Entries Tagged 'Misc' ↓

Click the image to go to Comics.com’s website to read the comic.

OK. A bit of the background.

I have Win7 Ultimate. I have my background pictures set to auto-rotate every 30 minutes.

Every week or three, I change the folder that the pictures rotate through. I’ve done this for a couple of months, and it’s been fine so far.

Yesterday, I grabbed a couple more images from Digital Blasphemy out of the “free bin”. I then told Win7 to rotate through these.

It wouldn’t. It stayed permanently on the last image from the prior choice. I started checking everything. I tried changing folders, changing themes, rebooting, changing screen resolution… nothing.

So I asked Google… after much digging on an old forum post, I found this:

C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper.jpg

If you delete that file, it fixes whatever was broken, and now my images shuffle again like I want.

‘Twas the night before startup
and all through the house
not a program was working,
there clicked not a mouse

The users were nestled all snug in their beds
with visions of systems alive in their heads.
The programmers slumped round their screens in despair
and felt that a miracle now would be fair.

Then from the back office there rose such a chatter
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter
and there to my marveling eyes did appear
a wonder programmer with a six pack of beer.

His resume glowed with experience so rare
he turned out great code with that bit-pusher’s flair.
He spoke not a word but went straight to his work,
turning specs into code like a sitcom berserk.

A wink of his eye and a nod of his head
soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
More smoothly than salesmen his programs they come;
he whistled and shouted and called them by name.

On update, on add, on inquire and delete,
on batch jobs, on closing on functions complete.
His eyes all glazed over, hands nimble and lean,
from long days and nights spent in front of a screen.

He tapped and he hammered, he nothing did shirk,
turning specs into code; then he turned with a smirk,
and laying his finger upon Enter key,
the system came up and worked perfectly.

The updates updated, the deletes all deleted,
the inquiries inquired and the closing completed.
He tested each whistle, he tested each bell,
and with nary an append it all had gone well.

The system was finished, the tests were concluded,
the client’s last changes were even included.
Then the user explained in apocalypt font,
"It’s just what I asked for, but not what I want."

Author unknown… Just some Christmas fun I was sent via email.  Thanx Chad!

The Northeast Roadshow will be in Augusta this year (well, the Maine venue is).  It’s scheduled for December 16th (a Tuesday).  They’ve moved the venue, since the previous location was packed to overflowing.

Chris Bowen (one of the speakers) has more details (including the agenda) on his website.  I’m planning on attending.

I started to use ZSNes.  But I found that the development had pretty much died about 1.5 years ago.  So I checked to see what was good, but still had active development.  I found BSNes.  It doesn’t play all the games, but it does play most of the ones I want to play.

You can download the emulator here.  I’ll let you find your own Roms.  I’ve been playing Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda and Mechwarrior no problems.

bsnes – Super Nintendo Emulator 

Here are the system requirements.  They are a little hefty compare to many emulators, but, it plays very smooth on my dual-core machine. 

Minimum system requirements:

• 2ghz Athlon 64 or Core Solo
• 32mb RAM free

Recommended system requirements:

• 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo
• 64mb RAM free
• Video card that supports Direct3D9+
• Sound card that supports non-standard sampling rates natively (32khz, 64khz, …)

One quirk I found.  It didn’t automatically detect and use my MadCatz XBox 360 controller.  All I had to do was configure the “joypad” and it worked fine.

I’m a .NET Developer.  Primarily Visual Basic, but I’ve worked in C# before too.  I’ve also done some RPG (on the AS 400) and some PHP.

I’ve recently been contacted to do some contract PHP/MySQL work again.  So I started looking to see what was available for IDE tools.  I wanted something that would appear familiar to me.  I didn’t want to have to relearn the PHP language, AND learn a new IDE.

I found VS.PHP – It’s a PHP IDE that sits in the Visual Studio IDE.  They have several versions depending on what you need.  I chose the Standalone version, since I develop in a Virtual PC Windows XP box.  I didn’t want to install my VS 2008 license there, and not be able to use VS 2008 under Vista (where I do most of my .NET development.

I’ve only completed some sample projects, but so far, I’m impressed.  The IDE is familiar to me, and I get syntax checking, intellisense and the F5 functionality to test.  Reminds me a lot of doing ASP.Net development. I’m still using the free trial, but for the price of $99, it’s a definite “Must Buy” if I get the contract.

For the MySQL front-end, I’m trying MySQL-Front.  It has a trial version, so I’m using that.  So far, it’s decent.  The UI is a little old, but fairly easy to figure out.  I’ll be looking around for other visual front-ends for MySQL.  I like the SQL Server Management Studio, and I’d like something similar for MySQL.

Since I’m a contract developer, I work for many different clients.  That means, I need many different work environments.  The simplest solution to this, is to use Virtual Machines.

I used to use VMWare.  Now that I have a TechNet subscription, I’m playing with Virtual PC 2007.  So far, it works pretty well.  Very similar to VMware.

I’ll be researching tips on how to keep the VM’s as small as possible, yet still fast.  I plan on setting up a base Windows XP with SP3, and then copy that as my starting point for each client.  It’s rare that I use any OS other than XP. 

I will make a VM of Ubuntu though.  I want to play with that some more, and I don’t want to dual-boot at this point.

Note: To get the Virtual PC to release your mouse, hit the [hostkey].  By default, this is the Right Alt.

There are more Virtual PC Tips here.

I recently found Jing (this morning as a matter of fact).  It’s a great tool (from what I’ve used so far) for recording images (screen captures) and screen casting (videos of your computer screen).

It’s free.  And you can use it to share your images and captures with friends, via ScreenCast.com, FTP or on your network.

There are a few limitations (the following is a direct quote from Take 5: The Video Time Limit – via the Jing Blog):

1. We think Jing is for quick and simple sharing. Record, send. No scripts, no editing, few retakes. Anything over 5 minutes starts to become a tutorial and we thought things like that are better suited for Camtasia Studio and the like.
2. File size. Depending on what you’re recording, the file size can start to get massive. Once I recorded live video from a web cam and I was up to 55 meg in under a minute. This sort of relates to quick sharing in that we wanted to be friendly to viewers on less-than-ideal connections.
3. Our video format is SWF. One good thing about SWF is that the quality is lossless (no degradation between what you record and what viewers see). Learn more about SWF near the bottom of this post.

They have some great tutorials, and Jing works on the PC or Mac. So, go download Jing now and see for yourself.

UPDATE: A friend asked me “Why is this better than ALT+PrintScreen (or even regular PrintScreen).  There are a few reasons.

1. Jing will do a screencast.  It will do a live recording (with audio) of your computer screen.  PrintScreen can’t do that.
2. Jing offers a “hint” when you hover your mouse over a window.  It darkens the other windows, so you can easily see what you are taking a screenshot of.  PrintScreen can’t do that.
3. Jing lets you choose the entire screen, a single application, a single window, or you can draw your own custom sized box. PrintScreen can’t do that.

So there you have it.  Three reasons why Jing is better than the regular PrintScreen.

This book list is courtesy of The Monkey Exhibit.

• Look at the list and bold those you have read.
• Italicize those you intend to read.
• Mark in red the books you LOVE.
• Reprint this list in your blog

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen (in progress)
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (sorry… ain’t happenin)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (yes, I’ve read it, and I intend to reread more every day).
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy – Not sure if I’ve read some or just excerpts
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas (a favorite)
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie (sorry… ain’t happenin)
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – Not sure if I’ve read or just read parts.
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I think that gives me 25 read.  1 in the process. Some, I just won’t read… period.