Broadband Access

I finally decided to take the plunge and install ADSL at home. Unfortunately here in good old South Africa the boradband options aren't that good so I will only get a 384kbps pipe into my house, but it should be fine.

Telkom, the service provider, also does not have a very good track record. I will have to wait for at least 3 weeks, hopefully not more.

Amarok

Being a devout gnome user I don't like installing KDE software on by Ubuntu machine but all the talk on the wire about Amarok made me curious enough to install it and try it out.

I must say that all the talk is justified, Amarok is really an amazing piece of software and I am thoroughly impressed.

Nokia 9300

I just received my Nokia 9300 and I am impressed so far. I downloaded the mobile GMail application and it works good. I think it works better than on my SE w550i.

The standard Inbox

Conversation view

Edgy Eft Power Management Applet

I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see my Edgy Eft power management applet support my wireless Logitech mouse.

Very nice touch.

flv2mpg

I regularly download movies from YouTube but they are always in Flash format which is no good for most people I want to email funny bits.

After some searching on the web I found that ffmpeg will be able to convert all my .flv files to .mpg files. I also found a nice script to do the job.

With some modifications to those scripts I created two scripts that will allow you to right click any .flv file in Nautilus and convert it to a .mpg file. The new .mpg file will have to same name than the .flv file and will be in the same directory.

Also it is possible to select multiple .flv files and convert all of them. The script will also check for a valid .flv file before converting it so to convert a lot of .flv files is a simple as Ctrl+A and then flv2mpg.

The attached flv2mp3.tar.gz contains both scripts and it should be as simple as just extracting the tar file into your home directory.

Ubuntu 6.10 Installed

Finally I installed Edgy Eft on my laptop. I had an unfortunate bug with my ATI FireGL drivers but the Ubuntu help sorted it out.

All I need to do now is install Automatix and all my other nice tools I am used to, will have to wait for Monday though, no broadband at home.

rDesktop 1.4 that comes with Edgy rocks, had some issues while my FireGL was still detected as Mesa compatible and not as fglrx compatible, but after the ATI fix my rDesktop is fast and very efficient.

Ubuntu 6.10 Released

At long last last Edgy Eft is available for download, unfortunately staying in South Africa with the Telscum (Telkom) monopoly it means my download will be done by sometime tomorrow if I am lucky.

So this weekend seems to be the Edgy Eft weekend I've been waiting for.

rDesktop

It seems I do not need to try and make Remote Desktop work on my Linux machine via Wine anymore. Apparently I can use rDesktop to connect to my Windows boxes via the RDP protocol, if this works well it will be brilliant.

Will try rDesktop as soon as I installed Ubuntu 6.10 on my Laptop.

Ubuntu 6.10

I can not wait for Ubuntu 6.10 to be released. I almost forgot how much Windows XP sucked. The last week of using XP again brought all my bad memories back. One more week and then I have my Ubuntu back again. Brilliant.

I broke Ubuntu

I recently reconfigured my partitions on my notebook and I broke Ubuntu in the process. My bootup process gets stuck at Mount root filesystem..., I tried all the fixes I could lay my hands on but to no avail, so now I will just wait for the new 6.10 release and reinstall which should be by the end of October.

So for now I will use Windows XP again.

VM Keyboard Problem

I always had a nagging issue with my Windows 2000 vm whenever my laptop is not docked into my docking station, for some reason the keyboard would have a lag, so I would press a key and the character will only appear a second or two later.

I sort of found a hack for the problem over at the VMWare knowledge base, it is not pretty but it seems to work, so now my clock is very fast when I am docked into my docking station but at least my clock is running at an acceptable speed when I am not docked.

Firefox has sound!

My Firefox on Ubuntu 6.06 never had sound, not when watching YouTube videos and not when using Meebo, but today I realized with a shock that YouTube and Meebo has sound all of the sudden.

All I can think of why it is suddenly working is that I upgraded to Firefox 1.5.0.7 recently and my Ubuntu installed approx. 70 updates in the last week. Whatever it was, it is great to have sound in my browser.

Windows Vista RC1

One of our clients decided their new product must work on Windows Vista RC1. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my Linux machine using VMWare Server and VMPlayer.

A full screen image is available here.

Why I like VMPlayer

I am using VMWare's VMPlayer extensively now and a feature I only recently discovered is that the VMPlayer will dynamically change the resolution of the guest OS when I resize the VMPlayer window, thus it is possible to have unlikely resolutions of 433x900 etc.

To me this is great, I can now run my VM alongside my other applications and it looks like just another application actually. I have a screenshot available just to give some background to why I am so impressed, just be warned it is a 1920x1200 PNG image.

Opera 8.6 for PocketPC

I downloaded the new Opera for PocketPC and it is very stable and much better than Pocket IE. At last I have JavaScript 1.2 support and some other goodies Pocket IE does not have.

Unfortunately Opera for PPC is not free so I will have to fork out $29 for my full copy soon. At least it will be money well spent.

iPAQ Bluetooth Keyboard

I bought myself an iPAQ hx4700 PDA a bit more than a year ago and I have been using it mosly everyday. I just recently decided to by the iPAQ bluetooth keyboard as well.

The keyboard works like a charm, I am actually typing this blog using my iPAQ, the BT keyboard and my Sony Ericsson W550i cell phone.

VMware Player vs. Workstation

I am currently using VMware Workstation 5.5 to do my Windows development on my Ubuntu laptop, the problem is I need to buy VMware Workstation to keep on using it and I do not really have $189 to spent on it, especially since I am only using it run Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

I considered using the VMware Player instead but could not find any meaningful benchmarks or comparisons so I decided to download SiSoft Sandra 2005 and do some tests myself and I am very impressed with the Player's speed.

I am not allowed to publish any benchmarks but suffice to say that I will be using the free VMware player to do my development on from now on and not the VMware workstation anymore.

JDiskReport and Unison

In my search to find utilities that can replace the Windows utilities I was used to I discovered these two applications.

jDiskReport is a utility that allows me to analyze my hard disk to find directories that are becoming a bit bloated. The added benefit is that it is a 100% Java application which allows for easy installation.

Unison is a utility that allows me to synchronize my files on my hard disk to my backup hard disk. I always used FileSync for this on my Windows machine and this utility has equivalent functionality.

CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office

I use Ubuntu exclusively now but my job requires me to still use Microsoft Office. Now I used MS Office inside my Windows 2000 VM but then I tried a product called CrossOver Office and it works great.

I am now using Microsoft Office XP on my Ubuntu machine without any problems, the little envelope from Outlook even appears in my Ubuntu notification area. I am definitely going to invest in this application very soon.

My Desktop even has the MS Office icons as any other Windows PC would have.

Just more reason not to ever go back to Windows again except maybe for gaming.

Ubuntu Printing

Again I am very impressed with Ubuntu, everything just works so far. I setup my machine to be able to print to PDF from any application and I setup my network printing to our company's network printer on the Windows server.

Both work perfectly and it took my only 30 minutes about to do it all. Still a bit longer than in Windows but I think I am able to setup a printer in Windows much quicker because I've done it so many times before.

VMWare on Ubuntu

Well I have been using my new Ubuntu laptop for almost 3 weeks now exclusively and it has been working great. I am still developing on my desktop machine remotely via VNC but I also installed VMWare for Linux to develop at home without having to resort to dual booting.

So far I am very impressed with VMWare on my Ubuntu Dapper Drake installation, the install went smoothly and the Windows 2000 virtual machine is fast and flawless, given I will not be able to play games using the virtual machine but for development it works just fine.

When I want to play games I would probably just dual boot or get hold of Cedega.

Mozilla Thunderbird

I really like Mozilla Firefox so I decided to use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client. Unfortunately Mozilla Thunderbird seems unable to communicate with my companies Exchange Server, something Evolution has no problem doing.

This is really sad because Evolution's interface is not as catchy as Thunderbird's but until Thunderbird fixes the Exchange incompatiblity I will be forced to use Evolution.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake Switch

So I finally switched to Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I am currently dual booting just to keep my options open, but I am currently only booting Ubuntu and no Windows at all.

To do my work I remote terminal to my Windows Desktop to develop in my Microsoft IDE. Until I start working on the Java side of our product I will be developing on my Desktop machine via remote access.

Sounds complex but isn't really, now I am able to keep work baggage off my machine, no more compulsory anti software installed on my laptop because it is company policy.

I managed to get everything I used to using up and running, and so far I have no dependency on Windows anymore except for my .NET development. The Visual Studio 2005 IDE is still my favourite IDE to develop in, but that is where the remote desktop comes in. I may consider a VM to eliminate the whole desktop entirely for development but that I still need to think over.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake

Being South African I am very attracted to the name Ubuntu but liking a name does not make the OS good enough. I decided to give Ubuntu Dapper Drake a try in my everyday development shores.

I have a very complex setup going now. I am using Dapper Drake inside my VM. Having a dual monitor setup all my Windows apps are running in the secondary window and my Dapper Drake OS is running on my primary display.

This allows me to develop on Dapper Drake whilst still remaining compatible with all my colleagues. I am planning to do my Java development using Eclipse on Dapper Drake and my .NET development on standard Windows XP and Visual Studio 2005.

So far it has not been to eventful but the compile speed of my Eclipse environment inside a VM might give me a headache.

Google and Yahoo listing

At long last my site is listed on Google as well as Yahoo. I do not care to much about MSN for now, maybe next year will be a different story.

To make it all happen I had remove all my invisible text, in my case innocent keywords and description meta tags. Also I removed all meta tags my html editor added.

I registered with Google's sitemaps program and I submitted my site regularly on Yahoo and Google.

I must also comment on the Network Solutions experience. Though NS is more expensive than GoDaddy I find NS to be more compatible with me. The whole user experience is just different, but if you need lots of space for cheap then GoDaddy is the way to go.

Linux go where?

I periodically upgrade my virtual machines with the latest and greatest Linux distro I can find just to see the progress of the Linux "revolution". Every time I am excited by the new interface and new installation, my general first impression is usually good. I actually have some hope of switching my home machines to Linux at long last, but alas just 30 minutes into using the latest and greatest Linux I realize that this will not be the case.

I might have been content in the early days of Linux to do everything by hand in text mode but not anymore and my wife will definitely not do any text based tasks to do her work. She is not an I.T. professional, she is in the arts industry. She needs to create sound tracks, DVD movies etc. and expecting her to have in depth knowledge of the inner workings of a tool just to create a DVD is not realistic.

I really have some high hopes for OpenOffice but having just one tool that is acceptable is not good enough. There is no software available on the Linux platform that I know of that can touch Sound Forge for audio manipulation for the masses i.e. people not in I.T. and when it comes to DVD authoring the software available to Linux is just horrible, I will not even consider using it myself much less my wife.

So I guess I will wait another 6 to 12 months, load up the latest distro of any Linux and reevaluate the Linux packages and software, but for now I am sticking to Windows.

BPEL4WS

Something I need to research very soon is BPEL4WS. It all sounds very exciting and promising but I still need to do an in depth analysis of it.

Exceptions and Error Code

I was pointed to this article by a colleague. Brad Adams is one of the guys I really respect when it comes to .NET. I whole heartily agree with his statements. Exceptions just plain and simple RULE! I lack any other better word for them.

Opera 8.5 For Pocket PC

At long last Opera released its Opera browser for the Pocket PC. I own an HP hx4700 Pocket PC and Pocket Explorer is just plain horrible. No JavaScript support and the image quality is just unacceptable.

With Opera I have most of the benefits I would have using my PC and Firefox. It is even possible to do internet banking using JavaScript. Just beautiful. The download is available here.

Mount St. Helens Crater

Being a lover of everything science I really liked this pictured of Mount St. Helens Crater growing a rock. Very nice picture. The full article is available here.

Why I like Firefox

I could never really quantify why I preferred Firefox over Opera or Internet Explorer, maybe it was because Opera isn't free or maybe because I just got tired of Internet Explorer.

Opera is "free" if you are willing to live with the adware in the browser.

I recently discovered the plugin side of Firefox. Admittandly it has been there for quite sometime but I for some reason never looked at it. Now with the new plugins of Firefox I can really quantify why I use Firefox. I haven't even started really exploring the plugin pages but my Firefox is now customized to such an extend that I actually removed some applications because I do not need them anymore.

I am very impressed with Firefox.

Great AJAX Frameworks

I stumbled across this blog. It contains a list of a few AJAX frameworks the author has tried out or used before. Definitely worth a quick glance.

Network Solutions first impressions

Well I moved my site to Network Solutions and my first impressions are good. Much less in your face advertisements when accessing my account manager and the account manager interface is also less busy and easier to use.

The verdict is still out on my Google search engine problem. Hopefully I will have an answer soon.

Move from GoDaddy to Network Solutions

My website has been hosted by GoDaddy for the last 6 months. In that time I tried my utmost best to get my site listed on Google and even Yahoo for that matter. I started investigating and came across the following two articles

• GoDaddy says ...
  
• Search Engine Optimization ...

According to these two articles GoDaddy is to blame for this. I decided to open a new hosting account with Network Solutions to see if it is better. I will only know after the next few days.

I also changed my domain name from TheSystemArchitects to MarthinusSwart, after working on my site over the past 6 months I realized I will not be able to maintain the TheSystemArchitects website as I would have liked to.

Notebook Docking Station

Just received my notebook's docking station today. It is in simple words Amazing! I can't imagine anyone working on a notebook without a docking station. It really makes the whole experience of developing on a notebook so much more enjoyable.

My first configuration without the docking station worked OK as can been seen from this picture. I was able to work on my notebook monitor and keep all the other debug information etc. on the secondary monitor.

On the CRT / secondary monitor my latest desktop enhancement is visible ... Yahoo! Widgets, very nice and very useful.

After I received my docking station I had to change my configuration a bit. My CRT monitor was not high enough to have it above my LCD monitor so I had to move the CRT monitor to the left side of my notebook.

Still works good, the CRT just had to move back a bit so that I do not need to twist my neck too much to work on the CRT monitor.

Visible is my Yahoo! Widgets and my other desktop enhancement tool Meebo.

A view of my notebook with docking station from the side.

Notebook Update

It's been a week since I took delivery of my notebook and it works like a dream. Must be one of the best 'investments' of this year, that and my Seinfeld DVD collection. The notebook was a bit on the expensive side but I feel it was well worth it. I will post a small picture of my current work environment shortly.

I must admit the 7200 rpm hard disk makes a huge difference in my compile time, but it was expected. I am very impressed with my notebook. I am still waiting for the delivery of my docking station and my sports bag but until then my notebook rules!

Pending file operations irritation

I recently had the unpleasant pleasure of encountering a pending file operations irritation while trying to install SQL Server. Luckily there is a solution.

The short of it is as follows:

• Run the Windows Registry Editor
• Go to
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager
• Delete the pendingfilerenameoperations key

And that should get rid if the irritation.

C# Quick Equivalents

I discovered a nice website containing some common C++ functionality and the C# equivalents to those funtions. Really helpful when converted legacy C++ code to C# like I am doing now. The website is available here.

Another 48 hours

Jip sounds like the 48hours movie and its follow up. Everything was setup and ready for me to take delivery of my new HP notebook on Thursday, but alas they will only get new stock on Monday so my ETA shifted out to Tuesday, so in reality it will be another 96 hours before a take delivery of my new HP notebook.

At least next Monday might not be that blue then.

48 Hours to go

After a lengthy purchase exercise my new notebook will be delivered Thursday morning. I am buying my notebook through the company I work at so it wasn't as easy as just walking into a store and taking delivery of a notebook.

Two years ago I bought a top of the range HP notebook for the same price than my new top of the range HP notebook but the new HP has 1Gb more memory and it includes a docking station which my previous notebook did not have. Nice to see notebooks becoming cheaper, though slower than the desktop computers, but I assume the more people start buying notebooks the cheaper they will be become eventually.

Another friend of mine bought himself a notebook at a 1/4 of the price I paid for mine and it is actually a decent notebook.

Now I just have to wait 48 hours and maybe finish setting up my desktop computer at home.

Notebook, notebook, notebook ...

Well I knew that my notebook will only be delivered within 7 working days and today is only the 2nd working day, but after working on my friend's NW8240 over the weekend I can barely wait for my notebook anymore.

The 1920x1200 resolution is not a problem at all, I think it is one of the best things about this notebook. The screen real estate on the notebook is amazing!

Now it is just a matter of time ...

My New Laptop

After two years of using my trusty HP Nx7000 I decided to upgrade. My Nx7000 was not an average midrange laptop for its time but it was showing its age lately.

My Nx7000 was one of the few laptops with a 60Gb 5400 rpm hard disk coupled with 1Gb RAM and it sported a 15.4" WSXGA+ (1650x1050) LCD screen. This set me back a bit of money when I bought it but it was well worth it. Two years after I bought the laptop it was still good enough to do my everyday work on.


Naturally when it was time to upgrade I looked at HP again. Not having any problems with my Nx7000 I decided to buy HP again. My new laptop will be the NW8240. More details are available on the HP website but in essence my new laptop will have a 80Gb 7200 rpm hard disk, 2 Gb RAM and a 15.4" WUXGA+ (1920x1200) LCD screen.

I was a bit reluctant to buy the WUXGA+ LCD at first, I was concerned that the resolution will be too small for development but after a quick call to a friend already owning a NW8240 I decided to give the WUXGA+ LCD a chance. I will only know for sure when I get the laptop whether it is a good development screen on not.

My new laptop should be delivered within the next 7 working days.

Difference between free and delete

I stumbled across the following article on www.voidnish.com. It compares the differences between using the new / delete pair and the malloc / free pair. The 'Tip for scalar and vector new/delete' in the article helped me realize why my one DLL had a memory leak when handling char arrays.

Obviously a seasoned C++ programmer would know this, but me being a C# / Java programmer and only a C++ programmer when the situation calls for it, I did not realize that mixing the two ways of allocating memory and freeing them again will have such an effect.

Just another reason I love my C# / Java managed code world ;)

Metamodel Programming

I always used meta data to store business rules e.g. tax rates, commission etc. This allowed the system to be modified and even extended after delivery well into the maintenance phase without too much hassle.

Lately I am gravitating more and more to the idea of having all my logic inside a meta model. This meta model will not only contain business logic but also programmatic logic . The meta model must be able to model the interaction between all the various business objects as well as the presentation objects which will in turn allow me to generate code from the meta model.

There are tools available today allowing this, but they are either too expensive or too bulky. Obviously creating a product to do all of this, the product needs to be very generic to allow it to be usable by the mass market.

Because my projects are medium in size, 5 - 10 developer teams, I do not need the bulky huge be everything to everyone packages. The tools needed in my domain will be fewer but more biased towards the domain instead of trying to have a tool generic enough for all domains.

Luckily for me the chances are very good that I will be trying out this new approach on my new upcoming project. We will have to wait and see how many sleepless nights I will have to endure to make this a reality.

Intel Pentium M vs. AMD Turion 64

Being an avid laptop fan, I found this article very interesting. I wondered when AMD will come to the party with some real laptop CPUs, the previous attempts were running too hot for my liking. It seems my next laptop will still be a Pentium M, but it is good to see that AMD is making some progress. The mentioned article is available here.

What I do find very interesting is the advantage the Pentium M has over the Turion when the level 2 cache is used. I suspect the level 2 cache plays a rather prominent role in compiling code, which is way my next laptop will again be a Pentium M.

It gave up the ghost

It seems my Motorola E1000 decided to give up the ghost for a third time. I decided enough is enough and bought myself a new Sony Ericsson W550i. I will now use the USB library to communicate with my new W550i. Maybe I will have better luck with the Sony Ericsson.

Motorola E1000 USB Access

I am currently struggling to communicate with my Motorola E1000 cell phone using the libusb-win32 library. Whenever I try to open configuration number 1 the library just stalls until I disconnect my cell phone.

I am able to connect to my PocketPC via the USB successfully, so I suspect my Motorola USB driver is at fault. Unfortunately this means I will have to do some trail an error investigation for the next few sessions.

USB Access Library

I downloaded the #USBlib from icsharpcode. Unfortunately the library was not complete enough for my intends and purposes. After browsing through the icsharpcode forums I realized there are more than a few people that would have liked the #USBlib to be a bit more complete.

I decided to complete the #USBlib library to a point where I will be able to use it to communicate with my Motorola cell phone. Unfortunately Mike Krueger decided that all his classes will be marked as internal and not public making my attempt to only extend his existing classes impossible but he did make the source code available.

I copied his code as is into a new assembly and started with extension classes. I did not want to change code on the existing #USBlib classes but again there were some incompatibilities which I had to deal with in the current source code but I kept the changes to a minimum.

I implemented the classes needed to be able to control the USB device according to the USB documentation e.g.So to be able to read and write information to and from the USB device you will need the Device object. The Device object will have a Configuration object. The Configuration object will have an Interface object and the Interface object will be able to create a USBStream to read and write from.

The library is complete enough to play around with, but it still needs some refinement and it needs a help file explaining all the classes.

I have the following files available for download:

• The assembly
• The Test application and
  
• The Test application source

Some limitations and dependencies:

• You will need to install the libusb-Win32 library
  
• The current version only works with Framework 2.0 and the Win32 DLL
  

.NET USB Library

I have been unable thus far to obtain any free Bluetooth library in either .NET or any other language that would enable me to use the Widcomm Bluetooth stack.

The Franson library works sufficiently enough but I do not want to buy a $99 library just for my current freeware project. I am on day 5 of my 14 day trail period so I need to get another way of communicating with my cell phone.

I decided to use the USB port for now. I am developing a cell phone library that will be able to communicate with any cell phone that is compatible with the extended Hayes modem commands. To enable me to test my library extensively over the next few months I will need a connection to my cell phone that will not expire and is free.

I decided to use the #USBlib to communicate with my cell phone via USB. The libary is open source and can be obtained from icsharpcode.

Franson BlueTools

I found a different Bluetooth Library from Franson. Their pricing model is also a bit better, but now I need to develop a commercial application and not a freeware application. There is a 14 day trail available, maybe that will work fine for now.

Bluetooth Communication

I recently became interested in Bluetooth communication between my PocketPC and my Motorola cell phone. I primarily want to be able to send and receive SMS messages from my PocketPC through my cell phone. For some strange reason Microsoft decided that the messaging software supplied with a standard PocketPC will not be able to send and receive SMS messages unlike the messaging software supplied with a PocketPC with cell phone capabilities embedded.

I definitely want to use C#.NET to develop this simple SMS application but now I need some Bluetooth library to communicate with my cell phone.

In my first search attempt I came across a Bluetooth library for .NET created by 32feet.NET, unfortunately this library only supports the Microsoft Bluetooth stack and not the Widcomm Bluetooth stack. My HP iPAQ uses the Widcomm Bluetooth stack and not the Microsoft Bluetooth stack.

In my second search attempt I came across a Bluetooth library for .NET created by High Point Software which supports the Widcomm stack but it is not a free library. I will be able to obtain a free evaluation copy of the library. This copy will pop up a message each time the application connects to the Bluetooth stack. There is also a limited edition of the libraries available but I do not know what the implications are of these libraries.

What is ...

What is The System Architects blog? The System Architects website's main aim will be to help other system architects with their projects. The System Architects blog's main aim will be to talk about current developments in different projects from different architects. Some of these posts will be upgraded to articles which will then be published on The System Architects