Search Results for: TEST

Oct 27, 2011 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

How to darken the exposure of only the lightest areas of a photo

Here’s an Advanced Photoshop trick that might help you out one day. The trick allows you to target only the most over exposed sections of the picture. This will ensure the rest of the tone and quality in the rest of the picture remain intact.

Once you have the picture in question open click on the Channels tab (normally bottom right hand side in Photoshop).

Holding the Control key down double click the “RGB” layer. I’ve marked with the screenshot with a red “X” where you should click. This will allow you to select ONLY the lightest areas of the picture.

Hit “Ctrl+J” to take the selection you just made and make a copy of it to another layer.

If you click back to the “layers” tab select “Multiply” to darken these areas. If the effect is a bit much you can adjust the “opacity” to your liking. In this example I pulled the effect back by setting the opacity of “86%”.

If this doesn’t bring back enough detail and you want to darken things a bit more just make a copy of the top most layer. Keep copying the layer until you get the image exposure where you want. Hope this helps!

Apr 26, 2011 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

My Hands-on Test with the new Ford Eco-Boost Engine

website

Earlier this month (April 6th) I was fortunate enough to be invited to Ford’s “Built Ford Tough” campaign. Before I go any further, let me say that the only thing I was offered as a participant was a light breakfast and a day of fun with some trucks. It was the Ultimate test drive in my opinion. We got to test trucks from different manufacturers in real world conditions, we also got to drive the trucks back to back. This in turn allowed me to form real world educated opinions on different brands at similar price points.

After meeting up with other people from the media we were given a 30 minute presentation of all the new Ford Engines. While I love driving vehicles I normally don’t have much interest about the things like the engines and how much horse power it can produce. All those numbers are just numbers to me. One thing this session allowed me realized is how something so small can make a huge difference in measurable performance.

The biggest news was Ford’s new twin-turbocharged with 365 hp, 420 lb-ft torque, and 11,300 lbs. towing capacity. Ford is touting it as a V6 which delivers the power of a V8. The beauty of the EcoBoost system is that it takes relatively few changes to go from a standard 3.5-liter V6 to a fire-breathing, twin-turbo monster developing peak torque at 1500 RPM.

The two main upgrades that give this engine an edge over other similar engines is the combination of “direct injection” and “turbo boost”. Those two main updates drive the smaller, but smartly executed, changes around them. Other interesting facts are:

The Ecoboost engine was modeled after a Diesel engine
EcoBoost engines have more torque at lower revs then a V8 Hemi engine
F-150 returned as high as 32 mpg in “hypermiling” techniques

I was pleasantly surprised that the “Sales” pitch time was kept to a minimum. It’s nice to hear about all this power but I wanted to actually FEEL it. Ford was so confident that we would like their products better they put their money were their mouth was. We were given a side-by-side comparison between four different trucks. These weren’t just Ford trucks. They brought in the best trucks from Ford, Dodge, and Chevy. We were paired up into teams and test drove each truck on the highway. We spent 10-15 minutes in each truck. We did things people would typically do like pass vehicles on the highway. The one thing that wasn’t typical about the drive was that each truck had a large fully loaded trailer attached. All trailers were the same size and weight.

The sway control on the Ford was fantastic and anyone who needs to pull a trailer will appreciate it. What is really impressive about ford is that that the sway control is standard on even the lowest entry F-150. The other trucks can be ordered with sway control but there is a large additional fee that goes along with it. I never once felt the trailer behind me in the Ford Ecoboost truck. With the new turbo charged engine passing vehicles was almost too easy. The interior of the ford trucks were very ergonomically constructed and positioned. I had a ton of room all around me and the ergonomic chair seemed to hug me like no other. It was possibly the most comfortable chair I’ve ever had the fortunate chance to sit in. Being tall and having a bad back I really welcomed this comfort. All the settings were very easy to reach. I never once felt like I had to take my eyes off the road in order to change something. As most companies are putting more and more options into vehicles it was nice to see how Ford cares about our safety by making the designs work for us.

After the first 12 or so minutes I got to head over to the Dodge truck. While it was very comfortable I found the seats weren’t nearly as nice and there wasn’t nearly as much room in the cab. I found my head constantly hitting the roof because it was a bit lower then the Ford’s interior. I was able to change the position of the seat but it didn’t help much. As for power and performance the truck handled great, but I could definitely feel the trailer behind me. Passing with the Dodge truck was good but I could sure tell I was missing that extra zip from the turbo chargers in the Ford truck. I’m sure if I had not driven the Ford before this truck I might have thought it had a lot of power. The interior of the truck was nice but not great. If I had to change a setting I needed to look for it.

I am going to say up front how terrible the next ride was. We got to drive the Chevy truck last. I know this might seem like a huge exaggeration but I am sure my Corolla would have done a better job at pulling the trailer. Ok Ok I exaggerated a bit! Honestly, the Chevy wasn’t even close to being in the same league as the other two companies. There was no zip, features were sparse and interior looked like it came from a the year 2000.

After completing the hauling component we took a break and met up at the drag race area. We were given the opportunity to pick what ever truck that was available and drag race them. This honestly was my favorite part of the day. The Ford reps encouraged us to step on the gas as hard as we possibly could. A person controlling a computer system would measure measure our speed and reaction time. After the drag race section they setup an obstacle course that allowed us to see just how well the trucks could maneuver. Doing the obstacle course also served as a way to give the attendant a bit extra time to print off your race particulars.

Very similar to the earlier tests the Ford trucks consistently felt more powerful and handled better than the competition. The V8 Titanium truck was a riot. While it didn’t have the turbo charged engine, the truck could hit high speeds really fast. I was lucky enough to drive it twice on the track. Much like other test the Dodge speed and handling was good but failed to give me the same rush that I felt driving the Fords. It was pretty apparent how badly the Chevy trucks performed when comparing the trucks side-by-side.

trucks

Nov 17, 2010 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

How to test your website in multiple browsers for free!

This post will go over how I check my websites in multiple browsers for free. There are services out there that will show you what your webpage will look like in other browsers but unfortunately they are not in real time. They also don’t allow for testing websites that are local on your machine.

Unfortunately for the Mac users this will NOT work out of the box. I’m sorry you will just have to buy an Extra PC, Run a Virtual Machine or just switch to an operating systems that gives you much more options and won’t confine your creativity! *jab*

How can I test multiple browsers for free?

There is two tools that I use. One is web based and the other one is a free download.

IE Tester

This is such a great piece of software. It does an awesome job of emulating the different versions of Internet Explorer. It emulates IE 5.5, 6, 7, and 8 on Windows 7. I have found it’s not the most stable piece of software but considering the other options out there I don’t care. Because it’s a local app I can test local websites I am developing and see them very quickly without a lot of hassle.

http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

Spoon Web Browser Virtualization

These guys are amazing. They managed to virtualize all the browsers out there. Unfortunately they were asked from Microsoft to remove the different version of IE from the website. They currently have most of the Firefox versions, Opera, Safari and Google Chrome browsers. What’s nice about there site is that you don’t actually have to install the browsers on the machine. You can have multiple versions of browser open at once. Because the browser is NOT being emulated you get very actual results!

http://www.spoon.net/Browsers/

Jan 12, 2010 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

How to test a laptop power adapter

What happens when your laptop just isn’t working properly. The batter doesn’t seem to charge as fast or the machine just won’t turn on at all. These are signs that your power adapter could be on the fritz. How do you go about testing your laptop power adapter to make sure that it is give out enough Voltz?

What you need

You will need to be in the possession of a “volt meter” and the laptop power adapter.

You will need to find out what the Voltage of the power adapter is. In my case it is 19.5V
Now that you know how many V’s it needs to output you now have to select the proper setting on the Volt Meter. Set it to 20V since it is close enough to 19.5V
Put the Black probe on the outside of the power tip.
Put the Red probe on the inside so that it is touching the inside wall of the tip.
You should see it reach something like 19.4, 19.3, 19.5-ish.
Since the number matches the requirements we know the adapter is working up to it’s full potential.

See below for a picture tutorial:

How-to-test-a-laptop-power-adpater-01

Jul 9, 2017 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

How to perform a basic setup of a Palo Alto Firewall

Welcome to the first of many posts about Palo Alto Firewalls. This post will go over using a physical Palo Alto Firewall.

The model I will be using is a PA-200 with a PAN-OS of 8. As long as you use the same OS the screenshots should look identical. Older versions of PAN-OS should be similar or the same.

Palo Alto Firewalls have two “Planes”. They have the Management Plane and the Data Plane. These concepts are important to understand when setting up the device.

Management Plane – Is essentially tied to the Management Port. It will have it’s own IP address, DNS and Default Gateway. In order to update your firewall, you will need to make sure the Management Plane/Port is set up correctly. This post will go over these tasks
Data Plan – The data plane is the area in which the data flows. Typically the External Port will have a default gateway as well. This post will not cover this.

I will be creating a LAB setup that will be a subset of an existing network. The purpose of this setup is to allow you to play and work with a Palo Alto firewall from the comforts of a working network.

The first thing you need to know when setting up a Palo Alto is that the device’s management port is set to the IP address of 192.168.1.1.

If you plan to plug this port into your existing network and your IP range is also in 192.168.1.1 you will need to change this IP address by plugging a computer directly into the Managment port rather then plugging the management port into your existing network infrastructure.

My network is not part of the 192.168.1.X network so I will plug my Palo Alto management port into a switch and make sure that the Palo Alto device and Computer are on the same VLAN/Physical Network.

I will change my IP address from it’s 192.168.101.x network address to 192.168.1.2 /24. Doing this will allow my machine to talk with the Palo Alto firewall.

Open your favorite browser (I find Chrom works the best) and go to https://192.168.1.1

You will be greeted with a warning that you are using a private cert instead of cert from a certificate authority. Tell your browser it is ok.

You will see the login page for the Palo Alto firewall. The default username and password is:

user: admin
pass: admin

When you have entered the login credentials click “Log In“.

You will see a warning that you haven’t changed the default password yet. Click “OK”

Click the Device Tab

To change things like

Hostname
Domain
Time Zone
Time

Click Setup – Management TAB and then the General Settings Cog icon.

A window will pop open and you can enter the information. Here is an example of what I entered into the Palo Alto Device. When done click “OK”.

Please note that this setting and the rest of the settings we change will not be applied on the Palo Alto Firewall until I have hit commit!

Next we will update the DNS servers that the Management Plane. To do so stay in the setup section and click the Service TAB – then click the Services Cog

Enter your preferred DNS servers. Typically you would enter your Active Directory DNS servers. Today I chose to use the Google DNS server. Click OK

The next things we will change is the IP address of the Management Port. To do this stay in the setup section. Click the Interfaces TAB – Click Managment Interface.

As we have seen the default IP address is 192.168.1.1. We can specify the IP Address to be DHCP (only newer versions of PAN OS allow for this!) or a static IP address. Here is how I setup my device:

The next thing we will need to do is change the default password of your Palo Alto Firewall. To do this click on:

Device TAB – Click Administrators Section – then click on admin

Change the password to your liking:

Now that we have finished the basic setup of the Palo Alto Firewall we will now need to commit our settings.

PLEASE NOTE – Since we are changing the IP address from 192.168.1.X network to the 192.168.101.x Network the progress bar will never reach 100%. The reason for this is the browser won’t be able to update progress bar to 100%. This “issue” is pretty typical on network devices that are being configured via it’s web managment. If you were using the command console it would complete as expected.

In my instance, the device got to 98%. Click Close.

You can now switch your computer’s IP address back to its normal network and you should be able to talk to the Palo Alto on the new IP address!

When you log in it is good to verify that the settings you have entered were applied. Notice right away you can tell the device was named propperly and that we are now logging in from the new network in the logs.