Real World Computing

I'm getting a lot better at Dragon and the Sony IC Recorder. The trick, which was not reported anywhere on the Dragon site or in the documentation, was quite simple. My older version of Dragon used to start up and load my personal user profile but the newer version needs you to pick it whenever you start. At first, I thought that this was just an annoyance of the upgrade but I've since discovered it's a "feature" of the "Preferred" edition. Instead of loading my normal profile, I chose to create a new user and was asked, as part of configuration, what type of microphone was going to be used. There was a short list, or so it seemed until I started scrolling. Near the bottom of the list, I found the Sony IC recorder. I selected that and Dragon prompted me to go away and read a large chunk of novel to the stick and then bring it back. Foolishly, I chose Arthur C. Clark. I think I have been put off his books forever now. If you thought that the movie ...

Well, my overuse injury is back and it's quite painful to type. I'm not as worried as I was a few years ago when it first flared up because now I have Dragon . The problem is that Dragon doesn't lend itself to the open plan office environment. We've recently moved offices and in our old office, I used to be able to use Dragon without worrying about bothering my colleagues. This is no longer the case. After much deliberation I've found a solution (of sorts). I've managed to get a Sony IC recorder and have upgraded to Dragon Naturally Speaking version 9 Preferred. So, now to type longer documents, I take the recorder into a quiet meeting room and dictate to the sony stick. There are some other advantages to this as it frees my hands up for looking through other paperwork. When I get back to my desk I copy the MP3 file across and then from the Dragon Naturally Speaking menu I select Sound then Transcribe Recording. It is possible to transcribe the recording d...

Yesterday morning we got a defunct drive on our main Domino server. No problem, I called IBM and they arranged to send out a replacement drive within 4 hours. We got the drive within about 3. (Good Job). I mentioned to my boss that although the drive was a hot-swap drive, there was a chance, however slight, that it could bring the server down. This is my standard disclaimer nowadays. Well, I removed the old drive and waited about 30 seconds before plugging in the new one. Instead of the expected rebuild operation, the RAID controller flagged the new drive as defunct and Windows Server 2003 obliged by giving me a blue screen of death. Great... I had a look at the packaging that IBM sent... Reconditioned Drives... not good. I don't begrudge IBM for using reconditioned parts but I think it is a little bit cheeky. At Any rate, following a call to IBM was told to update the firmware on the drives as the replacement drive have shipped with the very latest. Isn't that just a typi...

Level: Beginner Development Today I thought I'd just share with you a little routine that I use when I want to make field level changes to a lot of documents without having to edit them. It's beginner stuff but I use it a lot. What you need A document, or group of documents with a field called DocNumber A view where you can select those documents. Notes Designer. Creating the Agent Open Designer on the database (or template) Click on Shared Code then Agents Click on the button marked New Agent In the Properties box, give your agent a Name eg: Change Document Number It should be a Shared Agent In the Target Section, it should read All Selected Documents You don't need to change anything else in the properties box, so just close it. Now, in the intialize event of your Agent (just click on the word initialize and type in the box that appears). Type your code (or paste it from this page). When you've finished, Close the agent windows and choose YES to save your changes. Th...

Normally, I wouldn't be using this blog as a platform for a quick rant about a gaming platform - I tend to keep it computers as much as possible but there's a post on DVD Bits that's really got my gander up. It talks about the cut-down Playstation 3 being released in Australia for $700. As the article says... "This shaves $300 off the current RRP, but also removes backwards compatibility with Playstation 2 titles ; takes out the multi-card reader (for your Memory Sticks, SD cards or Compact Flash) as well as 20GB of HDD space. On the plus side, it is still a Blu-ray player, and may be one of the cheaper and more reliable options." Now I'm a big fan of backward compatibility. One of the reasons why I felt that Microsoft's XBox deserved to fail was because they don't provide adequate compatibility with their own product. The article goes on to say that "Sony has confirmed that the 60GB model will only stay on shelves as long as stock lasts....

One thing has really been bugging me in Notes 8 so far. The apparent disappearance of the Set Bookmark as Home Page option. I tried configuring myself a new home page but I kept getting greedy and wanting six-panel monstrosities which for some reason, the welcome screen refused to create. That is, I thought it refused to create... until I opened Notes this morning and was confronted by my own handy-work - yuck. Whatever the cause, I decided that today I was going to get my old Navigator home page back. Here are the Steps... 1. Right Click on the Tab for your Database and choose Create Bookmark . 2. The usual bookmark window would appear. You can put the bookmark anywhere but I'm going to put it in favourites, since it is one of my favourites. So... Click on Favorite Bookmarks . Change the type to Application (default is view and this can sometimes muck up framesets). Click Ok to add the new bookmark. 3. Click on Open , then Favorite Bookmarks , then Right-Mouse Click on you...

As promised last time, I'm going to have a look at views. Suppose we decide to have a view called ITContacts. We will also need a form called $ViewTemplate for ITContacts. We can't change the $ViewTemplateDefault form because changing this will affect other web views of the database. Of course, if your database isn't otherwise available on the web, you can save yourself some trouble because otherwise you'll need to create a $ViewTemplate for each view that will be available on the mobile. Tips for the View Creating this view is pretty much the same as creating any other Notes view except that you need to be conscious of how much data you're pushing out. For example; Your normal web or notes view of IT Contacts might have; |FirstName | Surname | Company | Phone | Fax | Mobile | Email | Support ID | Address | City | State | This is fine for a wide screen but isn't at all useful on the mobile. Concatenation Consider concatenating fields; eg: Instead of the first t...

This is a Beginner/Intermediate Domino developer post. Most mobile phones these days will happily support web browsing. Some, like the Blackberry, will go much further and offer you an API for development. The problem really is that you need to find the common denominator rather than developing for one of the higher end platforms. I believe that the common denominator is probably plain old web access. If you've got Domino running web services, you most likely have many of your databases already served over the web. The key things to remember with mobiles are; Low Bandwidth Narrow Screens Simplicity This post will cover one method that could be used to provide non-push mobile access to databases using a Notes-only solution. There are plenty of other options available but this solution should work well in Domino 6 & 7 (and I'd expect, 8). Create a Mobile Page Open your database in designer and create a new page, you should call it mobile. This will be the front screen fo...

Why would you need to do this? Until recently, I'd have been at a loss to give you a good reason. Now however, since I've decided to modify some databases for Mobile Phone use, I have a very good reason. Suppose that you want your database to be searchable via the web and also searchable via mobile. On the web, you can afford to spread out on the screen and you want to use a lot of fancy graphics and fonts. On the mobile, you need to keep things as small and as plain as possible. Working with your existing Database Your database probably already has a $$SearchForm (or similar) and a $$SearchTemplateDefault. Leave these as they are and your web site will continue to work beautifully. Make a copy of the two forms and modify them for mobiles In these examples, we'll call... the new $$SearchForm, MSearchForm We'll call the new $$SearchTemplate for MSearchAll On your MSearchForm, you need only have; 1. An Editable Text Field (called SearchWord1) 2. A Button 3. A Computed T...

This is a Notes 8 Newbie Tip. Getting to the Sidebar If you can't see the sidebar, you should click on View, Sidebar, Open (In the Menu). The sidebar will display on the right hand side of the screen. Look in the Sidebar for an orange icon with the word Feeds next to it. If you don't see it, you may need to click (on the menu) View, Sidebar Panels, Feeds Adding a Feed 1. To Add a feed, click on the orange icon with a plus sign on it. 2. An Add New Subscription dialog box will appear. 3. Type (or paste Ctrl+V) the address of the feed you want to subscribe to. You can usually get these addresses by right-clicking on the RSS icons (or orange icons) on web sites and selecting Copy Link Location (in Firefox) Copy Shortcut (in Internet Explorer) 4. Click the button marked Go . This causes the bottom section of the dialog box to fill in. You can change these settings if you want to, but often they'll be ok. Note: You can change them later by right-clicking on the Feed Name and ...

We're a Notes 7 shop and will be until November 2007 at the earliest (while we wait for the relevant blackberry fixes for Notes 8). That said, I wanted to get some familiarity with the client without Losing my Notes 7 install. So far it's working, so here's how I did it. A Near Miss My first attempt at installing Notes 8 could have ended in disaster had I not been watching carefully. The software wanted to install right over the top of my Notes 7 installation and wouldn't give me an option to change directories. Installation Procedure I quickly located an IBM tech note on the problem which said to temporarily rename my notes directories. I renamed them from Lotus to xlotus (both the Application and the Data directories). This was enough to allow me to do a fresh install of Notes 8. This time, I chose a different location. After installation, I did the workstation setup and chose not to make Notes 8 my default email client (just in case it overwrote something im...

Ok, this is just a really quick post. I've been trying to get hotmail to work on the blackberry but it's just not as intuitive as Gmail and there's certainly no nice application available. In the past, I've been able to browse to hotmail but it doesn't automatically recognize the blackberry as a mobile device. This is (I think) due to the way the blackberry browser registers itself. Today, I stumbled upon this link and all my problems are gone. http://mobilecentral.ninemsn.com.au/hotmail.aspx It's still browser based, (no nice Gmail style app) but it's fast and works well enough. I don't know if this is due to the recent hotmail/windows live updates or if it has been there all along and I didn't notice.