• Spam Comments

    24Dec
    Categories: Blogosphere, Tech Comments: 3

    I have been having enormous comment spam problems. I have been deleting enormous quantities and in the process may have deleted legit comments. If you notice one of your comments has been deleted, resubmit it and then drop me a line at hansmast at hansmast dot com to ensure I approve it. I got a bout of worry that I may have been accidentally deleting legit comments when I saw two honest-to-goodness comments come through the moderation queue, something of an incredible rarity! (Thanks Caleb and Mike!)

    Tags: , ,

  • Hi-def Video: A380 Lands in Chiang Mai

    03Sep
    Categories: Personal, Photos, Tech Comments: 0

    We were privileged (mainly due to Thai Airways’ order for a couple of A380s) to be recipients of a visit by the new Airbus A380, the world’s largest airliner. It landed at Chiang Mai airport in part to demonstrate that the A380 can land at secondary airports without difficulty.

    We went out to a footbridge over Hang Dong road near the airport to watch it land. We waited in the hot sun for a long time while the schedule kept getting pushed back. The A380 had scraped its wing on a hangar door in Bangkok and finally they simply removed the vertical winglet on the wings.

    Without further ado, here’s the hi-def video (taken with my Canon TX-1) of the plane landing:

    2:44
    Hi-def: MPEG-2, 1280×720, 376 MB
    Hi-def: WMV, 1280×720, 9.5 Mbps, 153 MB
    Hi-def: WMV, 1280×720, 3.6 Mbps, 58 MB (While I’m sure a videophile could, I can’t tell the quality difference between these first three)
    Lo-Def: MPEG-4, 320×240, 1 Mbps, 22 MB (not recommended)
    YouTube

    Play the WMV files in something other than Windows Media Player. For some reason WMP squishes it down to 4:3 instead of properly displaying it at 16:9. (I recommend Media Player Classic.)

    Here are some pics that my good friend Darren took with his Canon 10D:

    Airbus A380 approaching Chiang Mai International Airport
    Airbus A380 approaching Chiang Mai International Airport

    Airbus A380 landing at Chiang Mai International Airport
    Airbus A380 landing at Chiang Mai International Airport

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

  • Thesaurus for OpenOffice

    09May
    Categories: Tech Comments: 4

    I was writing a paper today, and was groping for words. So I Alt-Tabbed to my thesaurus (Microsoft Encarta Dictionary) and punched in “thought”. I then Alt-Tabbed back to ooWriter and changed “thought” to “reflection”. On further reflection, I thought, “Surely there’s a thesaurus add-on, plugin, or extension for OpenOffice.” I searched high and low and finally through much Googling and scrounging through OpenOffice’s rather poorly designed site and series of wikis I finally discovered a thesaurus add-on. The download link didn’t work. So I Googled the file name and found a mirror. Then I went to the install instructions which told me to use the Open Office “Install new dictionaries wizard”. I opened this up which re-downloaded the thesaurus (as well as two other dictionaries) and installed them. So, all that to say, if you want a thesaurus in OpenOffice, do this:

    Go to File–>Wizards–>Install New Dictionaries…
    Follow the instructions.

    To use the Thesaurus, put your cursor on a word and hit Ctrl-F7. Or go to Tools–>Language–>Thesaurus. Somehow I prefer Ctrl-F7.

    Memo to OpenOffice team: It probably shouldn’t take a computer programmer an hour to install a thesaurus.

    Tags: , , ,

  • IGO Blogs Aggregator

    23Apr
    Categories: Blogosphere, Tech Comments: 0

    I have put up an aggregator for the IGO blogs.

    If any techie person wants to apply this patch to the planet planet source code and email it to me, I would be very delighted. Obviously we all here are on GMT+7 and UTC is somewhat less than satisfactory.

    Tags: , , , ,

  • Importing an Excel Spreadsheet into Microsoft Access and getting “Too many fields defined” error

    18Mar
    Categories: Tech Comments: 0

    I have had some frustrations in the past trying to import an XLS file into our Access database–I would get a “Too many fields defined” Error 3190. I saw quite plainly that the spreadsheet had only 29 columns (the limit is 127). The problem was, I was using OpenOffice Calc (an excellent, free, spreadsheet program) to edit the XLS file. Whenever Calc saved the file as an XLS, it added a whole ton of extra columns, which it didn’t show. However, MS Excel showed the extra columns fine and I was able to delete them. Someone over at OpenOffice.org needs to squash this bug before it bites more people.

    Tags: , , , , , , , ,

  • SMBI Yearbook

    14Mar
    Categories: Personal, Tech Comments: 0

    I have been spending much time working on the SMBI Yearbook. Below is a picture of me hard at work. There was this certain young lady of which two portrait pictures were taken. On the first, she had her eyes open and was frowning. On the second, she had her eyes shut with a sweet smile on her face. I took the eyes open pictures and clone stamped her smile from the other one onto it.

    Photoshopping an SMBI yearbook picture

    Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

  • Coding the Taxes

    06Mar
    Categories: Tech, Work Comments: 0

    The joys of doing corporate taxes as a computer programmer:

    SELECT DISTINCT [SR Commission].[Check No],
    (SELECT SUM([Amount])
    FROM [SR Commission] AS SRCom
    WHERE SRCom.[Check No] = [SR Commission].[Check No])
    AS Total, [Sales Reps].[Sales Rep], [Sales Reps].Name
    FROM [SR Commission] INNER JOIN
    [Sales Reps] ON
    [SR Commission].[Sales Rep] = [Sales Reps].SalesRepID
    WHERE ([SR Commission].ChkDate > ‘2006-01-01 00:00:00′) AND
    ([SR Commission].Paid = 1) AND
    ([SR Commission].ChkDate < '2006-12-31 00:00:00') AND
    ([Sales Reps].[Sales Rep] <> ‘MAST’)

    Tags: , , , ,

  • Webdesigner’s Note

    28Dec
    Categories: Humor, Tech Comments: 0

    Note from a webdesigner: You know you’ve been Photoshopping pixel by pixel for too long when blue spots appear in your espresso that you absolutely know are not there in real life. Then you realize you’ve been spending too much time working with photography when your first thought is that to correct the chromatic aberration you are experiencing, you need to use a lens that doesn’t have so wide an angle and simply stitch the photos together digitally.

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

  • RockStartUp Reality TV vidcast

    21Dec
    Categories: Tech Comments: 0

    There is a small internet startup company called PayPerPost which connects companies and individual bloggers. The companies pay the bloggers to post about their company, product, or website. PayPerPost, obviously, then takes a cut. PayPerPost’s CEO has also started a sister website called RockStartUp which he dubs Web 2.0 Reality TV. It has free episodes, or vidcasts, (in a whole multiplicity of formats: low-bandwidth YouTube, high-bandwidth letterboxed 480, and 1080 HD) about the making and the running of the company.

    It is truly intriguing to catch a glimpse into the running of one of the famed (or perhaps infamous) tech startups. It is funny how stereotypically PayPerPost’s employees act in the vidcasts. They even have the rainbow colors of brilliant yellow, lime green, and bright cyan for the wall colors. They have the 30″ Apple Cinema displays. They have the meetings with the eager venture capitalists. They have the nerve-racking first tradeshow. They have the champagne shooting all over the office when they move into their new digs. They even have the raunchy Las Vegas clubs. The last part turned me off of this vidcast. I enjoyed everything except the last part of Episode 4 when they went to some nasty, puke-worthy club. If you don’t mind doing some fast-forwarding, this is a very interesting vidcast that provides a very interesting look into the life of a ‘net startup company.

    Full Disclosure: This post was sponsored by RockStartUp. I was paid to make this post. However, the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.

    Tags: , , , , , , ,

  • Blogroll Addition: Kirb’s Musings

    21Dec
    Categories: Blogosphere, Personal, Tech Comments: 0


    An essential blog that for a long time has unfortunately not been on my blog roll is Kirb’s Musings. Kirby Witmer is a good buddy of mine who writes a great tech blog. The cool thing about it is it’s written by a computer techie (and thus has fairly solid information–I say “fairly” because I must make an exception for some of his pro-Microsoft views!), but is palatable and useful to a general audience of computer users. It doesn’t get into technical esoteric arcana like some tech blogs (including mine at times) are wont to do. Great blog! Highly recommended!

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recent Posts