In attempt to play Tiger Woods '09 golf online today, I had to change some configurations on my router. It wasn't that difficult, but I'm sure the average user won't be playing online, unless they have a 'tech' friend to open ports on their router.

Hardware:

• Wii
• Netopia router(Type: 0x69, Model 3347.02)

Configuration steps:

1. Click on Configure in the upper Menu bar.
2. Click on Advanced.
3. Under the NAT heading in the Network Configuration box, click on the Pinhole selection.
4. Click on the Add button.
5. In the Pinhole Entry box, enter the parameters for your pinhole. For example, to add your Wii:
   1. In the Pinhole Entries table, in the first line, type the name you would like associated with the pinhole. For this example you might call it Wii EA Sports for the EA server. PLEASE NOTE: Each pinhole you configure must have a unique name associated with it. If you should duplicate the pinhole name in a subsequent entry, it will overwrite the first entry.
   2. Protocol Select is TCP by default. Different protocols can be selected from the drop-down menu when appropriate. Select UDP.
   3. External Port Start is 100 for this example.
   4. External Port End is also 3700 for this example.
   5. Enter the Internal IP Address of your Wii. ex. 192.168.1.4
   6. The Internal Port is 3678.  From the nintendo website.
   7. Click on Submit to save the changes.
6. Save and Restart router.

 There's more info on the ninendo website regarding firewalls:  www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/wii/en_na/onlineFirewall.jsp

*From a recent email I sent to everyone in my contacts*:

I'm not usually sending email blasts out to everyone in my contacts, but feel that with the upcoming political power shifts that we need to support an organization that fights for our 2nd amendment rights. If you're offended by this email, sorry...I'll only be sending this once.

My hope is to propagate this message across the internet to everyone you know, they know, etc..  

My charge is to have all those people join/renew NRA membership on inauguration day, Jan 20th 2009. Not only will this help the NRA continue to fight for gun ownership rights, but will hopefully resonate this message across our great nation.

The link for NRA membership:
http://membership.nrahq.org/default.aspx?campaignid=nranews

Anyway, if you found this message, great! Please forward it to all your friends, family, etc...

I had this problem on my Blackjack, and I was ready to return it!  I went to my Cingular store, and the rep told me that the issue is with the stability of the 3G network, not the Blackjack per se. 

The fix is to force the phone into GSM mode.  There is a *# code you can use for this - it's the same one used to help with power savings. 

1. Dial *#1546792*#
2. Hit 3
3. Then 5
4. Select GSM
5. Hit Done
6. Then end

As an alternative create a shortcut in \windows\start menu to \windows\adminsettings.exe. adminsettings.exe give the same menu as the number above.

You can also create a shortcut to bandsel.exe the same way, and select GSM850.

Prior to this trick, I was dropping over 50% of my calls.  Since forcing GSM mode, I have not dropped a single call.  As an added bonus, the battery life is much better.  Even web surfing works fine in GSM Edge mode.  The only time I would switch to 3G (WCDMA) is if I were tethered to a laptop.

OK, I did it. Not sure why...still not sure, anyway I did it. I followed the instructions on the Samsung website and resources from myblackjack2.com. Thought I'd put the steps here in case I need to do it again for some strange reason.

Steps

• Step 1: Backed up my stuff on dashwire.com. Thanks Dashwire!
• Step 2: Downloaded the Windows 6.1 updater from Samsung's website. Thanks Samsung!
• Step 3: Removed my SIM card and microSD card(why? just in case) from my BJ2.
• Step 4: Powered up BJ2 and ran the updater, followed all the prompts, clicked were needed.
• Step 5: Rebooted BJ2
• Step 6: Reinstalled everything

Issues

• Had to modify registry to allow ICS:
  • * Find the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\ConnMgr\Providers
  • * Under one of the GUIDs you'll find a Connections folder that will have an entry for each of your connections
  • * Under each connection, find the ReadOnly key and set its value to 0 (zero).
  • edit my AT&T ISP connection, changing the Access point to wap.cingular

Benefits of Windows Mobile 6.1

• Really cool sliding home page
• Voice Command, not bad...might prove useful
• Threaded SMS, I guess...but I don't 'text' much.

That's it, not sure it was worth the time involved, but it's done.

This article will cover some of the changes we are able to make to our Windows mobile devices, through our devices registry.
Disable menu animations

To disable menu animations (sliding in/out) and speed up performance of the UI a bit:
HKLM\SYSTEM\GWE\Menu\AniType = 0 (DWORD decimal)
To change it back to the default:
HKLM\SYSTEM\GWE\Menu\AniType = 6 (DWORD decimal)

Disable window animations

To disable window animations (minimizing/maximizing) and speed up performance of the UI a bit:
HKLM\SYSTEM\GWE\Animate = 0 (DWORD decimal)
And to switch them back on:
HKLM\SYSTEM\GWE\Animate = 1 (DWORD decimal)

Increase font cache

To increase the font cache, speeding up font rendering at the cost of a bit of memory:
HKLM\SYSTEM\GDI\GLYPHCACHE\limit = 16384 (DWORD decimal)
To change it back to the default:
HKLM\SYSTEM\GDI\GLYPHCACHE\limit = 8192 (DWORD decimal)
You can set the value to pretty much anything you like

Enable FileSystem cache

To enable the FileSystem cache, speeding up overall performance at the risk of the cache not being written on a sudden reset:
HKLM\System\StorageManager\FATFS\EnableCache = 1 (DWORD decimal)
To disable again:
HKLM\System\StorageManager\FATFS\EnableCache = 0 (DWORD decimal)

Note that by default, the cache size is zero, and you will see no effect. See "Increase FileSystem cache" to incease the cache size

Increase FileSystem cache

To increase the file system cache:
HKLM\System\StorageManager\FATFS\CacheSize = 4096 (DWORD decimal)
To return the file system cache to zero:
HKLM\System\StorageManager\FATFS\CacheSize = 0 (DWORD decimal)
You can set the value to pretty much anything you like

Increase FileSystem filter cache

To enable the file system filter cache, speeding up overall performance with file mangement:
HKLM\System\StorageManager\Filters\fsreplxfilt\ReplStoreCacheSize = 4096 (DWORD decimal)
To return the file system filter cache to zero:
HKLM\System\StorageManager\Filters\fsreplxfilt\ReplStoreCacheSize = 0 (DWORD decimal)
You can set the value to pretty much anything you like

Change the thickness of scrollbars

To change the thickness of the scrollbars at the right/bottom of documents larger than the screen, adjust...
For the horizontal (bottom) scrollbar:
HKLM\System\GWE\cyHScr = 9 (DWORD decimal)
For the vertical (right) scrollbar:
HKLM\System\GWE\cxVScr = 9 (DWORD decimal)
The default thickness is 13. You can set the value to pretty much anything you like

Change the length of scrollbar arrow buttons

To go with changing the thickness of the scrollbars, you may wish to change the length of the scrollbar arrow buttons...
For the horizontal (bottom) scrollbar arrows:
HKLM\System\GWE\cyVScr = 9 (DWORD decimal)
For the vertical (right) scrollbar:
HKLM\System\GWE\cxHScr = 9 (DWORD decimal)
The default length is 13. You can set the value to pretty much anything you like

Enable ClearType in Landscape mode

To enable ClearType in Landscape mode:
HKLM\System\GDI\ClearTypeSettings\OffOnRotation = 0 (DWORD decimal)
To disable:
HKLM\System\GDI\ClearTypeSettings\OffOnRotation = 1 (DWORD decimal)

Bold = hacks I've used

Interestingly enough...this doesn't suprise me.

With all the rain we've had lately, it was decided to run the river..speed style. Not speed speed...just as fast as Jeremy and I can paddle a tandum yak.  Jeremy made the call last week about a <2hr econ run(*What!!*), that obviously meant NO fishing :(

Well..almost no fishing. In a moment of brilliance, I decided to tie a top water soft bait to the back of the kayak with some 14lb line. It bobbed along behind for about a quarter of the trip when a branch snagged and popped the line. Can't blame me for trying.

Anyway, we managed a good pace, with no portages and clocked an impressive 1hr 55min econ river trip. The normal milage on the river is 8.2 miles from SR419 launch to the Snow Hill rd bridge. This trip, due to the flood stage of the river, and a few short cuts, was 7.43 miles.

Next time..maybe more fishing, less paddling. Beat that!

My at&t wireless Blackjack II was not bundled with Internet Connection Sharing which is a part of the standard Windows Mobile 6 application set.  For those of us on the go and traveling this is a must have program to connect our laptops to the Internet while sitting in the airport or other locations outside of  the office.  Why it was left off I am not sure.  A few Googles later and I had found out there was already a hack to provide the application.  To setup Internet Connection Sharing for the Blackjack II I followed these steps (paraphased from the Howard forums). 

Step1: Make sure your device is app unlocked!!; run secpolicies.cab first if unsure or the certs won't take!! **run this cab and reboot; http://sems.org/content/download/secpolicies.cab. Use Activesync to move this file to your 'My Documents'. You have to use 'File Explorer' to install these cab's from the device.

Step2: REBOOT (means turn off/on) THE DEVICE!

Step3: Install the BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable cab file (it might ask you to reboot)

Step4: navigate to \My Documents and click on the certs.cab file

Step5: REBOOT

Step6: Changed settings/connections/gprs/AT&T IMS/Access Point from isp.cingular to wap.cingular. After looking at my data acees on my att bill all internet access(phone or tethered) is logged as to/from as wap.cingular.

Step7: go to Start / Applications and run 'Internet Sharing'. You phone will indicate that it's making a connection, once connected the display will show 'Connected'. At this point you can surf the web, email , etc. You may need to disable Activesync while Internet Sharing. Also, incoming calls will break your connection. I'm connected to my laptop with the USB cable and haven't tried using Bluetooth, which should work as well.

Downloads:
BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable cab file is temporarily hosted at:
http://www.mdots.net/misc/BJ.WM6.ICS.Enable.cab

http://sems.org/content/download/secpolicies.cab
 
References:
I found this example on the the following board:
http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1290859&page=2&pp=15

Also found on the at&t wireless support forums:
http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/message?board.id=samsung&thread.id=45502&view=by_date_ascending&page=4

Disclaimer: Don't hack your phone if you don't know what you're doing.  I provide these instructions UNSUPPORTED. So don't get upset if I don't reply to requests for help...all though I may ;)

Recently I needed to create a Google map driven solution that required geocoded addresses. After poking around the Google Maps API and looking at other solutions I decided that I'd batch geocode the address I needed and store the coordinates in the database with the address data. This would prevent numerous geocode call to the API and should make things run a bit faster. While looking for examples of Coldfusion and Google maps I really didn't find anything that met my needs so I started from scratch. Here's what I did:

 First thing that you'll need is a Google maps key. Get one here.

<cfset ghostKey = "yourKeyGoesHere">

Next make the http call to Google. You pass in three parameters: q='address to geocode' output='xml' key='hostkey'. So your request is formatted as:

I chose xml as output and was easy to work with. You can choose XML, KML or JSON. Look at the Google API for more info.

You can view the http results here: results.xml

Cool, two lines of code so far and we have a result. As you can see the XML is well formatted and easy to parse at this point. There are a view 'gotcha's' as well. First check to see if XML was returned.

If so, xmlParse it:

Next you want to make sure you're getting a response code of 200, walk the XML to find Status.code:

Great! we can proceed. If you look at the result.xml file you'll see an node for Accuracy. For my application I needed an accuracy of 8.

Now I can grab the Longitude and Latitude to update the database:

Pretty straight forward. But, if you remember I had a cfif that wanted an accuracy of 8, if not try Yahoo. No problem...just as easy as Googles...pretty much, just different. You guess it! you'll need a Yahoo API key too.

Do the neccesary check for good reponse Yahoo's XML Result:

Yahoo deosn't have a 'Accruacy node, they have precision and the best 'precision' you can have is address level. Any way, walk the XML grab the coords and off you go.

That's it. simple geocoding using Coldfusion and/or Yahoo! I don't blog much, but hope to get a post on how to create dynamic Google maps using Coldfusion.