Gavin News

MagicBerry Blackberry IPD File Exporter Review

Gavin R — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 21:10:24 +0000

The Blackberry Desktop software creates an IPD (*.ipd) file when creating a Blackberry backup. This file is useful to the Blackberry Desktop Software if you want to load your information on to a new device in the future, but does not allow you to extract your data (like contacts or SMS messages) for your own archival purposes.

In my search to find a program to archive my SMS text messages, I found many references to ABC Amber Blackberry Converter. This program costs $20, and the free version only lets you convert 10 items at a time – very annoying.

The solution: a simple, free Windows program called MagicBerry.

The MagicBerry interface is very simple. To access the data of an IPD file you simply open it (File > Open) and all the information from that IPD appears in the right-hand column. You can then inspect each piece of data, or Export All to a CSV or text file.

This is the perfect solution for someone who wants to back up your SMS messages or other data from your blackberry and save it in a readable format. Thank you Ashraf Awwad for creating this simple, useful software!

Don’t Forget to Backup!

Gavin R — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:00:13 +0000

Why should you back up your data? Because your computer hard drive will die eventually – it is only a matter of time. To save yourself the time and pain of trying to recover lost data, be sure to backup your data regularly.

The 3-2-1 Rule

The guys over at DPBestFlow have succinctly defined some best practices for keeping your data and photos safe. It’s called the 3-2-1 Rule:

Have 3 copies of any important file (a primary and two backups)
Have the backups on at least 2 different media types (hard drive and optical media, for example)
1 copy should be stored off-site

Some Ideas

So how do you set up a system of backing up your files to comply with the 3-2-1 system? Here are some services and methods that I

Jungle Disk (and other online backup services) – Provides automated, off-site backup. It does daily backups of all the files I decide to backup, plus it mounts an additional Windows drive that I can save files to “the cloud” directly. For this service, you pay per MB stored and per MB transferred. Other options are Carbonite (unlimited size backup for a one-time fee) and Mozy.
External Hard Drive – Every month I take a snapshot of my entire computer on my external hard drive. Use an encryption program like TrueCrypt to make sure your data is safe even if the external hard drive device is stolen.
Media Server – I have a custom-built desktop computer that automatically keeps my data mirrored on two hard drives, which protects against hard drive failure. You can do this in RAID, but I find it easier to use a tool that runs as a service in Windows – SyncBack.
Backupify – Although all the new cloud services are nice, we as consumers have no recourse if our accounts become inaccessible for some reason. This free service will automatically backup your data on Google (Mail, Contacts, Calendar), Twitter, Facebook (Facebook photos is a big one), Flicker, and much more.

Good luck backing up!

Moving to Chicago

Gavin R — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:30:59 +0000

I recently moved to Chicago, IL to start the next phase of my “real life.” I have learned a lot, including:

Bed shopping is hard – how do you know what you like?
It is expensive to re-stock your basic “one time yearly” foods like butter, spices, plates, soap, cleaning solution, etc.
The Chicago CTA Train, although cheaper than driving and parking in downtown Chicago, is far from “cheap” at $2.25 per ride (and no way to get discounts)
It is tough to remember all the places to change your permanent address (credit cards, banks, Amazon.com, etc)
Comcast will try to take advantage of you by charging a $50 setup fee. Do not pay it – call them to get it removed.

Summary: Moving is not necessarily fun, but moving ahead in life with new experiences and meeting new people is definitely something to treasure.

Improve Yourself – 42 Ways

Gavin R — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:19:52 +0000

I recently read a post on Stepcase Lifehack about 42 Practical Ways to Improve Yourself. Many of the items on this list were intriguing, but I really liked two of them.

1. Stop Watching TV – TV is a complete waste of time. Americans spend about 50% of their free time watching the idiot box. There are so many things that you could be doing instead of wasting your time watching TV. Gary V said it best, “STOP WATCHING F’ING LOST!”

2. Avoid negative people – Simply put, life is too short to deal with these people. Always be positive, and you’ll spread your positivity to those around you. But if someone is consistently dragging you down the negativity path, please avoid them.

What are your favorite ways to improve yourself?

Why Computer Science is Awesome!

Gavin R — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:19:53 +0000

That’s a video from a “theory” computer science course – a type of course that all computer science students have to go through (at the University of Illinois, they are the _73 courses – 173, 373, and 473). There are some lucky students who find these courses fun and interesting, but most students find them extremely challenging. The topics that are covered in these classes are, however, the basis of computer science (or computational science, which is separate but similar), as this video is explains really well.

BIS – Issue with Blackberry Tour

Gavin R — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:39:55 +0000

As a new Blackberry user, I was not aware of the BIS, the Blackberry Internet Service, when I set up my Blackberry for the first time. Basically, the BIS allows you to manage your email accounts that are used on the Blackberry, like the Display name for sent email, and the annoying “Sent from my Blackberry” signature.

To get to the BIS interface for your carrier, just search “[carrier] BIS” in Google. For example, search “Verizon BIS” to get to https://bis.na.blackberry.com/html?brand=vzw

If you set up your email on your device, however, you probably get this message:

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

I struggled with this error for a bit, until I found these two resources. The second one shows how to enable your account to use the BIS. Note, however, that the “Create User Name” option is now in the Menu (click the menu button once you’re in the Email Settings) on the Blackberry Tour. Once you set this up you should be good to go for your BIS account.

Your account is not accessible via HTML browser. Please use your device to access BlackBerry Internet Service.

How to change the login mode for a BlackBerry Internet Service 2.4 account

Public Service Message: ../index.htm

Gavin R — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:05:23 +0000

One of my pet peeves is when people post links or URLs in prominent locations (posters, advertisements, etc) with the “/index.htm” or “/default.php” or “/default.aspx” or any of the derivatives of these. Please people – with very few exceptions, URLs with default.htm or index.htm or things like those do not have to have those parts of the URL!

For example, the NCHS of the CDC website can be accessed at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/Default.htm or at the much better looking URL http://www.cdc.gov/nchs.

Just some helpful advice. Please take these annoying little parts off of web addresses so that it looks cleaner. Thank you.

Building a Backyard Screen

Gavin R — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:34:44 +0000

What is better than watching a movie in your backyard on a nice warm summer evening … on a huge screen!

We’re approaching the two year anniversary of when Doug, Nathan, Joe, Kelsey, and I built a huge backyard screen for the showing of High School Musical 2 on August 17, 2007. Check out the movie below, see the article on Lifehacker, and get ready for another showing on the huge screen sometime this summer.

Lifehacker: Build Your Own Outdoor Movie Theater

Dual-Monitors Full Screen Flash

Gavin R — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:06:13 +0000

UPDATE: These instructions only work on older versions (10.0.22.87) of the Flash Player – there is an updated, easier solution here (via Lifehacker).

If you have two monitors like I do, you may like to have full-screen flash videos playing in your second monitor. There is a problem, though, that as soon as you click in a different window, the Flash goes to non-full screen. In other words, you can’t browse and have full screen flash on your second monitor.

There is a fix for this “security feature,” though. (Disclaimer: Adobe claims that this feature of auto-minimizing is integral to computer security, so proceed with caution)

Make sure you have Flash player version 10.0.22.87 (you can see this version information here).
Open NPSWF32.dll (probably located at c:\Windows\system32\Macromed\flash\npswf32.dll) in a hex editor.
Go to address 0×136340 and change byte 74 to EB.

I have tried this, and it works great. Original source here.

New University of Illinois PH Interface

Gavin R — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 01:10:26 +0000

The University used to have an online searchable “phonebook” that was invaluable when students needed to contact each other. The information displayed by default listed name, email, major, address, phone number, web site address, and department (if the student worked for the University). This has all been disabled except for email address in the new PH system. I wrote about this situation on The Quad.

Anyway, a biproduct of the new web interface is that my Firefox extension NetID Lookup was broken for about 7 days. It is now fixed, and you can go to http://addons.mozilla.org to get the latest version (1.3). Thanks, and please provide feedback if you use and enjoy this simple extension.