Sydney Dust Storm

Posted on by

Sydney Dust Storm, originally uploaded by tomhide.

Found this awesome photo and entry on Flickr about the dust storms in Australia. This dust storm looks hectic, I can’t believe people braved it to go for a walk, let alone go take photos. I would hate to think what all that dust must do to the camera equipment.

I wonder if it was a fine dust? or perhaps more sandy dust? Sandy dust could do some serious damage if its moving at high speed, it would basically sand blast everything in its path.

Google Gears enabled Sites.

Posted on by

Google GearsRecently I’ve been enabling Google Gears on sites that support it, most notably I’ve enabled it on the WordPress backend of this site which means appears to fix some loading issues I had when I had a dodgy internet connection.

I’ve also enabled it on my Gmail account where its improved my email experience a lot. My biggest problem was when SAIX is having international connection issues which is when Gmail tended to get a little flake-y which is a problem as I use it as my primary email client. I’ve decided to not install Google Gears in Firefox but rather switch to running Chrome, Firefox is still my favourite browser but Chrome feels faster when running Gmail and I can easily pass it different proxy settings which is nice when I’m moving around from one client to another.

Next up… I’m busy enabling it on Google Docs, can’t wait to see how that goes.

Howto Debug an odd problem – “Load Datalogic Scanner XML Settings Failure!”

Posted on by

I had an odd problem today with a USB barcode scanner and its OPOS driver. The scanner in question is a DataLogic 2200VS USB scanner and I’m using its OPOS Driver (USBScanner is the OPOS Device name) on a Windows Vista machine with UAC switched on.

When I lauched the application I was running it kept giving a error when it tried to open the device “Load Datalogic Scanner XML Settings Failure!” No amount of searching online was able to reveal the answer to this error and because its load via the OPOS control which is in my application via COM.Interop there is no easy way to step into the code and see why its going wrong.

After a little testing and debugging I discovered that it works if the application is “Run As Administrator” it’ll work fine so it had to be a permission problem just wasn’t sure which permissions were wrong.

If only there was a way to see which files and registry entries the driver was trying to access and which failed because of a access denied error… Thats where this cool tool called Process Monitor comes in. Lauching the app it’ll show you everything going on in your system, a few quick filters so that it only shows my apps calls then tried to use the scanner, it gave the error again but this time I could track down the cause.

It turned out that it was trying to write to the C:\Program Files\DLSOPOS\ folder and was failing and was trying to access these 2 parts of the registry and getting access denied errors.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\OLEforRetail\ServiceOPOS\Scanner\USBScanner and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\DATALOGIC\DL_OPOS_Service

Changing the permissions on those registry keys and the folder fixed the problem.

10.1″ Acer Aspire One Pro

Posted on by

Acer Aspire One Pro, originally uploaded by Dale Nunns.

We just got one of these 10.1″ Acer Aspire One Pro’s in the office for a client. I’ve seen them before and played with them in various shops but this is the first time I’ve gotten to use one for an extended period of time or been able to feel the weight of one with the battery in.

It’s a very nice machine with built in 3G, Bluetooth, LED Backlit screen, Wifi and a 160GB HDD. The machine is reasonably quick, not sure on battery life yet but it shouldn’t be too bad.

Everyone who’s seen it so far as commented on its “cuteness”, how small and light it is and how its perfect for travel.

Spring is here!

Posted on by

For those of you on this side of the globe its the 1st of September which of course means its spring. I thought you would all love a few pictures of what this lovely spring day looks like outside our office window.

Typical Spring Day

There aren’t any birds chirping because they’re being blown away, no girls have sexy revealing sun dresses on because its about 14deg outside and everyone is wearing raincoats because there is a hint of rain. Somewhere behind those dark grey clouds are mountains, blue skies and sunshine.

So would the DJ’s on the radio please stop going on about how wonderful this spring day is!!! It sucks here in Cape Town 🙁

Unmountable_Boot_Volume BSOD on Windows XP

Posted on by

A friend brought round her computer today that was constantly rebooting while Windows was trying to boot. After a bit of fiddling I got it so that I could see the error message which was a BSOD (blue screen of death) with the message “Unmountable_Boot_Volume” on it.

A littile googling found this post on MSGoodies with the following details:

Start the recovery console. If you do not have it installed – or when that version does not work – like in this case, boot from an installation CD and select R for repair. You can easily mix languages – I used an English CD on a Danish Windows

Run these command –
chkdsk c: /r /p
fixmbr
exit (to reboot)

And it worked great, saved me alot of fiddling. I’ve put the details up here in case I need it again in the future.

Wedding Update

Posted on by

For those of you following the progress of our wedding you?ll be pleased to know the invitations are going out this week, in the middle of a post office strike so please be paitent.

You can now RSVP on the site and you?ll see I?ve put up links to our gift registries.

I’ve still got to sort through all my scribbled down notes of places to stay and stick them under the accomodation banner, if you anyone knows of any good places in the Durbanville area please let me know.