Vista DNS Suffix Fix
Jul0
I was having trouble with Vista on my laptop occasionally failing to resolve a hostname (very likely over wireless), at which point it would append its local DNS suffix before re-trying. Since my DNS suffix is a real domain with a catch-all sub-domain, I was having a lot of trouble with websites and the like resolving to my router rather than their proper addresses. This is in part due to my DHCP config, which specifies the domain-name option.
Amazingly, I could find no guidance online except mentions of changing your Active Directory Domain or using the Hosts file for certain systems you need to reach. These solutions did not apply nor appeal to me, so I set out to figure out a way to get Vista properly resolving. Here are instructions that will disable local domain suffix resolution on Vista, tested with Vista Ultimate x64:
- Open Control Panel, click on Network and Internet, then click on Network and Sharing Center to get to the networking center.
- Click on Manage network connections (in Tasks on the left) to open the network connections folder.
- Right click on Local Area Connection (or another network device) and click on Properties to bring up the connection properties dialog.
- Double click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) to bring up the protocol properties dialog.
- Click the Advanced… button to bring up the advanced protocol settings dialog, then select the DNS tab to switch to advanced DNS settings.
- Select the Append these DNS suffixes (in order): option, then click on Add… to bring up the domain suffix dialog.
- Type in a single period (.), then click on Add to create the null domain suffix (which actually tricks windows into appending nothing).
- Click Ok, Ok, Ok, and close out the rest of the windows. Changes should take effect after closing the connection properties dialog.
I’m fairly sure others have encountered this issue, so let me know how this works out for you.
Plaything to Product
Jul0
Trivial is not the word that comes to mind when I consider my development and management skill sets. I’ve successfully managed million dollar projects and developed software for huge clusters of machines, so the progression on iLostMyMarbles has come as a surprise. I narrowed the problem down to my mindset, where I consider games trivial applications. Nothing is further from the truth, and game development is much, much less forgiving!
As much as I hate to admit it, this is a repeating trend for me, as the first time I go down a new avenue of programming I’m much more apt to throw something together than to take the time to plan everything out. This is more or less how I learn, and has always served me well as those learning projects never get off my hard drive. iLostMyMarbles is a different beast since I’ve allowed it to cross the threshold from plaything to product, and has reminded me in no uncertain terms that nothing should be developed without a solid architecture and at least some documentation.
This comes up because I’ve now been hacking (in the literary sense), rather than programming, more functionality into the game. My original intent was to get familiar with game graphics on the iPhone, and now I’ve gotten myself into acceleration, databases, networking, and a whole host of performance tweaks. I’ll end up spending at least as much time condensing and cleaning my code as writing it took, and that time will all be wasted for want of a properly conceived architecture.
CentOS 5.3 RoR Install
Jun7
My Linux of choice is CentOS, owing mostly to its stability and very mature support base. Even with that, it’s actually pretty hard to find a good guide for installing a Ruby on Rails stack on CentOS 5.3. Here are the commands I run on a clean VPS or server (works for i386 and x86-64):
yum -y install mysql mysql-devel mysql-server yum install -y ruby ruby-ri ruby-rdoc ruby-libs ruby-devel yum -y install zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel chkconfig mysqld on service mysqld start mysql yum groupinstall -y 'Development Tools' yum update -y wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/57643/rubygems-1.3.4.tgz tar zxvf rubygems-1.3.4.tgz cd rubygems-1.3.4 ruby setup.rb gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/bin/mysql_config
I hope this saves someone just a bit of time, let me know if you have any trouble.
Designer!
Jun0
Yesterday I had an awesome lunch meeting with Matt Garrett, a graphics designer I worked with at Pensaworks. Apparently we’re on the same page with iPhone App development, and we’ve agreed to make a joint venture out of it where he provides style and graphics and I provide features and code. Matt is a stellar graphic designer, and I’m really excited to have him as a partner on this stuff!
While there is some overlap in our skills, we’re both very solid in our respective corners and I think that will help us produce games and apps that have both great code as well as great designs. If you hadn’t noticed by the design of this website, I’m not much of a designer! My ideas on interfaces range from “concise” and “intuitive” to “responsive” and “fast work flow” - not the best memes for iPhone development, since the iPhone’s success draws from style as much as technology.
Up For Air
Jun0
I’ve just spent the better part of a week totally engrossed in iPhone, Objective C, and Cocoa while writing endlessly rewriting my first commercial application. I’m honestly not sure how much effort I’ve put into iPhone development so far, but the end result has been ignoring everything else for a week, including this blog.
Stay tuned for a detailed post about my application. I’ll also be posting about what I’ve worked out for secure project management and source control.
Besides the late bills, cluttered house, and a growing todo pile this week, I missed SQL Saturdays #14 this morning where I had planned to volunteer. I feel really horrible about this as I really wanted to support these guys and what they’re doing. Great events!
I also want to shout out to Radio Paradise, which is just light years beyond every other radio station out there. Check them out!
AT&T Fail
May4
This post is a rant, just to give you a heads up.
For about two months now our phones have been degrading in performance and usability. The issue is an intermittent inability to make and receive calls, establish a data connection, or send and receive text messages. Basically useless phones! If you’ve ever shown 4-5 bars on your AT&T phone, gone to make a call, had it say “Dialing…” for 30 seconds (no ringing) followed by “Call Ended” with a logged talk time of 0 seconds, you know my pain. Unfortunately, redialing and resetting the phone have no effect.
Before you think I’m ranting about how horrible AT&T’s network is, I want to explain that before these issues started we had very little trouble with our phones, 8 months of good service. This post is rather about security policies in place at AT&T, in particular their differing policies between their phone service and their brick and mortar service.
You see, a week ago I finally got fed up with having to wardial every time I try to reach someone, so I called AT&T tech support. A few reboots of my phone showed no improvement, so the technician did a “SIM Update”, citing that our SIM chips had not been updated since the account was opened. At first blush this seemed to help, but the next day everything was back to normal. After a couple more phone calls a ticket was set up and I got a voicemail telling me to get the SIM chips replaced.
This afternoon I went in to the storefront with both our phones in hand to get new SIM chips, and was told I couldn’t because of a storefront policy of only allowing hardware changes if Alaina was present or called in from work to set me up. I explained that not only do I pay for the account, but that I’ve got a ticket number they can check on and I’ve been making changes to the account in the past. Not a budge, even after asking a manager for help. I wasn’t very nice myself after that, and had to call back and apologize.
I would understand their position if they didn’t allow you to make any and all changes over the phone with just the last four digits of a social security number for confirmation. So my AT&T service continues to be broken, their storefronts are full of bureaucrats, and they’ve wasted nearly a day worth of my time. I’m not sure whether to cancel or not. I expect that with enough griping I could get a refund for the two months of shoddy service, which should cover any cancellation fee they try to charge. What do you think I should do?
Stress-less
May0
The last two weeks have been very pleasant and enjoyable, but I feel like I’ve been idling at 10% throttle, which is far short of normal for me. This site and blog are an effort to keep the world informed about my hobbies, research, and profession. I don’t expect too many readers as I don’t plan to promote or advertise in any way, but I will send prospective employers, contractors, friends, and family to this page rather than boring them (and myself) with repetitive updates.
Professionally, I am an entrepreneurial software and systems architect focused on distributed and peer to peer systems. I recently left my position as Vice President of Systems Operations at Brand Asset Digital, LLC in order to maintain creative freedom and to explore other paths in computer science. Brand Asset Digital is transitioning from development to sales and support, and I prefer to develop new technologies rather than maintain existing ones. My position was eating most of my time and preventing progress on my research, so I am looking for new employment in the 40-60 hours per week range rather than the 60-80 hours per week range.
Please check my resume and give me a call if you are interested in my skill set. Pensacola is not the best locale for a career based on technology, so I am prepared to interview and move out of state or work remotely.
At the moment, I am working on five projects. Two are iPhone Apps that I won’t discuss on here due to a very competitive atmosphere. I’m also working on temporally aware video codecs, massively concurrent real time analytics, and distributed (as in peer to peer) computation. Setting aside the iPhone applications, which I consider possible money makers, my research and development is focused on hard problems. Making money off solutions to these problems is not my forte, so I work with others to do so.
I’ll keep this post short so as to save some content for tomorrow. I’ll try to maintain daily posts as long as possible.
