hulu.com, impression of usage

Ok, using a "non-standard" method I managed to access hulu.com.

Today I browsed the titles for a while, then I decided to watch a Simpsons episode, exactly "E. Pluribus Wiggum", season 19, episode 10 (wow it's almost 20 years of Simpson's broadcast!) and an excerpt from a '76 Saturday Night Live... with Chevy Chase an John Belushi (I really like those old SNL clips, they're great!)

Well, the viewing experience is good, I have to say - only some glitch here and there in the few starting seconds, but I immedialtely learned that after a reposition at the start, then the playing is smooth and continuous.

In the longer clips you will find some ads, and you can "see when" they will arrive thanks to some marker in the timeline indicator. During these ad shorts you cannot skip forward or pause... but hey, that's fine for me :-). A curiosity: the Viewing applet has this ""lower light" function, that is a little but helpful function: it will darken (but not completely) everything in the browser window except the viewing area. Good idea.

I plan to access more content on Hulu asap, but in my opinion it's a really good service. Thanks, Hulu!!!

Bye!

Survival: Sql Server, change ownership on stored procedures

Some time ago I wrote about a couple of methods to grant execution permission on stored procedures, on Sql Server 2000.

Now I had to write something similar, but the scope was to change ownership of the objects; after some googling I found this page on support.microsoft.com that lists a good way to do the job... but I modified slightly the code from MS, because I needed the possibility to decide to actually execute the commands or simply print them.

So I added a simple parameter (the third), datatype bit, default 0 (false). When set to 1 (true) will cause the execution of the commands.

Here's the code:

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[chObjOwner]( @usrName varchar(20), @newUsrName varchar(50), @exec bit = 0)
as
-- @usrName is the current user
-- @newUsrName is the new user

set nocount on
declare @uid int                   -- UID of the user
declare @objName varchar(50)       -- Object name owned by user
declare @currObjName varchar(50)   -- Checks for existing object owned by new user
declare @outStr nvarchar(256)       -- SQL command with 'sp_changeobjectowner'
set @uid = user_id(@usrName)

declare chObjOwnerCur cursor static
for
select name from sysobjects
where 1=1
AND uid = @uid
AND xtype in ( 'P', 'U', 'V')
and name <> 'chObjOwner'
-- category: zero is valid for Stored Procedures... but not for tables
-- and category = 0

open chObjOwnerCur
if @@cursor_rows = 0
begin
  print 'Error: No objects owned by ' + @usrName
  close chObjOwnerCur
  deallocate chObjOwnerCur
  return 1
end

fetch next from chObjOwnerCur into @objName

while @@fetch_status = 0
begin
  set @currObjName = @newUsrName + '.' + @objName
  if (object_id(@currObjName) > 0)
    print 'WARNING *** ' + @currObjName + ' already exists ***'
  set @outStr = 'sp_changeobjectowner ''' + @usrName + '.' + @objName + ''',''' + @newUsrName + ''''
  print @outStr
  IF @exec = 1
    execute sp_executesql @outStr
  --print 'go'
  fetch next from chObjOwnerCur into @objName
end

close chObjOwnerCur
deallocate chObjOwnerCur
set nocount off
return 0

KeySwop and soft keys remapping

In a recent post, I showed how to modify the registry in order to change the left soft key standard assignment.

...and today I discover that there are some utilities, even freeware ones, that help you in this, so removing the need of manually change registry keys. For example, you can use KeySwop, a simple yet complete tool to remap soft keys from yourself!

hulu - now I can reach it, thanks to AnchorFree

I installed AnchorFree Hotspot Shield, and thru this new VPN (ad supported) now I can access all the HULU content (but as far as I know also Pandora or any other service blocked to non-US people).

So now I'm looking at one Simpsons episode, and I just browsed some Saturday Night Live episodes... hulu.com is great!!!

If you also want to try the Anchor Free app, please go here. And happy navigation :-)

PocketCM, a very good contact manager for Windows Mobile

I installed yesterday PocketCM, a freeware contact manager that you can find here.

And I have a really good impression on this, even if the release number is "0.18" - very low, but it doesn't correspond to the stability of the app, that is really good. It could easily win a place in my list of "never without" apps!

The interface is realized to allow for a "finger" use, and it works. The screenshots on the site do not show all the smooth transitions (scrolling, moving from a function to the other, and so on) that give a really good feeling. 

It's fast, and way better than the standard contact manager, at least if you compare to the WM5 one.

On the same site you can download a keyboard app replacement, that will be useful if you want to use the keyboard with your fingers. I installed also this one, but I have to say that it's a bit slow in starting; then it works, and offers some interesting functionalities; go to the site page to understand its use.

Windows Mobile 5 - Left Soft Key and PocketInformant

Just because I needed it and it's not so easy to find... If you need to remap the left soft key in Windows Mobile (the standard link is to "Calendar", \Windows\Calendar.exe) you have to modify the registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Today/Keys/112

There you have two string keys, Default and Open. Default contains the String you want to display in the menu, Open contains the path to the app you need to use for that.

For example I lost my PocketInformant Calendar link (due to the setup of another app that overwrote that voice) and I restored to my previous situation writing in the "Open" key the following:

Programmi\WebIS\PocketInformant\PITab.exe" 11

Outlook 2007 (was) painfully slow!!!

I hope I managed to solve this issue, that was causing me a lot of trouble and of wasted time.

What I was experiencing: from a certain date on OL2007 was really slow in opening, then in updating headers, then it hanged for seconds while I( was composing new messages, then... in a word it was going to be completely un-usable.

After googling and discussing for days, trying different ways, that went from disabling RSS feeds to checking out encryption in transmission between OL and Exchange, finally I understood that my real problem was... the mailbox size. And the corresponding OST file size on my hard disk.

What i understand is that in OL2007 MS changed the underlying data structure of PST and PST files, in a way that requires a lot of disk access when the file size is big. So the solution for me has been "simply" to split my OST archiving some hundreds of messages in a new .pst file.

I think that I need some more archiving work, to really solve the issue; but even now OL reacts much better than before.

hope this helps... :-)