Steven McTainsh

28
Jan
2010

HDMI and C# Image Lists

Well, I finally made the leap from VGA to HDMI and, I must say, the sound quality seems to be pretty awesome (not sure if it’s just these speakers or the cable ). However, when I plugged the HDMI cable into the computer and my HP 2159m, the screen looked a bit odd. There was a black border around the entire image, and all text looked really fuzzy. I found out that this is a setting enabled by ATI drivers (I’m using an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570). To remedy the situation:

Open Catalyst Control Center (the drivers I had from Windows Update did not include this, so I had to download the full driver package from Dell);
Click Graphics in the top left corner and choose Desktops & Displays.
Click the triangle in the top right hand corner next to your display (use the triangles at the bottom, not the ones on the numbered displays) and choose Configure.
Click the Scaling Options tab and drag the slider to 0%. You’ll see the changes take effect as soon as you move the slider.

Thanks heaps to xpmediacentre.com.au for the tip.

In other news, whilst working on Time Sheet 2010, I discovered something interesting. When adding an image list, even after adjusting the colour depth to 32-bit, I found the images displayed within the image list would always appear jagged and rough around the edges, and the colours would never really look like 32-bit. So, by pure coincidence, I discovered that by removing all images from the image list and adding them back in, the issue was resolved! Hopefully someone else finds this little tip handy too. Never mind, it doesn’t seem to work.

Steven

Posted in General, Programming

6
Jan
2010

New laptop on the way!

Well, my brand spanking new Dell Studio 15 is on its way! According to the courier, it arrived in Tauranga this morning and should (hopefully) be here today or perhaps tomorrow.

A little hint if you are buying a Dell computer in New Zealand and want to track it’s progress with the courier once it has arrived in New Zealand – go to the website of the courier Dell uses in New Zealand, PBT Couriers, and enter the PB Trace number 36XXXXXXX, where the X’s represent your 6 or 7 digit order number. It may take some time for it to become available, but it should eventually show up. I found this out after asking Dell when my order would arrive, and they let it slip in the subject line of the email.

I’ve also ordered an awesome new case for my new laptop; a neoprene ISIS Black I for $34.99 from Mighty Ape. Check it out if you are looking for a great notebook sleeve; I look forward to putting it through it’s paces to see how it performs!

Also, I want to express how delighted I am with Mighty Ape’s service and delivery turn-around – my orders have always arrived in perfect condition and less than 24 hours after the order was initially placed – now that’s what I call service! I highly recommend them to everyone in New Zealand and, if you are in Australia, they’re launching there early this year.

Steven

Posted in General

1
Jan
2010

Happy New Year!

Well, 2010 has arrived here in New Zealand! I hope everyone had or has an awesome New Year’s Eve and a relaxing and chilled out New Year’s Day!

Steven

Posted in General

29
Dec
2009

Very dissatisfied with Dell

After ordering a Dell Studio 15 laptop on Christmas Eve, I thought the remainder of the order process would be straightforward – unfortunately, it just wasn’t to be. Here is a recount of my absolute frustration with Dell NZ.

I initially chose the Dell Studio 15 because it looked nice and very similar to my HP Pavilion dv6000 which I love the look of. Not to mention that it was a great price – NZ$1,700 – for what I wanted in it. So, I asked the customer support personnel if the current offer (a free sound card upgrade) would be the same next week, or if it would change (as I would prefer to get the best offer I could between now and next week). I was clearly told that the offer would be exactly the same next week.

So, I order the aforementioned product on Christmas Eve, my credit card is charged, and my order confirmation tells me that it will take 10 working days from the order date for it to arrive. That seemed reasonable and in accordance with what Dell’s NZ localised site states. However, the customer service representative tells me that it will take 2 – 3 weeks to arrive! So, seeing online that Dell usually deliver well before their proposed delivery date and add a ‘buffer’, I thought it would be okay.

Yesterday, the free sound card upgrade expired and, lo and behold, it has been replaced with a different offer – a free upgrade to Office 2007 Home and Student! I was absolutely furious with the blatant lie I had been told by Dell. To add to the shear frustration, I have been told that the laptop will be here on or before January 19th 2010 – more than 3 weeks, wouldn’t you say? After attempting to make contact with Dell in New Zealand, it turns out they have no actual operators in New Zealand – what a joke! All the 0800 numbers just get redirected overseas, although that’s hardly surprising in this day and age.

I am now awaiting contact with a supervisor who will hopefully settle the matter as to why I was lied to. To be perfectly honest, I would be happy with a refund so that I can get far away from Dell and never go near their products again. If you are in New Zealand and are considering Dell, my recommendation is not to go near them – if this is the courtesy I am provided with just after my purchase, I would hate to think what their customer support is like later on down the track. If I can’t get a refund, then this will be my first and last Dell (my previous two laptops were a Compaq and HP respectively – both great machines purchased at retail stores).

Update: Just spoke to the aforementioned supervisor and all the issues have been sorted. It turns out that Dell don’t actually know about the latest deals – I passed it on to them that they should tell people this in the future. Also, the reasons for the delivery delay are because of the holiday period. If only I’d been told this sooner!

Steven

Posted in Rants

19
Dec
2009

Merry Christmas!

Wow, I can’t believe it’s only 5 days til Christmas, and that a whole decade is almost over. This year has gone by so fast – it seems like just yesterday that I was starting out at Waikato University, and now my whole first year of study has passed.

You may have noticed a subtle change in the design of my portfolio and blog – the traditional background has been temporarily replaced with a background made up of different snowflakes, which were obtained from here. Now, you may be thinking, it’s not winter in New Zealand at this time of year (in fact, it’s summer), but snowflakes seem to be an internationally recognised symbol of Christmas, so I thought, why not? Plus, it suits the existing site colour scheme well, don’t you think?

Anyway, I want to wish everyone (in particular, my blog visitors, supporters and all of my clients from this year and all the years that have gone by) a very Merry Christmas and an awesome 2010! Be safe during this holiday season!

Steven

Posted in General

7
Dec
2009

My disappointment with Wordpress

After numerous attempts to try and integrate a custom-built CMS I made with Wordpress, I have come to the conclusion that Wordpress is annoying, and that the support offered on the Wordpress forums is, to put it simply, useless.

Firstly, if you try to use Wordpress’ built-in login functions, even if the user exists in Wordpress’ database, you just can’t login. And, this is with Wordpress 2.8.6, the latest release. Registration works fine, but login fails miserably. However, you can login to Wordpress using the default form located at wp-login.php. However, this just wasn’t an option.

Secondly, if you try to create a plugin to override one of their so-called ‘pluggable’ functions (in pluggable.php), it tells you it’s already declared, even though Wordpress’ documentation clearly states that the plugins are checked for the existence of these functions first.

To top it all off, when you use Google to find a solution, you get heaps of posts in the Wordpress forums, all with no solutions. It’s extremely frustrating when you find someone who shares your problem, but there’s no solution!

So, if you want to even try and integrate Wordpress with a custom CMS, my suggestion is to try another blogging solution – Wordpress seems to offer no hope.

Posted in Web Development

28
Nov
2009

Another useful tip…

Hopefully this might just help someone out – to many people, it’ll seem obvious, but when you’re getting frustrated, you tend to overlook the obvious…

When you’re editing Wordpress themes, and you’re including content from a separate database, make sure Wordpress is able to connect to the database its data is stored in at the end. I had a custom header and footer set up, and utilised a database connection to get page data. After some investigation, I realised that Wordpress needed its database connection back – doh!

Posted in Web Development

28
Nov
2009

Annoying issue with footer.php in Wordpress

While working on a Wordpress theme recently, I came across a particularly frustrating issue. The aim was to integrate the existing site header into the blog and, thinking this would be simple matter of a PHP include/require, I went straight ahead. However, I was wondering why variables in the included file were being ignored. It basically came about because I forgot about what require_once does – requires that file once. After using require, the variables magically appeared! Wow!

Posted in Web Development

17
Oct
2009

PayPal IPN woes

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog entry! This one’s about a few simple mistakes I’ve made while utilising PayPal IPN through PHP – hopefully they’re helpful to someone!

A word to the wise – when you’re using mail() in PHP and everything seems to have completed fine, but you don’t seem to get an email, check that the email isn’t being picked up as spam. This just so happened (I believe), because I had the sender’s address set to a randomly generated PayPal sandbox address which looked suspect.

Also, another stupid moment I had – when testing PayPal IPN, it pays to remember that the sandbox IPN simulator does not return a VERIFIED or INVALID status; you’ll need the sandbox for that.

These are seemingly really simple things, but sometimes we tend to overlook the simple things.

Also, my apologies for the lack of updates to WebCipher – things have been pretty hectic lately, and I just haven’t had to time to update it. My Uni exams will be over in 2 weeks, at which time I’ll have 4 months holiday, so there’ll be some catch up on WebCipher development and various web projects.

Steven

The great thing from here is that I simply have to change the PayPal address that the script points to, and the automated sale system will work perfectly!

Posted in Web Development, WebCipher

6
Aug
2009

Time Sheet and Wordpress’ automatic updater

Time Sheet is back in action! That’s right, the desktop version of Time Sheet is back, better than ever, after its hiatus. If you’re unsure of what exactly it is, Time Sheet is a time keeping, invoice generating, job tracking tool that aims to simplify your project management, from sole proprietors to businesses. It also features an address book to keep track of your contacts, plus heaps more. This brand spanking new version has been in testing for a while now, and for the small price of US$19.95, you can have your own copy and get free updates while the testing period is going on, from the current release (Beta 1) to the final 1.0 release. In addition, bug fixes for the 1.0 branch are free for customers, and an upgrade to the 2.0 branch and also subsequent branches will entitle you to a (up to) 50% discount! So, if you’re interested, head on over to mytime-sheet.com, and be sure to follow the updates on Twitter! (End shameless plug :p).

As an aside, I just updated my WordPress installation to 2.8.3 – very impressed with the automatic updater. It simplifies the upgrade process greatly, and saves me having to open up my preferred FTP application, download the latest update and apply it.

Steven

Posted in Programming, Web Development

HDMI and C# Image Lists

New laptop on the way!

Happy New Year!

Very dissatisfied with Dell

Merry Christmas!

My disappointment with Wordpress

Another useful tip…

Annoying issue with footer.php in Wordpress

PayPal IPN woes

Time Sheet and Wordpress’ automatic updater

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