Peter's Blog 2004/1

Spent a while fiddling around trying to work out..

Spent a while fiddling around trying to work out why windows XP search will not search inside *.py files. It appears MS decided to put in some smartarse thing to 'intelligently' search files. py files do not happen to have a clever search thingy registered so it just ignores them. If you search through html files then apparently words in comments are not searched because you don't see them in html pages and because you are probably not a web designer. As an aside, the new search dialog is horrible.

From this site: http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBM/tip6200/rh6222.htm

(NOTE: logging off and back on is enough, no need to reboot).

1. Use the Registry Editor to navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlContentIndex.

2. Double-click the FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions Value Name, a REG_DWORD data type, and set the data value to 1.

3. You must restart your computer for this change to take effect.

You can also use the GUI to configure this option:

On desktop PC, prompted mainly by getting too..

On desktop PC, prompted mainly by getting too comfortable on the settee and kicking coffee over the carpet. Looked at PC and thought of:

• More ergonomic position

• Hifi

• Big monitor

• No pissing about

and went back to the dark side.

New mouse works nicely, better than touchpad.

New mouse works nicely, better than touchpad. It has both a transformer to charge it up and also usb->power cable. Using this it is like a cabled mouse except it uses two USB ports, one for the power and one for the radio. It is optical and it works nicely on the sofa. It feels nice in my hand (the mouse) and having a proper scroll wheel again is bliss. Touch pad has a scroll effect at the edge but it's not the same. Drivers came on a floppy which is a problem on a floppy-less laptop. Luckily the mouse is USB HID compliant so it worked anyway. It took windows a while to see it which is worrying. I hope it remembers that it is around.

Thumbs up to Packard Bell Mice.

Decisions: do I reinstall everything on the laptop, carry on using UltraVNC or do I use the main PC upstairs? Using UltraVNC right now, the only problem is the tiny font.

Got DateBk5 registration key.

Got DateBk5 registration key. It moaned this morning about the 45 day trial being over.

Starbucks offered me an extra shot of coffee for..

Starbucks offered me an extra shot of coffee for 15p, usual price 45p. 15p is expensive for a headache.

Bought a Packard Bell mini cordless optical mouse..

Bought a Packard Bell mini cordless optical mouse for the notebook. Nice little thing, not a hulking handful like some cordless mice. Rechargable batt eries, hope it does not need charging every 2 hours like the notebook.

I looked at other mice, microsoft, logitech, creative, taiwanese noddy, etc but this one drew me back.

The price on the shelf was £29.99 but when I went to pay they charged me £19.99. I said 'really' and she checked it but I still only paid £19.99. This makes me happy.

I'm starting to avoid taiwanese noddy stuff, with brand names there is more chance of support on the internet.

Dell will oharge £90 or so for an extra battery for the notebook. Tempted. It replaces the CD/DVD drive and you can even change them without rebooting windows.

Sitting in Starbucks writing this on palm. I want to get my blog going this afternoon using DayNotez->html python scripts.

Must add, I gave Bonsai 3 a workout, taking meeting..

Must add, I gave Bonsai 3 a workout, taking meeting notes and I had no problems. I was careful, only editing on PC or HandHeld between syncs, backing up before sync etc but there were no problems.

Also, I registered DateBk5 and BackupBuddyVFS today. I cannot imagine life without DateBk5.

Sitting in lounge, typing this into laptop.

Sitting in lounge, typing this into laptop. DayNotez is running on my PC upstairs. I'm using UltraVNC which is noticably faster than TightVNC and is better in that the right mouse button works. The connection is VERY fast, moving a window around the screenn is very nearly real time, it makes a valiant attempt to show windows fading. This setup now is so sweet it makes me want to weep. The notebook is fast, the network is so quick it's as if it wasn't there... oh it's too much.

One thing I don't like: the touch pad. Using a mouse is a joy by comparison.

New laptop came yesterday.

New laptop came yesterday. It is wonderful, I love it.

• Bigger than I thought it would be

• Came with everything installed and battery charged, switched it on (no mains) and it just went

• High res screen (1400x?) makes my eyes bleed

• It is light enough to sit on lap comfortably, although warm towards the end

• It ran for an evening's worth which is ok, although the optional extra battery pack is tempting

• Wireless network can play Milkshake video. Problems playing videos from BBC site which could be due to BBC or supply

• Played DVD's nicely

• Sound is a little too quiet.

• Installed mozilla incredibly quickly.

It seems much faster than old 1GHz home PC or 300MHz PC at work.

Rushed out to buy a DLink DE624 wireless router. After some worries from studying the box that it was not really IEE802.??g compliant I went to their web site to find that it very much was so. Replaced the Orico wired router and got it all going with no big problems. I Get good signal strength in the lounge, at times it seemed faster than the wired connection upstairs with the old router. I flashed the firmware and enabled WAP(?) security so nobody in the street can leech off my wireless broadband connection (surprising that by default there is absolutely no security, just pluck any wireless connection out of the air). The MAC address in the router is programmable and I had to set it to the same value as my old router for the broadband to work. Not a problem for now but if I sell the old router I may have to register the new routers own address for it all to work, I'm not sure of these details.

The firmware in the new router is much nicer, I had to read the manual to realise that the firmware is flashed by (in effect) uploading the file to the server's 'website'. Good idea. The CD it comes with has nothing but accursed PDF files on it.

Tried my method of breaking Bonsai and it passed.

Tried my method of breaking Bonsai and it passed. I'll trust it again.

It transpired that a new version of bonsai has been..

It transpired that a new version of bonsai has been released, not a beta. I've installed it and it's gone well but I haven't tried my test on it yet. The new desktop app looks good.

Got a reply to my email:

Got a reply to my email:

Peter,

Sorry to hear you are having problems with Bonsai synchronization.

I had not heard of any problems with Bonsai deleting any items in

outlines. There were some reports of branches being mixed up when the

order was changed on both the handheld and the desktop.

The new release has an improved algorithm that should handle changes to

both sides better. I would encourage you to upgrade to the new version.

I'll have our system kick out a new registration code for you.

Regards,

George Wayland

Natara Software

Email to natara support::

Email to natara support:

Hello,

I have had a few problems where my Bonsai outlines have become corrupted. I think this is because I have been editing both the Desktop and the palm copies between hotsyncs.

I am using:
         Bonsai version 2.8.1
         Palm O/S 5.2.1 (Tungsten T2)
         Hotsync Manager 4.1.0
         Windows 2000 SP1

I have found a way to reproduce a problem:

1) Create an outline on the desktop::

   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
           - Child 1 of Line 3
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4

2) Save and Hotsync to copy to palm

3) On the desktop move line 4 and it's child up so that it
   becomes:

   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
           - Child 1 of Line 3

4) On the Palm add line 5 so that it becomes:

   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
           - Child 1 of Line 3
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4
   - Line 5

5) Hotsync

The result is this:
   - Line 1
           - Child 1 of Line 1
   - Line 4
           - Child 1 of Line 4
   - Line 2
           - Child 1 of Line 2
   - Line 3
   - Line 5
           - Child 1 of Line 3

My main problem is that I have been losing entries on complex 
outlines, including irreplacable meeting notes. This has dented 
my faith in Bonsai yet I have paid money for it and I like it 
as a product and I wish to continue using it. Can you assure me 
that if I only edit on the desktop OR palm between hotsyncs then 
I will not lose any data ? Or is this problem caused by moving 
things around ? Any advice or workarounds that you can give
me would be appreciated.

I avoided trying the new beta in case it corrupted my data...

-- 
Regards,
Peter Wilkinson

I am so disillusioned with bonsai that I am..

I am so disillusioned with bonsai that I am investigating alternatives. First is palm-db, an open source flat file database. It supports memo fields up to 3k. However, the palm-db tools that are a seperate but bundled sourceforge project do not support anything beyond string, integer and boolean types. They come with a pdb2csv program to generate a csv file but this bombs out with a corrupted database error if the database contains a memo field. It also comes with an Excel spreadsheet that won't work, possibly because I am (still) using Excel 97 and it may be a later version.

Without Bonsai, I would like to concentrate on using DayNotez. However, I need a way of indexing the notez so that I can find stuff.

Could this be done with headers in the DayNotez entries ???

Bonsai is a loss to me but I just cannot trust it. Given that hotsync is screwed, I cannot just bypass the bonsai conduit unless I want to try to reverse engineer the bonsai pdb file to get at the data therein.

Tried TClockEx from..

Tried TClockEx from http://www.rcis.co.za/dale/tclockex/index.htm. It puts a clock with date in the task bar. Seems to work nicely.