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SSH – A Brief Software Engineer’s Masterclass

SSH is a secure protocol for communicating between computers. There are many useful tools built on top of this protocol and they should be a part of every Software Engineers toolkit. This blog will detail how to connect to remote computers super quick and more securely, several ways to transfer files between computer (and edit them), and how to connect to ports so that services (such as databases) appear to be running locally.

Image of console using SSH

These commands are most easily ran on Linux OS’s but they have equivalents on other systems too. In particular the rise in popularity of mini computers, like the Raspberry Pi, which have no screens means these techniques are much more widely needed than ever.

Continue reading “SSH – A Brief Software Engineer’s Masterclass”

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CSS IE Media Query Hacks

I’m not a fan of CSS hacks, they are totally unstable and unpredictable pieces of code, usually built on top of another bug… but… unfortunately the way of the web has made it almost impossible to avoid them – I find myself facing a problem I can’t get around without one.

The problem here is CSS media queries and our old fiend Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer only understands the very basic media types such as: media=”screen” but fails to understand media queries like media=”screen and (min-device-width: 450px)”. When it doesn’t recognise this it simply ignores it – that means whole sections of styles are just ignored, and your pages will look completely different to how they are supposed to.

Continue reading “CSS IE Media Query Hacks”

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Exciting software: Photosynth

Already mention in my Exciting software blog, Photosynth is now released to the public.

This has been around for a while now, but is still pretty impressive software. The idea is it can take multiple shots of the same area and stitch them together to create a 3D world. You can then move about in this world, moving in and out of various areas.

You can try the software out for yourself here:
http://photosynth.net/

(A warning though, any photos you upload become public.) They say you can create a impressive shot with as little as 10 photos and they suggest you start small. For a guide on taken photos see this PDF’s but some quick tips to get you started:

  • Overlap the shots alot
  • Take zoomed out shots
  • Shoot the same thing from different angles.

The software works on either XP or Vista across most of the leading browsers. Let me know how you get along and have fun.

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RM Asus Eee (by gum) PC – The miniBook.

Just got my hands on a new RM Asus miniBook machine today – how cute the little fellow looks!

My first impressions are that it is certainly a capable machine which you can take anywhere with you. The Keyboard is very small but I got used to it – I’d recommend the two finger entry approach. It uses a linux operating system.

Here’s a size comparison of the miniBook with the book (which I now propose should be an official standard size) “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, The miniBook is slighly longer, slighty deeper but about half as thick:

Harry Potter book and miniBook side view

Harry Potter book and miniBook top down

Harry Potter book and miniBook open

And here’s a comparison with my 17 Inch Widescreen Dell laptop (Which was somewhere in the region of 8 times more expensive…):

Laptop and miniBook side-by-side

Laptop and miniBook together


Easy Mode
Here’s some pictures of the Easy Mode the computer boots up into, it’s basically a list of tabs of applications split by type.

The Internet tab (Includes for example FireFox and Skype):
Internet Tab

The Work Tab (Includes for example OpenOffice and FileManager)
Work Tab

The Learn Tab (Includes Subjects folders which include for example a planetarium and fraction Tutorial)
Learn Tab

The Play Tab (Includes for example Games folder and Media Player)
Play Tab

The settings Tab
Settings Tab

There’s also a favourites tab where you can add your favourite apps.

Apps
And here’s a few screenshots of a select applications, all as they appear with out any tweaking.

OpenOffice Writer:
Writer

Frozen-Bubble Game (Screenshot slightly cut off, the game runs in full screen)
Frozen-Bubble

FireFox:
Firefox

The explorer (The observant amongst you will have noticed how similar some of the shots look to WindowsXP – Check the title bars out, and especially this screenshot)
Explorer

I’ll be following up with some tips on using the Asus miniBook soon.

Let me know…
…what your experience’s of the machine have been.

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Visual .Net's most useful enhancement.

Just a quick one. And really simple.

If you’re like me you’ll always be routing through the folder structures to fin where the project is you’re currently working on. Well no more, this is something I added in to my Visual Studio back in the old ages, but it’s one of the first things I do when I install a new version.

Go to the Tools menu and select “External Tools…”, then set up a new item as below:


If you can’t see the image: Set Title to “Project location” (or whatever you like), set Command to “Explorer.exe” and Set arguments to “$(ProjectDir)” (That’s a build in variable that stores the position of you project folder – try the arrow button at the end for other locations)

And that’s it. Just click it when you need to get to your files.

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My First Ubuntu Blog

I’ve been playing around with the great operating system, Linux (Ubuntu flavour). Its really nice and easy to use, and there’s a million bits of software out there for it, all free-tastic.

Check it out here:
Ubuntu