Feed: Ben Forta's Blog - Stuff - AggScore: 78.5

Tarmac Delay Rule Shocker - NOT!

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Back when the tarmac delay rule went into effect I predicted that this rule would fall victim to the Law of Unintended Consequences and that airlines will do the only thing they can do, they'll cancel flights earlier or more often (that copied and pasted from an April 2010 blog post). And so I was not in the least bit surprised to see the report from the US Government Accountability Office proclaim that our analysis has shown that the rule appears to be associated with an increased number of cancellations for thousands of additional passengers - far more than DOT initially predicted - including some who might not have experienced a tarmac delay. I know I shouldn't say "I told you so", but ...

When Lightning Strikes The Network

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My home network had a bad week last week. One of my 24 port hubs is dead (well, it powers up and passes POST, but not a single data LED lights up). The WAN port on my SonicWALL firewall is fried (fortunately I had an unused port and was able to change the configuration to get back online). My Roku box no longer works on wired Ethernet (although it does work on Wi-Fi). I lost one port on my PBX. A VGA over Cat5 extender lost all 4 of its ports. The integrated Ethernet port on one of my computers is dead. It could have been much worse. I have lots of connected equipment and the vast majority of it is fine (the pattern around what was fried and what not is intriguing to say the least). Still, as I said, a bad week. The culprit? A massive lightning storm in the area. We never lost power, but apparently the lightning must have caused a significant surge and fried lots of equipment connected to the phone lines (several POTS voice lines and a U-verse data line). Interestingly, all of the damaged equipment still works, I just lost lots and lots of ports, almost all on my LAN, and one on a PBX daughterboard. I have significant power surge protection. But, obviously, none for the phone and data lines that come into my house. And while I know that this was a freak occurrence, it's still been frustrating and expensive enough that I've been looking into the options for protecting phone and data. And the information out there is rather ambiguous, ranging from inline solutions with mixed reviews, to comments about the impact on performance, and more. So, I'd like your input. If you have any experience with this type of surge protection, please share - the good, the bad, and the ugly is all appreciated. Thanks!

Vote For Matt Gifford

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.net Magazine is running their annual .net Awards, and our own Matt Gifford is the only ColdFusion developer up for a .net Awards 2011. Feel free to help him out, go vote (category 16, at the bottom).

BrowserLab Updated

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The BrowserLab team has announced that version 1.6.1 is now live, and includes support for newer versions of Chrome (although not the newest yet).

Expanding A Virtual PC Hard Drive

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I use Virtual PC extensively, and have lots of virtual machines that I fire up as needed to run specific software. (Charlie Arehart gets the credit for getting me hooked on virtual computers many years ago). Virtual computers use virtual hard drives, essentially a complete hard drive in a single file, a .vhd file. When a virtual hard drive is created you specify a maximum size, and the drive can either grow to that size as needed (dynamic drive) or start off as the specified size (fixed drive). But what if you need to expand a drive beyond that initially designated size? There is a great little free utility named VHD Resizer, which, as its name suggests, resizes VHD (virtual hard drive) files. It can convert between dynamic and fixed sized virtual drives, and can change the drive size, too. Simple, right? Well, not quite. Here's the problem. Expanding the size of virtual drive is simple enough, but expanding the size will not automatically resize partitions on the drive. So, if for example you expanded a 4GB virtual drive to 8GB, your C: drive on the virtual drive will still be 4GB in size, and the extra space will be unassigned waiting for you to create a new drive (perhaps drive D:). Which is great, unless you really do need to expand drive C:, as I just did. Windows includes a command line utility named diskpart which can extend partitions, but diskpart cannot be used for system or boot volumes, and so if you boot from drive C: (usually the case) you'll not be able to extend it. There are 3rd party tools which can indeed manipulate partitions, including extending system partitions. But (at 36,000 feet somewhere over CO) I found a workaround. WARNING: What follows is NOT recommended by Microsoft. It worked for me, but no promises. In other words, if you're going to attempt this, make sure you've backed up your .vhd file. And if it doesn't work, well, I don't want to know! ;-) Ok, so here's what I did:

1. You'll need two virtual computers, let's call the one whose drive you want expanded A, and the second B
2. Make sure virtual computers A and B are not running
3. Open the settings for virtual computer B, you'll likely see a virtual hard drive listed as Hard Disk 1, and Hard Disk 2 through 4 will be empty
4. Set Hard Disk 2 to point to the .vhd file used by virtual computer A
5. Save settings and fire up virtual computer B
6. Once virtual computer B is running you'll see its own virtual hard drive as drive C:, and virtual computer A's hard drive as another letter (next available letter)
7. On virtual computer B, open a command prompt and run diskpart, selecting the volume that is computer A's virtual hard drive, and extend it (this will be allowed as diskpart won't recognize it as a system partition as you didn't actually boot virtual computer B from it)
8. Shut down virtual computer B, and remove the added hard drive from its settings
9. Now fire up virtual computer A
10. With any luck you'll now have an expanded system volume

This is NOT supposed to work safely. But, I just did it, and it worked perfectly. Great little workaround, but, caveat emptor.

BrowserLab For Firebug Updated

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BrowserLab is our online service for performing cross browser testing, and BrowserLab for Firebug is a Firefox add-on that lets you preview temporary changes you've made using. Today the BrowserLab team announced that BrowserLab for Firebug has been updated to support Firefox 4 and Firebug 1.7.

Serge Jespers Interviews Paul Gubbay Re HTML5

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Paul Gubbay is Adobe's VP of Design and Web Engineering. You may recall that I interviewed him (and John Resig) during the MAX 2010 Day 2 keynote, and we chatted about HTML5, jQuery, and more. Well, Paul has been interviewed again, this time at FITC by fellow Adobe evangelist Serge Jespers:

Thank You, Discovery

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I am on a Delta flight from SFO to DTW. Fortunately, the plane is equipped with Wi-Fi, so I was able to watch Space Shuttle Discovery's final landing on NASA TV. And honestly, this picture perfect farewell is stirring up a mix of emotions and reactions. I remember as a teen back in the 80's reading up on everything I could find about the Shuttle fleet as they were being built. I still remember the reaction at seeing a picture of a Shuttle piggy-backed on a Boeing 747 for the first time. I remember exactly where I was (in a taxi in Manchester, England) back in 1986 when we heard about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, and the exhilaration listening live to Discovery triumphantly reinvigorate the program two years later with mission STS-26. And I recall the horrible sense of déjà vu when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry in 2003, and the similar nervous tension three years later when again Discovery led the way back to space with mission STS-116. And I know I am not alone, millions have the same emotional attachment to an amazing and awe-inspiring machine. And the emotions? Pride, exhilaration, awe ... and at the same time some real anger and disappointment. Honestly, it feels like we've lost the desire to do big bold things, we take Shuttle missions and Space Stations and frequent satellite launches for granted, we've grown jaded and uninspired. And worst of all, we've lost the healthy curiosity needed to be able to literally aim for the stars. How many kids nowadays want to grow up to be an astronaut? Realistically, these days we'd never be able to pull off anything as grand and as ambitious as the Space Shuttle program. The public has lost interest and so there is no political will to think big. Considering the huge advances in technology since the Shuttles were conceived and built, we should be planning huge leaps forward in space exploration and associated sciences. But, no, instead we're having to fight for attention and relevance. I'm sad, disappointed, and yes, angry. So, welcome home Discovery, farewell, and thank you for 27 inspiring years. And here's hoping that at some point in the future we'll once again find the passion, the curiosity, and the willpower to do the impossible and inspire a generation.

Trying To Get To Flash Israel, And Thanks For Nothing DOT

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I'm go-presenting the Flash Israel 2011 opening keynote with Lee Brimelow tomorrow. Or rather, I'm trying to. Weather last night close to shut down DTW, so I never made my connection in JFK. I am now in Amsterdam, and have an 8 hour wait until the flight to TLV. I'll arrive in the wee hours Tuesday morning, not long before we have to present. Still, I'm really glad to be visiting Israel again, even briefly. Somewhat related, back in April 2010 I stated that the new DOT 3 Hour Tarmac Delay Rule was a bad idea. I predicted that it would make airlines overly risk averse, pushing them to return to the gate too early, because canceling flights would be cheaper than risking huge fines. And the pilot on my DTW to JFK flight last night confirmed my fears when he announced that he'd like to wait in the queue longer, that he thought we probably could get out, but that the airline is insisting we deplane because we had just broken the 2 hour mark. Nice, thank you government, you have once again proven how utterly useless you are, and how the Law of Unintended Consequences is alive and well. Ok, now what to do for 8 hours in Amsterdam?

TSA = Tactics Simply Asinine

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It's been a while since I posted examples of TSA rules, policies, and behaviors. But, I just have to share this one: The primary security entrance at DTW McNamara Terminal was closed the past couple of weeks while they installed a new millimeter wave scanner (whole body imaging device). Better security, yeah! Or not! I went through the newly opened security lanes this morning. There is a single millimeter wave scanner sitting to the right of two typical metal detectors. And some passengers are being routed to the new scanner while others are being routed to the metal detectors. Random, right? Well ... The thing is that there are two entrances to the security area, the left for most of the flying public, and the right for frequent flyers and elite members. In other words, the new scanner is in front of the frequent flyer line. I stood and watched for a little while, just to see who was getting routed where and how random the routing really is. And sure enough, the majority of passengers directed to the new improved scanning are the ones entering security right in front of the machine. Which passengers? Elite members and frequent flyers, the passengers that the airlines and TSA know best (many of whom have been pre-screened, too)! Wow, I feel so much safer!

Microsoft By The Numbers

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Frank X. Shaw, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Microsoft, recently posted an entry entitled Microsoft by the numbers. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft or their products, this one provides some very interesting perspective on desktops versus netbooks and tables, smartphone market share, as well as industry income.

InfoWorld: Apple Safari HTML5 Vs. HTML5

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InfoWorld's Neil McAllister comments on Apple's HTML5 drive, and the Web standards community's displeasure with the effort blasted as being "not intellectually honest".

Google Wi-Fi Sniffing Analogy Is Wrong

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If I were to leave my house unlocked, I'd not expect people to enter without permission, even though they probably could do so. But if I were having a conversation, perhaps a meeting using a microphone so that everyone could hear, and I left my windows open so that passersby could hear every word, well, I'd have to expect that and be OK with it. No? Google is in all sorts of trouble over Wi-Fi sniffing by its Street View cars. And lawyers now argue that the data was not collected accidentally as previously claimed, but that the cars were deliberately programmed to collect the data. And many are comparing this to the unlocked house example, so evil and sinister, big bad Google silently creeping into your private property to steal from you. The thing is, that analogy is flat out inaccurate. My microphone broadcasting info up and down the street is a far more technically accurate analogy. And yes, if you yell outdoors, clearly and free for all to hear, well, then you can't complain if sometime writes it all down. Duh!

My Whole New Respect For Google

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The first playable Google Doodle, a PAC-MAN game in honor of the game's 30th birthday, created in conjunction with the game creators, is now on the Google homepage. They even changed the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button to one that says "Insert Coin" (click it to start the game). This is a whole new level of awesomeness (and I even totally forgive them for playing sound without permission). Some great details in this CNET story.

I Am Not bforta@gmail.com

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No, I am not looking for a new job. I doubt anyone would seriously believe this one, but just to be sure ... Someone using the name Benjamin Forta has been posting a resume to job boards and groups, claiming 14 years of leadership in the ColdFusion community, and offering ColdFusion and Flex development services. The associated e-mail address is bforta@gmail.com which is not my address, and the Colorado phone number listed is not mine either. It's been a few years since this last happened. I guess I should take it as a compliment, it's nice to know I'm still relevant. ;-)