If you’re a Digsby user and have any concerns about security, check out this comment left by Steve, who is apparently with Digsby.

We take security VERY seriously and are 100% transparent about the measures we take
to keep your data safe.  Learn more here:

http://wiki.digsby.com/doku.php?id=security

I wanted to make sure his comment got plenty of visibility, since he was kind enough to write it.  The last thing I want to do is inadvertantly malign someone or some piece of software unfairly.  I’ve read through the information at the link Steve left above, and I’d say they have a good handle on things.

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Thought I’d mention, today work upgraded my laptop from a Dell Dimension Latitude D620 to a D630.  We run dual-screen off a docking station (sure helps when writing code), once with VGA and one with HDMI.  My VGA would randomly have a blue tint to it, and then switch back.  Still readable, just colors screwed up.  Switched monitors, problem followed the cable.  Tried different docking station, followed the laptop.  Apparently something about the VGA output on the D620 flaking out.  I figured I’d have to deal with a loner until they got it fixed under warranty.  Lucky me, they just upgraded me instead.  So now I’ve got to load all my little tools and such on the new laptop tonight so I’ll be halfway productive again tomorrow.

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Forgot to mention, although I do still like Digsby, and I still use it, it DOES have the annoying requirement of having a Digsby login that controls everything else.  On the plus side, I installed Digsby on my new laptop at work, and all I had to do was log into Digsby – apparently my AIM, Twitter and Facebook info is stored within my Digsby account on one of their servers somewhere.  That can be good or bad, depending on how you look at it, but for ease of use, it was nice to have.

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Or actually, just one good app at the moment.  I need a decent IM client for my HTC smartphone, which runs Windows Mobile.  Unfortunately neither Pidgin or Digsby has a mobile version, and those are my two favorites for normal use.

I found something called Agile, which I haven’t tested much yet.  I noticed it’s a limited trial.

If anyone knows of a true freeware multi-protocol client for Windows Mobile, please let me know.  If I get too desparate, I might talk myself into trying to port Pidgin or Digsby, and I’ve got too much to do already.

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I did want to throw out something I noticed about Pidgin that I haven’t had a whole lot of time to look into.

In my company, we have, I think, an Openfire server that we use for internal IM communications.  We also have an Asterisk phone system with VoIP phones that sit inline on the network drops that our PC’s plug into.  The majority of the company uses an IM client called Spark.  Their Spark client somehow knows when the have an incoming call on the VoIP phone and pops up the caller ID on their screen.

My Pidgin client, although it somehow can tell me if someone is on the phone, doesn’t seem to know how to sense that incoming call and display the caller id.

If someone can explain why this doesn’t work, let me know.

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I’m thinking about writing an alternative to or maybe expanding on this module for PHP.  It seems that there are things missing that would be handy, such as increment/decrement IP, first- and last- available in subnet, etc…  I also don’t really like how you keep having to call calculate().  For example, to increment an IP, I have to set the IP and netmask, then call calculate() to convert the IP to long.  Then I can increment it or decrement it, but to convert it back to IP I have to blank out the IP field and call calculate() again.

I think I can do things a little cleaner and maybe offer more options, so if anyone is looking for a better or alternative to Net:IPv4, let me know and I’ll work on it.  Right now I’m just plugging away on my big project, so I don’t have anything fantastic or exciting to report.

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I’m no social butterfly – anyone who knows me can vouch for that.  However, I’m in the Internet business, for better or worse, and I have to stay reasonably up to date with the current “killer apps”.

Lately I mentioned that I’m using Digsby for AIM and Twitter.  I’ve been a Pidgin fan for a long time, but I think the Digsby Twitter plugin is much cooler and smoother than the Pidgin alternatives.  Twitter being the hot topic it is right now, I want to try and stick with it and use it, so having it handy on my Digsby list is helpful.

As for basic use, Pidgin and Digsby are pretty much interchangeable to me.  The differences right now are that Digsby has the best Twitter plugin, whereas Pidgin has better Jabber support, including group chat.  So, I’m still using both.  If either one were to add that final piece they are missing, I’d probably standardize with them.

Since I’m using Digsby and making a half-hearted attempt at Facebook, I figured I’d try their Facebook plugin.  I’m not sure yet what I think of this one.  The Twitter pluging is simple – add Tweets, list the most recent Tweets from the people you follow.  Easy, probably because the whole idea is so basic in the first place that it lends itself well to being an add-on or plug-in.

Facebook, on the other hand, has more going on, so there’s more to try and get into the plugin.  For the most part, it shows you your “wall”, any alerts, and the “news feed”, which I guess is all your friends’ walls.  If you authorize it enough times, you can update your “wall” directly from Digsby through a pop-up window, rather than having to open a browser.  Other than that, there are direct links to various parts of Facebook that launch your web browser.

I don’t know, the whole thing might start becoming more useful as I start adding friends to Facebook – we’ll see.  For now it’s just another place to send mini-blog messages to.  I’m already running two blog sites, helping my wife with hers, trying to Tweet once in awhile, and now I have another place that begs for content.  Blood from a turnip, blood from a turnip.

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Viruses, spyware, adware, rootkits, etc…, they’ve been around for years now and they’re worse all the time.  With the relatively low cost of PC’s these days, it’s not uncommon to see articles talking about how it’s cheaper to just get a new PC than to have one cleaned up or repaired.

Myself, I’m not big into the business of cleaning up viruses and such.  I mainly do it as a sideline for a little extra money and a lot of challenge.  There’s a certain amount of personal satisfaction in rooting out some really nasty virus and returning a useless PC to life.  I realize the REAL cost of most repairs, which can take hours and hours, isn’t reasonable for most, so I generally just charge $100 for the trouble and insist that the PC be delivered to my house.  The majority of cleanup work is just starting various cleanup routines and letting them run, so it’s a big timesaver to have the PC at my house where I can do other things as well.

If you’ve got a PC that you want cleaned up, email me.

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Wow, it’s been a long time since my Oracle DBA days.  I’m getting deeper and deeper into my latest project that includes a lot of MySQL DB work, and I need to spend some time looking into things that I long forgot about, like foreign keys, constraints, and indexes.

What fun!  I love this stuff!

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Got hung up this afternoon trying to build a custom report from a database that up until this afternoon I didn’t even have ERD digrams for.  ERD’s are entity relationship diagrams, and show the relationships between the different tables in the DB.  I still don’t have access to a data dictionary, which would give me a detailed breakdown of what every field in every table is used for, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Unfortunately, I’m a little handicapped on this one.  It would be much simpler to use Access or Excel via ODBC to query this Progress DB and build the report.  But, the drivers are proprietary and cost money.  I already have paid-for drivers for Linux so that Perl and PHP apps there can use the ODBC drivers there to connect.

What I really need is a web-based query tool for Linux that can use ODBC for DB connections.  I could get this done a lot faster.  Instead I’m constantly adjusting SQL calls in a PHP file and executing the PHP file via web browser for each attempt.

Not the best solution, but it DOES work, and at some point I’ll turn that code into a custom report that can be run at any time.

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