Archive for January 2008
Getting BadImageFormatException in 64-bit Windows?
17 January 2008 in .NET in general & Code-ing | Comments (1)
Have you been running/developing .NET programs in 64-bit Windows and met the BadImageFormatException? Well, Microsoft might say: “The exception that is thrown when the file image of a DLL or an executable program is invalid.” Which says absolutely nothing… 
However, if it happens when using Platform Invove (P/Invoke or DllImport) or a third .NET party library (DLL) then you might have to set the project’s properties (or compilation flags) from “any” platform target to “x86″. Also, remember to set change to x86 in both the debug and release build configurations while you are at it, otherwise it might seem to only work when you are debugging and not in release compilation.
(This happened to me when I used a .NET code library for a LabJack device in a program and ran the program under 64-bit Vista. Couldn’t find what the nature of the problem “really” was… )
HSDPA as Broadband: The 2nd Report
16 January 2008 in Phones | Comments (0)
I dumped my ADSL subscription last year and switched to using solely HSDPA, or as it’s called in marketing speak: mobile broadband. Serving as my modem is a S60 powered Nokia 6120 Classic (which is not be confused with the older model) which I bought for around 250 € at an online store. I will try to document my experiences and experiments with HSDPA surfing in this series which I’ll call “HSDPA as Broadband” in a semi-weekly monthly fashion.
Reboot, Rinse, Retry, Repeat
I have had some problems with the phone not always connecting to HSDPA or the connection seemingly “dropping out” in use. The solution to my problem is to reboot the phone just before I head out onto the Internet. Hence, I would like to suppose that the problem is most likely due to the phone’s firmware (IE. the software that the phone is made up of) having memory leak issues which causes the connection problems.
This doesn’t, however, prevent any spontaneous self-resets which the phone still likes to do whenever it feels like it.
For More Speed, Turn Phone Left
A quite interesting thing regarding the inconsistent speeds I was and have been experiencing recently: turning the phone a bit to the left one day seemed to increase the downloads speeds from just 22 kilobytes/second to about 110 kilobytes/second. Now, I don’t have the phone lying down on the table, as this mostly results in it changing from HSDPA to EDGE, but I have it in a penholder which holds the phone vertically and facing the south window in my apartment. This arrangement has been working out fine for the most of the time seeing as the 3G coverage is a bit weaker than it could be where I reside.
Why does turning the phone one way or the other produce better download speeds? My guess is that the 3G cell my phone connects to is a bit to the side of my window and turning the phone to the left a bit more sets the transmitter in more direct line towards that cell. But, really, I can’t say for sure.
Not So Bitten by Bluetooth Right Now
I have finally gotten the phone to connect over Bluetooth, but Nokia has left a big bug in the firmware version that my phone happens to be 
having. The connection works for a minute (quite precisely, even) but after that the Bluetooth stack on the phone freezes up which renders the connection useless. This has been discussed on the various Nokia.com forums and it seems there was an update available, but it got pulled due to unknown reasons.
If you want to connect your 6120 over Bluetooth in Windows Vista, then you need to go and configure the Bluetooth modem in Device Manager. Usually, the 6120 will show up as “Standard modem over Bluetooth” under Modems in the device manager. Pull up the properties on that device, and open the Advanced tab. Enter something like:
+CGDCONT=1,”IP“,”internet.saunalahti”
in “Extra initialization commands” replacing internet.saunalahti with you operator’s respective HSDPA/GPRS access point name.
MediaPortal Decryption Support for Anysee Plus Coming?
15 January 2008 in Digital Television | Comments (0)
It seems like AnySee released by mistake the software development kit (SDK) for the card reader in their E 30 Plus and E 30C Plus products. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to download it since AnySee removed the SDK quite quickly. Luckily, someone at the MediaPortal forums got a hold of it which means that AnySee’s card reader can soon be supported by MediaPortal and maybe even support decryption/descrambling the pay-per-view channels.
This can be a great thing, since AnySee’s own programs have stability problems — the DVB-C version more than the DVB-T version, from what I have noticed — and sometimes the programs can stop decrypting/descrambling the pay-channels due to some weird CATR-errors (which probably means card reader error, or something).
As, “Da Silva” mentioned in the same topic in the MediaPortal forums, ProgDVB supports AnySee’s card readers if one downloads some DLL-files from a link he gave. I tried using those files with ProgDVB and, sure, it works. But, and it is a big but from my point-of-view, if you haven’t paid for the Elcom codec provided by ProgDVB, then the video is too choppy and unsynchronized with the sound when using other codecs. Furthermore, ProgDVB uses almost all of the CPU time on my computer, which makes it impossible to do anything else when it is running. So, it might be that ProgDVB will require a more powerful dual-core processor than what my single core processor can deliver.
Happy New Year!
2 January 2008 in Root | Comments (0)
Hyvää uutta vuotta!
Gott nytt år!
I wish all of my readers a successful, happy start to the new year!