Alan Kleymeyer’s Blog

Lemonade stand

Photo sent to me by childhood friend Randy Sawyer. Chris and Lisa Dunn also pictured.

I don’t always eat breakfast but when I do

Mac startup problems

Mywork MacBook Pro wouldn’t boot up.  It was hung on the gray screen with the apple logo and the spinner spinning.  THIS article told me what to try and fortunately, the save-boot did the trick.  However the safeboot booted into the blue screen and I had a mouse cursor I could move but Finder did not appear.  I turned it off and back on and it came up all the way. This article has more details on the problem.

Update: Next day wouldn’t boot up at all. Was stuck on blue screen.  I took the following steps to backup files:

• Reboot and hold down <Command> S to boot into Single User Mode shell
• /sbin/fsck -fy
• mount -uw /  ; Make drive writeable
• mkdir /Volumes/usb
• ls /dev/disk*   ; Locate usb drive, should be last one listed
• /sbin/mount_msdos /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/usb
• cp -r srcFolderName /Volumes/usb
• /sbin/umount /dev/disk2s1  ; !!! Important. Unmount before removing drive

USTA 4.5 2011

I had a great season of USTA 4.5 tennis this year.  Counting the three matches I played this weekend in Houston (Little State) I went 9-1 !  Not bad for the last year as a junior.  Next year I qualify for senior leagues!

Thanks to my tennis partners: Clay Johnson, Steve Gilmer (we went 3-0 in Little State), Russ Needler and James Bronson.

And thanks to Gentry Sparling for captaining our team and to Darrell Breeden for all his help this season and for scheduling most of my practice matches.

Android Development

I’m sticking my toe into Android Development

Here are some reference links

How to install non-market apps

What version of Android should you develop for?  Many say develop to the oldest version that you can in order to support the biggest market share.  However the older versions are only in a small % of the phones.  The newest versions of Android are not supported in many phones yet.  The sweet spot in my opinion starts at 10% coverage which today is 2.1.  Visit this site for the latest stats.

Tutorials

Setting up application with multiple tabs

UI/Application Exerciser Monkey

Traceview for app profiling

Creating custom title bars

Confluence for collaboration

My company is standardizing on Atlassian products such as Jira (for issue tracking), and Confluence for Wikis and collaboration.   I have yet to use a system that works better than a simple blog with categories, pages and RSS feeds.  I mean what is better than subscribing to a Page, Category (or tag) and contributing to the comment thread of a post you are interested in.

So far, I’m finding Confluence’s support for blogs leaving much to be desired.  Starting with the fact you can’t subscribe to feeds with many readers since they require authentication and many (such as Google Reader) don’t support authenticated feeds.

Here is one option that uses a proxy

I tend to agree with Scott that a wiki without RSS feeds is a non starter.  Email notifications?  I find it funny that Confluence promotes itself as a solution for email chaos but then offer it as the primary mechanism for notifications.

You should completely drain your battery once a month

“For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

“Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”

Of course, many iPhone users find that it’s easy to completely run the battery down…

WordPress Notes

Recommended settings:

Settings…Media… Uncheck Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders.

Always obfuscate email addresses.  Create images of the address or use javascript email obfuscator

Roles and Capabilities

Recommended Plugins
Members highly recommended for collaboration.
AWPCP for Classified Ads
iFrame. Wordpress doesn’t allow iFrames for security reasons.  This plugin supports iFrames which are necessary for embedding things such as a Google Form or PayPal buttons.
NextGen Gallary for simple photo management.  Can be used to rotate through images.  I use it to highlight VIP sponsors.

WordPress Feeds

Control-Click conflict in VMWare Fusion and Windows

I finally figured out how to get to do mulitple selections in lists on Windows when running in a VMWare virtual machine under Windows (VMWare Fusion). The Mac does not allow you to remap this sequence but under VMWare Fusion…Preferences…Keyboard & Mouse…Mouse Shortcuts I can turn off the Secondary Button Mouse Shortcut and it will allow Control – Primary Button to do it’s normal thing in Windows.

Windows Explorer Preview Font

Windows Explorer in Windows 7 has a Preview mode that will attempt to display the contents in a right pane of the currently selected file. It uses the current font size of the Notepad program. To turn on file preview you select the icon in the toolbar area just to the left of the Help icon. It is a small square divided into 3 rectangles.