Friday, July 3, 2020

Choosing the correct cable to connect DVB-T2 television to aerial wall socket

Since August 2019, Malaysia free over-the-air television broadcasting has been switched from analogue to digital.

The good news is, nowadays most newer model of television has built-in DVB-T2 decoder to receive digital over-the-air TV channels.

If your house/condominium/apartment has an aerial wall socket that connects to the external aerial antenna of the building that looks like the one below, you can use a TV cable with male-to-female connectors to connect your TV with DVB-T2 decoder to the TV wall socket and receive the broadcasted digital TV channels.

If your TV is facing problem of missing channels, pixelated screen, snowy screen due to weak signal strength and/or weak signal quality, it can probably be caused by the type of cable used.

Referring to the table below, if you are staying in a highrise building, the cable buried inside the call connecting the wall socket to the external antenna should be coaxial cable of type RG11/U.

If you are staying in landed property which the distance between the external antenna and the wall socket is below 225 meters, then maybe RG6/U cable still be used without much problem.


For the portion of cable connecting your TV to the wall socket, RG6/U cable is recommended. Using RG11/U cable is even better, but its cost will be higher too.

If you are using RG59/U cable but don't face any problem with your TV, then you can continue using it, otherwise, consider upgrade the cable to RG6/U.

In the photo below, the black cable is type RG59/U and the white cable is type RG6/U. You can easily notice that the RG6/U has a much thicker diameter than RG59/U.


If your TV problem persists despite using RG6/U cable, you might probably need to resort to other solution, such as adding a signal booster, using digital TV decoder box, or receiving the TV signal using an internal antenna.



Monday, June 29, 2020

Generating PHP codes for mobile-friendly web database applications with AppGini rapid development tool

AppGini by Bigprof Software is a rapid web application development tool for the PHP and MySQL web service stack.

It is very easy to use, and very handy to generate up-and-running mobile-friendly web database applications instantly at one mouse click, without the need of writing any programming code.

With AppGini, it is possible for you to save hundreds of man-hours spent in prototyping, programming, design and testing your web application.


AppGini is a Windows application. As such, it is best suit with Laragon as the WAMP development platform to receive the PHP codes generated by Appgini, so that you can immediately test out the generated web application within the same computer.

If you are using Linux or Mac OS, you can also install AppGini in your computer through PlayOnLinux or PlayOnMac.

Below are 2 of the screens in the generated web application, with sample data, using AppGini's default template. You can modify the looks and feels of the screen by choosing another theme of template and layout options.

 
 

The PHP codes generated by AppGini are pretty clean and neat.

In 1 or 2 man-days, by using AppGini, you should be able to produce a fully functional Northwind Orders system with ACL (access control) mechanism from zero. Imagine how many man-days you need to produce the same amount of PHP codes as shown below, by manual coding.


Northwind Orders system is used by Bigprof to demo the work produced by AppGini. You can access to its live demo system here, and can even download its generated source codes here. Beside Northwind, there are more open source web applications generated by AppGini which you can download here.

You don't even need to know about PHP programming in order to create web application using AppGini. Anyhow, you need to have basic knowledge on software development and concept of relational database to master the use of AppGini quickly.

Therefore, I found AppGini an ideal tool for educational purpose to teach and learn about web database CRUD programming concept, and also relational database concept, including the data structure, normalization, joining of tables, keys & constraints, etc.

Of course, AppGini is also ideal for software developer to quickly come out with something, then to further customize on the generated codes. This approach can really save a lot of time and effort.

AppGini is a trialware. You can click here to download AppGini free trial edition, which has no time limit of use, but has limitation on some key functions, including unable to save your AppGini project for future use.

If you like it, you can order its full version at the price of US$79.90 per user. I found that this price is one of the cheapest among its competitor products such as Scriptcase, PHPMaker, CodeCharge Studio, Dadabik, etc.

Friday, June 19, 2020

Update Microsoft Windows to version 2004 - Windows 10 May 2020 Edition

Microsoft Windows 10 May 2020 Edition (version 2004) is available now, free for update from existing Windows 10 to version 2004.

It is also free for upgrade from eligible older Windows 7, 8, 8.1 to this Windows 10 May 2020 Edition.

Existing Windows 10 users can search for this update in Settings > Windows Update > Feature Update and click on it to start the update process.


If you are not able to find the update there, you can also perform a manual update by downloading the Windows 10 Update Assistant from the link below:
 
https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10

 
Just run the downloaded file and follow the step by step instruction to complete the update to Windows 10 May 2020 Edition.


 
Please take note of the following:
  • This update will download a large number of files from the Internet. It is best to run when your computer is connected to a fast and stable network with unlimited data plan or free WiFi.
  • The entire update process will take about 3-4 hours. Therefore, it is better to run it over the night while you go to sleep.
  • Windows 10 Update Assistant will create a folder in C:\Windows10Upgrade with a lot of files, consuming a lot of storage space. The best way to safely delete this folder after successful update to Windows 10 version 2004 is by uninstalling Windows 10 Update Assistant. That folder will be deleted along with the uninstall process.
  • There will also be a very large C:\Windows.old folder after the update. You can find it under Settings > System > Storage and click on it to delete it safely.

Hint: Click on the "Older Posts" link to continue reading, or click here for a listing of all my past 3 months articles.