First Google Wave Impressions

I’ve just received an invitation to Google Wave and I’ve being trying it out. Here’s a screenshot for future reference:

 

Unfortunately I couldn’t get any of my geek friends online so I couldn’t experience the collaboration features. And Google Wave is not the kind of application that shines alone, so let’s wait for the first tête-à-tête to post about it. Until then the only thing worth mentioning is the Outlook look and the feel and the promise of open gadgets.

Hope to continue this post soon.

Thanks for the invitation, Pita :)

<update>

Just stared working with Pita. First impressions: it works, but at the present time we can’t figure out what to use it for :) IM? Social networking the FaceBook way? Pure collaboration?

</update>

Joining the dark side of the force

I’ve finally embraced an old objective: to get my hands on a large-size J2EE project!

For years I’ve been working on Microsoft Platforms, and though I’ve started developing on Unix, java wasn’t present back on those days. And though I’ve been in contact with J2EE projects, these were usually small Master of Science projects, not the real thing.

This project will allow me to benchmark the two evil brothers. In my evaluation, here are my first thoughts:

• Boy, do these environments starve for memory! Our typical .NET VMs can settle for 700MB of RAM, the J2EE are crying for 2.5GB…
• Compared to these environment, the .NET platform is quite monolithic. The good side being: there’s way less to consider, projects tend to be more cohesive among themselves
• Methodological these J2EE projects are more solid than .NET ones
• On the other hand, the development experience in .NET is way better, the IDE is more robust and responsive
• J2EE environments depend heavily on bunches of XML configuration files. .NET tend to depend on wizards and graphic DSL tooling
• J2EE developers tend to accept with somewhat religious abnegation the shortcomings of their platform, .NET developers are not as forgiven

 

The baseline of our environment:

• JBoss
• JBoss Portal
• ORM: hibernate
• Container: this will be a subject for a future post…

Hyper-V Physical to Virtual: Disk2vhd

SysInternals has just released an utility, disk2vhd, that creates VHD versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines. As it uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, it can copy an image of an online system. Not that the competition doesn’t do it for long…

Download Disk2vhd (751 KB)

The Machine SID Duplication Myth

I’ve been using NewSID for years, first with disk cloning and on the last years with VM images. And it comes as a great surprise for me that it’s okay to have duplicate machine SIDs!

According to Mark Russinovich:

This blog post debunks the myth with facts by first describing the machine SID, explaining how Windows uses SIDs, and then showing that - with one exception - Windows never exposes a machine SID outside its computer, proving that it’s okay to have systems with the same machine SID

The exception to the rule is quite obvious: domain controllers.

Oops. How can so many people (me included) be so wrong for so long?

BizTalk Project Creation Failure

Strangely enough we lost the ability to create BizTalk projects on one of out dev VMs. The solution we chose was to repair the installation.

VMWare Player 3

I’ve upgraded VMWare Player to v3, and I’m having some mixed thoughts about it:

 

The good:

• We can create and update VM settings from within VMWare Player – no more VMX Builder for the majority of tasks
• VMWare tools are self-updatable from the net
• update: Multiple display support
• update: Unity support

 

The bad:

• Still no Unity support (changed "virtualHW.version" from "4" to "7" in the vmx file)
• Still no multiple display support (it works once you upgrade the VMTools)
• update: Unity is terribly slow

 

These last 2 seem to be dependent on a licensed Workstation copy. I can understand that VMWare wants to support its business, what I find hard to understand is why do they keep announcing the bloody features on the menu if they don’t intent to support it? Argh…

Oh well, still a great update.

<update>

I forgot to mention it: the display driver seems substantially slightly slower on my Windows 7…

</update>

Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries

For better or for worse Portugal has its share of responsibility over the globalization we so well known today. The exploration voyages experienced from the 15th century Portuguese sailors connected the world, “discovered” continents and cultures, ended old fears and monopolies, opened the commerce to the word and laid the grounds for the world we live in.

As a Portuguese I always wanted to see an exhibit that portrayed this time of world history as told by non-europeans. Smithsonian has made it possible with a fine exhibit that made its way back home to Lisbon, at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga.

Though in my opinion this exhibit somehow lacked the needed articulated view of the so called “discoveries age”, the choice and relevance of the exposed objects was enough to make a great exposition. I’m talking about 300 objects gathered from museums in China, India, Japan, South America and Europe.

Here is the exhibit international link, the Portuguese one and some photos. Finally here’s a cool Google Earth kml file.

An now for something completely different: dual boot :S

Ok, after years of evangelizing VMs against dual boot I’ve re-discovered dual boot! And what’s new about it? My new eSATA external disk!

 

I’ve now 3 OS on my laptop (and an extra 4 virtual machines):

• A conservative Windows 7 on my internal drive
• A Windows Server 2008 R2 directly on my eSATA
• A Windows Server 2008 R2 supported on eSATA as a VHD

 

The later was installed the way I’m installing OSs from now on. Here’s how:

 

• Start installing Windows Server 2008 R2
• Start the shell (Shift-F10)
• Launch diskpart
• Create a VHD file:
  • create vdisk file=”D:\Documents\Virtual Machines\VWMROMANO-DEV05\VWMROMANO-DEV05.VHD” type=fixed maximum=20000
• Attach it:
  • select vdisk file=”D:\Documents\Virtual Machines\VWMROMANO-DEV05\VWMROMANO-DEV05.VHD”
  • attach vdisk
• Install into your new disk :)

 

Here’s a simple how to.

 

It’s cool having a bunch of native OS on my laptop! Just think about it: the next time you want to test-drive a new beta OS, you can do it without compromising you stable workstation :)

 

<update>

When we already have the VHD, here’s how to registry the boot entry:

bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "New Windows 7 Installation"
bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=”[locate]\Image.vhd“
bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=”[locate]\Image.vhd”
bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on

I had to look for it as EasyBCD messed up the VHD boot entry. In the same blog it states:

The advantages are magnificent:

• Simply copy one file (the .VHD file) and you’re entire system is included.
• Create incremental VHD files: One VHD file can be based on another one. So if you have different systems, create a base Win7 VHD and make all others incremental. This will save a lot of disk space!

There’re also some small disadvantages :-)

• The .VHD booted OS needs to be Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 or later.
• There’s a performance decrease of about 3%.
• Hibernate and some BitLocker scenarios don’t work
  (BitLocker CAN be used within the guest VHD though, but not on the disk where the VHD resides).
• Windows Experience index won’t work.

</update>

 

<update>

Here’s another link from TechNet.

</update>

Generating FLAC

I’m in the process of getting rid of my physical CD collection into a media hard drive. As I don’t want to compromise the quality of the conversion, I’ve chosen FLAC.

I’ve looked for some advices from my friends the music specialists, and here’s their advice:

Ripping	Playing
Exact Audio Copy	Foobar2000

Silver ink for wearable or throwaway electronics

Here’s a cool technology: Xerox developed a silver ink for wearable or throwaway electronics:

Xerox researchers have invented a kind of ink that can conduct electricity and be used to put electronic circuits on top of plastics, film, and textiles. That means in the coming years we’ll be able to wear or bend our electronics. You could even print out your electronic gadget on plastic sheets, as if you were printing a document.

This technology can prove decisive on the RFID market in massifying usage and pulverizing prices.

Internet speeds and costs

Here’s where we stand:

61Mbps? 0.27$ per Mb/month!I want to go to Japan!

in: http://files.redux.com/images/b3a38a65dc1991703826b71ef1d2e752/raw

eSATA versus USB

I’ve finally bought an eSATA external drive, a 1GB LaCie. Has it supports eSATA + Firewire + USB, I’ve decided to do a little home benchmarking. Here are the results:

 

USB

 

eSATA

 

Uau!… Bye-bye USB, here’s my new VM disk :)

 

And here are my internal disk results:

 

 

Strangely enough, these are worse than eSATA.

 

Update: I’m copying my VMs to my new eSATA external drive at 57MB/s. Cool.

 

<update>

Here’s a benchmark for another drive and external case (with eSATA):

This is a 2.5 disk. And the benchmark results are not so bright…

</update>

 

<update>

And here’s yet another cool setting from another development server we have:

</update>