Reviews | Solarum - Information For Everyone

I am sure that just about everyone has at least looked around on eBay if not purchased something from someone through there. There are a smaller number of us that have actually sold stuff on eBay, and as anyone who has done this can tell you, it ain’t pretty. The good folks at eBay have tools, ways and means to get your stuff listed for sale, but as easy as it is it’s also very complex and confusing. You can take some time and figure it out, but it never hurts to have some help, and this is where third parties have made a small fortune making tools, software and even books that aim to make eBay easier to learn.

I am all for learning and making things easier to use, and I ran across this site earlier today where the author sorts through a bunch of tools for eBay posting only the good ones and giving reviews on the “9 Excellent Free Tools For eBay Buyers and Sellers”. I took a look and while I can’t vouch for all of the tools, some of them I have used and I can say that I liked what I saw. So, go check it out and see if any of these tools can help you in your eBay journeys! Thanks

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Let me talk to you for a moment about a new box of stuff on the right side of this site. Yep, just like the title says, it’s Good Stuff! First though, I want to share some information and history if you don’t already know. I started this site because I wanted to share information. I felt like (and still feel like) if we all share the knowledge that we have with one another, our collective knowledge base grows by leaps and bounds. Seems obvious I know, but some folk I have seen and have even worked with want to horde information as if it were gold. So, hoping that sharing some of my knowledge and information might help others, I started this site. If someone is having a problem, and I have already run into the same thing and can post an adequate solution, then they get to solve that problem without re-inventing the wheel (so to speak).

I do this because it’s just something I do, a way that I can try to give back and help others. I don’t charge people for access to anything, I don’t have banner ads or popups (or unders ;]) or anything like that. At one point I played with Google Ads, but that was more to learn than really try and make any money. Which is good because I didn’t make any, a few pennies here and there, but nothing really. This though, is my point and has a direct impact on the Good Stuff I am getting ready to explain. That point is that I run this site using my time, paying for the server and bandwidth out of my own pocket, and I like it that way. I don’t want to be beholden to a vendor. I do have a donation link, so if a reader wants to show some love they can, but that’s different. I don’t get any kind of payment, kickbacks, reimbursement, dump truck loads of yen, or anything from companies that sell products, especially the ones I talk about or recommend.

What does this mean? This means that if I post a review about something, I am not blowing smoke just to say there is a fire. I am telling you, my reader, my own experience with whatever it might be and what my honest opinion is about it as well. Mainly I do this when I find something really cool that I think more people need to know about. Some piece of software that other geeks like me might find useful, or a game or whatever that seems to be well worth the duckets. I want to share that information with anyone who wants to read about it, that might benefit from it, and I want them to know that the information is coming from an unbiased source.

So, back to the Good Stuff box. This is where I am putting stuff to showcase things that go above and beyond or are extra good or really special, etc. Kind of like banner ads except I decide what is put there and no one is paying me to do so. It’s a showcase of things that I use and that I very highly recommend and therefore proclaim to be “Good Stuff”. This site had over a million hits last year, and the traffic trend is still rising, so my goal is to share Good Stuff with my readers, and hopefully help encourage those people that care about the customer and care about providing good valuable service to keep up the good work. If any of you have something you want to recommend, or some information you want to share with the world, hit the contact page and share it with me. If I end up doing something with your submission, I’ll make sure you get credit for it. Thanks.

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I thought I would post some information about a project that I started a few months ago called nix32. It’s hosted on SourceForge for the most part, with a handy website that I host myself mainly because it’s just easier to manage that way. The basic goal of this project is to create native command line tools for Windows that operate much like the commands that we know and love from Linux and UNIX. Things like ls, mv, cp, df and so on. I have become so used to, comfortable with and productive with the UNIX/Linux command line environment, that when I have to leave it behind on Windows, it’s pretty tough. Not just changing from what I am used to, but also because I think the command line of a UNIX/Linux server is much more powerful and flexible than the Windows command line, even including the power shell.

I have been working on the more popular commands, and I have a few basics out now with basic functionality. I hope to have more and better (improved) tools in the future. I am writing everything in PERL and then compiling each one on Windows as a standalone exe using tools from ActiveState, and so far, they run very nicely. It’s all completely open source, you can download the PERL scripts as well as the executable files if you want to take a look or help improve them.

Now, I know you can get similar results with other projects and products out there, CYGWIN comes to mind first. However, that’s a whole separate shell and almost a little mini-Linux setup in and of itself, especially looking at the directory structure after it’s installed. Here with the nix32 project I wanted to have native Windows executables that you can stick in your path somewhere and call right from the Windows Command Prompt, without ever leaving the Windows environment and without having to install anything. So far that is exactly what we have, just copy the files somewhere, make sure it’s within or added to your PATH variable, and you are good to go!

So check it out, see what you think, spread the word and maybe even help out a bit and crunch a little code too. Do whatever you feel and keep both feet on the wheel … or, keyboard maybe.

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OK, boys and girls, I have a really cool treat for you. For a long time now I have been looking for the right application to use as a source code library. I say application because I have been trying to be open minded about what to use. I have tried Wiki’s (which actually aren’t too bad), note taking programs, and a great many other tools, including a couple that were specifically written to be source code libraries … but in the end fell quite short of my expectations. Also, when I say source code library, I am not and have not been looking for tons of canned code to take advantage of, that’s the problem I have now, 20+ years in IT and I already have tons of code, I just need a way to store it, sort it, search it, export it, back it up, and anything else I can think of! I’d like to note too that in addition to all of the other features I may list here, this tool does a superb job at syntax highlighting as well.

Let me digress for a moment to mention a site called Donation Coder (www.donationcoder.com), these guys are great! Lots of free software from some really talented developers. There are some apps there that beat their commercial competition by a country mile, hands down. That’s one reason why I like to hang out there, in the forums for example, these guys write software because they enjoy writing software. Therefore they create some wicked cool stuff.

How does this pertain to the issue at hand? Well, it was in the forums there that I ran across a thread where people were talking about their own search for a source code library much like my own search. I found one post among others recommending different things that mentioned a free tool called “Developer’s Tips & Tricks (DTT)” from Freesoftland. I had never heard of this group before, but I liked what I had seen posted in the Donation Coder forums, plus I really liked what I saw when reading up on their DTT tool.

Read the rest of this entry »

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That’s me! I love my iPhone, but I don’t consider myself to be one of those blinder wearing fanbois either. I have had various and sundry mobile phones over the years, with one of the best being my Motorola Timeport. That thing lasted me five years and could still get better reception than anything else around it. To bad it finally came apart one too many times for me to put back together, gravity is a bitch lemme tell ya. Anyway, I made the move into “smart” phones with a Blackberry (didn’t everyone else when they came out? LOL). I had, had PDAs before, but this was my first adventure with a PDA/phone combination and I was hooked, I mean I loved it. I went through several Blackberry models both at work and with my personal ones. Including a stint with a Blackberry storm at work, man did that thing suck, it was awful. I had wanted an iPhone and had almost gotten one back in my Blackberry days, but I really figured that they were all pretty much the same. Boy was I wrong! I finally switched from a Blackberry to an iPhone (3GS) and I am never going back. It is an amazing work of art, both the hardware and the software that goes with it, although I am not a big fan of iTunes (not on a PC anyway). Even when I compare it to the Droid side by side, I just don’t see the iPhone killer that everyone talks about. However, that discussion is for another day.

I said all that to say this, the one thing that does bring me down a bit about the iPhone is the battery life. I know, you thought I was gonna say AT&T but that’s not a bad thing either, I already had AT&T and the service is great, way better than Verizon, and the prices are nice too. No, the only thing weak on my iPhone is the maybe 24 hour lifespan of the battery. My Blackberry Curve that I had could go a freakin’ week on a charge, it was awesome! So, to help this, I just ordered a nifty little product called a Mophie Juice Pack Air. It’s essentially a hard shell case for the iPhone with a battery incorporated inside that is supposed to double my battery life. While not a week, I’ll take 48 versus 24 hours any day. Once I get the little rascal, I’ll put up a proper review for anyone who might be interested. If you have one, or have used one, drop a comment and let me know what you thing about it. There are a few options available nowadays, but this one seemed like the best fit for me, and the prices have come down a lot compared to when they first hit the street.

So, check back in a few days, and hopefully I’ll have a cool review and maybe some pics too for ya. Later …

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If any of you are like me and deal with/meet lots of vendors and salespeople, keeping up with the mountain of business cards can be a job in and of itself. Whether you keep them in some kind of binder or Rolodex, or maybe just piled in a shoebox, they can be a real pain to sort through when you want someone’s number. Plus, heaven forbid you want all of their information in your PDA or PC because then you have to type it all in by hand and that’s no fun either. Instead of paying $300 or more for a business card scanner, I found a nifty little app for my iPhone that takes advantage of the camera to take a picture of the card and then OCR all of the info, even categorizing it properly as well. So email addresses get put into email address fields, and phone numbers in phone number slots and so on. You get a chance to verify that it recognized everything correctly, and it even compares it to the section of the scanned card it got the info from, very easy. Once that is done, the contact gets shoved right into your contact list, easy as pie, it’s great! Now I am sure Blackberry and other platforms have similar apps, this post is partly to rave about the concept of doing this on your smart phone/PDA, but also for iPhone users out there to give a nod to the application “WorldCard Mobile”, because it works really well. It’s currently priced at $5.99 in the app store and worth every penny and more, really. So check it out if you have a need for something like this. If you already have an iPhone, $5.99 is cheap compared to that business card scanner! Read more about it here …

*Note: This is not a paid endorsement, I am posting this because I like the app and felt it would be beneficial to share.