Working with Virtual Hard Disks in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

• June 20, 2010
• James Skemp

A new feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 is the ability to work with Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs) directly within the OS, by booting from them or mounting them as additional drives. While I've had a good deal of experience with using VHDs in virtual environments, being able to work with VHDs directly is fairly new, and leaves some question as to how useful it could potentially be, since I'm happy using VirtualBox to work with virtual machines when I need to do any testing.

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Secunia consumer products - PSI and OSI

• June 20, 2010
• James Skemp

I have an old Windows XP machine that I know is out of date, in particular as regards the drivers, and potentially for some old software that I've forgotten I've even installed. Years and years ago it was possible to run a scan, online, on a CNET, or the like, site, which would tell you exactly what applications you had installed that needed to get upgraded, based on DLLs. Dan Conderman recommended Driver Detective, which is a free and pay service, which looks to provide part of that.

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Postulate: Given the present, the future can be known, but the past only guessed

• June 17, 2010
• James Skemp

I submit the following as a postulate: Given knowledge of the present state of affairs, we can know the future, but not the past. Of the latter we can only make guesses and assumptions, albeit educated ones, but cannot know with certainity that they were the case. Given that two vehicles are heading towards each other at speed, and neither will be able to stop in time, we can know that they will hit each other and cause a certain amount of damage, knowing the speeds they're going, the integrity of the vehicles, and etcetera.

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RESTful WCF Web services, easily

• June 15, 2010
• James Skemp

I know I should know them better so I've been looking into WCF Web services, with a heavy lean towards an implementation based on REST principles. After a good deal of research, where it was highly suggested that while ASP.NET MVC may make sense, WCF is still the way to go for Web services, I stumbled upon WCF WebHttp Services, which uses functionality released in .NET 4. After a painless install via Visual Studio 2010's Extension Manager (more information), and troubleshooting a stupid mistake on my end, I was able to quickly create a Web service that uses an assembly I had created to parse one of my iTunes Playlists to Xml files and return a listing of tracks for a particular artist.

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Vehicle gas DTD .NET objects and XML parsing with LINQ

• June 10, 2010
• James Skemp

The code contained below is a rough draft, and will eventually be moved into an assembly, and the code posted. At some point in 2007 I started keeping track of my gas mileage in an XML file, with a custom DTD for validation (and intellisense in oXygen). I present below the code necessary to create an rough object from the XML, and the LINQ to parse it out. C# objects public class Vehicle { public int Id { get; set; } public String Make { get; set; } public String Model { get; set; } public int Year { get; set; } public IEnumerable Fillups { get; set; } } public class Fillup { public int Id { get; set; } public DateTime Date { get; set; } public int MilesTotal { get; set; } public Decimal MilesDriven { get; set; } public Decimal Gallons { get; set; } public Decimal CostPerGallon { get; set; } public Decimal CostTotal { get; set; } public String Notes { get; set; } }</code></pre> LINQ to XML XDocument vehicleGasXml = XDocument.

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Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition - setup for sharing files

• June 6, 2010
• James Skemp

When I first started downloading files, almost a decade and a half ago, I would just download everything to one directory, using whatever name the file originally had when I was downloading it. In the last couple of years I've been trying (despite Chrome's default method trying to push be back) to be much better about saving files, by creating a directory with the full name of the application - "Microsoft Web Platform Installer"

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Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition - setup for Web development

• June 5, 2010
• James Skemp

This afternoon I setup a machine for the following purposes: to serve as a test bed for Web development to serve as an always-available Subversion repository server to serve as a repository for shared downloads, across all my machines As time goes by the scope of the server may also change. But for now, this will work just fine. Choosing an edition The first step was to install Windows Server 2008 R2.

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Expanded Table of Contents for The World as Will and Representation: Volume I (Dover Edition)

• May 31, 2010
• James Skemp

The Dover Edition of The World as Will and Representation: Volume I, translated by E.F.J. Payne, suffers from a sparse table of contents, covering only the starting pages of the four books and the appendix (the index being contained in the second volume). To remedy this, I've presented below an expanded table of contents for this work. Expanded Table of Contents for Volume I Translator's Introduction (v - xi) Preface to the First Edition (xii - xvii) Preface to the Second Edition (xviii - xxvii) Preface to the Third Edition (xxviii) Selected Bibliography (xxix - xxx) Contents, Volume I (xxxi) First Book: The World as Representation.

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Review: Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease

• May 28, 2010
• James Skemp

This is a review of Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease, written by Gary Greenberg. I selected this book based on the following lines of a highlighted review: "He offers a measured dose of philosophy in contemplating whether unhappiness should be regarded as a disease or instead as an essential part of being human. Ultimately, his book is a sobering critique of the marketing wizards who have overhyped the dubious benefits of antidepressants and of an American public all too eager for quick fixes to life’s inevitable challenges and disappointments.

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Music Recommendations Please! version 0.5 beta

• May 28, 2010
• James Skemp

While not necessarily a step forward from version 0.4.5 of Music Recommendations Please!, version 0.5 is nonetheless a positive step. Consider this an idea-based release. As such, this application is in no way final (but might be more complete after this long weekend). Download Music Recommendations Please! version 0.5, beta. You can see a general idea of where I'd like to end up by reading my music application idea. .NET Framework 4 is required for this application.

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