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Author Archives: balint

Sydney Spring Cycle 2009 GPS Track

I ran InstaMapper for the duration of the ride on my iPhone, resulting in the following track:

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com
Direct link to track.

iPhone Exchange Push Email (ActiveSync) only operates when connected via 3G, not WiFi, when mail server’s IP address is not externally-routable

I host my own mail server (Courier with Spamassassin) and check my mail via IMAP on my iPhone. Unfortunately Apple never implemented use of the IDLE command to enable Push with an IMAP account (there is a jailbroken app that will do this!), so the alternative (if one is desperate for Push) is to pipe [...]

Error when instrumenting files for profiling using Visual Studio Performance Tools

A while ago I started using the Performance Tools that came bundled with Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite to analyse my code. There are two analysis methods: sampling and instrumentation. Although instrumentation has a higher overhead, it can reveal in greater detail exactly what your program is doing. In order for instrumentation to proceed, one [...]

Drupal request_uri returns broken absolute URLs when served from an Apache VirtualHost

After upgrading my Drupal site to the latest point release (5.19), before transitioning to version 6, I discovered that the action parameter of all rendered forms were being prefixed a slash ‘/’. This in itself is reasonable since one would expect the REQUEST_URI server variable to return a relative URL. However, as I host several [...]

The Mammalian Diving Reflex

From Wikipedia:
“The mammalian diving reflex optimizes respiration which allows mammals to stay underwater for a long time. It is exhibited strongly in aquatic mammals (seals, otters, dolphins, etc.), but exists in a weaker version in other mammals, including humans. Diving birds, such as penguins, have a similar diving reflex. Every animal’s diving reflex is triggered [...]

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 crashes when typing into a code window while debugging

When debugging my VC++ projects, I routinely make use of ‘Edit & Continue’ by modifying code in the Visual Studio environment while stepping through the compiled code. Recently I found that typing into a code window would cause Visual Studio to become unresponsive for a long period. Checking Task Manager, I found that WerFault had [...]

Changes in ActionScript code not reflected in published content

While working on a Flash project in Adobe Creative Suite CS4, I was editing some ActionScript 2.0 code (AS) stored in a separate code file from the main Flash document (FLA). I decided to revert to an older version of the whole project, thereby going back to FLA and AS files with an older timestamp. [...]

T_Visionarium featured on SBS World News

Please visit this page to view the video clip.

T_Visionarium launch at UNSW for the 2008 Sydney Festival

TVisionarium (AKA T_Visionarium Mk II, affectionately TVis) was officially launched yesterday in The Scientia at the University of New South Wales. Bruce Beresford was invited to open it. Jill Bennett published a book about it: “T_Visionarium: A User’s Guide” (albeit not the technical one you might expect). I received a nice credit at the back [...]

T_Visionarium in the Sydney Festival 2008

TVisionarium (AKA T_Visionarium Mk II, affectionately TVis) has made it into next year’s Sydney Festival!