I'm back!!!!

So it's been a while...almost 7 years actually.  Life got busy in the past 7 years.  I was separated, got a new position at work, and of course, I have been a happy little code monkey as well.  I definitely got a great grasp on C# and ASP .Net Core.  So much so that my Java skills which used to be more forté are not even remotely up to date.  I have found that Microsoft's .Net has matured to the point now where it doesn't make sense to ignore it anymore.  I find that PHP is too hard to work with, although it is a fairly robust platform (Wordpress for eg).  Ruby on Rails is another popular framework but it is rather slow.  JSP is definitely still a very robust platform but the hosting options are not as ubiquitous as the other options. 

So I am going to try a little experiment which I will start talking about in my next post.  I am going to try and develop an ASP .Net Core 3.1 MVC Web Application on Linux.  I am using Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine) on my laptop and have tested it out I was able to get a small sample app to run.  Pretty cool.

Also on more physical experimentation things, I intend on trying an experiment in a leather alternative.

Stay tuned, my intent is to start posting regularly.  Since I have some topics that will involve regular posts, there should be more content here in the future.

Until next time my fellow nerds!!!

Learning C#

So I decided to finally take the plunge.  Despite getting a sneak preview of C# way back in 2000-2001 I never really learned it.  I delved into .NET programming a bit but only from an ASP and C++ perspective.  We have need of a utility at work, and I have already built one in VBA on top of Excel 2007.  To say it's quirky is a bit of understatement.  I've decided to build it again as a stand alone app and learn C# while I'm at it.

After all the issues I had with VBA and different forms I'm going to use a MVP framework called MVC#.  This should make keeping track of authentication and any persistent data fairly easy.

The program is to manage medication administration records at work.  This way we can generate them rather than typing them up every time, and gives us a record of what a particular client had received in the past.  Since we will be dealing with sensitive client information that must remain confidential I will have to add encryption to the data.  Rather than use SQL I want this to be easy to deploy since we don't usually have administrator access at work.  I will use flat files to save all the information, and the "database" will be just the model component of the Model View Presentation framework.

So I will post more details in my next post.  Until next time.

Nerdtek out!

Medieval Tech

So I'm part of the Society for Creative Anachronism and have a few projects on the go currently. I will be detailing my progress in this blog as I progress. Currently I've already made a maille coif. My current projects are small mead, gruit, (I love brewing!) A maille hauberk. A gambeson and a bow and arrows. The project that I'm currently working on is a batch of small mead.

So here's the modified recipe that I've used. This is based on the original medival (well Elizabethan actually but close enough)

1 kg Honey
7 1/3 l water
1/2 tsp Ale yeast
1 1/4 Tbsp Ginger
3/5 Tbsp Orange peel
14 or so resealable bottles (I used old Grolsch bottles but you can use pop bottles with twist tops too.)
Cheese cloth
Fermenting bucket (must be food grade, and not metallic. I use an ice cream bucket)

So combine the honey with the water in a stock pot. Heat the mixture up carefully watching it, as if it boils over it happens fast. Keep a rolling boil going and spoon off the scum from the top when the total volume is reduced to about 5.56 litres then it's time to add orange zest. Zest 3/5 Tbsp of orange peel carefully avoiding the white part of the peel into a few layers of cheese cloth. Tie the cheese cloth and place in the pot. Continue to boil for 15 minutes (this is the last 15 minutes of the reduction) grate the ginger and add to an additional cheese cloth. Add the ginger at the last minute of the boil. The reduction should take 2 to 3 hours depending. Don't forget to continually remove the scum from the top. It should be clear by the time the mixture has been reduced. Transfer the mixture (including the two cheese cloths) to your primary fermenter. Cover the fermenter with a clean tea towel and allow mixture to cool. Once the mixture has cooled to luke warm take a hydrometer reading. Make note of your initial reading as this will give you your approximate final alcohol content. Pitch the yeast into the fermenter and cover with the tea towel again. Check every day until the specific gravity has lowered to approximately 1.004 +- 0.0005. At this point transfer the mixture to the bottles. I usually syphon the mixture to do this most effectively although you do want some of the yeast to transfer to the bottle to carbonate your mead. After 3 or 4 days refrigerate your mead. It will be drinkable in a week, but will taste better if you age it a bit longer.

One thing to keep in mind is sterilise all your utensils and containers. I use a steriliser that I obtained from my local brew supply store.

Step 1. Add honey and water to stock pot and bring to a boil.
Step 2 - with 15 minutes to go add the orange peel wrapped in cheese cloth to the mixture.
Step 3 - zest orange peel and add to a few layers of cheese cloth and tie off the cloth.
Step 4 - at the last minute of boil add the orange peel to the pot.
Step 5 - Transfer the mixture to the fermenter (in this case an ice cream tub)
Step 6 - Once the mixture is luke warm sprinkle the yeast into the mixture.
Step 7 - After 24 hours push the cheese cloths down into the mixture to get the yeast off of them and take a specific gravity reading. In the case of this batch mine was 1.054. Make sure to note this reading some where as you will need it later.

R2D2 powered by Android

So I'm in the process of design a full size autonomous R2D2. I have found a hardware platform that will be more than sufficient for the needs of this droid. So this will actually be a droid powered by Android!! I'm really looking forward to it. I still haven't decided on building materials by the R2 Builders Group on yahoo has all the blueprints I could possibly need. I'm going to use a pandaboard as the brains of the droid. Pandaboard is a board similar to the beagleboard, but this one is using the OMAP4 chip which means dual-core ARM processor. Totally awesome. Should be able to get some fairly complex code running on this as well as run the basic motors and controls. I'm going to emulate the hardware set up first and develop the code probably using a hybrid of neural network code and scripting. I'll post more on the Pandaboard next post.

Need your help.

Hey folks I am promoting a friends band. They're called Baker Kane and they're very talented. If you could do them a favour. It only requires a couple of steps, one if you're already a member of digg.

1. Register at www.digg.com.
2. Second "digg" this article

If they get enough diggs the link will show up on the front page of www.digg.com, and a lot more people will discover this amazing group. They're in process of compiling material for an album, but if you like check out their myspace page.

Thanks for your help
Ciao For Now

Dano

Can't send email and have a router here's a tip

I had a friend call me up today with computer trouble. It is a common problem that people experience with routers. I figured I would post the reasons this occurs and a fix for it so that others might benefit from it.

The problem was that he was able to receive emails but not send them. This usually occurs when one has a router because the information leaving the router is getting scrambled. In order to explain this I'll have to explain how TCP/IP the language of the internet works (very simplified version)



I'm tempted on talking about the tubes now but I'll refrain ;-)




TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. It is what is used to send and receive information over the internet. It is made of different layers the:

1. Link Layer
2. Internet Layer
3. Transport Layer
4. Application Layer.

For the purposes of our discussion we are only going to concern ourselves with the transport layer. The Transport Control Protocol allows information to be broken up into smaller pieces called packets. So lets say we were sending an email that has an attachment. We'll say this attachment is 10 KB or 10 Kilobytes. Some people prefer to refer to this as 10 KiB or 10 KilobInary Bytes as it actually refers to 10240 bytes or 1024 x 10 bytes. I will refer to the shorter version from here on in, simply by virtue of being stuck in my ways. ;-)

The default MTU or Maximum Transmission Unit is 1492 this determines what size chunks the information is broken up into when sending. So in the case of IPv4 the first 20 bytes are header which leaves 1472 bytes for data and checksum. Inside the TCP datagram we have 20 bytes for the tcp header. Which leaves 1452 Bytes for data. So a file of size 10240 would be broken up into 8 packets (10240 divided by 1452 is 7 and a bit so rounding up we get 8 packets).
Now here's where the problem arises, if there is an error in the packet the packet has to be resent, what happens with a larger packet size is there is more likelihood to have an error the more bits there are in a packet. So the mail agent keeps trying to send a packet that ends up getting mangled. Once the size or MTU is lowered the packet sends because there is less likelihood of an error, and the email can be sent.

So for example on a linksys router:



You would change the MTU drop down tab to Manual, and then change the size by reducing the default 1492 to 1452 to see if that decreases the error rate.



Next try to send an email with an attachment, if the send error disappears you are set, if not reduce the MTU value by 10.

There is a more in depth way of doing this so that you can optimize this setting, but this is the easiest way for the average user who doesn't want to get too complicated and start checking for packet fragmentation/mangling.

Hope this helps...until next time

Nerdtek signing off.

Scratch the Scottish Oak

After speaking with my uncle Paul who knows a ton about guitar making. It would seem oak is the absolute worse wood to choose. So I'm going with good ole' swamp ash.

Anyways enough of the guitar stuff. Seeing as though I'm calling this blog Nerdtek I should post something appropriate. Tech stuff for nerds!

I don't personally have a cell phone. At the moment I don't really have a need for it, but I have been kind of geeking out over Motorola's KRZR. A friend of mine picked one up and I liked what I saw. He picked up an unlocked phone, and hacked his bios. Has quite a few games on it, among other interesting utilities. He also hacked his lights to suit his needs. I'll provide more of write up after I interview him.

I was a little disappointed by Palm's Foleo. The Treo was where it's at a phone and mobile computing device in one, but they missed the boat a little with it as they didn't integrate the phone features of the Treo into the Foleo. Keep your eyes peeled though as I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Palm listens to what people are saying and offer it.

As some of you know from my other blog, I'm not a Microsoft guy. I use their stuff when I'm forced to but if I can get away with it, I'm M$ free. So I've been really interested in the One Laptop Per Child project. Recently Nicholas Negroponte has brought Intel on board. After a long period of adversity between the two groups it looks like they've decided to play nice.