Entries for Chadk

Server setup - Feedback wanted [Server setup - Feedback wanted]

Chadk — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:27:42 GMT

So about a year ago, I decided that I might as well put together a nice little machine and throw on the wonders, which is the new Windows Home Server. It has worked OK, but I'd like to have a bit more control.

Recently I have realized how much I seem to mess up my visual studio environment. It's rather annoying, seeing as I have to reinstall my machine every time that happens. So why not go ahead and put it on a virtual machine, on my server? Then I can access it from outside of my house too! :D

Anyways, here's my specs:

ASUS M3A-H

AMD Phenom X3 8450 (2.1GHz)

4gb of ram

3x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11, 500 GB, 32 MB, SATA II

So my main objective of this machine will be to serve media and files between my machines, take backup of my family's machines. And host a few virtual machines.

So now I get to the first problem: Should I install Server 2008 instead? I have a feeling it will perform better and is generally more recent, etc.

My first impression is YES! That leads me to my second problem: WHS has this nice drive pooling options. I like redundancy, but when running a virtual machine, I'm going to assume that drive performance is a pretty good idea to have, yeah?

So given these 3 drives, how is the best drive configuration? I'm thinking 2 in RAID1. Maybe get an identical drive and do RAID1 with all of it. What will give me the best performance and redundancy?

in reply to Server setup - Feedback wanted

Windows 7 [Windows 7]

Chadk — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:04:23 GMT

Disclaimer: I love Windows 7. I really do. After upgrading to 7, I de-degraded my Windows machine to being my main surfing-machine and connected another monitor.

But I have noticed something... After about 5-7 hours of usage, I swear that it starts getting really slow.

Have anybody else noticed this?

in reply to Windows 7

Need an idea for domain name [Need an idea for domain name]

Chadk — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:38:40 GMT

So I'm throwing together a concept for a portal that will basically become a screen-cast resource site with the main topic being economics. So screencasts talking about the different theories in regards to economics on high-school evel.

One of the main focuses is ease of use(Most high-school students are borderline retarded, mind you). So an easy-to-remember domain name is critical. It also needs to explain exactly what the site contains, so that people remember it.

I thought about economics101.com, learneconomics.com or something like that. But they are all taken.

Anybody with a creative mind who can help me out here? It would be much appreciated :)

in reply to Need an idea for domain name

DVB-Subtitles in Windows Media Center? [DVB-Subtitles in Windows Media Center?]

Chadk — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:30:19 GMT

So about a month ago I finally got my Windows Media Center working. But I have a problem.

I'm using a DVB-T Tuner, because that's how we get digital TV in Denmark.

But I get no subtitles at all! From searching google, it turns out that Media Center Edition doesn't support DVB-Subtitles.

Is there any patch or anything like that I can use, third-party or third-party? My family doesn't understand foreign languages very well. So subtitles are really damn important. It kinda renders the TV useless, and a Vista home license isn't cheap. So I would *really* expect media center to support it. I'm not happy about the fact it doesn't.

in reply to DVB-Subtitles in Windows Media Center?

Visual Studio 2010 as WPF app [Visual Studio 2010 as WPF app]

Chadk — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:04:21 GMT

Judging from the small screenshot we could see in the stream, holy ****!

It looks sexy. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

in reply to Visual Studio 2010 as WPF app

JAOO 2008 Confernece keynote with Anders Hejlsberg [JAOO 2008 Confernece keynote with Anders Hejlsberg]

Chadk — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Check it out!

http://jaoo.blip.tv/#1324214

in reply to JAOO 2008 Confernece keynote with Anders Hejlsberg

Vista Media center is killing me [Vista Media center is killing me]

Chadk — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:46:38 GMT

Hey guys.

So 2 weeks ago all my sweet hardware arrived for my media center. Included was a Hauppauge WINTV-Hvr-4000, which was supposed to be a really good TV tuner.

I install Vista Home premium, slap in all the drivers and then boot up Media center. It took some fighting to set up(I think I had to install a codec, but I don't recall), but eventually I found my terrestial channels.

Then I also got a firedtv box for picking up my subscription channels. I never got that to work.

One evening, it just broke. Out the blue, I couldn't receive any TV.

I reinstalled windows from scratch, same story. I found no channels at all.

I installed 3-4 different media center packages like media portal, the one that came with my tv-tuner and some other random ones.

Only 1 picked up the signal. Rest reported 0 channels. But the quality of the one that did pick up was very very very poor.

So I reinstalled again thinking I probably shouldn't install so many drivers at once. So I installed network, graphics, audio and tv-tuner card, and that's in. I rescan, nope. No channels at all!

At this point I'm getting desperate. The major difference I can see between the first time and now, when I do the scan, is that the scan runs much much faster. I have no idea if this means anything though.

Anybody got a clue what I can do? I'm thinking I should get my tv-tuner replaced. But I'd rather not have to deal with it.

in reply to Vista Media center is killing me

How do you get ideas for projects? [How do you get ideas for projects?]

Chadk — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:40:02 GMT

So over the last few months I have tried hard to come up with some kind of project I could work on and maybe make a coin or two after some time(Hosting isn't free).

So I'm obviously doing something wrong.

What's your "secret" for coming up with good ideas you can make into an useful product?

in reply to How do you get ideas for projects?

JAOO 2008 - Are YOU going? [JAOO 2008 - Are YOU going?]

Chadk — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:14:32 GMT

I am. If it's anything like last year, it will be *totally* worth it :)

in reply to JAOO 2008 - Are YOU going?

Yes, I'm switching [Yes, I'm switching]

Chadk — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 08:41:12 GMT

Yesterday morning I sold my new Dell laptop. I just didn't want it.

It didn't suit my needs. A "PC" doesn't care about your workflow. It doesn't care about these "small" things which saves you time and brain cells.

I still have my desktop PC. I will probably be keeping it for a while longer. But I mainly keep it due to the fact I still want to play games.

So I stood there and had a good amount of money in my pocket. I obviously couldn't live without a laptop for school. Neither my daily life would work without a laptop.

What did I do?

I went out and bought a MacBook and ordered 4gb low-latency ram.

The workflow is sweet, I can do about everything I want on my old Windows laptop without a problem. I am now actually PRODUCTIVE. Windows limited me by making me think about how exactly I would carry out a task. With less than 24 hours worth of experience using the mac, I already am at a point where I just do things.

Applications are a bliss to manage. Want to remove an application? Just drag it into the trash folder. Installation is even easier. Download the dmg filed, either click the install button or drag the program into the applications folder.

I still have the access to use programs like Visual Studio trough VMWare fusion. That is the ONLY program I couldn't possibly replace.

Needless to say, I'm a very happy camper now. No wonder the apple market share is going up.

It's a sad day when the only reason people stick to Windows as their main(Read: Main, not installed in a virtual pc) because of games, development tools and office.

And that time seems to be drawing closer. Even my MOM wants a mac now.

So what does it matter that I'm switching? I'm not calling the death of Microsoft.

But my point is that we finally reached a stage where people have an option without being limited. The option to buy what works best for them without being restricted to certain tools.

I call bull**** at EU for saying Microsoft has a monopoly. Microsoft is doing great in the development tools area. Hence why they still have success. You can't attribute a monopoly to a company because they attract so many people due to their development tools and the easy adoption for companies.

That was my rant. Now I shall have to go and do more work. It's actually fun now!

in reply to Yes, I'm switching

Seattle, here I come! [Seattle, here I come!]

Chadk — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:27:21 GMT

I just booked my airplanet ticket for my trip to Seattle.

Hopefully I will get a chance to see Microsoft Campus and get to hug the huge C9 guy!

How many 9'ers are in seattle?

in reply to Seattle, here I come!

A small observation I have made.. [A small observation I have made..]

Chadk — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 08:14:51 GMT

Well, lately I have been busy with web programming. After being introduced to Ruby on Rails, it just seems much more fun. But due to my prior knowledge and love for the .NET Framework, it was a given to try ASP.NET.

ASP.NET MVC is sweet indeed. It's way better than Rails in terms of tools. I would have to sit with the documentation open, until I learned about every possible call in rails. Thanks Visual Studio!

So if you want to do some simple things in ASP.NET MVC, hell yeah! Go for it.

But I made an observation, which quite saddens me.

The tools just doesn't work together. And despite how Microsoft is now preaching "CONVENTION OVER THA CONFIGRATUION!!1!!!", it just doesn't seem that way to me. In fact, Scott Hanselman managed to contradict himself SEVERAL TIMES, while discussing the Convention vs Configuration issue. Not because Scott isn't smart. But it just comes down to ASP.NET MVC not being as Covention over configuration-ish, as they want to make it look like.

Fine. So I'm coding away, and I want to enable some fairly non-complex things. At least not compared to what it would be in Rails.

But ASP.NET doesn't define a model very well. In Rails there is a Model baseclass. In ASP.NET MVC, not really. You can use your favorite ORM, LINQ To SQL, entity framwork, nHibernate, etc.

But what is the issue here? ASP.NET MVC doesn't include a convention for how to do things. You get all these crappy option. In ruby you just use the one that ships with rails, and it works wonder!

So what does my headache come down to? Options.

Microsoft is giving us ALL THESE different tools for about everything. They aren't simple and they don't work too good together.
In Rails everything works from my cmd and my text editor. Isn't that nice?

Microsoft needs to step back and wake up. They need to make things simple.

The only reason I don't embrace Rails and go with it full-time, is the main issues it has. It doesn't scale very well, the tools are lacking(No intellisense makes it hard to code in if you don't know how to do everything in advance) and the .NET community is much better.

The life is mucher simpler in railsland. Microsoft should learn from them.

</Rant>

in reply to A small observation I have made..

PDC07 Agenda & Windows 7 [PDC07 Agenda & Windows 7]

Chadk — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:54:48 GMT

http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Agenda/Sessions.aspx

It seems like the only feature which is worth talking about, is the touch stuff?

Surely there must be more interesting stuff in Windows 7?

in reply to PDC07 Agenda & Windows 7

Freelance work, how do you charge? [Freelance work, how do you charge?]

Chadk — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:27:24 GMT

Hey guys. I have been doing a bit of freelance-ish work foor a person i know, which I'm getting paid for.

It's a simple cms solution in Ruby on Rails(Bite me, it's an awesome framework and Ruby is fairly nice), with a login page and then it just replaces the labels with a rich text editor, and stores the html in the database.

I didn't really take note of how much time i spend making it, nor do i actually know what to charge per hour.

Since I'm a student(17 years old), I can't charge that much.

So what would you guys charge? I'm looking to have a few tasks like this in the future, so it would be useful to know.

in reply to Freelance work, how do you charge?

NiN - Discipline [NiN - Discipline]

Chadk — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:22:57 GMT

I remember some guys in here posting about the Ghost tracks from NiN, so i figured this would be relevant.

Nine Inch Nails released a new single, "Discipline", a few days ago.

I don't know what to say. It's not as hardcore as other of their tracks. But it's damn cool!

Anybody else like it? :)

in reply to NiN - Discipline

Hey Charles... [Hey Charles...]

Chadk — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:52:42 GMT

Why is there no videos on MVC(At least there is no tag for it)? We need some going deep on that stuff!

in reply to Hey Charles...

How do you get away with the "nasty" feeling? [How do you get away with the "nasty" feeling?]

Chadk — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:52:18 GMT

So back in the days i would reinstall my Windows once a month and spend a day installing everything again, just to keep things clean.

Sadly, as i have increased amount of data, as well as games on steam i don't want to reinstall, it's not an option.But everybody knows the feeling, after a while Windows just starts feeling bloated.
I feel overwhelmed by all the different things i do, and i just don't really wanna get attacked by all these things i have installed. It's probably just in my head all of it. But even if i do install a program, i always have in the back of my head how it would affect performance, it would clutter up my computer with all kinds of processes running in the background, write a (I need to watch my language) ton of things to the registry.

And even if i use the installer that it comes with, to uninstall it, it just doesn't feel clean anymore. There's always a feeling of this things being totally impossible to remove.I have been playing with Ubuntu, and i must admit i enjoy apt-get and how i know what is installed, where the configuration is and all that.
But i just CAN'T do this on windows. There will always be these programs like Visual Studio which i can't move around due to its registries, yet i want to.
The grass is greener on the other side, but i can't go across, yet.

So how do you guys keep your system "clean"?

in reply to How do you get away with the "nasty" feeling?

VMWare Fusion - How close are we yet? [VMWare Fusion - How close are we yet?]

Chadk — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:28:21 GMT

So i have just seen a demo on VMWare fusion. The concept is EXTREMELY Interesting to say the least.

The idea is that it's a virtualization which intergrates with the Mac OS, so that you can start the guest OS and drag out the applications seamlessly.
I have seen quite a few people reporting that it even runs Visual Studio extremely smoothly, even faster than a normal PC in some cases. Visual Studio and Office 2007(I could probably live with iWork 08) and games are the ONLY reasons im sticking with my Windows machine.

But I'm starting to think that once games works better under the mac, even with software like VMWare, people have no reason to actually stick with a normal PC, rather than buying a mac.

So at this point the only reason i can't justify buying a mac is because my games simply wont work and that i have some doubts about the graphics card build in, which would even keep me from playing games if i used bootcamp.
But also the cost is keeping me from doing it. But for next upgrade, i might just buy a mac.

So how do i justify NOT buying a mac? What does turn me off with the mac is the developer history. Objective-C isn't my cup of tea, and to get access to the apple developer center you have to pay. And i'm still a big fan of .NET, but i will still be able to exercise my .NET muscle with Visual Studio trough VMWare fusion.

So please give me reasons to not buy a mac. My faith in Microsoft is disappearing by the minute beyond the .NET paradigm, and I'm not comfortable with it.

in reply to VMWare Fusion - How close are we yet?

So, RoR vs ASP.net MVC? [So, RoR vs ASP.net MVC?]

Chadk — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 10:36:26 GMT

Recently i have been trying all kinds of fun stuff, for instance yesterday i spent a few math classes and most of my spare time, playing with C++.

But i have always wanted to master a technology for building websites. Sadly, asp.net web forms is a black art which is just not trivial, as i see it.

So i have surfed the internet and found RoR and ASP.net MVC/Monorails.

I like VB.net, but Ruby does seem kinda cool. It could be cool to learn.

Im already fluent in VB.net and C#, som im thinking it would be good to learn ruby, so i learn a dynamic language too.

But the power of the .NET framework would be tough to live without.

So im wondering, should i learn Ruby(On rails) or should i do ASP.net MVC OR Monorails?

in reply to So, RoR vs ASP.net MVC?

Ok, im paranoid [Ok, im paranoid]

Chadk — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 11:19:53 GMT

Depsite the fact i never had a HDD kill itself on me, im afraid it will happen.

Because of that, im considering this:

Buy 2 USB sticks.
Make a program that will mirror 2 USB sticks
Put all my source on the USB sticks.

Not only is an USB stick extremely fast speed wise, its also considerably faster.

Am i just being too paranoid, or is it a viable idea?

in reply to Ok, im paranoid

Stop this nonsense [Stop this nonsense]

Chadk — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 08:08:43 GMT

Ok. Im a student. I dont actually use Visual studio for commercial use, despite the fact the express FAQ states its allowed.

So im using Express, as i cant afford anything else.

Now, Express has very few features. I miss unit testing, code rush, etc. etc.

I have no problem with Express being a stripped down version for enthusiasts and hobbyists.

But if i cant extend the shell with extensions like some of the excellent unit testing tools, and my beloved coderush, its a deal breaker for me.

I see absolutely no reason why they wouldnt allow extensions. It makes me sad.

So im either forced to not use all these great tools, or go buy an absurdly expensive license.

I thought you got the hint with VS05 guys. But well. I was mistaken.

Next time, consider who your user base is. Hobbyists in particular WANTS to extend and tweak their shell. Dont stop them.

in reply to Stop this nonsense

So, Vista vs xp again.... [So, Vista vs xp again....]

Chadk — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:32:07 GMT

Ok. Up till this point, i have been clearly pro vista.

But to be frankly honest, im not so sure anymore.

There's a lot of cool features, like the search function directly in the start menu. And that, is about the only feature, im gonna miss considerably, if i drop Vista.

On the other hand, i wont miss this:
Boot your PC. Takes 1 minute to reach login screen.
Log in. Wait 30 secondes.
Open 3-4 programs you wanna use. Go out for 5 minutes, and wait for it all to load. When you first start loading 1 application, the rest of the system freezes.

Thats right. When you first boot, its HORRIBLE. Superfetch? Yeah, it just didnt load the applications i wanna use into memory. In fact, it takes considerably more time to open applications on boot, than XP.

The system is easily slown down. And you get hell when that happens.

Im honestly feeling like giving it the benefit of the doubt, until Sp1 is out. But im not sure i can justify staying with Vista.

How many switched back to XP yet?

In general, performance on Vista isnt

in reply to So, Vista vs xp again....

Advice needed on education [Advice needed on education]

Chadk — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 15:46:43 GMT

Right, heres the deal. Next month i have to pick which subjects i wanna take at my high school(2 year) course.

Im planning to take Danish, Math, Physics & Economics on high-level.

This gives me several options at university. But im honestly not sure.

My big interests are Computer science and physics. Id love to take a degree in physics, tho my plan have always been to get a job as a developer(Tho likely in a research position, as im not a code monkey)

So my "aim" is to work in something like Microsoft Research or the like.

So my options for university is:
Computer Science
Physics WITH Computer science as side subject

To me it seems that the latter is the obvious call to make. But will any company hire somebody without a full computer science education?

Thanks in advance.

in reply to Advice needed on education

Top 50 Atheism Quotes [Top 50 Atheism Quotes]

Chadk — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:42:06 GMT

http://leftofzen.com/quotes-atheism/2008/01/14/ Awesome read.

in reply to Top 50 Atheism Quotes

Wow, what a cool bug [Wow, what a cool bug]

Chadk — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:16:09 GMT

http://peecee.dk/uploads/012008/CoolBug.PNG This is what my second monitor looks like atm. If i press ctrl, the first intellisense window even fades just like in visual studio. What a nice bug that is. Intellisense right on my desktop? Awesome!

in reply to Wow, what a cool bug