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| Sunday, August 29, 2021 |
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win-acme Posted: 2:05:00 AM 0 comments |
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Here's a great piece of free software for IIS administrators who want to easily manage their SSL certificates from Let's Encrypt. win-acme is a self-guided command line utility that allows you to quickly and easily take an IIS website and get an SSL certificate on it. After struggling with utilities like ACMESharpCore, ZeroSSL's Crypt-LE, and Posh-ACME, I realized that all of these tools, while powerful, didn't have any ease of use whatsoever. When I first looked at the text interface for win-acme, I didn't think it was going to be as easy as selecting options from a menu. It's as easy as selecting optinos from a menu. Within 5 minutes, I had 7 websites with shiny new SSL certs, and I had gotten them scheduled them for a regular renewal. I didn't have to do any configuration or any PowerShell scripting, it just worked. Give it a try if you're running websites on IIS! Labels: Coding, IIS, Let's Encrypt, Software, SSL Certificates |
| Thursday, July 30, 2015 |
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Windows 10 public "beta" Posted: 12:20:00 PM 0 comments |
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If you've at all been keeping up with the news, you've undoubtedly read that Windows 10 is a godsend, a vast improvement over previous versions of Windows, and that you should upgrade to the latest version and you'll have absolutely no regrets. One thing that Windows 8 had over Windows 10, however, is that it worked. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft got a lot of things in Windows 10 right. They took the god awful start screen in Windows 8 and managed to blend it with the typical Windows 7 start menu in an appealing way. They added an action center for your notifications. They even made speech recognition a thing with Cortana, which is a pretty decent addition even if I'm not going to use it much. But there is SO MUCH wrong with Windows 10 right now that I say that casual users should not bother upgrading until they fix the major issues. Keep in mind that I spent much of yesterday upgrading all my drivers and software in an effort to eliminate these issues, to no avail. Perhaps the biggest issue I have with Windows 10 is items missing in the start menu and from Cortana's search. Sure, Voicemeeter may not be a common application. Skype is. No matter how I install Skype, through the "Get Skype" application they added in Windows 10, or through Chocolatey, Skype simply does not appear on my start menu at all. Even if I find Skype.exe and make a shortcut to it and throw it in c:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs, I still end up without access to it unless I pin it to my taskbar. What the hell, Microsoft? Having items in the start menu has been a basic Windows feature for TWENTY YEARS. You couldn't get that right? Now, I think this might be due to the fact that Windows 10 hasn't finished indexing my computer (it was about 40% done last night when I went to bed), but still, you shouldn't have to index the start menu. If it's there, let me use it! Ugh. Another pretty noticeable issue is the fact that sometimes you can't right click on a tile in the taskbar. If you try it, you might get a context menu, or it might do nothing. Annoying when you're trying to close windows. The workaround for me was to hover over the tile to bring up the preview, right click THAT, and close the application that way. Or you can Alt+F4, but I have so much running at any one time that often right clicking the taskbar is simpler. A huge problem for me is the case of the disappearing USB display. I run a three monitor setup, with two standard 1080p monitors side-by-side and a DoubleSight 1024x600 touchscreen below the main display. It's wonderful when it works, and had no problems in Windows 8.1. And to be fair, it works most of the time in Windows 10... up until the point that I run Crypt of the NecroDancer full screen. And even then the screen will continue to work while the game is running. The moment I alt-tab out of the game, the display freezes up, EXCEPT for the mouse. Then I'll go back into the game and the display will be fine. When I quit the game, though, that's when the display freezes up for good, and is entirely useless. The worst part about this is that it so far seems to only happen with Crypt of the NecroDancer. Not Descent. Not Portal. Not World of Warcraft. Not other full screen games. It's something Crypt is doing when it's full screen that is killing that display. I thought it might be drivers, but I have the latest Windows 10 drivers for both the DoubleSight display and my AMD card. This is seriously messed up. The list of annoyances continues:
This is just an example of the beta-ness of Windows 10. Many of these issues would cause the average user so much frustration. Do yourself a favor and stay away for now, unless you are a power user, or have very basic PC needs. Hopefully Microsoft gets on the ball and fixes these soon. Without pushing a broken update. Labels: Coding, Editorials, Software, Windows |
| Thursday, November 15, 2012 |
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Sift Shopping has arrived Posted: 1:24:00 PM 0 comments |
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About 6 months ago, I started working full time on a startup venture located out of the San Francisco Bay Area while working from home. Since joining, I have taken five trips out to the area. Lots of planning, coding, and sleepless nights have occurred between now and then. In fact, if you're wondering why I don't write here as much anymore, this is probably the main reason. With the exception of my WoW raiding time with SMTR, most of my free time has gone into a new creation. Today, that creation is here. Introducing Sift.  Currently it's an app for the iPad 2 or higher that basically takes all of your shopping-related email sales and puts them into one easy-to-access place. We currently support nearly 3,000 shops, so even if you're just a casual shopper like me, I'm pretty sure you'll find something of interest in Sift. It does have Chick-Fil-A, after all. Not only can you get your sales into Sift, Sift can also bring sales to you. We get hundreds of newsletters per day, allowing users to find new places to shop. We also have social connections, so you can see what your Facebook friends are interested in buying, as well as share your interests with others. And did I mention it's beautiful? Probably the best part of the app, and I can't take credit for it. Seriously, you've seen this site, you think I could come up with that nice of an interface? With fluid animations and clean design, it makes the browsing experience a heck of a lot more enjoyable than sifting through your email yourself. This is something that I've poured the last several months of my life into, and I'm quite proud of the result. So if you've got an iPad 2 or newer, give us a try and let me know what you think. |
| Friday, November 26, 2010 |
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RockMelt Posted: 12:07:00 AM 0 comments |
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I read an article a while ago, can't remember where, about this new browser that was coming out, called RockMelt. "Oh god", I thought, "not another web browser with its own JavaScript and CSS quirks I will need to consider." Well, I went in on the beta very shortly after it came out, and I have to say, I'm fairly surprised. RockMelt is based on Chromium, the same guts that powers Google Chrome. This browser, however, provides fast and easy access to the social networks Facebook and Twitter. This is huge. I'm an avid fan of both sites, as they are really easy avenues of communication between me and my friends & family. As a result, both my Facebook and Twitter usage has gone up recently, having fun responding to people's statuses and replying on Twitter some. What I love most about it is that the browser's settings are stored on their server. This means all you have to do is log in to Facebook (hey, you gotta do that anyway if you want a Facebook-integrated browser, right?) and the settings that you setup on the computer you were using at home are downloaded to your computer at work, resulting in a consistent look and feel between computers. All of Chrome's extensions are available, so I don't miss things like One Number or IE Tab. However, the extensions are a bit buggy, as you can't see any icon animations, such as notification counts. Hopefully that will get fixed soon. It also has an integrated RSS reader, although its implementation seems poor for now. I'll be sticking with Google Reader for reading my news for the time being. They recently added a GMail notifier which is nice. The features I'd really like to see added to it are closer Google integration so I don't have to have One Number or manually subscribe to RSS feeds through the browser. It would be really nice to take a feed and just say "add to Google Reader". However, this is Good Software™, and I highly recommend you get it if you're into Facebook and Twitter communication at all. If you're on Facebook with me, hit me up for an invite. |
| Wednesday, November 11, 2009 |
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Riding the Wave Posted: 2:42:00 PM 1 comments |
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Last night I had a surprise waiting for me in my inbox: a Google Wave invitation! I spent the majority of last night playing in various multiplayer Sudoku waves and checking out many of the other public waves available. The implementation is very nice. I haven't done a whole lot so far, but this post here is my first attempt at using Bloggy, the robot that publishes stuff to your blog. [ed: It failed. Bloggy's not working yet.] There's also Tweety for Twitter, and about half a gazillion more that I haven't even discovered yet. Having very few contacts makes it difficult for me to do anything productive here, but it's really neat to be able to check out the latest Google technology. And before you ask, all my invitations are spoken for. Sorry! Labels: Google Wave, Software |
| Tuesday, August 25, 2009 |
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Yahoo! Pipes Posted: 12:34:00 PM 0 comments |
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While I was on my honeymoon, I discovered Yahoo! Pipes, which is an interesting feed aggregation service. The nice thing about it is that it has super advanced features that allow you to do things like, well, this. The premise is simple, just display the last 5 achievements earned by the player in question. But since the data is coming from an XML page, a lot needs to be done to format it into a feed. The original version of this was found for th EU servers, I just modified it to be compatible with the US servers. But the possibilities appear to be endless. Worth a try if you like tinkering with data. Labels: Software, Yahoo! Pipes |
| Thursday, August 20, 2009 |
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Out With the Old and In With the New Posted: 11:13:00 PM 0 comments |
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First of all, my apologies if this post comes across strangely. I've decided to ditch LifeCast since it can no longer connect to Blogger. Instead, I am using something called Pingle. There doesn't appear to be any obvious place to put a title, so I will fix it if it breaks. this will allow me to also post to Twitter, so I may begin to actually use twitter.com/roncli for micro-blogging. We shall see. In any case, off for some sleep, there's a long day of Blizzcon ahead of me tomorrow. |
| Thursday, September 04, 2008 |
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Google Chrome Posted: 5:06:00 PM 0 comments |
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Google has put out a new product called Google Chrome. It is, basically, an IE killer... a next-gen Internet web browser. Google put a lot of thought into this product, as is evidenced by the elaborate comic strip they put out, describing all the deep, delicious, techie details that only us geeks can understand. It's quite feature-lacking, however. Google put all their manpower into the V8 engine, the webkit, and the minimalistic design that they've forgotten about simpler things. One person on TiS pointed out that you can't tell Chrome to not remember a password right now. You either remember it forever, or it won't bother you ever again, there's no middle ground. One of the frustrating points for me is the lack of 3rd button scrolling on the mouse. You can't hold down the middle mouse button and scroll the webpage. And the spell checker... did they not think about offering suggestions for misspelled words? But the speed is phenomenal, you can't deny that. Everything that has run JavaScript has worked with amazing speed and web pages load faster than ever. For that reason I've made it my primary browser for now. Hopefully Google can get their act together and start working on the small details to make a really awesome Internet browsing experience. Labels: Google Chrome, Software |
| Monday, July 28, 2008 |
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LifeCast Posted: 1:57:00 PM 0 comments |
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In checking out the many applications available for the iPhone, I've come across LifeCast, which is compatible with blogger.com. Now I should be able to better aimlessly chatter when I'm at lunch or otherwise out be about. Anything to get me to post more, right? Posted with LifeCast |
| Thursday, July 26, 2007 |
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winLAME Posted: 7:16:00 PM 0 comments |
| Today, I discovered an application by the name of winLAME. It's a free WAV to MP3 converter using the LAME engine, and it's got to be among the best interfaces I've used for creating MP3's. Best part is, they sound great, too. All of my releases from here on out will use this encoder, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to others, either. Need an MP3 converter? Check it out. |
| Thursday, March 01, 2007 |
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BoincView Posted: 3:48:00 PM 0 comments |
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For the past several years, I've been running Berkeley's Seti@Home, a grid computing application that searches for extraterrestrial life. It's out there, just trust me. Anyway, since being put under the BOINC system, I've managed to compile a list of 41 projects that my computers can crunch numbers with. Naturally, my servers all host a BOINC client service, and I'm particularly controlling over which projects get time. Basically, I set it up so that I'm hitting a particular goal as to how many percent of the users in each project I'm doing better than. That current goal is 80%, although projects like Seti@Home are pushing the mid 90's. The big problem has been controlling all of these servers, which used to be a pain. Then I found BoincView. I've only been using it for a couple of days, but what it does is it gives me a look at all of the computers that are running BOINC at once. I have the same control I can get with the BOINC Manager application that comes with the client, but since it all operates over the network, that means I can take care of all of the tasks I need to do, such as switching project work requests off and on, from one computer. It's currently in development, so the project continues to get support and more features as it goes along. And the best part is that it's free software! Not a bad replacement for the BOINC Manager either, but if you have multiple computers you run BOINC on, this tool's invaluable. |
| Saturday, June 03, 2006 |
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Another PDF Viewer Posted: 10:42:00 PM 0 comments |
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This free PDF viewer is very compact and fluff-free. It's Foxit Reader, a really smooth PDF viewer that is a bit better than the previous one I mentioned. Give it a whirl. Labels: Foxit Reader, Software |
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Overcomplication Posted: 10:31:00 PM 0 comments |
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I finally uninstalled Adobe Acrobat Reader today after struggling with its absolutely terrible updater. Not only does it make you reboot your machine two to three times in order to update, I have never gotten its updater to work correctly since going to 7.0. I'm trying a few free utilities, one being the CAD-KAS PDF Reader 2.4, a free PDF viewer that can also edit the files if needed. I'm definitely not going back to Adobe until they do somerhing about their faulty updater. Labels: Adobe Acrobat, CAD-KAS PDF Reader 2.4, Software |
| Tuesday, May 16, 2006 |
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CDBurnerXP Pro Posted: 9:35:00 PM 0 comments |
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More good software, CDBurnerXP Pro sounds like an expensive, state of the art CD Burner. Well, knock out the word "expensive" and you've got it right. I downloaded the approximately 11 MB program, installed it in seconds, and had a CD burnt within 10 minutes after installing. No confusing wizard interface, just a very solid CD burning application that's free. Check it out. Labels: CDBurnerXP Pro, Software |
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Microsoft's Latest Resource Hog Posted: 1:02:00 AM 0 comments |
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I haven't talked about bad software in a while, either. At all costs, avoid Microsoft's IE 7 beta. It's not that it's a bad browser. They have tabbed browsing, now, so it's not all that bad. Popup blockers, phishing filters, all sorts of neat little bells and whistles have been added. However, all of this comes at a cost. IE 7 has destroyed my computer's performance. I have web browsers open all the time as part of what I do, and whenever I do, my CPU is instantly a constant 25 to 50 percent. Not all of it is IE 7, either, csrss.exe joins in, running 10-20%, even after reinstalling the one hot fix Microsoft updated late last month. The last thing I want is a computer that's annoyingly slow, and IE 7 has done it. I can't wait to get a chance to sit down and uninstall this stupid browser. Maybe I'll just take all of Windows with it, that can't be bad. Labels: Internet Explorer, Software |
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Google Calendar Posted: 12:58:00 AM 0 comments |
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I haven't talked about good software in a while, so let me introduce you to Google Calendar. When you first look at your calendar, you see nothing but... well... a calendar. I never was big on using a calendar before, and I really had nothing to put in there. So I started by creating a schedule for the Houston Aeros 2005-2006 season. It actually went fairly well, I could put in the name of the arena they were playing in along with the city and state (or providence, they played a few games in Canada), and it would come up in Google maps. Neat! Next, I put in my vacation, flights included. It's a bit lacking in time-zone specific information, but I was willing to overlook that for getting 3 hours advance notice of a flight. Finally, I started throwing my blocks for working on projects in there, and that has really gotten me fully into using Google Calendar. I'm fairly amazed at how simple the interface is to use, yet has many features that make using it worth it. Check it out, even if you don't use calendars much. You may be surprised at what it has to offer. Labels: Google Calendar, Software |
| Tuesday, April 04, 2006 |
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First look at Google Pages Posted: 2:03:00 AM 0 comments |
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I got my first look at the latest in free Google stuff, Google Page Creator. It's pretty simple, you use a web-based WYSIWYG editor to create your web pages. There's not a whole lot of flexibility, but I'll give Google this: they did a good job with what's there so far. I put something up. It's not much, but gives you the idea the type of stuff you can do with it. Labels: Google Pages, Software |
| Tuesday, March 28, 2006 |
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Windows Defender is Terrible Posted: 4:26:00 PM 0 comments |
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I was using Microsoft Anti-Spyware at work, and it was a great program. It caught stuff that didn't need to be on my computer, and for the most part worked quietly in the corner minding its own business. So I decided to upgrade to Windows Defender, the next in line. What a mistake! All day at work I was having message after message after message asking me to check Windows Defender to see what was wrong when there was nothing wrong. It also said I had two VNC versions installed on my computer, except when I had the program remove one version it killed the second version. Then, after I completely uninstalled and reinstalled it, it still saw two versions. I finally gave up and uninstalled the program. Spyware just doesn't concern me enough to keep a program that won't leave me alone for no reason, even when I turn it off. AdAware SE remains the best thing out there. Leave it to Microsoft to screw it up. Labels: AdAware SW, Software, Windows Defender |
| Sunday, February 26, 2006 |
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Warning: Winamp 5.2 Posted: 12:30:00 AM 0 comments |
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Just a warning to those who like to play MP3 and other files in Winamp: Don't upgrade to 5.2. Apparently there's a lot - and I mean a lot - of problems with it. I installed it and I can't even open it now, I get a fatal exception. Back to WMP for now... Sigh. |
| Thursday, December 15, 2005 |
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Seti@Home Classic is Dead Posted: 5:43:00 PM 0 comments |
| Well, Seti@Home finally announced the inevitable: Seti@Home Classic sent out it's final work unit, and is switching solely to BOINC. What sucks is that they aren't allowing Classic users the ability to upload completed work units anymore, so all that queuing done was rendered useless. I've seen the new BOINC version and am not really sure I want to go to it yet. I've done a lot for the Classic version, having run a SetiQueue for over 3 years. It's more a sentimental thing than anything. |