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.