Thushan Fernando Uncut

5 days into 2010, its already feeling a bit awkward as 99 doesnt feel that long ago.

My good buddy Edwin Vermeer has finally got his WordPress blog setup and he’s also included many of his code as open-source. Of particular interest is the assembly SVGA library he wrote (!!!) 20 years ago and various projects I remember talking with him about over the years.

• BeursMonitor – Stock application
• DBPublisher – Called SiteSkinner too for the developer version!
• ComDoc – COM documentation tool based off DBPublisher.
• Error handling – Based off my wExceptionHandler (which in turn was based off an MSDN Article) but far more improved.
• Object browser – Much like Reflector or Object Browser in VB6 but without an IDE to browse COM objects..

On a side note, I almost forgot to mention that ZScreen was updated on Christmas eve to 3.25 thanks to Santa. For those who haven’t tried ZScreen its a screen capture tool (open source and written in C#) that is chocko-block full of things that will make your life helluvah lot easier – especially when it comes to taking screenies for blog posts. Check it out, it goes beyond WindowClippings which used to be my screen-shot application.

Let the good times roll… Wishing everyone who stumbles apon this post all the best for 2010.

Wishing everyone a safe and Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year. Hard to believe we’re already at 2010 and every year we’ll be calling it twenty-something.

http://xkcd.com/680/

It combines a two of my favorite things in life: driving a rally car in the snow and snowboarding in the powder in the back country. It’s incredibly fun having the ability to push the high-power Subaru on the slopes and to back country spots that normal cars could never go!

That  my friends, is pure awesomeness. When you’re ready check out Ken going around a snowboard park. More videos on his site to compliment his Gymkhana practice video.

Posted at Australia Post in Blackburn.

After a bit of digging around, my original spec’d hardware I’ve decided is too much for a boxen that will be on 24×7, especially with the rates for electricity going up next year – every little Watt counts. The existing 65W CPU isn’t ideal, instead I’m opting for a 45W CPU instead and this means – looking at the lineup, its going to be a walk down AMD way. Less watts, less heat and less noise, noice! See AMD’s product roadmap for 2010-2011.

The original specifications I mentioned were:

• Motherboard: ASUS P5QL-PRO
• CPU: Intel Core-2 E6750 – 2.66Ghz (65W TDP, VT)
• RAM: Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C5 (4Gb kit x 2 = 8Gb)
• Graphics: ASUS 9400GT PCI-Express

I’ve decided to change the CPU and Motherboard but keep the other bits and bobs – I could loose the graphics card and go onboard but I felt like leaving it there for now. The target budget is $250 maximum for both CPU+Mobo, so this means I’m sticking with DDR2 which implies AM2+ but it must also satisfy:

• CPU has to be 45W and be atleast 1.6Ghz, dual core no more, has to support Virtualization.
• Motherboard has to Support 8Gb (most boards doo!),  have atleast 2x  PCIe and a PCI slot, it would be nice if the network cards work (gigabit) but no fuss if it doesnt. No crazy shebangabang Wifi, remotes etc bling and if it has onboard Video great, otherwise its OK to use a crappy card.

I picked the AMD Athlon X2 5050e CPU because it was cheap (~$80), supports a 45W, has virtualisation and is an AM2. Next was the motherboard, looking at the ASUS, Gigabyte & XFX models as my target.

Chipset wise only the following fit the criteria for a possible match because others just don’t have the number of SATA ports available onboard. Primarily AMD boards are supplied by NVIDIA or AMD themselves.

• NVIDIA nForce 750a SLI
• NVIDIA GeForce 8200
• NVIDIA GeForce 8300
• AMD 790X Chipset

Initially I looked at the ASUS  boards (they’ve been nothing but rock solid for me in the past) but after a lot of research scouring through the manufacturer sites I ended up picking out the Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P which is based on the AMD 790X Chipset. The board came with 8x SATA Ports, 3x PCIe and 2x PCI and a  Gigabit NIC all for a $137 from PCCaseGear. Not only was the power consumption lowered but the noise and heat generated was substantially lower too!

Coming in close was the ASUS M4N78 PRO or the ASUS M4A78 PRO, each of those unfortunately didn’t have as many SATA ports (2-less) nor the PCIe ports (1-less).

Source: http://xkcd.com/642/

I've made a huge mistake

An article in The Age about computer techs and their chosen lifestyle made me realise just what a mistake we’re making.

Long story short: now I run a computer repair business.

Babes, parties, status, wealth – these are just some of the things you’ll be missing out on by becoming a computer tech.

But that’s OK. If you have what it takes to be a computer tech, you will have a genetic predisposition to driving away members of the opposite sex. In fact, members of any sex.

I’m just kidding.

Oh darn, I was just about to enjoy being a techie. But wait he’s just kidding.

How do you know if you have this personality type? If you have more computer magazines than girlie magazines, and if the thought of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 with 12mb L2 cache running at a clock speed of 2.83GHz and a bus speed of 1333 MHz stirs the kind of feelings usually associated with procreation, you are well on your way to a career in computing.

Uh-oh, this one time, at band-camp LAN camp I was talking about the new Intel i7‘s coming up and oh noooooo! Just remembered I also have far too many developer mags lying around and no Womens Weekly nor Cosmopolitan‘s. Doom is imminent, it was also a kick-ass game made by those clever folks at id Software who just the other day got bought out by Zenimax Media, they’re also working on Doom 4 powered by the RAGE engine did you know? Doh, I’m digging my own grave aren’t I by going on? I better stop, you just go and read the article yourself before I start admitting to something like my crazy adventures in Linux.

But if your a hottie and you see a computer-techno-nottie, just go and give them a hug. They need it, those tradies, they’ve got their stuff together, so do the sparkies. We programmers, gamers who resort to online dating and wierdly obsessed facebook/twitter stalkers need love too. Who knows, we might even get around to fixing that problem with the mouse moving around the screen all by itself one day.

One things for sure, the future is not set, there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

So you’d all know that Apple is having their WWDC is on right now, all those excited believers (NSFW or your eyes), evangelists, elitists, iPhone users and ‘cool folks’ turning up to get their:

in-depth technical information and hands-on learning about the powerful technologies in iPhone OS and Mac OS X from the Apple engineers who created them.

(from the WWDC website) They fail to mention the usual butt-wiping they include apart of the ‘festivities’. The guaranteed Microsoft .bash‘ing and the occasional pissing-all-over-Microsoft.

(Source: NeoWin -> Engadget )

Whats worse, the head poncho, Senior Vice Presidente of Software Engineering at Apple took the stage to claim that Windows 7 is the same old tech as Vista. Mr Apple man sir, may I remind you that your rotting iCandy contains parts of FreeBSD and NetBSD internally. Unix (which OS X is now certified for) predates Windows NT. Snow Leopard is also a refinement of Leopard no Señor?

Sure Microsoft may seem like one big evil company, but do you think Apple isnt? Google isnt? They’re all businesses, its all about the money, shareholders and making more moola. It’s All about the Benjamin’s buddy.

But I read an editorial written by Michael ‘Marshal’  Stanclift that screamed, YES DUDE, I AGREE. Instead of me ranting on, read what Marshal has to say. He sums it up pretty well and I back the man up.

Apple has a product that in some ways is superior to Windows, that does not have many of the problems that plague the Windows ecosystem. Apple can get away with a lot more than Microsoft can in terms of dropping support for older devices. But Apple needs to learn how to promote their technologies on their own merits, instead of acting like the pretty girl in high school that lobs insults at the ugly one to make itself feel better.

In the end though, if you want to give your support to a company who’s whole ethic seems to be bashing the competition – and quite poorly, go ahead. Give Jobs a job. They’ve got talent – cant deny that, they just dont know how to be professional about handling a bit of competition – just a bit.

Whilst on that same note, I was talking to someone at the station the other day, he was proudly showing me how his iPhone can surf the internet and I agreed that it was pretty awesome that we’re all heavily connected now. Just out of curiousity I asked him what he had before – because in his mind, the iPhone was the best thing since Xenu came and Elron Hubbard (who didn’t live in a cupboard it seems) gave us his cult relgion – and he told me he had a ‘crappy nokia from way back’. Just like people dont realise that there _were_ mp3 players before the iPod, it seems people didn’t know about SmartPhones.

Lesson? Apple knows how to sell things but it looks like they’re shitting Apples to be competitive – and you can be garanteed that the faithful will eat that right up. Windows 7 is picking up some press, what is a competitor to do?

I’ve moved my entire mailbox over to Gmail now, previously I was a firm believer in IMAP and didnt move to Gmail fully sooner because of the lack of folders – unlike in real life where my life is usually a mess, I keep my mail quite organised. Whats more, the junk mail filters are second to none.

Whilst the mail trickled down via POP3 (thank god for IMAP!) I had to manually get the contacts to be updated in gmail. Here’s how to get your contacts into GMail from thunderbird – and possibly other clients.

• Open your addressbook in Thunderbird.  Tools > Addressbook or {CTRL+2}
• Goto Tools > Export menu item
• We need a CSV file, change the default file type from LDF to ‘Comma Seperated’ and save it with an appropriate filename.
• Once exported, open up the CSV file in OpenOffice or Microsoft Excel.
• Heres where we get trippy. By default, when you export you will get these headers:
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Display Name
  • Nickname
  • Primary Email
• We need to make sure that we have the four main columns that GMail looks for:
  • First Name
  • Last Name
  • Display Name
  • Email Address
• Remove all the other columns (so Nickname, Secondary Email etc etc)
• Save the file as something else so we can go back to it later if required.
• Goto GMail, click Contacts and click ‘Import’ from the right panel header.
• Point to the CSV file you  just saved and let it import, you will find that the Display names are automajically resolved, duplicates trimmed and others merged.

Enjoy.

New servers are now hosting this domain and the WebSoftware Systems, HotHTML domain. There was a temporary hiccup with the DNS’s going a little crazy – my fault, last week but everythings back to norm Hopefully with the additional RAM, faster CPU and move to 64bit things should be faster.