Category Archives: Software Engineering

Another Reason I Hate My Job

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I’m on the “innovations” team at my work. I’m supposed to come up with innovative new solutions so that our products don’t linger in the past. All too often my team gets disbanded for a while to work on other items due to the nature of other teams. Our solutions are often held hostage by legacy implementations which no one will update or migrate to support the type of cutting edge internet applications my team is tasked with creating. Here’s a gem I found recently. We wanted task data from one of our systems. We were told that the manner … Continue reading →

Chrome and ADB Device Detection Issue

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Lately I’ve been working on an app for viewing Spektrum Telemetry on Android. While I’m using the Ionic Framework and Apache’s Cordova project to do the UI, I still need to do native functions. I’ve written my own plugin to do these functions. While working on my native functionality I’ve come across the need to debug in order to see how certain things behave while running on my Nexus devices. To do this I need to have ADB recognize my device. Lately I’ve been having an issue where I have no devices detected on any of my machines. This baffled … Continue reading →

Spektrum Telemetry Reader – Pre-Alpha Build

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Here’s a little update on a project I’ve been working on. The Spektrum Telemetry Reader is an Android app to read Spektrum telemetry data. The Spektrum Telemetry Reader I’ve completed another alpha build of the Telemetry Reader for Android. It’s relatively stable. Obviously there are ways to make it crash. I’m mainly using it as a visual verification that the data from the library is coming back correctly. I’m also attempting my first hybrid application using the Ionic Framework (an extension of Cordova) and want to validate some of the design choices that I’ve made. Download the compressed APK: Telemetry Reader for Android … Continue reading →

Spektrum Telemetry Viewer for Android

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I’m announcing two new projects! TLMReaderLib, a library for decoding Spektrum TLM files, and TelemetryReaderForAndroid, an Android application for viewing Spektrum telemetry. Let me tell you why I’ve undertaken these two projects in my spare time. Continue reading →

CSS and IFRAMES Break IE11

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Because after all these years, IE still sucks. Does anyone know how to prevent IE11 from barfing when using a few nested IFRAMEs and a lot of CSS? Continue reading →

SeeSpace InAiR

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One of the popular things in tech circles is crowdfunding. If you’re not familiar with the concept of crowdfunding or haven’t heard of sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or GoFundMe, I suggest you read a bit. Crowdfunding is a great way for ideas to grow some legs and allow those entrepreneurs the ability to create while in turn providing early adopters with an opportunity to get the latest and greatest gadgets. Of course, once you dive into the world of crowdfunding you’ll quickly see it’s not just about tech and gadgets but artists and non-profits can use it as a tool … Continue reading →

Scrape Websites With NodeJS

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In the RC airplane hobby we’ve been blessed and cursed with the rise of inexpensive foreign manufacturing. On the plus side the cost of participating in the hobby has gone down drastically. The actual monetary cost of the materials and components has dropped tremendously. However, on the negative side, the hobby has seen a race to the bottom for prices which has led to dramatic cost cutting measures. When kits and components are produced in such a large amount the proper QA is often thrown away to favor a lower cost to the distributor. This is also seen with many … Continue reading →

JetPack Troubles

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Oh no! You’re WordPress site went down! Are you getting a fatal error with a path that has JetPack in it? When you try to go to log into the admin portion of your site you’ll probably also see something like this: Fatal error: Cannot find a library with slug admin-pages/class.jetpack-landing-page. in … Don’t freak out just yet. I had this same issue and for me the fix was very simple. First Step: FTP Find your FTP credentials for your site. This shouldn’t be too difficult. If you did the install for WordPress not using an automated tool from your hosting … Continue reading →

Configuring NodeJS in Windows for Success

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Here’s how configuring NodeJS a bit different from its installed settings can create a little less of a headache in Windows. If you’re not familiar, NodeJS is an awesome environment for developing apps using JavaScript run with Chromium’s V8 engine. I’ve been using Node on my Ubuntu a little bit of time. Recently I’ve been working on projects at my work while in Windows. It didn’t take long after installing some packages that I ran into most developers common annoyance with developing in a Windows environment, path length limitations. It’s 2015 and users are still dealing with a 260 character limit … Continue reading →

SPMReader Update

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Here is a quick update regarding the SPMReader application I created for Spektrum RC Aircraft Radios. It’s been about a month since I announced the SPMReader application. The amount of work that I’ve been able to put into the application hasn’t been as much as I hoped. The biggest updated is that the application now supports the following radios and features: DX18 Converts the SPM to a standardized XML format. DX8 Converts the SPM to a standardized XML format. Currently working on the conversion. It doesn’t look like much now, but the first two points under each radio is important. Once … Continue reading →