.NET Hobbyist Programmer

Blocking the "Green Meanie" Popup Ads

Mark Treadwell — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:32:49 GMT

I am not sure why it took me so long to implement, but I finally had it with the Vibrant Media IntelliTXT in-line text advertising and their intrusive pop-ups. You have probably seen them yourself. They are the highlighted green words with a double underscore present in many news and blog pages. While they generate money for those sites, they are as irritating as hell, so I decided to remove them.

I opened a web page which I knew would display the Vibrant advertising. A few seconds after the page displayed, the green meanies appeared. That indicated a remote Java script. Viewing the page source HTML, down at the bottom was a pretty clear text comment: "start Vibrant Media IntelliTXT script section". Target found. Well, that was easy.

The script source link was to the IntelliTXT web site, so it was clear that blocking that web site would stop the green meanies. I use IE8, so I went to the Internet Options, Security tab, Restricted sites zone icon, Sites button. I added the following to the restricted sites list: *.us.intellitxt.com. While I was at it, I also included *.tacoda.net to block their behavioral tracking.

Do it yourself for free.

Note: I know there are many add-ins which will do this for you. I try to run the computers in our house with a minimum of software which needs regular updates.

Update: I also added *.kontera.com to block their "blue meanie" popup ads.

Emergency Food Distribution

Mark Treadwell — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:03:17 GMT

While walking a street in Old Town San Diego one evening after a busy day on a business trip, the scene below was one I just had to take a picture of with my phone. I am sure the church did not intend the juxtaposition...

Maybe the trash truck crew had some fun though.

Upgrading to a Kindle 2

Mark Treadwell — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:31:11 GMT

As I wrote a couple of days ago, my wife and I got a pair of Kindle 2 book readers. While she started fresh, I had a little work to move my book content over to the new unit.

When I ordered the two new Kindles, they showed up under my Amazon account as my 2nd and 3rd Kindles. Once the units arrived, we enjoyed our out-of-box experience, which was on par with the excellent Zune packaging. The Kindle took recycling to a new high since essentially everything but the cling wrap, the protective cover instructions, and the quick summary card was paper-based. I ended up disposing of all the Amazon packaging in our paper recycling bin.

I prepared for the transfer of my content with a backup of all the Kindle document content to my computer hard drive. I copied everything to a My Documents folder. When you hook up a Kindle via USB, it shows up as a standard USB drive. The Kindle documents directory holds all your content.

After copying my books to the computer, I deleted them from my Kindle 1 in preparation for selling it. To clean up before copying everything to the Kindle 2, I deleted the blog files since new versions would be downloaded when I synched up. I also deleted the My Clips files, since they were an experiment on my part that contained nothing of interest. One lesson learned here was that the Kindle 1 Mobipocket eBook Auxiliary Files (the ones with a .mbp file extension) seem to be different from those on the Kindle 2. When I copied them, none of the associated documents would open. Once deleted and the unit restarted, everything worked fine.

I like keeping a backup of all my Kindle content on my main computer, since my Windows Home Server will make an image backup as well. That way, a restore will be easy.

Swapping the Kindles around with the Amazon management interface was straightforward. The only issue with my wife's Kindle was reading the tiny serial number (miniscule gray text on a brushed aluminum back) and typing it into the text box. For this, I can only blame aging eyes, .

After the first day of use, the results are positive for both of us. My wife likes the convenience. We bought four books she wanted and downloaded them wirelessly without a hitch. She like reading it one-handed and its thinness is a big plus for her when compared with some of the weighty paper books she has toted around for years.

I like the Kindle 2 for all its improvements over the first version -- size, weight, layout, etc. I really like that they shifted to a micro USB port so I can use the same charger as my cell phone. That is one fewer thing I need to take on trips. I miss the switch to turn off the cellular modem. While the menu interface is OK, it is not as convenient when I am in an airplane. The four-way controller is a big improvement over the previous scroll wheel. It took a bit of adjustment to shift from the two-key sleep activate/deactivate to remembering to use the slide switch. I wish they had made the switch a little easier to move. That switch is the only means to control power -- a brief slide will shift it in and out of sleep mode, holding it 5-10 seconds will power the unit off, holding it for more than 15 seconds will reset the unit. That reset function is your only way out of a freeze-up, since they removed the reset button, the keyboard reset and the ability to access the battery.

As we use the new readers, I will post our longer term impressions.

Update: I thought my backups were along the lines of a good standard computing practice, but this and this concerns me. I read the Amazon terms of service and do not see where they say they will do remote deletions, so I agree that Amazon appears to have violated their own terms of service since the books were purchased in good faith. This is not a Kindle deal breaker, but I will continue with my computing precautions for all my electronic content.

Kindle 2

Mark Treadwell — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:31:32 GMT

As a happy owner of an original Kindle, my wife was always asking me about its convenience. I take the reader on business and personal travel and find it much easier to read it one-handed when compared with any book. Everywhere I would read a book, I have no problem reading the Kindle. I find it convenient on airplanes, though having it off during takeoff and landing is bothersome. I have quite a bit of free content, or I had it converted for free by Amazon.

The Kindle 2 is out now and she wants one. She wants one so bad, she wants two so we can both have one. I demurred for a time because of the cost. Amazon has now done what I wanted them to do when they introduced the Kindle DX -- they dropped the price of the Kindle 2 by $60!

At $299, I can weakly rationalize away an upgrade I do not exactly need as a mandatory requirement to keep up with my wife technologically. After all, I can use my reader as a remote example to help her with hers should the need arise.

Recommended.

I Was CompuServe 73700,3344

Mark Treadwell — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:28:18 GMT

My first remote computer access outside my home was via CompuServe in 1985. I sat at my original IBM PC and connected via a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 to the service. I spent lots of geeky time sucking text through that modem and its replacements. I used CompuServe from all over the country as I traveled, and even internationally a few times. It worked great and kept down the long distance phone bills.

Remember those? Back in the day, we had to call long distance to a company's bulletin board service (BBS) to get info on hardware and software updates. Mind you, you could not buy things that way, just read about them and maybe get a patch.

That octal user ID was a function of the PDP-10 architecture of the original system. That worked great as long as things moved through slower modems. I recall things getting clogged up as the cable modems arrived.

I even tried Prodigy, God help me, and found it slow and clunky. I heard too many AOL horror stories to ever try the service -- though I got lots of CDs from them. Both CompuServe and Prodigy worked well as long as you stayed within their sandbox. Go outside the box, and things got harder. I ignored the CompuServe 2000 stuff entirely and stayed with what became known as CompuServe Classic. I canceled my service in early 2004. I recall that it was not easy, and required several phone calls. You could not cancel online. My last email from that account was from an old Fawcette newsletter telling me how to "Build a Longhorn App."

CompuServe really had no way to compete with the wilder and wider web. The fact that it has hung on this long says that the miniscule support was still covered by the few people who still paid real money to use it -- probably because it was familiar. No more. Goodbye. It was fun.

Killing Flash

Mark Treadwell — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:56:02 GMT

Over the past several months, I frequently found myself cursing the Internet slowness of my fully loaded multi-core computer. I cleaned, optimized, defragmented, flushed and did everything customary to resuscitate a lethargic machine. A blog entry described the woes of someone in a similar position. He speculated that the cause was Abobe's Flash plug-in for IE.

A Google search showed people with a similar problem and similar thoughts. I figured it would not hurt to just kill Flash ... kill it as in dead, dead, dead.

My first action was to remove Flash via Add/Remove programs. That action finished so fast that I figured that they just unregistered the plug-in and deleted it from the Control Panel. That was not dead enough for me.

Second, I brought out the big gun and ran the Adobe Flash uninstaller. The uninstaller reported all the files it deleted, even after the Control Panel uninstall. After a restart, I fired up IE8 and watched happily as web site after web site asked to install Flash.

Flash was dead.

I then went to the Adobe Flash web site and ran a fresh install. The install took a bit of time, but in the end it was successful. Back on the web, site after site snapped onto the screen. IE8 no longer paused while loading the page. Life was good. I can only speculate that the years of various Flash updates had gotten out of synch. The flush and restart was successful.

Now if I can only speed up Java loading so I see less of the cyclotron....

Blogiversary

Mark Treadwell — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 23:01:58 GMT

Wow. Five years of posts. Of course, the last eight months have been pretty empty, but I am starting a new WPF project at work that looks to be very interesting. I hope to get back into the posting routine as the work evolves. We are working on the design right now. More to follow on that.

I may also be posting on management of a distributed software development team.

LCD Screen Drawings

Mark Treadwell — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:59:35 GMT

My children's artwork adorns the walls of my house in several locations. It is regularly replaced with the most recent efforts, since the preschools seem to excel at a multitude of different craft projects. At home, we favor crayons and washable markers, but we keep close control of them.

This evening my three-year-old decided to climb up Daddy's chair and get onto my desk. A ball point pen beckoned from a pen holder placed far from a child-accessible edge. The canvas -- two 19-inch LCD screens. She seemed pleased with her art work when I came in, but I certainly was not.

I tried several cleaners unsuccessfully, but then had great success using full-strength isopropyl rubbing alcohol. I have been meaning to clean them for awhile. I just did not want to get around to it for this particular reason.

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