Author Archives: Robert

Fixing the Google Android USB driver to work with the NOOK Color ADB on Windows

Symptoms When attaching a Barnes & Noble NOOK Color to a Windows computer for app development, Windows is not able to automatically install a device driver that allows ADB to communicate with the NOOK Color. You may see a message … Continue reading

Posted in Software Development | 1 Comment

GSmartControl for Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. Information and Tests

It’s surprising how few good tools there are for Windows for hard drive Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System (S.M.A.R.T.) functionality. In addition to providing basic attributes like ‘Power-on Hours’ or ‘Temperature’, SMART can also include self-test ability and logs … Continue reading

Posted in Windows Tech Support | Leave a comment

Error 1327 “Invalid Drive” while installing or updating applications in Windows

Symptoms When trying to install or update an application, you receive an error message similar to the following: Error 1327. Invalid Drive: Z: I’ve encountered this error installing Google Earth and another application, and it also apparently happens with many … Continue reading

Posted in Windows Tech Support | 24 Comments

AT&T U-verse for the Curious Consumer – The Residential Gateway and Wiring Options

AT&T U-verse is an Internet, TV (IPTV), and phone (VOIP) service delivered primarily by fiber and existing copper. This article is targeted at consumers who would like a little bit of light shed on the in-home hardware (what it does, … Continue reading

Posted in Personal Technology | 8 Comments

bebooper

bebooper [bee-boo-per]: beep + boop + computer -noun Those things in movies that look like computers, but beep or boop every time something is clicked on, whir whenever there’s a progress bar, or ever show an “ACCESS DENIED” message in … Continue reading

Posted in portmanteau | 1 Comment

View Your Google Apps Calendar in Outlook 2007/2010

Microsoft Outlook (2007 and 2010) and Google calendar both support the iCalendar format, which means you can view your Google calendars in Outlook. This is great if you, for example, want to be able to see your Google Apps personal … Continue reading

Posted in Personal Technology, Web Technology | 19 Comments

s3nukem – Delete large Amazon S3 buckets

s3nukem is a slightly improved version of s3nuke, a Ruby script by Steve Eley that relatively quickly deletes an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket with many objects (millions) by using multiple threads to retrieve and delete … Continue reading

Posted in Web Technology | 6 Comments

WREST (Website REST)

WREST [rest] = Website + REST -noun A RESTful API service that is made available to its own website. The distinguishing behavior from a regular RESTful API is that calls coming from the client are identified the same way as … Continue reading

Posted in portmanteau, Web Technology | Leave a comment

haircro

haircro [hair-kroh]: hair + Velcro -noun When hair is cut very short (using, say, #2 on clippers), the hair holds hoodie hoods on like it’s Velcro — but it’s hair! 

Posted in portmanteau | Leave a comment

Two Subnetworks on One LAN, and Linux arp_filter

It’s a rare situation in a small networking environment that having two subnetworks on one broadcast domain can be an issue. I would normally avoid such a scenario (and it’s usually easy to do so) but I recently got AT&T’s … Continue reading

Posted in Networking | 5 Comments