I'm loving my recently updated Android4 and some of the new little touches that it adds to the Smartphone experience.

The only annoyance I've come across so far, is the background data being restricted when the phone is quietly hibernating at my desk. This is probably great for people on data usage plans but for big fat unlimited data dudes like me its a royal PITA (That does not stand for that lovely Indian Bread either). I want to be continually updated... my internet addiction demands it.

Here's the problem as reported by some other dude on some forum:

[quote]I have a stock, non-rooted RAZR. Ever since the ICS update, I keep getting a notification of "Background Data Restricted. Click here to remove restriction. I do not have a mobile data limit set and I don't have the box checked restrict background data. Any ideas? This thing is making me crazy.[/quote]

So a little bit of poking around the solution is straightforward.

The very clever SMART ACTIONS lets you restrict usage under certain conditions.

Now that the very saucy MOTOROLA RAZR phone has finally got its (Verizon) update to Android 4.0.4 we now have the ability to capture screenshots from within native Android. .. without having to resort to rooting or installing an APP to do it for us. About bloody time too!

How to catch a screen shot

VOLUME DOWN + POWER

From the screen you want to capture - just press both buttons at same time and hold for a second+.

The screen image will be captured as a .PNG image and a little message will be shown on the top status bar. You can click the message icon to view/edit your image or just go into GALLERY and click MY LIBRARY.

Now all I want is the ability to capture a live video plus sound... so I can talk and show instructions on how to do something on Droid.

Love this little green fella!

So, the Boris the bloody annoying LR3 has been getting worse and worse... it's at the stage now where I just dont trust it to drive anywhere. When it does start, I just leave it running on the street if I have to go into any stores... because there is simply no guarantee that it will start when I get back. It's left me stranded five times in the last 3 months... I've had the car into two different Landrover Main Dealers - both of whom found no problems.

After leaving both dealers... the car refused to start within the next 24 hours.

Then I tried a Landrover Specialist and left the car there for nearly two weeks while I tooled around in a hire car... all the time there it started first time every time... the mechanic replaced the starter motor and then transmission switch (in case it was thinking it was in gear when trying to start). Then declared it fixed. The car ran perfect for three whole days after I got it back.. then it refused to start and left me stranded at work...

I'm currently working with IBMi (iSeries) Turnover change management system. It's the best SCM (Software Change Management) application in IBMi land and has a great balance between being easy to use and very powerful.

I know the product fairly well, but it still grins and kicks me in the shins occasionally. This week I've been seeing a lot of "this program has been changed outside of turnover" warning message when checking Turnover Forms to promote code changes. But, when I use DSPOBJD to compare object differences, the only thing different is the last used and the change date. Maybe its a system authority change on the object? Or something deeper and trickier...

The trouble is... what exactly is Turnover checking when it compares the old and new objects?

I've frequently scratched my head over this so it's time to submit the following question to SOFTLANDING SUPPORT

What exactly is the cause of "program has been changed outside of turnover" messages...

I'm sometimes bemused by gaping holes in the IBMi operating arena.

What do I mean by this?

The IBMi operating system is fantastically robust, powerul yet simple to use. It's evolved from the early days of CPF on the System/3x machines, upthruogh the OS400 years and now in its latest and greatest iteration of the 'IBM i' operating system. During this time the operating system has resolutely stuck to a command driven GUI ("Dont worry, I'm not going to moan about the lack of a point/click GUI interface today"). IBMi has incredible functionailty in its ability to interface with any operating system in the world and really cool functions like the IFS - which makes the IBMi storage area look and act just like a windows server.

But here we are in 2012 and there is still no really simple way of transferring data to your IBMi system. Obviously there is more than one way to skin a cat, but the main techniques are (a) use the data transfer function in the IBM i Access client software or (b) use FTP to upload/download *SAVEFILES from your Windows/Apple/Linux/Machine of choice.

Turnover (the one written by Softlandings that does Change Management, not the one that is full of apple and tastes delicious) is a pretty cool software control application native to IBMi. But of course, you already knew that. But did you know that you can promote an EXTERNAL PROCEDURE to a specific library and then have it invoke its program component from that library, or from any library that you care to define to Turnover or of course from the *LIBL?

It's all down to these basic rules:

1. &LIBRARY is the variable that TURNOVER will replace with the name of your target library during promotion
2. if you quote the procedure name (ie: 'program') then it must have either a hardcoded library ('QGPL/THING') or the variable ('&LIBRARY/THING)
3. If not quotes (ie: EXTERNAL NAME THING) then *LIBL will be used to call the THING program

Example *EXTPRC using &LIBRARY VARIABLE:

CREATE PROCEDURE CHKCASACT

Oh its horrible when Drupal decides it's got a headache and throws an error message out:

MovieMode = *ON;

So, According to ScreenRant.com development of the next installment of I AM LEGEND is underway:

[quote=ScreenRant Website]There have been rumblings about an impending second installment in the I Am Legend (would-be) franchise being made, ever since the original 2007 film grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide in theaters. Warner Bros. has finally struck a deal to do just that, with Oscar-winner Akiva Goldsman – who co-wrote and produced the original Legend adaptation – now onboard to collaborate on the project (in some form).... The second I Am Legend flick is (asDeadline puts it) “not being called a prequel,” and is being fashioned so as to allow Will Smith to reprise his role as scientist Robert Neville (if the A-lister so chooses).[/quote]

[pause]

Sorry, I had pause there... had an uncontrolleable burst of over-excitement and needed to sit down and have a nice cup of tea to regain control.

[slurp]

[dunk biscuit]

I occasionally get an email from RPG programmers out there in IBMi-Land who have spent the last decade gently plodding along in RPG3 and RPG400 and now face the daunting prospect of having to hone there RPG skills and learn RPG4 (or RPG-LE or /FREE as its also called). So, I’ve quickly cobbled together links and information from various sources on the web and dropped it here for reference.

What Software Tool do I use to write RPG?

Three main choices really:

I've been having problem promoting Stored Procedures today. After an hour of looking at two different Applications defined in Turnover - where one works fine and the other... *cough.... doesnt. I'm still none the wiser. Grrrrr

So this little cheat sheet may come in handy for me (and for you!)

Possible reasons why Turnover can't delete existing stored procedure

For TurnOver to properly promote your routine's catalog entries, you must do the following:

• Create a source member that uses the CREATE PROCEDURE or CREATE FUNCTION statements, to be run with the RUNSQLSTM or TRUNSQLSTM commands.
• Give your source member the same name as the program that it references.
• Use the SPECIFIC statement to give the routine's catalog entries the same name as the source member name.

The *MOVOBJ method is used during archiving of existing catalog entries, during distribution, and during recovery processing, as follows:

Ipad to go with the Market leader? Android to go with the new contender? Windows device to see what happens with the big and powerful Microsoft?

[quote]I think it depends on what you want to use it for. I personally wanted a device that was as easy and convenient to use as my TV. One that I could carry for email access, web use, and occasional games/music/videos/books etc. I wanted good selection of apps and a (relatively) virus proof OS. For me that came down to the Asus EE Pad.[/quote]

Installing ADMIN MENU gives us the most excellent admin menu black menu bar at the top of our website when performing administration functions in Drupal (currently playing with Drupal 7). However, I also want to display a User menu, in a similar style, for website surfers and anonymous users out there. Obviously we dont want to grant anonymous users ADMIN rights to use ADMIN MENU. Hmmm... happily this is a dilemma that can be solved by hacking around in the settings and permissions within Drupal7. Or you can just install a similar module that offers the required functionailty.

The Drupal QUICKBAR Module is like a ADMIN TOOLBAR for regular website visitors. It's a funky black menu at the top of the screen.

Lets have a look at setting it up in more detail:

1-Create a Menu to hold our links.

http://www.your-domain-here.com/admin/structure/menu/add

Add a menu (I called mine TOPMENU) and then we will add all our required menu options to it. Once these options are added it might look something like this:

It's April 2012 and Spring has sprung out here in the Nevada Desert (it was 99 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday - can you believe that?).

This warm weather always gets me a bit frisky. So after taking Muttley for his Sunday Morning walk and I decided to settle in with a cuppa Char for a bit of website spring cleaning, a new theme and some jolly good tidyup work. As usual, this evolved into a whole day spent tinkering with the nicklitten.com menu system. My aim was to get a 'admin menu' style menu to appear at the top of the page without any theme modifications. I considered editting the PHP of the theme and insert something up there but as I seem to be changing themes every few months I decided a slicker soft-coded approach was the way to go.

I had to jump through some hoops to get my desired result (which is hopefully showing a menu at the top of this very page) so heres the Shady Tale of a Sunday Morning deep in the depths of Drupal Menus:

I played with a few different options before coming up with my final solution:

So, for the last several months I've been getting this very annoying drupal error message on virtually every page on the website:

Notice: unserialize() [function.unserialize]: Error at offset 1066 of 1068 bytes in variable_initialize() (line 943 of /home/projex/www/www/includes/bootstrap.inc).

I had researched it... tried hacking some little PHP snippets... tried cleaning up the SQL database... all to no avail. But today is a cause for celebration and dancing in the streets. Because its gone! Huzzah! All thanks to a couple of smart drupal chappies and chappettes on various websites who have probably forgotten more about the Drupal Database than I will ever know.

This error is caused by a corruption in the database it self... mainly in a variable called 'variable' which contains an invalid value. So, all we have to do is to find that duff variable and kill it. I chose the method of hitting it with a stick until it ran screaming from the room and straight off a cliff outside the door... falling two miles and landing in quicksand... inhabited by a special breed of quicksand loving Piranha. They made short work of this cheeky little error... I can tell you.

Where can I get the AS/400 Client Access Express for Windows software?

In the olden days before the IBM System i... in fact wind back a few years earlier until you get to the old IBM iSeries hardware... dont stop... keep going back into history until you get to the venerable IBM AS400 system... The software that was initially launched to allow PC's to connect to the AS400 was called CLIENT ACCESS. An installable image of Client Access (now called IBM i Access for Windows) can usually be found on the system in the IFS path "/QIBM/ProdData/Access/Windows/Install/Image" or "/QIBM/ProdData/CA400/Express/Install/Image".

So - just for my reference:

For operating system versions prior to version 6:

• /qibm/proddata/CA400/Express/Install/Image

For operating system version 6 and later (i6.1, i6.2. i7.1)

• 32-bit: /QIBM/ProdData/Access/Windows/Image32
• 64-bit AMD: /QIBM/ProdData/Access/Windows/Image64a
• 64-bit Itanium: /QIBM/ProdData/Access/Windows/Image64i

For the longest time I've heard about the performance difference between a true SQL INDEX and a DDS generated index in IBMi... or 'on the AS400' as the old timers like to say. But is it true? I know that SQL creates its own special access path... and have heard vague rumblings about how it just does things different... and really all of us programmers should be creating files using DDL rather than the old DDS.

So, as part of the project I'm working on we have to copy data from a bunch of rather large files... so I did some real time comparisons and got some fascinating results.

Timings for the big Fight:

Using a physical file with 141,988,325 records in it I issed a batch copy into a DDS version of the file using both CPYF and SQL INSERT and then created a SQL/DDL version of the file and repeated the exercise. Both times running in a single thread job queue when the machine was quiet.

Copy file with 142 million records on an IBMi DDS compiled physical file:

• DDS –> DDS using CPYF took 19 minutes  (it used 99 seconds processing unit time)
• DDS –> DDS using SQL INSERT took 18 minutes  (it used 93 seconds processing unit time)

Then deleted and recreated the file using DDL (SQL) source code:

So, as usual... today I was scratching my head with a problem that was kind of outside my realms of expertise. These realms are many, I hasten to add the ones outside are the many ones and the ones inside are rapidly diminishing with my braincells exploding in a puff of logic and old age.

Searching the esteemed searchword engine of High Lord Bing and the mighty Goddess Google I found some interesting stuff about stored procedures.... and as I sit here... late at night... deep into my second bottle of red wine... spool *hich* spellchecking this for the fifteenth time... I realise that this is not the time to type this stuff.

Besides trying t otype technical stuff while playing Facebook Poker is losing me loads of chips.

so... *cough*... its time to sideline this for tomorrow...

and... errm... I will...

Loads of choices and a terrific range of great places to eat in Charleston so here's my personal favorites - trying to cover a broad spectrum.

Downtown

My favorite *steak* restaurant is called Peninsular Grill and its smack in the middle of downtown. Just park at the old market on, surprisingly enough, market street and walk to it. http://www.peninsulagrill.com/ is a little up market but with a great intimate feel. The staff are very helpful and it has a superb wine list. After dinner stroll around the area.

I would recommend getting a carriage tour for two (assuming it is just two of you) its a fun way of spending an hour and listening to your carriage driver tell you all the history of Charleston.

Another of my favorites is BASIL. A simply excellent Thai restaurant... if you go... try their famous Basil Duck. That's all I'm going to say. http://eatatbasil.com/

Make sure you visit the Pavilion Rooftop bar downtown (at the bottom end of the market) for cocktails or a lunch drink. Good views and cool all around. http://www.marketpavilion.com/index.cfm?page=pavilion

A big *THANKS* to all the crew at Camp Bow Wow... yesterday was interview day with Bailey (my 6month old English Springer) and based on the fact that he returned wagging like a loon, grinning, happy and promptly fell asleep right through to this morning... it must have been fun! One new regular customer is sold on your services. Thanks from me and from Bailey Litten ;)

Here is the live video feed from Camp Bow Wow - Can you find Bailey?

Refresh page

Me and my wing man (Bailey Version 2.0 - the Springer Spaniel) arrived in Las Vegas on Sunday night after a smooth flight courtesy of Delta Airlines. Shipping pets around domestic USA is remarkably easy and pain free:

1. Make sure dog is all up to date with vaccinations and get a certificate from Vet saying just that
2. Get a nice crate that Muttley can comfortably sit and lay down in
3. Put a nice fluffy comfy bed in there
4. Take Muttley to airport and pay your $fee (it was $200 from Charleston SC to Vegas NV)
5. He gets checked for drugs, guns and copies of the Quran by the TSA folks and loaded into a special pressurised and heated section of the cargo hold
6. Fly your flight, disembark and he is brought to the luggage belt
7. Extract puppy and get covered in canine kisses.

Bailey handled it incredibly well… I think he was more comfortable in his travel cage than I was crammed into the economy cabin (yes I am cheap) watching crappy TV on the headset unit and trying not to torture myself by continually looking at my watch.

All in all a decent experience. The folks at Delta were very helpful and accommodating.

Gets a thumbs up from me and paw up from Bailey.