On technology and development » Tools

Quick & Easy Windows Home Server Backup and Restore

Pål — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 19:30:13 +0000

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).

Another update for the WHS FileManager Add-In

Pål — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 06:47:36 +0000

The WHS FileManager add-in just made version 1.0.0.5

Changes in this version

1.0.0.5
- Does no longer show printers as shares
- Made current location of each pane to stand out more (easier to see)
- Made each folder in pane path (above panes) clickable for easy access to
any parent folder
- Fixed problem with caching of exe file icons (all exe files got same icon)
- Added support for sorting by clicking list headers
- Canceling a rename operation (clicking escape) does no longer give an error
- Changed default drag operation from move in 1.0.0.3 to copy.
- Removed a lot of the error messages and instead disable the command buttons when you have not selected and files.

Link to add-in
http://blog.paks.no/2009/03/29/whs-file-manager-add-in/

The long winded road of XAML

Pål — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:26:38 +0000

I was playing with Silverlight and Expression Blend trying to create a small animated figure to use in a project. I had the image in PNG format, but I needed it in XAML so I could animate parts of it.

Surely Blend would have an import from PNG option? Or convert PNG to XAML? Nope! Ok, Google is my friend. Must be a whole lot of free software that does the trick. Well, either there aren’t or I’ve become really lousy at using Google.

What I did find however was a lot of people asking the same question on different forums and sites. The best solution I found was a two step method. First convert the PNG into SVG, and then convert the SVG into XAML.

For converting an image into SVG I came over a site called Vector Magic, they have a really good online flash based service with lots of options and preview capabilities. The downside is that they actualy cost money, but if you register you’ll get a couple of conversions for free.

So after a couple of minutes of tinkering with different options I ended up with a nice vector version of my PNG image in SVG format.

Back to Google to search for SVG to XAML. Again a nice online service, this time actually free and as a bonus written in Silverlight. XamlTune lets you paste in the SVG code and will convert and preview the resulting XAML.

So now I had a XAML version of my original image. The downside was that it was just a couple of endless PATH’s with x,y coordinates. I used a small eternity to find out where to cut the PATH’s into the figure’s various parts so that I could animate the right part or it.

Silverlight, XAML and Blend are all nice and fun, but if your design is all about photoshop and PNG then prepare for a lot of extra work

And what was this image all about? I can not tell you, if I did I’d have to kill you. Sorry.