Geeks in Paradise | Brian Chee

My New Mac

Brian Chee — 2008-06-24T17:22:31-10:00

My New Mac 52 Simple Projects to Get You Started by Wallace Wang April 2008, 480 pp. $29.95 ISBN-13 978-1-59327-164-0 No Starch Press Oh I soooo wish this book had arrived just a few weeks earlier! There are somethings that just require unlearning skills, and moving from a PC to a Mac is one of them. I keep wanting to right click and it took some searching to find a webpage of keyboard shortcuts for the mac. In all reality, Wallace Wang (the author) has hit the nail on the head...some people just learn better and faster by doing... READ MORE

Taking truly amazing photos with a consumer camera

Brian Chee — 2008-06-11T09:39:33-10:00

I've seen those amazing high speed camera shots of bullets going through apples, water drops exploding on the surface of a pool of water and time-lapse movies of skyscrapers being built. However, the specialized equipment necessary to produce these images has been out of the reach of normal folks -- up until a dedicated group of programmers came up with software to extend the functionality of the Canon Power Shot camera. Their Web site, In Brief, gives you a thumbnail of what this open source project is all about: CHDK is a firmware enhancement that operates on a number of... READ MORE

Flex 3 Cookook

Brian Chee — 2008-06-04T12:48:16-10:00

O'Reilly's Flex 3 Cookbook seeks to help developers put their arms around the massive Flex development environment that is touted to help web developers embed flash tools without the pain of learning to develop in native Flash. Designed to complement both open source and commercial development tools the cookbook seeks to address the common pain points of the Flex environment. Flex 3 Cookbook Code-Recipes, Tips, and Tricks for RIA Developers By Joshua Noble, Todd Anderson First Edition May 2008 Pages: 704 Series: Adobe Developer Library ISBN 10: 0-596-52985-6 | ISBN 13: 9780596529857 Press Release $44.99 for print copy _uacct =... READ MORE

Wicked Cool PHP

Brian Chee — 2008-05-06T16:42:26-10:00

Wicked Cool PHP Real-World Scripts That Solve Difficult Problems by William Steinmetz with Brian Ward February 2008, 216 pp. ISBN-10 1-59327-173-5 ISBN-13 978-1-59327-173-2 $29.95 $17.95 PDF $35.95 PDF and Paperback I just love supporting this publisher since all their new books are available in both paper and PDF formats with discounts if you buy both at the same time. Their publisher and I have had several conversations about ebook support and the PDF version of this book now resides in my Sony eBook reader. (Their PDF's only have a watermark on them, no DRM!) With programs like Dream Weaver... READ MORE

Actively refused connections...OCS+Asterisk UC Integration

Brian Chee — 2008-04-29T12:34:52-10:00

It's now been several weeks of tinkering to install an OCS Server collection (AD, SQL, OCS, Edge, Mediation, Web Access) on a brand new Dell M-Series Blade Server. The goal of the Unified Communications (UC) group in the INTEROP Labs (iLabs) is seeking to delve into the intricacies of interfacing XMPP and SIMPLE based UC systems so that they can exchange VoIP calls, IM and most importantly presence. Glenn Evans of DiVitas has this to say about UC: Unified Communications (UC) is a commonly used term for the integration of disparate communications systems, media, devices and applications. This potentially includes... READ MORE

Old but frustrating problems all too easy to forget under Windows

Brian Chee — 2008-04-14T12:15:59-10:00

As Windows ages and evolves, it's sometimes too easy to forget those little gotchas that creep up and become the bane of sysadmins. My scenario is working on the Interop iLabs (technology demonstration areas) on Unified Communication. I'm responsible for bringing up Office Communications Server so that our group can get both voice and presence status to transit a gateway to a Jabber server through a federation interface. But I lost a bunch of time on little nit-picky issues as I burned the midnight oil rushing to meet our ship deadline.... So for the newbies, take note and save some... READ MORE

Ixia opens their iSim-City for business

Brian Chee — 2008-04-10T15:30:00-10:00

Opened on February 26, 2008, Ixia's iSim-City is a beautifully implemented facility that combines an executive briefing center with a large-scale proof-of-concept lab that can be used alone or with professional services. Located in Santa Clara, this city-scale testing facility is designed to meet corporate overflow testing requirements and will be used for some upcoming InfoWorld shootouts. In my case, I'll be showing up at the start of my test, but after the scripts and methodology are debugged, I'll be able to fly home and run all my tests remotely. With upwards of 5000 gigabit ports on demand, this facility... READ MORE

iPhone to Meeting Maker GoBetween

Brian Chee — 2008-03-25T03:56:09-10:00

The folks at PocketMac have created a niche made up of software shims to connect mobile devices like the iPhone to enterprise organizer systems. In this case I shanghaied a buddy of mine at the University of Hawaii Information and Technology Services (ITS) group to help me wring out their link between his shiny new iPhone and MeetingMaker. With a stable that includes links between Lotus Notes and Blackberry/iPhone/Windows Mobile 5&6, this PocketMac has been catering to the mobile user that has been feeling left out when on the road. The key issue here is that no two mobile phones... READ MORE

T-Punkt'ed in Germany

Brian Chee — 2008-03-05T06:10:21-10:00

So I'm having fun, T-Punkt is one of the German versions of a regular T-Mobile shop, but wait...not quite...because Deutschland's citizens can purchase DSL, home telephones, combo DSL+Wifi+Cellular routers all under one roof. My experience started as I started my quest to stretch the proverbial penny (or Euro in this case). With Hotel wireless hovering in the 20 euro per hour range, I just had to find something cheaper to satisfy my cheap nature. I had gotten lots of help from T-Mobile USA with a list of hotspots I could use my T-Mobile USA hotspot account on, but they just... READ MORE

Supermicro Water cooled blades

Brian Chee — 2008-03-05T05:20:59-10:00

It's already late in the afternoon and the snow has long melted from the ground of the Hannover Faire Grounds where the CeBIT 2008 technology conference is being held. This government sponsored super conference is trying to convince Americans to come across the pond to see what Europe has to offer. Those that do find folks trying very hard to make you feel welcome, but with a convention center the size of a small city I found myself in the gamers section when I thought I was heading into the Green Pavilion. Surprisingly, even with themed halls at CeBIT, I... READ MORE

Once upon a time there was an arp entry

Brian Chee — 2008-02-12T16:01:57-10:00

So a short story for you… …once upon a time I was hosting a research server behind my firewall and had done one-to-one NAT to hide and protect it…however, the researchers decided they wanted their own firewall and moved down the hall, but were still using the same “public address” for their server…things were kinda ok, weird slowdowns and such came and went but we couldn’t put our fingers on it…well today I swapped in my super duper faster firewall that went from a 100mb/sec uplink to a gigabit uplink and from a VIA processor to an Intel Xeon with... READ MORE

I object to RFID payment schemes without positive acknowledgment!

Brian Chee — 2008-02-01T13:05:01-10:00

I just got my replacement American Express Blue for Business credit card and to my dismay I found that Amex has given up on smart card tech and has instead led us down the primrose path with their "ExpressPay" RFID based technology. With MasterCard touting their "Tap and GO" payment system (also RFID) and now Amex, did these folks read about the problems that the US Gov is having with RFID's in passports? (Technologists object to U.S. RFID passports - Jul. 13, 2006 ) Here's my...]]> READ MORE

Wiring and Cabling: How To Lace Cable Harnesses

Brian Chee — 2008-01-08T10:28:22-10:00

Many have described Cable Lacing as a lost art and rightly so. With zip ties down in the $0.01 each range it doesn't make any economic sense to expend the labor on lacing. However, anyone that has had to troubleshoot a cable bundle has found that the labor charges were just shifted. Tightly bound cable bundles tend to the norm with some installers actually using a zip tie gun to get them even tighter. (and oh by the way increasing cable cross talk by flattening out the cable pairs) The downside is that if you want to trace a cable's... READ MORE

SonicWall TZ180W

Brian Chee — 2008-01-04T13:58:45-10:00

With more and more small office and branch offices (SOBO) opening around the world, it makes sense that vendors are attempting to add big box features into tiny little appliances. Now while I've not done any real throughput testing (RFC2544 or similar) I can say through experience that you need to be a bit realistic about what you ask such a device to do. Putting it in front of a 100mb/sec pipe and expecting it to handle a small server farm might not be a wise choice, but putting it in front of a branch office that might have a... READ MORE

Camera Phone barcode readers: Part II

Brian Chee — 2007-12-31T11:10:45-10:00

Well I find myself posting a second part to placate some readers who REALLY wanted me to write on alternative solutions to the previous blog posting on ScanLife and the Sprint ad associated with it. To understand the fervor regarding camera phone barcode technology involves a discussion over Direct versus InDirect metatagging. Direct metatagging and barcodes: The concept of a direct metatag is one where the information contained takes you directly to an Internet location whether it be an IP address or a DNS entry. A good example would be something like http://weblog.infoworld.com/geeks/ and if the name of the blog... READ MORE