On technology and development

Click to view full screen shot

I recently decided to jump ship and upgrade my developer machine from Vista to Windows 7 RC. I usually do a clean install, but resofting everything would take a whole day, so I tried upgrading and I was very pleased to see that everything is still working.

Windows 7 (Ultimate and professional) has something called XP mode or Virtual Windows XP which basically is a built-in virtual XP running in an integrated version of Virtual PC (you’ll need to download and insttall from Microsoft.com) . That’s nothing new, but what’s interesting is how the whole thing is integrated with Windows 7.

Microsoft uses a feature of RDP called remote applications. So when you run an application in Virtual XP you don’t see the whole XP desktop like you do when using normal Virtual PC or VMWare, you only see the application’s window, and it’s visible in Windows 7’s start menu, taskbar, ALT-TAB etc. It’s very similar to how things work on the Mac when running Windows apps.

As a developer I sometimes need to maintain old VB6 legacy code. VB6 does not run very well in Vista or Windows 7 and working in a Virtual PC has been the only option, same goes for testing web sites in IE 6. With Windows 7 and XP Mode I now have both VB 6 and IE 6 available directly from the Windows 7 start menu. Clicking any one of them will start the virtual xp machine if not already running, open the said application and transfer the application’s UI via RPD to Windows 7. It takes a few seconds the first time, but man how much better it’s to work with those old tools now.

According to an article at Digi.no twitter is struggling to keep it’s users. According to the article Nielsen Online has made a study that shows that less that 40% of American users return to the service the next month.

Another article at itavisen.no states that 10% of the users are generating 90% of the tweets. Also that more than 50% of the users tweet less than once every 74 days.

Is that so strange? Twitter is the-most-hyped-service-ever. So hyped that most everyone feels forced to sign-up and try the service that everyone is talking about, but very few see the value in.

Come on, who really have any benefit of reading less than 140 character messages from people you know, nearly know or wish you knew has done this, or is going to do that.

I have tried Twitter for some months now, I follow some friends, colleagues and some companies and some professional  twitters in different industries. Friends and colleagues mostly twitter nonsense.

I’m late for the bus

Going to a movie tonight

Playing PS3

Information that I really have no need for. If the “I’m going to the movies tonight” tweet is a hidden invite for others to join then please call, or send an email. Much easier for everyone.

The companies mostly use twitter as a new channel to advertise their products. The only tweeters worth following is the professional ones. People who really have something to talk about, but their tweets are usually bit.ly or tinyurl links to a blog post they have written. Well I already subscribe to their blogs using an RSS reader so again the tweet is mostly not useful.

So is twitter useless? In my eyes yes. Twitter is mostly useless for me (and I image a lot of other “normal” people). But for someone that needs to notify a large uncontrolled group of people fast I can see the value. That especially media buffs and journalists can have use for twitter. News travel fast, very fast on twitter, and if you have time to scan the messages as they arrive I imagine you can pick up quite a lot of stories.

So I have decided to end my twitter account like I did my Facebook account (too much noise and nagging). If anyone needs me call, text or email me. Otherwise I’ll pick up what’s happening when it hits the news, possibly a few hours later than on twitter, but that’s just fine.

I’ll finish this post with a link to a College humor video about Twitter in real life:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1909386

(and as a last bite-me, this blog post was announced on twitter)

I was lucky enough to snatch an invite for wimp that was twittered by @aspiromusic today. Wimp is a competitor of Spotify made by Aspiro Music. Where Spotify offers a free ad-financed version along side the payed Premium account Wimp is a pay-only solution.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

The WHS Media Connect Configuration Add-In has been updated to version 1.0.0.2. It now uses the %ProgramFiles% environment variable instead of hard-coding to \Program Files\. Should now also work with non-english languages of WHS.

Read more

The 31337 guys over at 4Hak3rs have written a guide for Quick & Easy Windows Home Server Backup and Restore. The WHS have duplication support for your data, but not the actual OS itself. So in the event of a disaster (or OS meltdown) you need to reinstall the WHS OS from a supplied restore DVD. All your data is still intact, but all your settings, users, add-ins etc are lost and needs to be reinstalled/recreated.

The above mentioned guide tells you how to create a new restore DVD from your existing setup so that you can roll back to what ever setup you have now.

Great news for all the HP MediaSmart owners (yes this tip is only for use since it makes use of the built in flash boot that’s in hardware).

I går falt dommen i den svenske tingretten. De fire medlemmene i The Pirate Bay ble dømt til å betale 30 millioner svenske kroner i erstatning samt ett år i fengsel. Selve utfallet var vel ikke særlig overraskende. Det hersker vel liten tvil om at nettstedet er laget for å distribuere “piratvare”.

[Read the rest of this entry...]

I often need to sort a generic list on some arbitrary property. After writing the code a couple of times I decided to make it more generic using generics and some reflection. Oh, I know that reflection if costly and this is not a good way to sort large lists, but I typically work with small lists.
[Read the rest of this entry...]

My first release of the WHS File Manager add-in got a rather bad review from Jim Clark over at We Got Served. Well I’m not one to let a bad review keep me from doing what I like. So I continued development and released a couple of updates. Today Jim posted an appreciation to all add-in developers and names me specifically. Thats a nice touch that I appreciate. We Got Served is probably the largest Home Server user and developer community out there and a site I visit regulary.

My WHS File Manager Add-In has gotten yet another public update and is now at v1.0.1.0.

New features:
- Support for removable storage (CD, DVD or USB disks that are not part of the storage pool)
- Support for opening files directly via the Home Server Console (files are opened on your local computer and not the server)
- Lots of bug fixes

I am now asking for feedback from the users about what further functions you would like to see in future versions.

Grab it from http://blog.paks.no/2009/03/29/whs-file-manager-add-in/

The new EX48x series MediaSmart servers from HP are already getting a software update. Today HP is announcing the upcoming release of a Software Update to the Windows Home Server powered EX485 and EX487 MediaSmart Server. The primary new features delivered in the 2.5 release are a Remote Video Streaming capability, a video conversion utility, and the HP iStream iPhone Application for remote media access. The update will also include several software enhancements and bug fixes. The 2.5 Software Update will be a free update to EX485/EX487 customers and will be available in late April.

[Read the rest of this entry...]