By Tom Wellige on Montag, 26. November 2007 15:26
After my vacation is over and my evenings and weekends are fully booked my hoster finished setting up the root server for Swyx Forum. Setting up DotNetNuke (incl. database) is up to me, but this will take some time now  Actually there was a reason why I ordered the server one week before my two-weeks vacation... Anyway, there is a light at the end of the tunnel now 
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By Tom Wellige on Montag, 26. November 2007 15:05
Yesterday I found myself in a time machine boosting me back in time into the year 1991. It was the year where I had to do my 12 month military service at the german navy. I was sonar operator on a so called mine hunter. We searched see mines (ground mines) by using sonar and then used a small remote controlled submarine to dop a bomb directly beside the mine to simply destroy it.
In 1990 Sadam Hussein invaded Kuwait and dropped hundreds of mines into the persian gulf as a barrier to make sure no military vessel or oil tanker was able to approach Kuwait.
A number of NATO countries as also germany sent their mine seachers / hunters down into the gulf to get rid of these mines. During this time I was stationed on the MHC Koblenz (M1071). So, that was the time where a saw quite a lot from the world ;-)
A few years after my military service the german navy replaced to old mine hunter fleet we were stationed on by new high-tech vessels.
One of the ships (MHC Weilheim (M1077)) was handed over... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Donnerstag, 22. November 2007 14:44
Randall has just started his new project Swyx WebCDR. It is a web based CDR (Call Detail Record) tool. Please take a look onto the project pages for more details. The current version is written in PHP (Apache Webserver) but we are also looking to provide an ASP (Microsoft IIS Webserver) version. So, if your are willing to help on this, feel free to join the team !
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By Tom Wellige on Sonntag, 18. November 2007 13:07
Ok, Morten has promised that I will write about my norwegian experiances, so here they are. At least in terms of "having a traditional norwegian dinner".
Friday night we went out to a quite nice fish restaurant in the newly build shopping and restaurant area Aker Brygge in down town Oslo, directly at the harbour. The name of the restaurant was "Lofoten" which clearly indicated that we were not going to get some nice english style steak (if you don't know about the Lofoten you should read about them here).
As I already promised weeks before to give taditional food a try the waiter didn't provided me with a menu. In fact most of us (we were nine people at all) skipped the part with the menu, except Morten and his wife, the other Morten and Thomas. The fact that both Mortens as real norwegians were not going for the traditional fish should have worried me... Well, to be honest, it did, at least a little bit.
As a starter we got something that is called "rakefisk". Stop, that's not true... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Freitag, 16. November 2007 13:26
The weekend is close and therefore it's time for something to smile about  Being David Copperfield isn't that difficult as it seems. Everyone can do such magic things. You, me, eveyone !!!  See for yourself !
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By Tom Wellige on Mittwoch, 14. November 2007 18:38
Over the last two weeks the down times of Swyx Forum have increased as you might have noticed. Unfortunately it always takes some time to get it up and running again as I do not have direct remote access to the machine to restart the webserver by my own but instead need to ask my hoster to do so.
The reason for these downtimes is, that the web framework Swyx Forum is using (DotNetNuke) is somewhat unstable in virtual environments, which is in fact a problem of asp.net, the web layer of Windows itself. After updating to the new forum version the downtimes have increased dramatically. Obviously this version touches unstable functions of DotNetNuke / asp.net more often than the old one.
But, good new is, HELP IS ON THE WAY !
Swyx Forum will definately move to it's own server machine which brings two major advantages:
more stable environment
direct remote access for me and Morten (to be able to react faster on any kind of problem)
Further advantages will be of course
... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Donnerstag, 8. November 2007 17:04
Usually the following chain reaction is not possible in online stores, but you never know... http://producten.hema.nl
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By Tom Wellige on Mittwoch, 7. November 2007 23:10
"Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!"
That's the title of a set of books, written by Richard P. Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of our century. Not only was he brilliant in his profession, theoretical physics (which won him the nobel prize), he was also a remarkable lecturer, story teller and finally also bongo player. He died in 1988.
His lectures where crowded with students, everyone wanted to learn from him. He had the ability to explain the most complex relations in simple words giving even "outsiders" of physics a chance to understand what's going on.
His "Feynman Lectures on Physics" (three volume books on the basics on physics) are still the most popular books for students.
Last year I was happy finding an audio cd collection containing original recordings of his lectures from 1961-63. I was even more happy realizing I was able to follow his explanations 
... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Mittwoch, 7. November 2007 11:52
Snowball is a medium sulphur crested Eleanora cockatoo and he loves to dance and sing. He loves the Back Street Boys. No one taught Snowball to dance... he just heard this song and suddenly felt like dancing. When he's really in the mood, he dances and sings. And at the end of the performance he takes a bow or two or twenty !! But see for yourself: http://birdloversonly.blogspot.com/2007/09/may-i-have-this-dance.html
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By Tom Wellige on Dienstag, 6. November 2007 10:09
After Sebastian started his new project Swyx IM on his own pages, the Swyx Forum project pages are availalbe now as well. Swyx Forum provides community services for the project, mainly the forums. For downloads and issue reporting you will be diverted to Sebastian's own page automatically. Please let me thank Sebastian for all his efforts (and lots of spare time) he spends on his projects, SwyxIt! Gadget and now Swyx IM as well. I know how busy he is already with his daily job ... So, if you feel like "wow, that's cool, what can I do to support this project (or others)" don't hesitate to get in touch with us. The more people we have in our project teams the more work can be done and the better the projects will become 
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By Tom Wellige on Montag, 29. Oktober 2007 14:18
Today I am facing several down times It seems, that the new forum version causes somehow more problems in the virtual environment than the previous version. I am already working on a solution to get Swyx Forum on it's own root server which promises much more stability. If this will work out as expacted/wanted, I will be able to move the site in one or two weeks from now (fortunately I have vacation during this time...). If you feel like wanting to support me on this you can do so by becoming an official sponsor of Swyx Forum. It is just a question of money... (as always). At the moment the costs are not yet secured.
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By Tom Wellige on Freitag, 26. Oktober 2007 10:02
As I am going to update the forum module the following weekend, you won't be able to access it from saturday morning presumingly until sunday afternoon. All other areas of Swyx Forum (projects, downloads, wiki, a.s.o.) will stay available during this time.
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By Tom Wellige on Freitag, 26. Oktober 2007 09:59
Hi everyone. Due to a massive hardware failure in the datacenter of my hoster Swyx Forum (and lots of other pages) where down far about half a day. As Murphey tells us: everything that could fail will fail, it took some time to get the datacenter back to life. Swyx Forum is available now again and I am looking forward to the weekend to update the forum module.
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By Tom Wellige on Freitag, 19. Oktober 2007 13:55
"Far out in the uncharted backwarters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."
This is the beginning of the first book of the only existing triology consisting of five novels:
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
If you grew up being somehow connected to technology this is for sure a very well known story for you. In fact I hardly know anyone not knowing it.
The story is from easy to complicated, from funny to bizzare. Over the last 20+ years it became nearly a religion to many people. Of course my bookshelf is the home of five paperbacks as well !
While spending some nice days in Reykjavik for an SwyxECR Developers Training the other day I found a complete... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Mittwoch, 17. Oktober 2007 07:49
Over the last days you might have exerianced this site to be very slow or not responding at all. My hoster just informed me that he had severe trouble with DoS Attacks on lot's of his machines slowing everything down. He told me that he "fixed" this now (I wonder how to fix DoS Attacks anyway... ). So, if the page is slow please be patient, this is most likely because some stupid guys think they have to do stupid things.
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By Tom Wellige on Mittwoch, 10. Oktober 2007 11:41
This morning the Swyx Forum web server (i.e. the web application framework) hang and it took some time to get the IIS (web server) restarted. So please accept my apology for this. I will try to make sure that these kind of down times will be prevented in the future.
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By Tom Wellige on Dienstag, 2. Oktober 2007 08:37
Is your daily work every day the same ? Did you get tired of it and want to learn and do new things ? Maybe this one is of inspiration for you: http://youtube.com/watch?v=p4cP2oy4ebE BTW: tomorrow is a national holiday in Germany (German Unity Day), so this is nearly like Morten's regular weekend starter blog
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By Tom Wellige on Sonntag, 16. September 2007 12:10
The other day a colleague of mine asked my for a favour to write a small function that strips the SIP URI from his caller list and redial list. At home he only uses SIP trunks to the outside world and therefore he always gets the SIP URIs into all lists.
Well, the result is the following piece of code that has to be copied into the gse script's Start block, and later on within the script, somewhere before the Connect To block you need to call the FixSIP function, best suited within a Insert Script Code block.
Feel free to use it where ever you like
Sub FixSIP()
Dim sNumber
sNumber = StripNumberFromSipURI(PBXCall.CallingPartyNumber)
PBXCall.CallingPartyNumber = sNumber
PBXCall.PhoneCallListEntry.Number = sNumber
End Sub
Function StripNumberFromSipURI(ByVal sURI)
Dim sReturn
sReturn = sURI ... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Freitag, 14. September 2007 13:42
As Morten already has opened the fun section for the upcoming weekend, let's celebrate it !
This is my contribution to it (Don't miss to watch BOTH movies!)
... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Donnerstag, 13. September 2007 08:04
Again I want to inform you about the latest news of the Kinderhilfe Afghanistan (Sorry, but both links are in german language available only). swyx-forum supports the Kinderhilfe Afghanistan. Read more about it here.
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By Tom Wellige on Dienstag, 11. September 2007 13:20
This small movie shows what really happend to Darth Vader after his battle star was destroyed by the rebells. ► Episode IV.V
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By Tom Wellige on Montag, 10. September 2007 21:42
Being already in the mood for some more good one's of Robin Williams I am pretty sure you will enjoy this very special version of "none-weapons-of.mass-destruction". This is definately one of the most brilliant ones ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL5qMobVS2U
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By Tom Wellige on Montag, 10. September 2007 21:09
Ever wondered who invented Golf ? This game where a few people with sticks in their hands hit tiny balls and run all the day after their these balls. Well, my most favorite comedian, Robon Williams, tells the truth about this sport. Lean back and enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X04wZpqx3U
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By Tom Wellige on Samstag, 8. September 2007 22:38
Too many DVDs, and CDs and not enough time to rewind? Are your DVDs running a bit too slow? The DVD rewinder is the perfect solution! This novelty rewinder comes with the exclusive Centriptal Velocity Spindle providing the world’s fastest DVD rewind!
The DVD Rewinder is a great gift for the technical savvy, the couch potato, teens with too much time on their hands, and the gadget buff! Novelty for you or gag gift for a friend.
The DVD Rewinder has a great black and fluorescent green color scheme with high tech styling! The DVD Rewinder will spin discs backwards and plays a “rewind” sound. You can also record your own “rewind” sound which provides unending possibilities. For the tech hip, the DVD Rewinder also has an additional MP3 port and plays a separate “rewind” sound. Rewind all types of disc media DVDs, CDs, and Console Games. But not just novelty, the DVD Rewinder has utility. It has a built in compartment that holds a disc cleaner. This compartment can be used to hold the cleaner, loose couch... Read More » |
By Tom Wellige on Sonntag, 19. August 2007 18:46
The last weeks and month I'd spent a fair amount of time on a redesign of the Swyx License Database. This weekend I have updated the productive system and am quite pleased with the results.
Two major "faults" had made the database very slow over the last years. As you all know the Swyx licenses are dongled with the hardware of the server machine. So, the first fault was to do all the hardware comparisons needed everytime one wanted to have a look e.g. on a customer. The second fault was introduced when implementing the SUS license management 2 1/2 jears ago. Because of a lack of time I had decided to make (intensive) use of "User Defined Functions" on the MS SQL server. In the beginning everything worked fine, but over the time, with more and more licenses in the database, the UDFs showed their major drawback more and more clearly: they became a performance problem.
So, if you ever have to design a database application, stay with the good old-fashioned Stored Procedures or Views and better do not... Read More » |