Williamsport Web Developer Weblog

Tonight I tried a version of Linux called dyne:bolic. You can burn this version of Linux onto a CDROM and run the entire operating system from the CDROM. All of its multimedia tools worked pretty well on my system. I was able to play videos that would not run on my recently updated Mandrake Linux 9.2 system.

It includes the open source video editing software called Cineterra. Cineterra doesn’t have very many video effects but I was impressed.

I was able to bring up YouTube in the FireFox browser and I could watch videos after installing the Macromedia Flash plugin.

http://www.dynebolic.org/

Today I upgraded my Linux system to Mandrake Linux 9.2. I found some welcome improvements. My sound card is now working. My built-in network connection is working so I can connect to the Internet over Verizon DSL. However, I did have some problems getting the Apache web server running due to missing SSL certificates. I had to edit a configuration file to fix that.

I decided to upgrade because I was unable to install anything from my original distribution CDROMs which are now unreadable. I could only find the Mandrake 9.2 CDROM images online.

I now have the Noatun application for viewing videos but it does not appear to be able to play anything. I tried several video formats without much luck.

I recently bought a LogiTech USB Desktop Microphone because my voice sounds funny when I try to narrate a screen capture video. Unfortunately, my voice still sounds strange when I record it using this new microphone. It may be that the built-in sound card is too crappy to provide good audio input. I will try it on my other computer.

Last night I finished reading Videoblogging For Dummies by Stephanie Cottrell Bryant. I won’t be doing any videoblogging until I can get my voice to sound natural.

Next week I have a dentist appointment and a bus trip to Washington DC on Saturday. I probably won’t get a lot of work done next week.

Today I did some work on WordPress Theme customization. I added a topic on this subject to my notes. I created a custom snapshot image for the WordPress Theme Picker and I documented how to change the header image and style.

I have ordered a Logitech USB Desktop microphone because my present computer microphone does not record my voice well enough for me to narrate my screen capture videos.

I recently bought the Philips SAA 7130 PCI TV Card to capture video on my PC. I needed this in order to import some videotape of Linux running on my Playstation. This video capture card works extremely well with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It includes a remote control and FM radio. You can import video through a TV cable or the usual AV jacks (yellow cord for video and red and white cords for audio). The only problem I had was the audio jack isn’t the correct size for the AV plug. I was able to hook my VCR up to my computer using a TV cable and recorded some videotape footage to MPEG video.

Unfortunately, I no longer have cable television because I cannot afford it but I can use this video capture card to listen to FM radio while working. I can also use it to capture video from old videotapes or I can videotape Playstation game play.

I have created an ASP.NET version of my script to document a database design using queries of the information_schema.tables. This required dynamically creating an unknown number of datagrid controls, one for each table that would be found. To do that I just loop through the recordset of tables and add a datagrid control to the page on each loop. My code also had to create the bound columns and specify the datagrid header style.

I like to have a print out of the database design so I won’t need to keep opening the database to look up a field name.

Today I learned how to do some Internet Explorer hacks to deal with differences in how Cascading Style Sheets are handled in other browsers and Internet Explorer. The problem I ran into is that I wanted to absolutely position a graphic but the distance from the top must be greater for Internet Explorer than it is for Firefox, Netscape, and Opera.

The first hack I learned is to use an underscore for the IE style property which is ignored by other browsers but overrides the preceeding property value in IE:

top: 1605px;
/* IE Hack */
_top: 1775px;

The second hack I learned is Internet Explorer conditional comments but this did not seem to work very well:

<!--[if IE]>
top: 1775px;
< ![endif]-->

The third hack is necessary for Internet Explorer 7 which no longer supports the underscore hack. Internet Explorer 7 understands the child selector command:


html>body #wheels-bottom {
position: absolute;
top: 1775px;
left: 600px;
}

Unfortunately, I have a problem because Firefox, Netscape, and Opera also support the child selector command so while it won’t effect earlier versions of Internet Explorer it does override the style for the other browsers.

Yesterday I bought TechSmith’s SnagIT Screen Capture software. I plan to use it to make tutorial videos and screen capture videos. I will be able to create a video to show a client how to use a web application or to demonstrate something that usually requires a lot of explanation.

Guiding someone through a process has always been a time consuming chore for me. I usually have to repeat the process myself several times and note every menu selection and button click that is involved. Then I have to capture many screen shots and edit the pictures. Then I have to create a web page or Word file to document all the steps that are involved.

A screen capture video replaces all that work. It is also a lot easier for the client to follow and understand. I anticipate that this software will be especially useful in dealing with www.caraccessories.com because they require a lot of help with software and web applications. They are always asking me to explain how to do something over the phone and that is usually very frustrating because I cannot see what they are doing and they cannot follow my directions.

Today I learned how to use the Response.ContentType property to cause the browser to open an ASP.NET page as a Word document in the Rich Text Format. I know how to do this in ASP to cause an Excel spreadsheet to a open in the browser. That has been one of my best technical tricks to impress a client. Now I know how to do it in ASP.NET.

I can also add a line to the header so the RTF document will open as a file attachment. I’m using this technique in a few projects that require Word documents to be created with data from the database. I would usually do this using Word documents in HTML format but the Rich Text Format allows me to open a template file which is easier to update. My code reads the template document, replaces a few fields with database values, and then delivers a finished RTF document. The formatting of the template document can be easily changed without rewriting the code.

I went into business for myself three months ago. It has gone surprisingly well. I now have just three clients but they keep me very busy. I am unable to take on any more clients right now. I do not even have time to learn any new technology. I did learn how to use Windows Movie Maker and I will probably be doing more video production experimentation using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro.

None of my clients are local companies. I should not have named my business Williamsport Web Developer. I will probably have very little to do with the local Information Technology scene. Williamsport has a lousy economy and employers can be very choosy about who they hire. I do not think they value technical expertise as highly as they should.

I have not been doing much blogging anymore. This blog does not appear to be read by anyone. It just collects a lot of spam and I waste my time deleting spam. I really do not need a blog to promote my business anyway. I am more interested in video blogging right now. It will clearly replace text blogging as more people discover it. But I communicate best through my writing. I may use video in my work if only to impress my clients.

It requires a lot of self discipline to work at home. Fortunately I have a lot of self discipline. I canceled my newspaper delivery and my cable television because they were getting to be too expensive and a real waste of time. This gives me a lot more free time to do my work. There really is not anything to do around here. I live alone so I do not have any relatives or a spouse to distract me. I just have a kitten. Sometimes he attacks me as I am trying to work but mostly he just sleeps.

I should probably be charging more for my services but I am doing alright financially and my rates ensure that my clients will be patient with me.

Yesterday I went to Beiter’s and bought an air conditioner for under $100. I managed to install it in the window of the room that I’m using for my home office. This will help me to remain productive when the temperature becomes unbearable hot. It requires a lot of self-discipline to work at home and being uncomfortable does not help any. It just encourages you to slack off or do something else to cool off.

I need to buy an air conditioner for the room that I am using for my office. The only air conditioner in the house is in the living room. I am not very productive when I’m hot and uncomfortable.

We had a thunderstorm today. My UPS Battery Backup system keep my computer from crashing when the power flickered. However, I don’t have the DSL modem plugged into it so I got knocked offline. I’ll have to change that.

I bought a Sony DCR-TRV280 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom on Amazon. I should have read the product description more carefully because this camcorder uses 8mm tapes rather than any form of digital media like memory sticks or compact flash. Fortunately I had an old camcorder with some 8mm tapes that fit in this new camcorder. The Digital8 Handycam Camcorder does have a USB cable and can stream video directly to my PC which is what I want to do. I’ve used it to take video of my kitten and for various multimedia experiments.

I’ve gotten more practice with Windows Movie Maker. You can mute the sound of the video clip and import a MP3 audio file to replace the audio with background music or sound effects. You can also add titles. However, its editing capabilities are somewhat limited. I’ve installed Adobe Premiere Pro and I plan to learn how to do more sophisticated video editing.

Multimedia production will be a great skill to add to my resume. It also gives me an opportunity to be more creative.

Today I got a cheap web cam. I was unable to get it to work on my Windows 2000 system however it did work on my Windows 98 system. The only reason to keep a Windows 98 system anymore is for games and hardware that won’t work on Windows 2000 or Windows XP. I had to delete a lot of programs from my Windows 98 system to free up some disk space. It is a good candidate for a hard drive upgrade.

I used the web cam to create a humorous music video starring my plastic skeleton. I edited the video in MGI VideoWave but it is a very old program and did not produce proper Quicktime video files. So I had to redo the video using Windows Movie Maker which only runs on Windows XP. I used an original dance song that I created in Propellerhead’s Reason software. The RIAA is sending cease and desist letters to YouTube users who feature copyrighted music in their dance videos so I wanted to make sure to use something original.

YouTube is a very addictive web site, especially if you’ve given up cable TV. There is a lot of very funny video on YouTube created by average people. YouTube is a form of video blogging but most of the vloggers are producing comedy sketches rather than diary type videos. It is a very competitive environment because some YouTube vloggers have become famous and may move on to commercial media opportunities.

YouTube

I bought a new hard drive on Amazon which arrived today. This drive is 100 GB. I used PowerQuest’s Drive Copy 4.0 to transfer my operating system and data to this new hard drive. Hopefully it will not go bad on me like the other one did. I also bought the full version of PerfectDisk 7.0 to keep the hard drive from becoming too fragmented. I spend a lot of time just waiting for the disk activity light to stop blinking.

I will need the extra disk space to do some video and audio editing. I plan to begin some multimedia projects soon.

After my hard drive went bad, I’ve realized that my home office needs a better data back up plan. First, I’ve ordered a bigger hard drive on Amazon. This will be a brand new drive and not a refurbished drive. My current hard drive is running out of disk space and does not provide enough room for all my projects. Computer Geeks issued me a RMA for the defective hard drive I bought from them so that may give me another hard drive.

Right now I just back up data to CD or DVD. I plan to do that more frequently. I’m creating an Emergency Repair Disk and backing up my System State more frequently. I’ve made a list and schedule of what should be backed up.

My older back up PC needs a bigger hard drive as well. I need to install some software on that so it can be used to continue work if my current PC dies.

Later on I plan to buy an external hard drive for backing up data and I may consider buying a RAID controller and more drives to set up a RAID system.

I am currently reading another book on ASP.NET, Microsoft ASP.NET Step by Step by G. Andrew Duthie, published by Microsoft Press. I’m up to chapter 7 on configuring an ASP.NET application (using the web.config file).

Although I already know ASP.NET pretty well it is fairly complex so it doesn’t hurt to review the subject. Plus I am studying for the 70-305 Exam, Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and rather than reread the study guide it is usually more helpful to read a secondary source of information to get additional details.

I have some other books on ASP.NET. One on security and one on web services. I also need to start learning ASP.NET 2.0 but I don’t have any books on that yet.

I don’t want to give the impression that my home office is inadequate after my hard drive went bad. I plan to invest in more computer equipment to save my work. I did buy a battery backup system (i.e. UPS) at STAPLES.

I bought the CyberPower CP685AVR which gives me 11 minutes of battery power after a power failure.

It will prevent my computer from rebooting during a power flicker which has happened occasionally. I don’t lose power all that often. There are many thunderstorms over the summer which is when the power is likely to flicker.

Last night I ran PerfectDisk 7.0 and it did a pretty good job of defragging my hard drive. It got half of it defragged which is much better than Windows 2000’s built-in Disk Defragmenter could have done.