s h a n . m o o n b a s e . n e t

Addicted to Learning?

shanmoon — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:05:37 +0000

Aeronautics

I spent so much time in school you would think I would be glad to be done with it… and I was, for a while anyway. Yet after a few months of school free existence, in the evening I often found myself picking up text books or reference manuals.

I’ve come to realize, that I greatly enjoy the act of learning and gaining knowledge. So, I’ve enrolled in a couple of graduate classes in Aeronautics, just because I find it to be a fascinating subject.

Talk like ye be a pirate!

shanmoon — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:21:57 +0000

Arrr, ye scruvy dogs! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Today only me ol’ blog will be readin’ most piratey!

Harvard Graduation

shanmoon — Sun, 29 May 2011 23:12:16 +0000

Harvard - May 2011

After years of schooling, I finally graduated from Harvard in May 2011! Hurray! You’d think after all of these years I would want to take a break and relax, but I find my brain seems to be stuck in “learning” mode, so I’ve decided to try and learn Japanese so I can be a proper anime otaku, lol!

2011 Soaring Season Begins

shanmoon — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 01:10:09 +0000

2011-02-26 Flight Path

I’ve been working on my sailplane to get in back in shape…last weekend I didn’t fly it, instead I spend 12+ hours cleaning, polishing and waxing everything except the bottoms of the wings. Today I wired up my new flight recorder and PNA. I thought about finishing waxing the wings, but I just couldn’t… with cloud streets like I saw today, I just HAD to fly. It was AWESOME! there was incredible lift, averaging about 4kts, but going up to 10+kts! I downloaded my flight from my flight recorder,so you can see there was good lift today… I made up above 5000′, and actually above the cloud bases at one point.

Flight Track from Flght Recorder:

Click here to view the embedded video.

2011-02-26 Flight 3D

JUnit4 Annotations and Ant Workaround

shanmoon — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 02:55:18 +0000

I usually use Maven for Java based projects, so my ant skills are a little rusty. Recently It was whipping up some JUnit negative test cases for someone else’s project that was a mess of ant build files (ugh). I decided to use some of the nifty annotation features found in JUnit 4.8.2 ( for rules and expected exception behavior). Annotations are great for addressing defects in the Java language, and help encapsulation by associating behavior directly with a class. But I digress… Anyway All the tests to check exceptions were thrown under negative test conditions looked good inside of Eclipse, but when I ran the ant test script from the command line, none of tests were being run encfprcomg the annotations, even though the JUnit jar was in the ant classpath! A little research showed that ant’s JUnit test runner doesn’t support annotations. The solution was to modify the suite() method of the AllTests class to wrap the classes under test in a JUnit4TestAdapter, i.e. something like this:

@RunWith(JUnit4.class)
public class AllTests extends TestSuite {

public static junit.framework.Test suite() {
        return new JUnit4TestAdapter(TestSomething.class);
}


}

XML Encoding, UTF-8 / UTF-16 Confusion

shanmoon — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:30:49 +0000

Here’s a frustrating little problem I found when a service I deal with (we’ll call it SystemA for “Awesome”) suddenly changed character encoding… My app was suddenly getting parse exceptions for XML messages after an upgrade to SystemA was deployed to a test environment. A peak at my logs showed the xml response looked funky, with extra spaces all throught it… no wonder my XML API went blooey:

< ? x m l v e r s i o n = ” 1 . 0 ” e n c o d i n g = ” U T F – 8 ” ? >

I blinked a little, then tried a copy paste from the log file to put into a bug note and got this little gem from textpad:

Cannot cut, copy, or drag and dtop text containing null (code = 0) characters.

Sweet!

I opened the file up in a Hex Editor, and low and behold there were extra nulls chars all through it. Even though the xml header specified UTF-8, it looked like it was actually encoded in UTF-16.

A quick hack to my code to override encoding to use UTF-16, and the xml was now readable…. looks like SystemA swapped encoding without informing anyone or updating their code to output the correct incoding in the file encoding attribute… makes me wonder if they String all their XML together by hand with String concatenations instead of using an XML library (shudder). Just goes to show, just ’cause the encoding attribute says one thing, it might actually be something else. Never presume that inside the black box that is someone else’s application, good coding practices are followed.

Flying Home

shanmoon — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 06:31:37 +0000

I flew my plane for the first time since my catastrophic hangliding accident 9 months ago… here’s a 3 minute video showing takeoff, some highlights of the flight, and my landing.

Review of ThinkGeek iPad Bluetooth Keyboard Case

shanmoon — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 17:01:29 +0000

case in use

Don’t get me wrong… I love my iPad. However, there are times when the onscreen keyboard just doesn’t cut it, like when writing/editing a particularly long document. These are the times I find my self reaching for my tabletpc Netbook (an Asus EEPC T101MT, a great little tablet netbook with a multitouch display which I will review later).

A standard bluetooth key is just too inconvenient…I certainly can’t use one with my iPad propped on my lap, plus I don’t want to have to tote one around with me. I’ve looked at a number of the offering out there so far, but was reluctant to pay $100+ for one . Enter ThinkGeek, offering an iPad case with integrated bluetooth keyboard for $59.99.

bluetooth case

Bulk: Thinkgeek’s case is about on par with my inCase cover. It’s a lot thicker than Apple’s cover, but offer a lot more protection. I never cared for the Apple cover, feeling it to be far too flimsy, too easily dirtied, and not well suited to propping a case on your lap.

keyboard closeup

Keyboard: The keyboard is small… a bit smaller than that on my 10″ Asus EEPC101MT. I find it manageable, but if your hands are really big or you really hate compact keyboards, it might not be for you. It’s a “chiclet” style keyboard, which I personally like. The keys are made from soft rubber foam. They are solid enough, but there is no audible “click” to confirm you’ve hit a key.

Usability: I am able to type on the keyboard with the iPad on my lap without it tipping over as long as the wrist rest is not folded back. I can also fold he entire keyboard portion of the case back and hold the iPad in a vertical orientation easily (quite usable as I am recovering from two broken arms). The keyboard easily syncs with the iPad. It also has an on-off switch to conserve power, and a power led to remind you to turn it off. It recharges using an included mini-usb cable which you can plug into you iPad charger (when it is not charging your iPad).

case vertical

Cons: On the downside it is not real leather, which is to be expected for the low price tag. It also smells AWFUL when first unpackaged, as many faux leather products do. After taking it out of the packaging, I let it air out in my backroom for a day before using it.

Quality: The overall quality of the case is good. The stitching is strong, and all the holes for the case lined up well. One area I could see improved is the flap that holds the iPad in the case. On my inCase case, the flap has velcro to hold it in place. Thinkgeek’s flap, while sturdy, does not. That said, I’ve had no sign that my iPad is slipping out of the new case. Battery life is good, and seemed to live up to advertised specs during my personal testing.

It’s worth it: Overall, I like it, and feel it is $59.99 (plus shipping) well spent. I won’t give up my netbook or laptops any time soon, but it is a convenient way to have a keyboard with my iPad, even if I won’t use it most of the time. The integrated volume/home buttons are a nice touch too, since I worry about double tapping the home button so much for the multitask dock now that I have iOS 4.2.

Fix for ipad activation error, updating from expired 4.2 beta to newest beta

shanmoon — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 17:02:24 +0000

Shan's iPad

Yesterday I turned on my iPad and got the connect to itunes logo…I was a little freaked, but plugged her in to my workstation. I got a message that the ios 4.2 beta was expired and I need to update (yes, I AM a member of the Apple Developer Program).

I download the latest ios sdk, and tried to update via iTunes 10 using the iPad1,14.28C5101c ipsw . The update failed and I went into restore mode. Forgetting that downgrades are not supported, I tried to the default restore (3.2. something). Now I got an error 1015 on update… So next I restored the same ispw using iTunes again. Next I got an activation error stating the device was not registered in the developer program and to register the deviceid via the developers provision portal. I tried to go back to restore/DFU mode using the normal means (home & sleep button,etc), but it would not re-enter restore mode….it would go straight to the connect to iTunes screen. Once I connected back to iTunes, I got the same activation error again, with no way to get my deviceid from iTunes!

Shan's Ipad

Now panic set in…I could not view the Serial #, DeviceId, etc via iTunes becuase of the activation error. All the usual tabs for iPad info in iTunes were missing. After a few deep breathes, my next thought was maybe i could someone get the deviceid from XCode if I could get back in restore mode. Unfortunately attempts to go back to restore mode failed and brought me straight back to the activate error (as described above).

I fired up XCode, plugged in my iPad (ignoring iTunes) and went to the Window menu and chose Organizer. The iPad showed up, but with no device info and with the restore button greyed out. I needed a way to force the device back to restore mode. A little googling, and I found a tool called RecBoot (available for Windows and OSX) which could for a device into and out of recovery mode. It worked like a charm and forced the device into restore mode. The restore button showed up in XCode. I restored to the latest 4.2 beta… 5 minutes or so later I was able to see the deviceid in the Organizer Window. I registered it in the developers portal, fired iTunes back up, and activation was successful.

I then did a normal restore settings in iTunes. My iPad is (almost) back where it was… I need to get a few application purchases that weren’t backed up back on the device, but it is not bricked. Whew.

If you are not a registered iOS developer with access to XCode, the iOS beta SDK, and a running instance of OSX (via a real Mac, a Hackintosh, or OSX Server running in VMWare), then you are going to have become one or make friends with someone who is!

exsec32.dll or OLMAPI32.dll is incompatible” Error When Upgrading from Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2010

shanmoon — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:55:50 +0000

Ok, this was a nasty littler error I ran into when I needed to upgrade to Excel 2010 for a spreadsheet modeling class I was taking at Harvard. I bought the Academic Version of Office Professional 2010, then the chaos began.

IN SHORT: Upgrades from Outlook 2007 to 20010 seem to have issue as Outlook 2007 in not uninstalled when upgrading from Office 2007 to 2010 even though other Office applications (Word, Excel, etc. are uninstalled if i upgraded.)

MY SITUATION: Micfrosoft Office Enterprise 2007 installed on Window 7 64bit Professional (disclaimer: only booted into to play games or use Microsoft products outside of VMWare, otherwise I am a *Nix head!)

UPGRADE PATH: Microsoft Office Professional 2010 (Academic) upgrade performed.

I performed an upgrade rather than uninstalling 2007 and doing a fresh install of 2010 because I needed to keep some Office apps that are present in the Enterprise version that are not present in the Professional version (Visio, Project, and One Note). I figured the upgrade would install the 2007 apps included in the 2010 Professional Version (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.).

THE EXPECTED: All 2007 apps not present in the 2010 upgrade were left in place (Visio, Project, & Access) and worked with no problem.

THE UNEXPECTED:Outlook 2007 was not uninstalled. When I triec to start the new Outlook it immediately crashed. If I started in safe mode like this:

“C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\OUTLOOK.EXE” /safe

Outlook would start, but withn 2-30 seconds it would crash with a dll error such as:

“The file OLMAPI32.dll is incompatible with Microsoft Outlook. Install Outlook again” or “The file exsec32.dll is incompatible with Microsoft Outlook. Install Outlook again”

I tried re-upgrading to 2010 Professional again and rebooting. This did not resolve the issue. I tried repairing 2010 and this did not resolve the issue. After a bit of sleuthing I realized that Outlook 2007 had not been removed. I then decided to remove just Outlook 2007 from the Office 2007 Enterprise installation. Some people might not realize this can only be done by modifying The Office 2007 install… “Outlook 2007″ is not going to be in your list of installed programs.

Uninstall like this in Windows 7:

To do this is Windows 7 you need to:

Go to Control Panel
Under the “Programs” heading Select “Uninstall a program”
Right click on the “Microsoft Office Standard 2007 item in the resulting “Uninstall or change a program” window and select the ‘Change’ option per the image below:

You will get the option to ‘Add or Remove’ Features’:

Click the radio button beside ‘Add or Remove Features” then click Continue.

As in the image below, X out the “Microsoft Office Outlook” application by clicking on the down arrow and selecting the ‘Not Available” option. Once X’d out, click on the Continue button:

Next you will see this Configuration Process Screen:

And then this success screen:

But don’t get excited yet… we’re not quite done. Reboot. Now we fix the dll error.

Proceed again to the “Uninstall or change a program” window (see first image above)
Right click on “Microsoft Office 2010” in the list
Select “Change” (as you can see in the first picture above for Office 2007)
Select the ‘Repair” option as pictured below then press “Continue”

This well be followed by the “Configuration Process” notification screen.

After this completed, Outlook 2010 was repaired and has functioned normally for some time now. The Office 2007 legacy apps (Visio, Project, etc.) configure to work without problems.