Object Definitions Blog

I had this problem after upgrading my Hero to Android 2.1

I previously had an imap mailbox working fine, with an SSL connection, but setting it up again under 2.1 seemed to get me nowhere.
After going to manual setup and entering the incoming server details, clicking continue would simply take me back to the same page – not to the next ‘configure outgoing mailserver’ screen.

Since HTC pushed out the over the air upgrade for the Hero in the last few days, I guess a lot of people may now be in the same boat

It turns out this is a bug – really at this point, android should be showing the ‘accept certificate’ dialog, in cases where you don’t have a signed certificate on your mailserver

The good news is – there is a workaround.

Simply put in an incorrect value for the imap server first time around
Android will tell you that it can’t connect to the server – but will still let you proceed and add an outgoing mail server etc, and finish configuring the account.

Then, when the account is configured, simply go to the account settings and enter a correct server.
This time, Android should correctly show the ‘accept certificate’ dialog, and you should be able to proceed as normal.

Thank goodness for this workaround! I was getting seriously worried my new 2.1 Hero wouldn’t work with my email server.

I have an old Dimension 4700 and Windows 7 couldn’t find audio drivers for adi 190x sound card.
After a lot of searching I came across the following link to drivers from an IBM ftp server:

http://ftp.us.dell.com/audio/R145551.EXE

These are vista drivers, for ‘Soundmax Integrated Digital Audio’ which appear to support the adi-198x and they installed fine for me in Windows 7, worked like a dream. After all, lets face it, Windows 7 really is Vista. If you’re looking, hope that helps

I just switched to using a Linksys NSLU2 NAS server for my home network.
It’s a great little thing – you just connect USB drives to it and set up network shares using the nifty web administration utitlity.

None of this is new – the NSLU2 (or ’slug’, as they are known) has been around for years now, and there is a cottage industry of linux kernal hackers grown around it, to adapt it to do such things as streaming music etc.

What is new, however, is that it won’t work from Vista. Works like a breeze from XP.

The linksys requires LM authentication which was supported by default by XP, but apparently it is disabled by default in vista, which only supports NTLM out of the box. I suspect this is not Linksys’ fault. The upshot of this is that from your spanking new Vista laptop you won’t be able to log in to your home network devices any more. You’ll probably forget they’re even there. The only person who will be able to log into them will be the guy parked up in a van outside who’s hacking into your wireless network using Windows XP. How’s that for security?

The forums are riddled with messages complaining about this, for the linksys and other similar NAS devices.
Most of them refer to now defunct Vista system administration tools
Searching the Vista help gets you nowhere.

Eventually I found a post which contained a registry setting to edit, to enable LM authentication
A registry setting to edit? Whooo, lucky me.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Windows usability.
If there is a utility which allows you to set this, I’d love to know, Windows admin dialogs are a joy.
I suspect I might be still looking at Christmas given how intuitive the admin is in Vista.

Anyhow, the magic LmCompatibilityLevel registry setting can be changed to let you log in to your network devices:

Note, changing this won’t make your network more secure. However, for your home network it should be OK, provided you’ve secured your wireless network. Any self respecting burgler walking into your appartment probably won’t be spending too much time trying to hack your network passwords. They’ll simply pick up your NAS drive and stick it under their shirt while pretending to read the gas meter, and make off with any win XP laptops (although they may leave your vista machine where it is)

You can edit the registry using the regedit utility
Have fun!

I’ve been looking for a screen splitting program for quite a while but somehow this one passed my by.

There isn’t much point in the 4 million pixels in the HP LP3065 unless you can easily arrange windows on the screen. Typically when working I need to run 15 to 20 apps, and view several simultaneously – and its a real waste of pixels if you can only maximise one window.

For a while, I was forced to go back to two screen setup, with smaller monitors, just so that I could easily maximise two apps.
But now that 30 inch monster is back on my desk, ooooh yea, with WinSplit revolution will never be separated again.

It’s a great little app which gives you hotkeys you can use to reposition windows in the screen either left or right, top or botton, in the corners or maximised. You can also use it to move windows between screens. That’s just the beginning – there are plenty of other great features too. So much so that I even find it useful on the 1280×1024 monitors at work. And, did I mention, it’s free? Forget windows power toys – this has instantly become my number one favorite windows utility.

Of course the real irony is that a free utility like this can provide such a huge improvement to the ‘windows’ os, which, despite costing hundreds of dollars, doesn’t even seem to offer the basic minimum ‘window management’ features required to use the software at a professional level. The windowing in vista, if you discount the ridiculous flip 3d switching gimmick, doesn’t seem to have changed an awful lot since win 3.1, when we all used to make do with 640×480 resolutions. Both linux and the Mac offer virtual desktops these days. There was a power toy which simulated this for XP, but it seems to have diasppeared from the Vista world. If anyone finds an equivalent, please let me know!

In a word – no.

I have recently aquired a 30 inch HP LP-3065 monitor.
Before you ask ‘aquired’ means bought, rather than offloaded from the back of a van in the night.

Well, it is a nice monitor. The resolution is 2560 x 1600, which is, well, huge -more pixels than two 1600 x 1200 monitors
But two smaller screens are better for work purposes, I have come to decide – at least for software development.
Only that way can you maximise applications in each screen.

However, I can’t fit both my old Iiyama monitors on my desk (my wife has grabbed the majority of the real-estate in our flat).
There is no way to get them back other than sneak over and grab them when she is not looking, and I’d have no room to place them anyway.
In any case, I fear no amount of bribary would compensate her for the loss of these.

Games, on the other hand, are a different matter. Bioshock looks great on a 30 inch monitor.
Although the LP-3065 doesn’t do upscaling, the nvidia card does this automatically- and it still looks fine even at less than the native resolution.
So don’t let that put you off getting one, if you’re a gamer!

I am getting glitches/stuttering in the sound from one of my PCs, with an Asus M2N4 motherboard and Vista with Realtec AC’97 on the board

I’m still looking for the perfect solution for this, but for me things are a lot better if change the sound settings.

Under control panel ‘Sound’ select Speakers and click the Properties button. On the Enhancements tab there is a box marked ‘Immediate Mode’ – check this. It doesn’t totally cure the problem for me – but does seem to make things a lot better. If anyone finds a better solution, let me know!