I have upgraded to the new blogger

I just had to upgrade to the infamous new version of Blogger. I have to admit that it was much less painful than I first expected. It took about 5 minutes with my 150 posts.

Now I can start into looking up what new features I can take advantage of...

Web hosting options

In my search for a good web hosting company, I have compiled a list of vendors I have found that can be usable.

Most companies require you to transfer the domain to them. And most of them also deliver email as part of their hosting services.

These are my thoughts after a quick look. As time goes by my requirements will probably be more accurate.

Database backup. Offline that is. Only one vendor seems to let me have access to the database and get a backup when I need it. Also check how you can work with the database directly. Raw log files are usually not accessible for me. Many provide (at extra cost?) access to the logs in a parsed form.

Shopping web hosting I believe that when you buy hosting from a company where you do not get personal interaction or service you get no loyalty to them. As so, you probably will switch hosting provider more often. The best way for a hosting company to keep their customers is to make it hard to leave. They can do so by making it hard for you to get your data back. Have you ever tried to export your address book in Hotmail or Gmail?

Company	Comment
GoDaddy	Lots of options. Can host both Linux and Windows based sites. You do not get access to log files, and backup of SQL Servers seems to be difficult. They do not require DNS hosting to host a web site.
DiscountASP	A pure Microsoft hosting environment. Lots of options for .NET developers. Seems interesting, as they understand and adapt better to .NET developers than the other hosting companies I have found.
One	A Linux hosting company. Cheap hosting, but you need to transfer the domain to them. No download limit, but they do not allow downloads of content (hit) larger than 1MB.
Webhuset	Offers both Windows and Linux based hosting. It is a Norwegian company and their web pages are in Nowegeian.
Active24	Hosting company based in Europe. Offers both Linux and Windows hosting. You can also buy SharePoint hosting and hosted Exchange. (For Windows mobile.)
Layered Tehcnologies	This hosting company delivers only dedicated servers, both on Linux and Windows. But firewall seems to cost extra.
Cliche	A Norwegian web hosting company with low prices.

How to backup your computer with rsync or robocopy

when you store lots of data on your computer it is necessary to do backups of some kind. And least if you care for your data. For most users this task is not trivial. Today I will talk about two simple ways to backup your computer if you have either two computers at home or have an external disk drive you can map to your computer.

The tools used is either Microsoft® Robocopy or a tool called rsync.

The goal

The goal is to copy your files from one computer to another computer (or disk drive). How you choose to do so is up to you, here I'll talk about two ways to do so. The backup solution here is designed to protect your data from disasters like stolen laptop, hard drive failures and so forth. It is not a tool to recover an old version of your document if you need so.

About backup You can loose your family pictures forever. In a computer, hard drives is the component that is most exposed to failures.

Both tools are relatively fast as only changed files are sent off the computer. As so, the first copy is always the slowest.

Robocopy

Robocopy is a free tool from Microsoft. It comes with their resource kits. If you don't have this tool you can download Robocopy from me.

Robocopy is a client-only tool. So you just need this one executable on your Windows powered computer. Just map your external drive as a drive letter and copy away. The syntax should be like this:

robocopy c:\ z:\backup-c /mir /np /r:0 /w:0

Your local drive is c:\ and the remote network drive is z:\. The /mir parameter ensures that if you delete a file on your local drive it will be deleted from the network drive as well.

Rsync

Rsync is primarily a client/server tool. You will need a (GNU/Linux) server running with the rsync server part to backup your files this way. The benefit of a client/server tool is that it works better on slow lines and that it can compare the content of a file and only transmit the changes to a file instead of the whole file. It also supports compression of data.

This article will not focus about how to set up the server part. There are lots of articles on the Internet that do so. My /etc/rsyncd.conf looks like this:

[nx9420]
comment=Backup nx9420
path=/data/nx9420
list=false
uid=root
gid=helge
use chroot=true
read only=false
write only=true

There are some Windows versions of rsync available, but the easiest and best is probably to install Cygwin and rsync from them.

When the server is up and running, I backup my drive with a command like this:

rsync -azv --delete-after . 192.168.1.2::nx9420

You have to be in your local drive root directory for this command to work. You will also need to substitute the IP address with your server's IP address.

Unsuccessful iFolder installation

The other day I was given the task to install iFolder 3.5 on a server. That turned out not to be an easy task. In the end we had to revert to iFolder 3.2 running OES. This is the last commercial version available from Novell.

iFolder is a file synchronization tool, allowing you to backup your files on the fly when you are online. Originally developed by Novell, but i now a open-source product donated to the community.

iFolder server

From their homepage the install seems easy. You just need a few components. If you run SUSE Linux you can download already compiled packages for everything. Unfortunately they don't work out of the box on newer SUSE releases.

• iFolder with Simian (included in iFolder download)
• libflaim (developed by Novell)
• Mono
• Apache server with mod_mono installed

The source code for all components are available for download so compilation is possible. But configuration can be demanding.

I ran out of time when I tried to make mod_mono work with Apache.

Links

• iFolder homepage
• Mono project
• Tags: iFolder, Linux, open source

<<iFolder-install.htm>>

mod_mono and xsp have different versions

When running mod-mono-server you often get an error message like this:

mod_mono and xsp have different versions.

This happens mainly for two reasons;

1. You actually have different versions of mod_mono and xsp.
2. You try to load a webpage directly from mod-mono-server using your brower. In this case you'll need to load xsp instead of mod-mono-server.

Architecture of an .NET application

When a HTTP request enters the Apache web server, mod_mono handles the request. mod_mono talks to mod-mono-server using a socket. This talk is a binary protocol, and the error message above is something you get when you run different versions of mod_mono and xsp.

mod-mono-server hosts the .NET environment.

External links

• mod-mono-server manpage
• Tags: mono, mod_mono, mod-mono-server

<<mod_mono-version.htm>>

Email submissions to Blogger from Windows Mobile does not work

Email submissions on Blogger.com does not work for me when I send emails from my Windows Mobile.

Blogger could not process your message at this time.

Error code: 9.1B538E0

Original message:
From: my email address
Date: None
Subject: None
None

I get this kind of error messages. And no match on the Internet when I search with Google.

I don't think it will help to write Santa so I ask if you have a solution for this problem - please give me a comment.

<<email-submissions-wm5.htm>>

Publishing with Blogger

In this article I will talk about how to use www.blogger.com publishing features to make it easy to publish articles on the web.

I believe many users use the WYSIWYG editing that is on the blogger.com webpage. This editor is an easy way to publish small amounts of text, but if you want to do more with the formatting of your blogs this is editor not good enough.

Also, as we all are aware of - Blogger is Google quality software - it buggy and often down. Usually you can send emails and your blog will be added as soon as blogger is up and running again.

In this article I will talk about how I use blogger.com to publish my stuff. I will show you how to make the most out of existing tools with the goal of making good presentation of your content. Everything on this page is with the old version of Blogger. Your mileage may vary with the new version.

For this article to work - or at least the examples I talk about - you need to enable the email option for your blog site. This is done in a few easy steps when Blogger is up and running. Go into Blogger control panel -> into your site -> email. You will find something called Mail-to-Blogger Address. You will have to choose publish and type in a password to use. When this is done you can send emails to username.password@blogger.com.

First I want to give you an overview on your options

Feature	Usage
Outlook (any other HTML compliant email client should work)	I compose my blogs using Outlook. I format the text and images I want to use in the email and just send it away to blogger when I am done.
FrontPage	FrontPage is a very good HTML editor that makes it easy for you to use many advanced HTML features, like tables, bullets, inline frames and so on. You can work in the design mode of FrontPage, and when you are done simply use File|Send to email the HTML document to Blogger. Blogger will then remove everything outside the <body> part of your HTML file and publish only your text.

Including pictures

I am very found of using pictures in blogs. Just remember not to use too many, as I tend to do. Read here on how to get good clipart cheap and legal. Using clipart or any other good looking images in your blogs give you space and attracts users. I believe most readers will jump over your text if you write too much dense text.

I do not use blogspot.com to host my images. So whenever I include images of some kind in my blogs I place them - in advance - on a server at my hosting provider. This way I can include pictures both in emails and via FrontPage without any hassle. Blogger does not support images attached in emails at this time.

Outlook

Outlook supports HTML, plain text and HTML formatting of outgoing messages. To swich to the right mode just open the Format menu when you are composing a new message and choose HTML. You can now type whatever you want and do whatever you can do to format the text in Outlook. If formatting like bold face, italics or font color is of any issue on the article you are writing on you can choose plaintext as format.

You will shortly realize that Outlook has really limited capabilities for formatting text the way you want. At least with Outlook 2003. You can not make tables or make the infamous rel="nofollow" tag. But for easy small snippets of text Outlook is king!

Images can be inserted, and you have to type in the URL of the image that is on a external server.

Microsoft FrontPage

FrontPage is a very good tool. You can do many cool things with it. Most of the HTML language is available from FrontPage, and the stuff you can't find you can edit as HTML code.

Format the text as you want and choose File|Send when you are done. Blogger will remove everything except for the text (between the <body> tags) and publish it on the web.

You can not make custom style sheets as they are removed.

External links

Tags at Technorati: blogger, Microsoft FrontPage, publish blogs

<<publish-with-blogger.htm>>

Adding graphics to your blogs

Adding graphics to your blogs is not an easy task. At least if you care about copyright. I've been looking into this issue for some time and looked at the various options.

It costs money. Most photo stock libraries charge you by the picture - and from what I have seen the price is > $50/image. At least if I not ask for a quote. But for personal use - the prices scare you off.

That why I am glad I have found a site called clipart.com - a site that is subscription based. From how I read the license terms I can download up to a 1000 pictures each day and use on my web page, presentations and emails. Given their license I can not use their images on new stuff after I terminate the subscription but existing blogs created during my subscription are allowed to display the downloaded images.

I have searched a little on their site and usually I find art I can use if I want to write about something.

All art on this page is downloaded from clipart.com and scaled down to the right size using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. As you understand the two last pictures have nothing to do with this article - I just added them for fun.

A good laugh

Finally bloggers have gotten their own comic.

I am exited to follow them in the future.

<<blaugh_en.htm>>

Marratech video conference software

The other day I came across a product from a company named Marratech. They deliver video conferencing on the web.

I only had a few minutes to try this one out, and installed the client software. Within minutes of installation it worked and I had found the public room where one of my colleagues was waiting for me.

I really liked this product. It seems to be a great way for people to meet on the Internet and share their work. The client is also "free" so you can let you clients install it if you want.

I don't know what the server part costs though

Barryvox Opto 3000 - first look

For some weeks ago I wrote a primer about avalanche beacons.

Now I have bought a beacon.

Content of the box

The content was as follows:

• Manuals in English, French, Spanish and some other languages I do not understand or intend to learn.
• The beacon as seen on the picture above.
• Some stickers (in various languages) with some instructions on what to do in case of an avalanche.
• Harness - to place the beacon to your body.
• A CD with some instructions on how to operate this device.

The beacon

With only three buttons (and power) it is very limited what you can do with it. And you have to memorize the entire manual to learn the different key combinations. Luckily there are only a few key combinations you need to learn. They are as follows:

• Group check. (Power-on while holding mode.) This turns on the received with about one meter range so you can walk around and verify that all the other beacons in your group is working.
• Search mode. (Three quick press on the mode button while the unit is turned on.) I'll get back on how the search works later on.
• Send mode. (Hold mode in two seconds when in search mode.) You do this when you want to get out of group check, search mode or configuration mode.
• Configuration mode. (Power-on while holding up and down.) Options are written below.
• Emergency search mode. (Mode and up when you turn it on.)  If the display is broken you can switch the unit into full analog operating mode.

When you go skiing, you check that it works and put in somewhere on your body. The harness is a  good place to keep it.

Configuration mode

There are only a few configuration options. You get in to the configuration mode by holding up and down when turning on the beacon. You use up and down to choose the different items and mode to move to the next configuration item. The List below is in the order the configuration options turns up on the device.

Option	Allows values	Explanation	My value
Search mode	Indicated by d or dA in the display.	Tells if you can use analog search mode when locked on to a victim. d is digital only and dA is digital and analog.	dA
Automatic revert to send	r-, r4 and r8	When in search mode this the time before going back to send mode unless you press any keys. This is in case you get caught by an avalanche when trying to find someone. r- disables the fallback function. The other values are minutes.	r4
Earphone volume	e1, e2	Volume on the earphone when searching in analog mode. (And beeps I presume.)	You have to try for yourself with your earphones.
Speaker configuration in digital mode	s1, s2, s3	This setting tells what you hear when you search in digital mode. In all modes you get an analog tone when too far away from the victim. (This is called the primary search phase.) For the secondary search phase (that is when the received have found a beacon) the options are: s1. No speaker. s2. Digital beeps increasing as you approach the victim. s3. Analog tone.	s1
Direction indication	3.0, 0.3	This value indicates how close you can be to the victim before it stops pointing what direction to search in.	0.3

For me, the reason to choose these values are:

• dA. Now I can switch to analog search if I want to when close to a victim. Otherwise I cannot do so.
• r4. If I get caught, I want to be searchable as quickly as possible.
• s1. I don't need any more noise than I need. And I can read the display. Also I can turn to analog mode if I want at this point.
• 0.3. For now I don't know why or why not use this setting. But as a Geocacher I know that it is hard to pinpoint the last meters of a cache.

Searching...

The recommended distance between each search line is 40 meters. That gives an operating range for about 20 meters. This is not much. Remember that burial depth also is a distance.

When I turn it into search mode it starts in analog mode with lots of static noise. Until it can find a beacon it keeps being annoying. (I really would like an option to turn this noise off if I want to.) When it finds a beacon it switches into digital mode and displays distance and direction.

When locked on to a target I now can switch to analog mode my pressing mode once. Up and Down can used to change sensitivity in dA mode.

When the beacon I searched for was on the ground the distance was fairly accurate.

The unit got backlight, but it turns on automatically when it is dark. I am not sure if this is good or not - as our eyesight varies though life.

Conclusion

In all this beacon seems to be very good. It seems like a solid device that is fairly easy to operate.

Remember to practice searching before you go skiing.

Tags

avalanche, barryvox, opto 3000

An unsolved problem

I hate it when I leave a customer site with an unsolved problem.

Luckily, it is not often that it happens though

The error message is as follows:

Faulting application w3wp.exe, version 6.0.3790.0, stamp 3e8000e6, faulting module oranls10.dll, version 0.0.0.0, stamp 42bf4420, debug? 0, fault address 0x000301f6.

This is from an application called Ephorte.