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Happy New Year 2008 to all! And remember to change the RSS feed address you are using to read this blog. See you next year! :-)
I learned about a new Windows enhancement from Microsoft today: Windows SteadyState. This utility allows users to lock down their Windows PCs so that nobody can change their configuration or cause other trouble with malicious intents.
It appears SteadyState is the next version of Microsoft's Shared Computer Toolkit, which I've heard about many years ago.
So, if you need to lock down your PC and its desktop for example at home, in an Internet cafe, or at a hotel lobby, Windows SteadyState appears to be the tool to use. Of course, there are many third-party options available as well.
I heard from Canon camera forums yesterday, that U.S. Department of Transport (DOT) has given new regulations to air travel regarding batteries, especially those with lihtium metals.
It is unclear to me whether these rules will affect flights in Europe, but they sure will staring on 1st of January, 2008 in the USA. Maybe Europe follows later, I'd think. In any case, the basic rule is that lithium metal batteries, but not the normal lithium ions used for example in cameras are forbidden in checked backage, meaning the one that you won't carry with you to the cabin. Also, you are permitted to take such batteries into the cabin in carry-on baggage, so no real harm seems to be done with the new rule -- you just have to be more careful in what to pack and where.
The Finnish Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) has conducted a survey with the University of Turku about Finnish software companies in their OSKARI project.
It is estimated that there are around 1000 software companies in Finland, of which the survey was able to reach about 400. The 2007 results are available here in PDF format.
The survey contains information about the companies such as size, location, ownership and financing. Also, main products and services are investigated. If you are interested in knowing more about the Finnish software industry, this is compulsory reading.
Visual Studio 2008 is here now, but sooner or later, the first updates and service packs will be here. When that happens, I'm pretty sure I find myself wanting to remember the RTM version number so that I could compare it. And always at that point I slap myself to the forehead and think "why didn't I write it down then". Well, this time I'm prepared to know better.
So here goes. The Visual Studio 2008 RTM version number is 9.0.21022.8. Just for the record, that is.
By the way, there's also available a quite new Visual C# 2008 Keybinding Reference Poster on Microsoft downloads. Go and get your copy!
During Christmas holidays it's always nice to surf the Internet and look for some seriously cool stuff. Well, this time I wandered to Roland's web site, the maker of synths and many other audio related things.
And what I found was V-Synth GT. Simply wow! I checked the price, "only" 2590 € from a local store. Hmm, maybe next Christmas. :-)
Dear reader, it's soon time to jump into 2008, and this means one thing regarding this blog: the URL address of the RSS feed for the most recent items will change beginning of 2008. The RSS feed you are reading now is:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/janij/blog/2007.xml
But once 2008 is here and I get the chance to blog my first entry, the new URL will be:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/janij/blog/2008.xml
So, please update your references soon. Thanks for your understanding! And finally, happy holidays to everyone, and see you in 2008, too.
The most recent issue of the MSDN magazine has an article about PowerShell: "Extend Windows PowerShell With Custom Commands".
This article talks about extending PowerShell with your own snap-ins, and the example code is given in C#. Go and read it today.
I finally found an utility that would let me do something I've already wanted to do a long time: rearrange Windows Task Bar buttons at will.
Yes, I'm one of those who have the habit of starting my PC and then firing up applications in certain order. Usually Outlook is first, then Outlook Express for newsgroups, and then Internet Explorer. With these four tools, I don't pay much attention to the icons on the taskbar buttons: I just select the first, second, third of fourth in order. And if it's the wrong application, it's not all happy-happy-joy-joy.
But, finally there's a solution other than restarting all those applications: Taskit. Thank you, A.S.!
The latest December issue of the Finnish Prosessori magazine has my column about small software companies and their recipe for success. The column is titled "Menestystekijöistä joustavuus ja asenne ovat sijalla yksi". I've also updated my list of publications.
Enjoy!
Sometimes, people ask me which data access technologies are still supported today, and which are about to be phased out. On MSDN, there's an article titled "Data Access Technologies Road Map" from June 2007 that lists these technologies.
Shortly put, many older, native-code level features have either been declared deprecated (meaning you should consider changing them to something newer) or obsolete (meaning that support for these technologies has ended).
Of course, Microsoft is pushing developers towards SQL Server, which is actually good thing in that thus applications will become more robust. The other side of the coin is that many simpler technologies, like Access via Jet is deprecated. This means that if you are still using Access as your (simple) database, you might wish to consider SQL Server Compact Edition. Interestingly enough, Microsoft's own Access 2007 still uses Access databases of course. However, I'm not sure which data access technology it uses internally so this MDAC/OLE DB related MSDN article might not apply.
While in Denmark yesterday and earlier today giving an InterBase training we noticed a backup/restore issue with gbak and gfix combination where there are users connected to the database, and you want first to shut the database down (as to remove other users) and then backup and immediately restore the database.
The problem here is the word immediately. If you want to improve the internal database file structure and make the .GDB/.IB file smaller (shrink it), you need to do a backup and restore. However, if you try to do that with gbak from the command-line, you might run into the following error while restoring:
gbak: ERROR: could not drop database C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\examples\database\employee.gdb (database might be in use) gbak: Exiting before completion due to errors.
We tested this with stock InterBase 7.5 server on Windows 2003 Server and Windows XP workstation. Here’s a .CMD batch file script that is able to reproduce the above error:
@echo off cd "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\bin" echo Shutting down... gfix -shut -force 1 -user sysdba -password masterkey "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\examples\database\employee.gdb" echo Backing up... gbak -b -user sysdba -password masterkey "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\examples\database\employee.gdb" c:\data\employee.gbak echo Restoring up... gbak -r -user sysdba -password masterkey c:\data\employee.gbak "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\examples\database\employee.gdb" cd\ echo Done!
To workaround this issue, you can introduce a simple wait between the backup and the restore command. Usually, a delay in the range of 5 to 10 seconds is enough. You can wait with a following VBScript code (the sleep time is in milliseconds):
WScript.Sleep 5000
You would then save this code line to a file, say, wait.vbs, and then modify the above script file to include a call to this script file:
@echo off cd "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\bin" echo Shutting down... gfix -shut -force 1 -user sysdba -password masterkey "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\examples\database\employee.gdb" echo Backing up... gbak -b -user sysdba -password masterkey "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\examples\database\employee.gdb" c:\data\employee.gbak echo Waiting five seconds after backup... cscript wait.vbs //nologo echo Restoring up... gbak -r -user sysdba -password masterkey c:\data\employee.gbak "C:\Program Files\Borland\InterBase\examples\database\employee.gdb" cd\ echo Done!
With this batch code, you should be able to always take your backups and then restore immediately. I’m not sure if this problem would affect InterBase 7.5 SP1 or InterBase 2007 (8.0).
I learned two little Windows Task Manager tricks recently: firstly, you can start a command prompt (cmd.exe) by clicking the File/Run menu command while you are pressing the Ctrl key. This omits the need to type in "cmd" to the Create New Task dialog box. This is very handy at times.
Secondly, I've noticed that you can also close the Task Manager window by pressing Ctrl+Break. Yes, this is not so useful, but an interesting find nonetheless. Seems like Task Manager has more features than it seems at first sight.
I've also spoken with SL from ITpro.fi about the ability to run command prompt by pressing Ctrl key, and his opinion is that this ability cannot be disabled with group policies. For example, one might have a software restriction policy where cmd.exe is blocked/disabled, but if you can run Task Manager, you can bypass this check. Seems like a hacking point to me.
I wanted to make prints out of my photos today, and used the company I've previously have: Ifi from Finland. Nowadays the company is named Ifolor, but their offerings are almost the same as previously. Except, two things: they don't anymore offer large prints, meaning 75 x 50 cm (around 30 x 20 inches), and there is a problem with larger picture files.
If I convert images from my EOS 5D to JPEG, they are usually in the range of 4-7 MB, depending on the picture itself. However, if you try to upload such pictures to Ifolor, you will get the following error:
--------------------------- ifolor Uploader Control --------------------------- Tiedoston koko ylittää sallitun ylärajan 6815744 tavua. --------------------------- OK ---------------------------
This means that they now have a limit of 6815744 bytes for pictures. Okay, this is well for pocket-sized digicams, but not for the largest resolution DSLRs. Think about Canon EOS 1Ds Mk III, for example. :-) Of course, they are a consumer-oriented company, but previously with Ifi this wasn't a problem. Now you either have to resize your pictures a bit smaller (my choice) or increase the JPEG compression factor.
A new CodeZone page features my latest Finnish article about LINQ. The two-page article gives quick code examples on how to use LINQ to objects, DataSets and XML files.
I hope you find the short document worth your time, and learn new tricks along the way.
Our group of ITpro.fi team of software development spent the previous weekend at Lehmonkärki, the location used also earlier this autumn. Three from our team, NS, SP plus me took our laptops and studied new technologies and spent the time with Visual Studio 2008 and Express Blend, and other tools and applications, like SQL Server 2008. It was great fun, and business too, as I rarely have the time to play with technology as much as I'd like. Stay tuned for more blog articles both here and on ITpro.fi, as I find time to digest all the things I learned during our meeting.
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