Internet on ManuSoft

A tale of two tethers

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:08:15 +0000

Those of you using your Android phone as an internet connection may be paying more than you need to pay. Many phone companies here in the US charge extra to enable tethering capability, either by providing their own OEM tethering app or by enabling the phone to serve as a Wi-fi hotspot.

All your base are belong to us

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:15:40 +0000

Excited news stories this morning about how your computer is vulnerable to attack from a phone plugged into your USB port made me chuckle. This “novel hack” involves making an Android phone mimic a USB keyboard in order to send keystrokes to the computer. Cool, but why wouldn’t a hacker just use a USB keyboard in the first place?

Infinite Computing: Bah, Humbug!

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:49:45 +0000

At Autodesk University, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass introduced the term “Infinite Computing” in an attempt to define Autodesk’s perspective on “the cloud” from a unique angle. I think the term is a brilliant and effective use of terminology because it focuses an otherwise nebulous concept and it radiates a sense of real and immediate purpose.

Deelip Menezes Predicts a Cloudy Future

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:28:54 +0000

I had the good fortune of hearing Deelip Menezes deliver the keynote address at the Bricsys 2010 Conference in person. If you missed it, check out the video now at the Bricsys web site. The question and answer session after the speech is an excellent harbinger of the discussions to come if Deelip is correct in his prediction about CAD on the cloud.

New ManuSoft web site

Mon, 17 May 2010 19:35:50 +0000

After over 10 years of the same infrastructure and the same look and feel, the ManuSoft web site has finally been given an overhaul. The original web site used Perl scripts that I wrote myself to serve up pages by patching together a header, table-of-contents, and main content frame and displaying it either as a 3-frame web page or by using an HTML <table> to format the layout. It wasn’t exactly pretty, but it functioned well and served its purpose for a long time.

All your tweets are belong to us

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:00:21 +0000

The Library of Congress announced yesterday that they are archiving every tweet ever published. I think a lot of people consider their tweets (and Facebook messages) as ephemeral writing that disappears into the ether, without thinking about the implications of its survival (mildly NSFW).

If you want it done right...

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:05:00 +0000

I’ve proved once again that if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. The ManuSoft web site is fully functional again after my longtime ISP had a major network meltdown. I waited for two weeks for them to repair it, then finally moved to a different provider. The new provider’s promised “24/7 tech support” turned out to mean “24 hours to respond, 7 days to fix” every problem, not to mention that I would need to provide step by step instructions to their techs so they could configure the server the way I needed. After two weeks of that, I gave up and configured my own server and now host it myself.

Let this be a warning to all of you hosting web sites with reputable providers, or storing your data somewhere in the cloud. I paid big bucks every month to my old provider for secure servers, redundant power supplies, managed and air conditioned server rooms, nightly backups, 99% uptime, etc., but they still lost everything. Almost a month later they still haven’t restored their customers’ data. Luckily, I make my own backups.

Autodesk Discussion Group Facelift Offer

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0000

My participation in the Autodesk discussion groups has been severely curtailed since the notorious “upgrade” a few months ago. One of the many problems introduced by the upgrade is the loss of formatting. It’s now virtually impossible to post messages that include inline AutoLISP or ObjectARX code without them being reformatted into unreadable garbage. Even attaching the code as a file is difficult (the “solution” is to rename files with a .txt extension!) As a result, many queries for programming help go unanswered. Autodesk has made an attempt to provide a fix, but a survey of the posts in any of the programming groups shows that it’s not working.

[Thread has been removed by Autodesk, so link was changed to point to archived thread.]

The recently announced layoffs and related cost cutting measures at Autodesk have dimmed my hopes for a resolution. Therefore, I’ve decided to offer my services to fix the problem. Autodesk, I’m offering to donate my time to fix your discussion group software. Just give me access to a development and testing platform, and the right to modify or rewrite the code.

Readers, can I get an “Amen”?

I'll take web sites for $200, Alex: Part IV

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 01:38:00 +0000

(continued from Part III)

Creating custom modules for DotNetNuke is an esoteric process that I don't recommend unless you're prepared to invest quite a bit of time and effort. I slogged through the process because I'm too stubborn to quit, but it's hardly worth the investment in time for a one-off custom module. I don't expect many of my readers to try it anyway, so I won't bother describing the technical aspects in any detail.

I'll take web sites for $200, Alex: Part III

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 23:20:00 +0000

(continued from Part II)

DotNetNuke (aka DNN) is not simple to set up. It needs at least the free SQL Server Express Edition on the host system (full SQL Server requires some changes to the default configuration) and either IIS or another ASP .NET 2.0 compatible web server to run on. If you have Visual Studio 2005 fully installed, you have all you need to run DNN.

I'll take web sites for $200, Alex: Part II

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 01:41:00 +0000

(continued from Part I)

The kind of web site I wanted to create is usually built on top of a Content Management System (CMS) that becomes the administrative user interface as well as the framework for web pages that get served to web site visitors. The first thing I learned is that there are thousands of CMS products floating about the internet, from simple “guest book” type scripts to full blown corporate extranet management systems designed for use by tens of thousands of employees and customers. I’ve also been looking for an excuse to learn ASP.NET, so I decided to narrow my search to CMS software that was based on ASP.NET. Finally, the software had to be free or very inexpensive.

I'll take web sites for $200, Alex: Part I

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 17:35:00 +0000

I’m one of those throwbacks that learned HTML by typing it in Notepad. I’ve since moved up to using the Visual Studio editor; it does syntax coloring, error highlighting, and has a “design” mode for previewing the page, yet it’s a very utilitarian editor that I feel comfortable with. I do use FrontPage when I need to manage connections between multiple HTML pages, but mostly in raw HTML mode. When I use WYSIWYG design mode in FrontPage, I inevitably end up cleaning out a lot of unnecessary junk that it includes in the generated HTML. I think it’s fair to say that my obsession with clean HTML results in utilitarian, functional, and standards conformant presentations – but with a decided lack of graphic appeal.

The ManuSoft and CADLock web sites are examples of this utilitarian approach. The ManuSoft site uses no fancy graphics and relies very little on client side scripting, and it supports a hierarchical navigation system using only standard hyperlinks. I like that minimalist approach, but the price for clean HTML being served to clients is a lot of work on the server to maintain the site. As a result, I don’t update the site very often because it’s just too difficult.

This blog was the first step toward realizing a goal of making it easier to add new content. After all, the raison d’être of blogs is to minimize the latency between the writer’s stream of consciousness and words on the web by making it irresistibly easy to add new content. This is precisely why blogs have become so popular.

Unfortunately, I soon found limitations with my blog. Tabular lists of data still require manual HTML input, it is difficult to customize the content area outside the individual posts on the blog page, and most aspects of the hosted blog software are outside my control. I wanted more.

The Autodesk vs. Open Design Alliance lawsuit gave me an excuse to take the next step: implement the “blog” concept across an entire web site with software that I control. So, I decided to swallow my pride and learn how to create an entire web site that would be so easy to update that I would actually update it frequently – even if it meant messy HTML code. Stay tuned for Part II, choosing a hosting service and deciding which software to use.

Coming up for air

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:18:00 +0000

While the rest of you were busy enjoying the holiday break, I’ve had my nose to the grindstone. I had been looking for an opportunity to learn more about ASP.NET and web site content management, and the Autodesk vs. ODA web site that I started recently was a perfect opportunity. After 3 weeks of sometimes frustrating adventures, the new site is now live (although still not quite finished).

Total cost of the site, including hosting for 2 years? About $200 and a lot of lost sleep. Over the next week or so I will be documenting some of the things I learned along the way.