I spotted this hawk flying around near Wright State University Tuesday afternoon.
These pictures were taken with the Nikon D40 using the 55-200 VR lens.
Red-tailed Hawk
Hike from Beaverceek, OH to Carillon Park, Dayton, OH
To help my daughter prepare for a 7 day, 13-mile a day hike, we hiked from Beavercreek, OH to Dayton, OH.
Google Earth puts this at 11.6 miles.
Here are the maps for the hike.
Smaller Footprint Oracle Client Software
Do you need to bundle Oracle Client Software with your application and want something leaner than the Oracle Instant Client? Do you need a quick and simple way to make a native Oracle 10 connection from your Windows PC?
Here’s an option that will provide Oracle 10 native connectivity (not ODBC) under Windows 32-bit using as few Oracle files as possible. Compressed size is 10 Megs compared to 17 Megs for the Oracle Client Basic Lite package.
To install, you simply unzip the contents. The oracle key file contains a registry path that must correspond to the folder in which you have installed the client software. In the zip file, bin / oracle.key has
SOFTWARE\ORACLE\myOracle10Client
and the oracle10.reg file has
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Oracle\myOracle10Client]
“Oracle_Home”=”C:\\Program Files\\Oracle\\myOracle10Client”
You can use the oracle10.reg file to create the required registry entry.
You should update these files to point to the location in which you install the client software.
You can assemble this distribution yourself by paring down an Oracle 10 Client install to just:
BIN/
NETWORK/
RDBMS/
nls/
oracle10.reg
oracore/./BIN:
ORASLAX10.DLL
TNSPING.EXE
oci.dll
oracle.key
oraclient10.dll
oracommon10.dll
oracore10.dll
orageneric10.dll
orahasgen10.dll
oraldapclnt10.dll
oran10.dll
orancds10.dll
orancrypt10.dll
oranhost10.dll
oranl10.dll
oranldap10.dll
oranls10.dll
orannzsbb10.dll
oranro10.dll
orantcp10.dll
orantns10.dll
oraocr10.dll
oraocrb10.dll
oraplp10.dll
orapls10.dll
orasnls10.dll
orasql10.dll
oraunls10.dll
orauts.dll
oravsn10.dll
oraxml10.dll./NETWORK:
ADMIN/
mesg/./NETWORK/ADMIN:
SAMPLE/
sqlnet.ora
tnsnames.ora./NETWORK/ADMIN/SAMPLE:
SQLNET.ORA
TNSNAMES.ORA./NETWORK/mesg:
tnsus.msb./RDBMS:
mesg/./RDBMS/mesg:
ocius.msb
oraus.msb./nls:
data/./nls/data:
lx00001.nlb
lx10001.nlb
lx1boot.nlb
lx20001.nlb
lx200b2.nlb
lx20367.nlb
lx207d0.nlb./oracore:
zoneinfo/./oracore/zoneinfo:
readme.txt
timezlrg.dat
timezone.dat
Configure TortoiseSVN for Auto-Logon Using Putty
Getting TortoiseSVN to stop prompting for a password can be a bit challenging. Here’s a step by step solution using Putty culled together from various sources on the internet.
Overcoming SonicFire Pro Sluggishness
If you use SmartSound’s SonicFire Pro for your royalty-free music, you might notice long delays when you preview music in the Maestro. On a 2.4GHz quad I was seeing pauses up to five seconds when I selected a song. I had installed the latest version of QuickTime, 7.4.5, to eliminate that as the culprit. I also noticed a strange pause on startup in which the program froze for a couple seconds before finishing painting its window.
I contacted SmartSound about this, and without providing anymore information than I’ve mentioned already, the tech said:
This is an issue between the QuickTime player and your Intel Matrix RAID controller driver. These Intel Matrix cards are included in many new PCs from Dell, HP, etc and even if you are not using a RAID, the driver needs to be updated. If you need help finding the driver, let me know some details about your machine and I will see if I can find it for you.
Very impressive that he seemed to know something about my computer. I hadn’t mentioned that I had a RAID controller. Indeed, I do. Obviously, they have seen this particular error before.
So, after poking around on Dell’s site I found the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver, and installed it. Voilà! SonicFire Pro runs like butter now!
Great job, SmartSound!
Note: To install the driver, you update the driver of the RAID controller in the Device Manager by pointing it to the unzipped folder.
ATT Rewards for Referrals
I just checked att.com to see if DSL were available in the somewhat rural area in which my in-laws live, and was pleasantly surprised to see that, yes, it is. ATT has a extremely attractively-priced package for new DSL customers who don’t need a lot of bandwidth. For $10 a month, you get a 768 Kbps connection. From the terms of service, it appears this rate is for the first year only and after that the price becomes $20 a month, the amount normally charged for this package.
I was further surprised to discover that ATT also offers a good referral program.
So, if you want to sign up for ATT services — like phone, internet and tv — and you don’t have a referral number, I would be most appreciative if you used mine!
ATT Referral Code: DA1010931
Just enter my code at http://www.attreferrals.com/.
Thanks!
Using a Custom Bitmap for a PowerBuilder Window Icon
Sybase’s PowerBuilder allows you to choose an icon for a window. However, the list includes only the .ico resources. Menus and toolbars, which can use the bitmap resources, have a much larger set of images in their drop-downs.
I don’t really care about the nuances that distinguish icon and bitmap resources. I just want the image choices to be consistent throughout the product.
The Problem
Here’s what can happen:
You find a custom image you really like for your dialog, and you assign it to the menu item, the toolbar item and perhaps a picture button or two. So you have your image appearing consistently throughout your application so the user is really dialed-in to what you want that image to convey. Then, you think, hey, let’s also put the image as the icon for my dialog (by icon, I mean the small image that appears in the window header, usually on the far left).
But, you discover that the choices for your windows are limited only to .ico resources. A very small listing in PowerBuilder.
The Solution
Here’s how you get the bitmap out of PowerBuilder so you can use it as an icon:
Using Resource Hacker, open the pbvm DLL. For PB 9.0, this is Program Files / Sybase / Shared / PowerBuilder / pbvm90.dll.
Select View / Expand Tree.
Now, scroll through the list looking for the image you’re after. Once you find it, right-click and choose Save [Bitmap : 25 :1033 ] (your numbers will be different).
Now, you simply convert that bitmap to an icon. Using IrfanView, open the image, and save it as an .ICO file with transparency. Select the color you want to be transparent (usually the gray color), and you’re all set!
su for Windows XP
Ever wanted to perform an action as the administrator (super-user) in Windows / Windows XP but you didn’t want to go to the bother of switching users?
I’ve worked out a shortcut that does just that.
%windir%\System32\runas.exe /user:myMachine\adminUser "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE c:"
Replace myMachine with your computer’s name. Put the name of the administrator account in for adminUser.
Here’s how it looks on my computer:
%windir%\System32\runas.exe /user:orion\root "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE c:"
When you run this shortcut, you’ll be prompted to enter the password for your admin account.
It works very well for most tasks. You may notice that you have to manually refresh Explorer windows running as admin using this shortcut. For instance, if you rename a file or add a folder the change won’t appear automatically, but if you press F5, it shows up.
This works for Windows 2000 and for Windows XP. I it does not work well under Windows Vista, but then you don’t need it for Vista as the OS makes it easy to elevate your privileges when needed.
Passing Parameters to Oracle Report Builder Runtime
It’s a little tricky passing parameters to the Oracle Report Builder Runtime when they contain single-quotes. Here’s a way that works:
/oracle/product/8.0.6/bin/rwrun60 module=myReport.rdf batch=yes userid=scott/tiger@demodb.world mode=bitmap destype=file desformat=pdf desname=/report/output/myReport.pdf adt_begin=01-Feb-2007 adt_end=01-Feb-2008 as_lastname="O''Brien"
You wrap the value for non-dates with double-quotes. Change all single-quotes to TWO single-quotes.
as_lastname=
[doubleQuote]O[singleQutoe][singleQuote]Brien[doubleQuote]
Great Church Websites
Animation:
Église Nouvelle Vie | Calvary Chapel of Downey | Calvary Evangelism Center | Calvary of Albuquerque | Church by the Glades | Church of the King | Church of the Open Door | Edmond’s First Baptist Church | Grace Christian Church | Grace Community Church, Houston TX | Grosse Pointe United Methodist
Harvest Christian Fellowship
Metropolitan Baptist Church
Northview Christian Church
Point of Grace Church
Rancho Community Church
Revolution
Richmond Baptist Church
Son Rise Baptist Church
St Paul Missionary Baptist Church
Sunridge Community Church
Thanksgiving Church
Union Evangelical Church
Watermark Community Church
World Overcomers Christian Church
Yorba Linda Friends Church
