Category: New Stuff

D-Link DIR-655: How to make 1.35 firmware upgrade stick

By , 02/06/2012 11:24 PM

If you’re trying to upgrade your D-Link DIR-655 Extreme-N Gigabit Wireless Router to the latest firmware (1.35NA US version as of this post), you may encounter a weird problem: firmware uploads without errors, router says it is being reprogrammed, but after reboot old version is displayed.

To solve it – try following these steps

  1. Save your current settings (Tools -> System -> Save Configuration) – you should do it prior any update anyway
  2. This what does the trick: On the same screen click “Restore Factory Default” – this will restore router default settings (one more reason why it’s important to do the update over wired connection)
  3. Flash your firmware
  4. Restore setting saved in Step 1 and reboot the router
  5. Profit! You’re now on the latest firmware

ICS: Android 4 on Kindle Fire

By , 01/11/2012 9:34 PM

Ice Cream Sandwitch on Kindle Fire

Another day, another experiment on my new favorite toy business instrument – Kindle Fire. Today I went ahead and installed latest (as of this date) incarnation of Android OS – version 4 aka Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). Again, like in case with CyanogenMod 7 (which is essentially Android 2.3.7) installation is extremally easy thanks to TWRP recovery. Just download Kindle Zone ICS ROM put it on your Fire, reboot into TWRP recovery, *backup your existing rom* and flash the ICS.

It boots nicely and looks pretty good. Connects to WiFi with Internet and LAN access (ES File Explorer comes preinstalled and accessed SMB shares on my home network with no problems).

Being a very early version it has it share of problems. Video doesn’t work correctly (MP4 files for example play in fast-forward mode, YouTube can’t connect). Sounds work sporadically and overall moving around the interface has a jerky feeling. But it looks like a very good start and I am looking forward to a more stable release. Meanwhile I am back to CM7

Plants vs. Zombies 2!

By , 12/10/2011 9:43 PM

Well, not really. But if you’re a fan of the original PvZ and just can’t wait for the sequel – check out this beauty:

“Mini Robot Wars” looks like a straight out clone of Plant vs. Zombies, but as clones go – this one is pretty good, give it a try!

WebHierarchicalDataGrid: Extra Row after Update

By , 10/12/2011 3:40 PM

If after upgrading to a new version of Infragistics NetAdvantage you suddenly found your WHDG sprouting an extra blank row on top:

Extra Row in Aikido WHDG

most likely it’s because grid’s ItemCssClass property is used. In theory (at least according to ever so verbose documentation) it should define what grid’s cells look like. In practice it have no effect whatsoever. Or rather had no effect until upgrade (verified in version 2011.1, perhaps even earlier). Now if your CSS class used in this property contains HEIGHT attribute – a blank row of that height will be inserted on top of the grid.

Solution? Remove ItemCssClass property. It’s useless anyway.

WebDataMenu: Incorrect displaying after upgrade

By , 10/10/2011 8:55 AM

This is the second post in saga titled Upgrading Infragistics Controls to a new version. Chances are that your WebDataMenu looks weird after upgrade to 2010+ version. In my case the menu had following options/features:

  • It was a context popup menu, called on right mouse click
  • Text of menu items was assigned dynamically at runtime in JavaScript Client code

After upgrading NetAdvantage from version 2009.2 to 2011.1 strange things started to happen. Text of the menu items was cut short, submenues appeared at wrong places it looked like something from a Dali’s painting.
Numerous experiments later I found out that the problem was with EnableScrolling property of the menu control. Setting it to False returned menu to realm of realism.

Changing Hosting. Again and again.

By , 08/18/2011 3:35 PM

Back in April I opened a hosting slot at Feral Hosting. It’s been a beautiful 4 months, exceptional service, tons of space and bandwidth. Unfortunately after provider changed a few HTTP settings my blogs were essentially killed dead. Unable to resolve problem there I had to move.

Goodbye Feral Hosting. Hello Market Juice.

Microsoft with the sense of humor

By , 06/24/2011 2:14 PM

Visited IE test-drive site in my Chrome browser today and was greeted with a cheery banner:

Microosft about Chrome

I guess that “Don’t forget to enable your partial hardware acceleration in the about:flags thingy…” is a veiled reference that IE9′s HTML5 is fully “hardware accelerated”. Still funny.

Update: Since Microsoft is abandoning their “native HTML5″ party line the funny logo has been removed as well. Too bad, especially after comparing FPS on speed tests.

Implementing getNextRow in WebDataGrid

By , 04/25/2011 2:16 PM

UltraWebGrid had a very convenient getNextRow() client-side function which returns next row in row collection. WebDataGrid does not have an analog, but it’s pretty easy to recreate the functionality:

function getNextRow(i_oRow) {
      var iRowIndex = i_oRow.get_index();
      var aRows = i_oRow.get_grid().get_rows();

      return aRows.get_row(iRowIndex + 1)
}

This function accept grid row as a parameter, gets the row’s index and return row with incremented index from grid row’s collection.

Changing hosting. Again

By , 04/06/2011 4:23 PM

Two years ago I switched to BlueHost. For a while it’s been a beautiful run, but lately the service has become horrible. Constant downtimes, and when sites were up they we unbelievable slow. So after a couple of MySQL DBs export/imports, after moving DNS hosting to my registrar GKG.NET – it’s:

Goodbye BlueHost, Hello Feral Hosting.

Posting from HELLOTXT to Custom URL

By , 03/23/2011 5:28 PM

HELLOTXT is an excellent service allowing you to update multiple social networks, blogs and microblogs at once. Among supported services – WordPress, Blogger, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter and many more.

One of the selections is Custom URL. What it does – it allows you to specify URL of your own site and then you’re free to do whatever you need with received data. This makes HELLOTXT services very expendable. For example natively it doesn’t support Russian LiveInternet network, but using Custom URL my site can accept posted data and then create a new LiveInternet entry via posting by email.

Setting Custom URL is very easy in HELLOTXT. You specify 2 fields:1st is Name*Code which can hold any data that your site can check to verify that call is authentic, 2nd field is URL – the URL of your site. Important! Make sure you specify actual file name, e.g. if it’s http://www.mysite.com/hellotxt/index.php – enter it as is, if your enter just http://www.mysite.com/hellotxt you may get 405 error “service not allowed”.

Once this part is setup your page will receive following FORM fields in HTTP request:

name, body, title, msg_code, image_code, video_code, audio_code, v

field “name” will have name*security code you specified in Custom URL setup. The rest depends on your setup, in my case (microblogging/status) field “body” had the actual message.

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