Finally managed to install Vista on the Mac via Parallels Desktop. I had some initial trouble getting the installer to use the .iso file but after quiting and restarting it worked fine. The result…very good, so much quicker than Vista on Virtual PC on a PC which I still can’t quite get my head around. The network didn’t work at first but once I’d installed the Parallels components onto Vista then all was good. The only down side is no DirectX3d so you don’t get the fancy bit…oh well I usually turn all that stuff off anyway!
Wireless connection doesn’t connect
I’ve been happily using my Pocket PC to sync with Exchange for sometime but today my Loox refused to connect to my secure wireless point, it just kept say "connecting". After some head scratching I finally noticed that the adapter had "lost" the WAP key. Now since I keep forgetting how to set this I thought I’d write it down. Wireless Settings->Adapter (click on it whilst WLAN is off).
Adding more memory, good ole Intel
As much as my Macbook is a nice computer to use, the majority of the work I do is on Windows, so why waste a nice Dual Core machine when I can run Windows on it. I didn’t want to go the dual boot option, mainly because I want to switch between Safari and Windows to test some web pages. With this in mind I purchased the Parallels virtual machine software. It ran XP really well but most of the software failed the pre-requisites checks since the meagre 512Mb of memory meant that XP could only have 128Mbs, not the greatest set-up ever. What was I to do? I collected my 2x1Gb sticks this morning and set about installing them. Looking at the previous Mac laptops the feat of installing new memory was quite a task. But now they’re using Intel it seems that finally Apple’s near facist attitude to its users doing anything to their machines is slowly dissolving. The tasks consisted of:
- taking the battery pack out – easy
- unscrewing a metal retaining bracket – a little tricky since you need a short screw driver
- free the memory by pushing the retaining arm – a bit of a sweat since it takes a nerve racking amount of brute force
- change the sticks
- push the new sticks until they don’t go any further
- attempt to put the retain bracket back on – fiddly but doable
So not only do we get a nice cool dual core Intel chip, we get some user friendly configuration options too.
Also just spotted that Parallels are beta testing a new version that runs individual Windows applications to look like they’re OSX applications with copy and pasting files and other "seemless" interoperation, plus it looks like Boot Camp is going nowhere.
IE7 breaks Virtual Server
Ah IE7, how I detest thee.
When I installed IE7 on WinXP SP2 my Virtual Server stopped working. Boy did it take me a long time to make the connection though. Every time I tried to log on to the Virtual Server it would correctly prompt me for authentication but it would always fail regardless of the level of use I chose. The error was that I failed to authenticate against an ACL. So I went to the root folder for Virtual Server and went to select the security permissions. However, on XP (unlike my more familiar Win2003) the security tab doesn’t exist. After following the help links I discovered that it does exists, you just have to switch it on. Although it wasn’t where it said it was in the help. The help says "Use simple security" is under Control Panel->Folder Options->View->Advanced. Whereas the last ‘Advanced’ button doesn’t exist, it’s just one of the options in the tree view. After turning the security tab on I then selected the security for the root folder->Advanced and forced all the child folder to inherit from the root. Job done. Although it took me about 30mins of turning the air well and truly blue before I figured all this out. Thanks again IE7.
PS, does anyone else have trouble getting the new tabs to respond to changes in the address bar? It just stays there looking all dumb…or looking like IE7 as I now like to think of it.
70-536
I was cleaning out the usual desk clutter the other day and found a voucher for a free Microsoft certification exam that was given to me from TechEd 2005! It was still in date, well it was going to expire at the end of the month, so I thought I’d book it for late January.
[Tues lunch time]
Prometric: "When do you want to book it for?"
Me: "Can I book it for late Jan?"
P: "let me see…you can have Thur or Fri?"
Me: "next week?"
P: "no this week, Fri is this last day you can book before the voucher expires"
<gulp> that givens me 2 lunch times and 3 evenings to cram like I’ve never crammed before!
So armed with my 1000 page Janet and John do Application Development book I managed to pass my exam, oh hurray for me. But all that aside 70-536 was quite a good exam to revise for and the official Microsoft study guide was pretty good. Some of the topics that usually have very chocked and dusty explanations were dealt with very well. Code Access Security (CAS) and Symmetric/Asymmetric encryption I thought were done very well, although as with all these revision guides they do only scratch the surface. A couple of things about security that I thought were really well put were;
- Using a domain to host a 3rd party component isn’t that you’re worried the 3rd party component is full of nasty code, it is that you’re not sure how well security audited it is and that some attacker may find a vulnerability in it. A nice way of thinking about the security risk.
- Seemingly risk-free resources can cause problems. E.g. The Event Log has never seemed liked a huge security risk to me, sure you could fire lots of messages for a Denial of Service, maybe clear a log to cover your tracks but, perhaps even read the log. But the one that was pointed out to me by the book I thought was very under-hand. You could shut an important service down and then pretend that all is well by logging fake log messages…clever.
I suppose I should think about doing another exam…then again I do have to wash my hair and then there’s the tiles to grout, must complete the Workflow demo, and the…
Pocket PC, car navigation
Managed to get hold of Navigon Navigator 5 software from ebay the other day, since I can’t buy the UK version from Navigon. Stuck the SD card in and installed the CAB. After about 30mins of struggling it to see the integrated GPS unit I finally persuaded it by resetting the PDA, rebooting to fix a problem isn’t a desktop only phenomenon. So what’s it like? I decided to test it on the local shopping run. It decided to take me there via the motorways but hey, I guess it will prefer to do that. The instructions were clear with each major changed prompted at least twice (with distance to manoeuvre) giving you plenty of time to make the change. So I got to the car park with no problems, apart from one set of traffic lights it didn’t tell me about. On the trip back I decided to take the b-roads. It gave me directions back to the motorway but as soon as it realised I’d missed its suggested turn, it quickly re-routed me via the road I was now on, "that was nice".
Next stage is to buy a TMC (traffic avoidance) cable and really put this navigation software through its paces.
ASP.NET why doesn’t error?
Ok it is a strange title but…
One of my the most problematic areas of ASP.NET is the combination of Viewstate and the Page Life-Cycle. If you attempt to access the Viewstate before it’s ready then not only do you get incorrect results for that call but you corrupt the state for subsequent calls too. So given that ASP knows where it is in the life cycle and that you’re trying to access the state, why doesn’t simply raise an exception? If nothing else it would save about 100Gb worth of forum posts!
In a similar vein I was working on a HtmlInputText control the other day and fell for another issue. As a good ASP developer I knew that the ID I’ve given the control will be changed to some odd unique name with lots of "ctl_" text stuck in-front of it. (If I say I want to uniquely name it and take that responsibility then it should only use my ID, grrrr). So I when I wanted to generate some Javascript to access the control I passed in myControl.ClientID. However, my Javascript failed saying the object was null. Odd. A quick review of the code I noticed that I was accessing the ClientID before I’d added the control to the page. Ok, that makes sense, but again why is the ClientID populated with the name of the ID only before it’s been added to the page? Surely if you access the ClientID before the *page* has correctly populated it, then it should error? Oh well, just yet another pitfall to side-step.
Pocket PC as a network media player
The Pocket PC is now nearing total domination and has become a network music player.
The major problem is that Mobile Media Player won’t look at network drivers. However, after reading a very helpful article I installed the Net Use application which successfully fooled Media Player into seeing a network drive as a local folder. While there I also read about a Coding4Fun project getting the PDA to ‘remote control’ your media library, includes all the .net source code too. Could be fun.
[Edit] Ah, talked too soon. Although media player can see, and catalogues, the tracks it won’t play them, ‘Invalid Parameter’ or something. Apparently some issue with the the translation of the file name. So I’m now looking at the Coding4Fun project and I’ve just installed the Mobile SDK so I’ll see how that goes.
[Edit] Hurray, using the PocketMusic player seemed to do the trick. Not sure it’s a replacement for dedicated media machine but it’s certainly small and quiet, good qualities in a music streamer…plus it’s it own remote…although I’m now eyeing up using the Mac’s front-row remote control via the PDA infrared port. For something that is supposed to save me time it seems to be creating project upon project!
Pocket PC, finally it works
Well things have finally moved on. My Pocket PC is now directly synchronizing with Exchange Server. Since this done via a wireless connection I now have no need for a host PC…hurray! I did have a slight set back with installing the necessary certificates to the PDA. I’d read a few sites explaining how to download special install software but all failed for various reasons. Until I found one site that state you simply click on the certificate! Yes it worked a treat.
The next (ahem) step was go for a GPS walk. I’ve registered with a site, GPS Walk, that supplied a breadcrumb application for the PDA. The application (and site) are still in their early days but it was a strangely fun thing to do, might have something to do with the two pubs I took in…you never know.
The third PDA success was a programmable remote control. There something satisfying with been able to change the TV channel with your PDA, surely there is some mischief to be had with the companies infrared controlled projector?
This leaves me with two remained tasks to be solved. 1. GPS for the car with traffic avoidance (TMC) and 2. Streaming MPGs to my stereo from a main server via the PDA.
Pocket PC woes
It was too good to be true, now I’ve actually started to want to use it the Loox is proving to be a bit tricky. As with anything OS based is it Windows or is the device(s) at fault?
Issues:
1. Company (I’ll name and shame if they don’t respond soon) sold me a USB cable that doesn’t fit
[Edit] Oh the shame. The cable has the "up" printed on the wrong side, so turn the connector over and it works a treat <doh>.
[Edit] Oh the shame. The cable has the "up" printed on the wrong side, so turn the connector over and it works a treat <doh>.
2. Windows 2003 ActiveSync refuses to find the PDA, even though it connects at a network level. I can ping it and everything.
[Edit] Well Fujitsu support contacted me today. Hmm, literally was re-boot the PDA if that doesn’t work send it back for tests. Great…really tried everything there then, not impressed.
[Edit] Well Fujitsu support contacted me today. Hmm, literally was re-boot the PDA if that doesn’t work send it back for tests. Great…really tried everything there then, not impressed.
3. Windows XP finds the device via USB but I can’t get ActiveSync to work via Bluetooth. The PDA see’s the desktop but doesn’t see anything other than a serial service. The desktop can see the PDA and establish a relationship but no ActiveSync, and I can’t offer any other services.
I have to be honest, the whole Bluetooth configuration is a bizare mix of security and in/out ports. So I’ve really no idea how it should be set up.
So I’ll have to make do with VPN’ing into work from my XP box to synchronise my Pocket PC via USB, madness.
[Edit] No need now, I’ve got Exchange sync’ working now
[Edit] No need now, I’ve got Exchange sync’ working now
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