dim mp3 As New ID3TagLibrary.MP3File("C:\song.mp3")
  ' put the mp3's title into a label control
  Label1.Text = mp3.Title
  ' put the mp3's artwork (if any!) into a picturebox control
  PictureBox1.Picture = mp3.Tag2.Artwork
End Sub

DIY Shovel Guitar

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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What if I told you that to craft your own guitar, all you need is a shovel, a drill, a few bits of guitar hardware, and some patience!? I wasn’t able to find out the original crafter’s name because the source is in Russian, but the series of pictures and accompanying Youtube video were straightforward enough. Here’s the final result:

Shovel Guitar!!

The article where I found this only had a series of pictures and I’m by no means a skilled guitar crafter, so I’ve added descriptions where I could.

Can We Stop AT&T From Acquiring T-Mobile?

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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Bell System Big news the other day, AT&T is about to acquire T-Mobile. Internet rage ensues. It was only a matter of time before someone started a petition, one of which made it to the front page on reddit.com:

Please sign the petition to actively stop AT&T from becoming a huge monopoly and saving our right to choose

Short history debrief: First AT&T was Ma Bell, then the Federal government broke that up into several companies which created fierce competition in the market. Many of those companies grouped together again under the same umbrella, in one legal way or another. Several years later and the Ma Bell antics are in full swing once again; in 2005 it was announced that Cingular Wireless, a joint venture between AT&T and BellSouth, would be sold under the AT&T name. And now AT&T is after T-Mobile.

If history taught us anything, wasn’t it that we can’t allow corporations to monopolize an entire industry?

AT&T

Board Warriors Tell Us How Great It Is To Be Rich

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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A long time ago, I created this idea called Verbal Reckoning where I would collect the most absurd claims and arguments from the web and comment on them myself in a thorough, very critical, insulting and sarcastic way…like policing internet trolls (a contradiction in itself). But mostly it was for humor’s sake, entertainment for the soul. This project idea faded quickly as I took interest in other things, but there was one relic from this ancient endeavor which I recently found on my FTP server and still hold close to my heart…

Riyad Mammadov, Enterprise Architect says, “Don’t Waste Your Time Commenting Source Code”

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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“A well-designed program uses classes and design patterns; it has high cohesion, low coupling, and limited cyclomatic complexity.” -Riyad Mammadov
BEEP BEEP BEEP BULLSHIT DETECTED

Source: Reddit user rafekett

Riyad Mammadov

Any programmer worth his intellect would be cautious of statements such as this one. I’m surprised to see this advice come from an Enterprise Architect with 16 years of experience. Come on man, put away that skunk! Commenting source code is a tool like any other, including unit tests. Some people prefer different tools or a combination of them all. Design practices such as unit testing and commenting source code should yield positive results when used correctly. Why else would these tools exist?

To make an outrageous claim that one should not use a fundamental tool such as commenting source code would be akin to me saying unit tests are a waste of time because they introduce an extra layer of design and complexity that is probably not necessary or useful at all, causing more dependency and a longer development period, not to mention costing the client more money in the end. While my statement is correct in some context or another, there are aspects of unit testing which I cannot deny the plausibility of, such as NASA using their own method of unit testing during the development of Project Mercury in the 1960′s. And I bet my butt that they also had documentation in the form of written English, which is precisely why commenting source code is a solid practice!

Classic sensational headline with a follow up clarification to keep oneself in good standing? In response to his original article, which received a flurry of negative feedback from Reddit.com users, he goes on to clarify that “one often-repeated mistake was that I am advocating against ALL source code comments. This is simply not true, and if you read the blog post through the end, you will see a pretty funny example of a very legitimate comment one programmer left in his code.”

What Is The Cloud?

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Perry under Blog
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Office Space What the hell? How did this \\heaven\HP4650 printer get added to my system at login!?

Enter Google Cloud Print.

“By connecting your printer with the Google Cloud you will be able to print to your printer from any computer or smart phone, regardless of where you are. Just activate the Google Cloud Print connector in Google Chrome and your printer will automatically be available to you from Google Cloud Print enabled web and mobile apps.”

The Google Cloud? The Cloud? Cloud Computing? In the Cloud? Google Computing? In the Google!? AAAGGGHHH SHORT CIRCUIT….

Utterly confusing. This is simply the American way, re-branding old $hit for profit. So Google has their own Cloud in the sky. I guess the way they see it, different Cloud-based providers will have their own “Clouds” (read: data centers) where they host and provision software, services and resources on the web.

But how is Google Cloud Print any different than setting up Internet Printing Protocol on your HP Color LaserJet 4650 or Canon iR5000 printer? I’ll tell you the glaring differences:

Requires Google Chrome on the computer that will be sharing the printer.
Requires Google Cloud Print-enabled apps to print from, such as Gmail, Google Docs, and Chrome OS. There aren’t many alternatives at this point.
Works with just about any printer attached to your computer.
You now rely on Google as a middle man between your internet device and your printer at home.