MacBook Pro SSD

Michael Dale

So my old MacBook Pro has been working pretty well for 2 years now, but it was sloooow.

So I purchased an SSD for it, and wow. It now feels faster than my 27" i7 iMac!

Any new computer I purchase now will need an SSD, I am very impressed with the speed increase.

So yeah, SSD for the win!

Bluetrait Event Viewer 1.9.2

Michael Dale

I've just released a new version of Bluetrait Event Viewer for WordPress.

The main new feature is an email alert option on Successful/Failed Logins. I've also updated some of the HTML to improve the display of the events widget.

This plugin has been downloaded almost 7000 times, which I think is pretty cool 

From going over the WordPress stats I think there are about 2000 active copies of the plugin running around the world.

I never have enough ram

Michael Dale

CPU is sweet, just need more ram........ 

IPManager Augmented Reality

Michael Dale

I spend a couple of hours yesterday adding a barcode scanner into IPManager.

The results are sent off to the IPManager server and then displayed as an overlay on the camera interface back on the iPhone.

It works surprisingly well for the amount of work I needed to do (not much).

I'll need to add a scanner log but it is pretty cool :)

Gmail Sucks

Michael Dale

We're finally moving one of our clients away from Gmail. We have be using Gmail there for the last few years and it has been painful.

The product is bad. We have had a number of times where email accounts will be locked out for no reason, passwords will be rejected and the stupid capture is impossible to read (required to unlock the account).

The email threading confuses most people I've talked to and it doesn't work correctly with many email clients.

The web interface isn't designed well and I don't like the idea of an advertising company having access to my email.

On the iPhone gmail is also really slow at sending/receiving emails compared to my email server.

The only good thing about Gmail is the search, but Mail.app on the mac seems to work just as well.

In fact most of the google products I have used aren't that good. Postini has the worst admin interface I have ever seen, it is really slow and again another bad design.

I don't understand why so many of googles products are so lacking. I would say that they offer just enough features to get people locked into their system.

I don't think I'll ever recommend a business use Google for anything.

Dalegroup Support App

Michael Dale

So every good website needs an iOS app these days ;)

I've been wanting to get into some iOS programming so I've started writing a small app that can be used on the iPhone.

I'm using this service to generate the code required for the SOAP connection to the website. After a small amount of hacking it works really well and allows you to access all your SOAP results as proper objects within xocde which is nice.

I would say that the interface builder in xcode isn't that great. It works okay but if you do anything stupid the app can crash without any nice error logging.

The SOAP connection is very quick compared to going to the actual website which is nice. I'd also like to write in some SQLite caching at some stage too.

Dalegroup Support Website

Michael Dale

So I've been looking for a program that does support tickets, news, assets etc for my clients. I also required some integration with Kaseya as I use this program for all my automation of patching/scripting/remote control etc

There was nothing good in my price range, so I wrote my own.

My graphics designer did an awesome job with the interface, so I'm very happy.

Remote Control Car

Michael Dale

I've always wanted an awesome remote control car, so I picked up a netduino a couple of weeks ago and have decided to build a remote control car.

So far the parts I have:

• Netduino
• Breadboard
• RP5 Tracked Chassis Gray (link)
• Pololu Qik 2s9v1 Dual Serial Motor Controller
• Arduino ProtoShield Kit

I'll need to get some more stuff for the remote control.

Anyway this is how it looks so far:

All the parts were ordered online from here.

Basic JunOScript PHP Client

Michael Dale

Still needs some work.

Link

Cisco Fail

Michael Dale

I don't normally sell Cisco products, but one of my clients already has a full Cisco network, so for them we purchased an ASA5505 for a remote office.

Cisco have made a number of upgrades to the software of the ASA range and have really stuffed up a few sections.

1. It took me about a month to get a new ASA5505 (the new 512mb version as the OS now needs more memory)! For some reason Cisco cannot manage their stock, they suck. Also the ASA5505 should have had 512mb to start with.
2. Finally when the ASA5505 comes, it doesn't work! It doesn't even switch on. I don't think I've ever had a DOA Juniper product. I understand these things happen but it doesn't leave a good impression.
3. The power connector is really bad, it is some stupidly small plastic thing that will no doubt break in the future.

Overall the ASA5505 is a good product, but they've done some stupid things with the range. I wouldn't recommend one over a Juniper SSG.

I don't know why companies always create shitty products, the Juniper SRX range is another fine example. The code base on the Juniper SRX is still buggy. Junos 10.2 should finally fix most of my issues with the OS, but really.