Finally got around to hacking in Slide.Show as my photo viewer. Yup, you need Silverlight installed to see them but with the way that Silverlight is growing that shouldn't be a problem.
Go check it out and let me know what you think!
Finally got around to hacking in Slide.Show as my photo viewer. Yup, you need Silverlight installed to see them but with the way that Silverlight is growing that shouldn't be a problem.
Go check it out and let me know what you think!
public override Stream GetDataViews() { string xmlName = "MySql.Data.VisualStudio.DDEX.MySqlDataViewSupport.xml"; Assembly executingAssembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly(); Stream stream = executingAssembly.GetManifestResourceStream(xmlName); StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream); string xml = reader.ReadToEnd(); reader.Close(); // if we are running under VS 2008 then we need to switch out a couple // of command handlers DTE dte = Package.GetGlobalService(typeof(DTE)) as DTE; if (dte.Version.StartsWith("9")) xml = xml.Replace ("Microsoft.VisualStudio.DataTools.DBPackage.VDT_OLEDB_CommandHandler_TableTools", "884DD964-5327-461f-9F06-6484DD540F8F"); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(xml.Length); StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(ms); writer.Write(xml); writer.Flush(); ms.Position = 0; return ms; }
It's about 5pm and I'm sitting watching my son play in his second tennis match and working on my Mac. Boy I have to get used to saying that. This is a beautiful machine. After I used Boot Camp to install Windows Server 2008 x64 I started searching Google for driver locations and tricks to get everything working. After the default install I had the built-in NIC, wireless NIC (Broadcom), iSight, and audio not working. The blogs that talked about installing the Aetheros wireless driver obviously would not work since this is a new Mac and they've started using Broadcom. I even found a post giving a download link to some HP driver that was supposed to work. Frustrated, I decided to simply insert my Leopard disk and see what would happen. I had heard that x64 drivers had shipped with the new Mac Pros but not with the MacBook Pros so when I ran the installer I expected a polite error message. Instead, something really cool happened. All of my devices (except the Bluetooth hub) just started working. Yup. Every driver installed cleanly. No unsigned driver warnings. Nothing but cool clean workiness. Yes, that's a made up word.
Since this is Windows Server 2008 I can't run the tool that gives me an experience index but from reading other blog posts I would imagine it is around 5.3-5.5. Very fast I can tell you that. I can also tell you without a doubt that Windows Server 2008 *is* faster than Vista. If you are running Vista and don't have crazy application compatibility issues then do yourself a favor and try out Win2k8. There are lots of posts out there talking about all the steps you need to do to make it look and act like Vista.
So, I've installed Visual Studio 2005 and now I'm installing Visual Studio 2008. No wireless here at the tennis courts and I don't have Live Writer installed so I'm typing this blog post into visual notepad. :0
Oh, one other nice bit of coolness. I installed the demo of VMWare Fusion and used it to boot my boot camp partition. First, it was nice to see that Fusion has experimental support for Windows Server 2008. That makes sense since it is basically Vista. In any case, I was certain that once I booted under Fusion that all my drivers would be replaced with generic SVGA, mouse, etc drivers and that I would have to endure a re-discovery of hardware when I booted natively into Window. I was prepared for that actually. But no, my boot camp partition boots nicely under Fusion but also boots natively with all the optimized drivers still in place. Call me naive but I didn't expect that. Very, very nice. By default the vm only had 512 meg assigned and that's like trying to carry the Brady Bunch in a Yugo. So I'll have more to say about Fusion and Unity once I get back to Mac land and give the vm a more appropriate 1.5 gig. I'm sure I'll be shopping for a 2 gig ram upgrade soon enough.
The power connector broke on my old laptop and with several trips coming up I really needed to get some new iron. So the question is which one. I originally looked at a nice Sony Vaio and then I saw one of those nice Dell XPS m1330 machines. They have a very sweet LED screen and a nice form factor but I really wanted a larger screen. The problem is that the m1530 doesn't yet ship with Penryn processors or a LED screen. The other option was the MacBook Pro. Yes, I know...
So, after a lot of consideration, I chose to go with the Mac. Pretty easy decision actually. The Dell configures up with 3 year warranty at $1800 and the Mac at $2200. Now if you consider the upgrade costs for when the 1530 will support Penryn processors and an LED screen (the 1330 costs $200 more with these options), that puts the Dell at about $2000. The difference of $200 is a small amount when you consider that the Mac is the only laptop that can run all 3 major systems today. Yep, pretty easy decision.
So, the new Mac arrived today and I'm writing this blog entry on it. I plan to write for the next 30 days on my experiences on the machine. I'v always worked on Windows machines so it's a brave new world for me. I'll be testing out Parallels and VMWare fusion for my development work and playing with such gems as iMovie and iDVD around the house.
I had several good impressions during the first hour or so of us. Initial startup had a nice touch where it let me use the web cam to take a personal picture for the login screen. Anyway, I have lots more to talk about but I'll save it for the next entry.
Well, I ran out of database room on my hosting account yesterday so the only thing to do was to move back to a blogging package that is not database backed. I thought about going back to dasBlog but instead decided to try out BlogEngine.NET. It's a new blog engine written in .NET and open source.
It seems to have quite a bit of traction and has some nice features. After a few minor skirmishes I got my blog exported out of Subtext in a BlogML format and it imported into BlogEngine very easily. The only issue right now is existing URLs that are out there and waiting for Google to re-index the site.
Anyway, so far I like it. Let me know what you think!
I ran Windows Server 2003 as my desktop from the time it came out until Vista shipped and now I'm on Windows Server 2008. And boy does it rock!
I won't repeat the many blog posts that are out there that go over the steps needed to get Win2k8 running just like Vista (though I will refer you to my last blog post about getting sidebar working right). What I will tell you is that almost everything runs under Win2k8 with less RAM than under Vista. People will tell you all day that there is no difference between the Vista SP1 and Win2k8 binaries but there is a difference somewhere.
Actually I checked the ntoskrnl.exe binary from both Vista SP1 and Win2k8 and they are truly exactly the same. However, that doesn't mean they run the same. The Vista kernel could have all sorts of compatibility shims that get loaded dynamically or checked at runtime. One piece of evidence that Win2k8 is different is the fact that a few programs don't function correctly. The latest version of skype and microTorrent do not function (you can use an older version of Skype though).
What I know is that it *feels* tons faster. IE just appears instantly. Explorer windows open immediately. And the RAM usage just speaks for itself. The table below shows what the memory usage typically is on my system for
Application | Vista SP1 | Windows Server 2008 |
Desktop Window Manager | 40-50 meg | 756k (yes, k!). Part of this is the fact that I have not yet been able to enalble taskbar video thumbnails. |
Sidebar | 25 meg | 12 meg |
I've been running with Windows Server 2008 as my primary desktop OS now for a few weeks and one of the things that I had not got to work was Sidebar. I found several blog posts on the net where people claim to have it working but following their steps always resulted in failure.
More specifically running sidebar would show the icon in the system tray but the app would immediately exit. Turns out that I needed on extra step. So, without further delay, here are the steps I did to get sidebar working in Windows Server 2008 x64.
Here's a screenie showing it working on my setup.
I've been working very hard on adding new features to our Visual Studio integration and one of those features is syntax highlighting of SQL when creating and editing stored procedures. With this new build we are using the core editor that is built inside Visual Studio. This brings other features such as the ability to split the code window. Currently I am hoping to have these new features in our 5.3 product.