Shout out to EPPlus

I just have a quick shout-out to someone who doesn't know they helped me out with a project. I needed a way to generate an Excel spreadsheet from inside a c# application. My client for the project wanted something more detailed and more usable than a .csv export file, because the single page of data was, to use the database lingo, not normalized. I had data repeated all over the place, and it was hard to read.

After a quick web search, I found EPPlus, which did exactly what I needed. I wanted to both write the spreadsheet to a file, and to build it in memory and attach it to an email which my software sends in the background without opening up an email client. The first I figured would be easy, but the second required writing to a stream, and EPPlus was already set up to allow for both files and in-memory streams. A few hours of data layout on multiple pages, and voila! I have formatting, sorting, column sizing, and as many pages as I need. Alas, I don't know how to build a pivot table worth beans, but EPPlus does that, too, according to the docs.

Their sample code project was really helpful to look up things like formatting and sizing of cells. The whole update to my code got me thinking of how you can do really cool stuff by intersecting multiple areas of expertise. Mix computer based testing with Excel and email, and you can end up with something pretty slick. It's the sort of programmer candy contract coders thrive on.

PingGraph 3.0.0.7 Release

My network monitoring tool PingGraph has been updated and released. You can download it here. I implemented a couple of customer requests to enhance the email alert system to be more user friendly.

First, it has a threshold so it won't send an alert until a specified number of consecutive time-outs or over-threshold ping times have occurred.

Second, there is a test button so you can verify that you have your email server settings correct.

As always, you can give it a test run for free with no time limits. Registering it allows for a longer saved data history, and logging data to a file.

Let me know what you think!

GPSMonitor update

My free GPS tool has been updated, and is about ready for release. I discovered that there were some more lurking issues for localization settings which use "," in numbers instead of the "." which standard US English localization uses.

The good news is that I am on Windows 7, so I can set my own localization to match anything I please, and then run my software to see what it does. That's much easier to debug. Two who reported bugs for me to look at were Carlos and Andrew, both due to localization problems.

Anyone interested in testing it over the next couple of days prior to release, drop me an email.

New Volume Pricing for PingGraph

I had a customer ask me about volume pricing beyond the discount for 6+ copies of PingGraph, so I have added two additional discount categories. Here's the full list now:

Price Per Unit (US$)
1 copy = $39.00
2 to 5 copies = $24.00
6 to 24 copies = $15.00
25 to 99 copies = $11.00
100 or more copies = $7.00

That puts the maximum discount around 82% off now, if you're distributing PingGraph across a large network and need a bunch of copies.

Minor PingGraph update

The vendor I use to process credit card orders for PingGraph is switching over to use the esellerate system. Esellerate has been around for years, and has been an easy transition. Registered users won't see any difference, and new buyers will just be automatically directed to the new purchase page.

I needed to make a couple of minor changes to the program to do the switchover, so I've released version 3.0.0.6 of PingGraph.

Panasonic Toughbook GPS

One of my GPSMonitor users just sent me a note about how he's using the software on a couple of Panasonic Toughbook notebooks with an integrated GPS. Unfortunately the notebooks didn't have GPS software, so he tracked down several packages, one of which was GPSMonitor. Now he's happily monitoring sites across 3000 acres where he works.

So if you're looking for GPS softwar for your Toughbook, give GPSMonitor a try! There's nothing to lose but a minute's worth of bandwidth since the software is free.

This struck me as the ideal combination for the software, since you have the large notebook screen (compared with a typical GPS screen at least). If you just add in a modem card, you can even pull up Google maps as you wander around with the notebook.

It's always fun to see how people are using my software in ways I couldn't imagine on projects that are just mind boggling. I've heard about everything from fishing boats to environmental monitoring. What will you folks think of next?

Use Your Router to Block Ads

No new software releases or anything today. Just a tip to make your web experience better.

Have you ever been irritated at those ads all over the web pages you go to? I try to keep the ads fairly simple on my site, but I'm sure you've seen how bad it gets with all the blinking, animated "ooh, ooh, click meeeee!" ads.

I also want to give the kids in the house less opportunities to infect our network, so I came up with a nice way to make things a little simpler. I block the ads at my router. Most routers allow you to block web sites, and it's usually meant to keep kids from browsing to places you know they shouldn't be. Well, for some of those ads I think that qualifies as exactly what I want, so I just put the ad providers in my block list.

You can build your own list of ad providers to block by just hovering over all those clickable links and ads, and looking at your browser to see where it would send you. You may notice that some don't show you and address, so you may actually have to pop open some raw HTTP to look for those.

As an example, my new Netgear router pops up a nice replacement image whenever something tries to fetch an ad from one of my blocked providers. It says "Web site blocked by NETGEAR firewall" and fills up the spot the ad would have been using. My old Actiontec DSL modem had the same sort of feature, but put up a more generic error for the blocked ads. Both work great, so I suspect most modern routers will do just as well.

You may be wondering what ad providers I block personally, but I'm not going to give you a list. First, you may want to keep particular providers and nuke others. Second, I don't want them to be able to complain that I singled anyone out. Third, they change names, and new advertisers appear fairly regularly.

Also just so we're clear, don't go blocking the ads on MY web pages, or I'll lose out on the few cents a week I glean from those who want to see who my competitors are. :)