Hibernating Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V

I can now finally hibernate my Windows Server 2008! Here’s how:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\hvboot]"Start"=dword:00000003

<update> For some strange reason, updating through a .reg file didn’t work, I had to do it via regedit. </update>

After restarting, Hyper-V is now disabled. To get it up running all we have to do is:

net start hvboot

Thanks for the link, Rasteiro.

PS: I couldn’t install VMWare player either, and now I can!

PS2: VirtualPC was incredibly slow here, and now it isn’t!

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 RC is Now Available

Here is the announcement, and here is the download.

IE8 RC1

IE8 has reached RC1. You can get it here.

Isolating components

We’re re-architecting an old .NET app so that we can isolate changes within modules. Basically we are slicing our app into vertical areas we can deploy as independently as we can from each other, and trying to close common infrastructure into isolated assemblies so even these can live isolated from each others.

The simplest way to do it was slicing the app into Web Applications. The problem arise with master pages. The solution we’ve tried and chosen was sharing Master Pages amongst Applications by Embedding it in an assembly. We will now try the same with user controls and modal pages. And what about js files, should we extend this approach so far?…

It is official now: Microsoft is firing

Here it is:

Microsoft will eliminate up to 5,000 jobs in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, including 1,400 jobs today.

The report STARTS STATING:

Microsoft Reports Second-Quarter Results: Modest revenue growth despite difficult economy; announces cost management initiatives.

Motivation Techniques

Here’s a great list.

S#arp Architecture: ASP.NET MVC with NHibernate

Here’s a cool package: S#rap Architecture:

Pronounced "Sharp Architecture," this is a solid architectural foundation for rapidly building maintainable web applications leveraging the ASP.NET MVC framework with NHibernate. The primary advantage to be sought in using any architectural framework is to decrease the code one has to write while increasing the quality of the end product. A framework should enable developers to spend little time on infrastructure details while allowing them to focus their attentions on the domain and user experience. Accordingly, S#arp Architecture adheres to the following key principles:

• Focused on Domain Driven Design
• Loosely Coupled
• Preconfigured Infrastructure
• Open Ended Presentation

The overall goal of this is to allow developers to worry less about application "plumbing" and to spend most of their time on adding value for the client by focusing on the business logic and developing a rich user experience.

NHibernate, scaffolding, IoC, guidelines, sample app, lots of goodies!

Windows 7 tips

Here are some tips for better using Windows 7:

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/01/14/windows-7-tips-and-tricks

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2009/01/12/the-bumper-list-of-windows-7-secrets.aspx

Boy, now that I’ve returned to my spartan Windows Server 2008 I’m really missing Windows 7…

One less excuse not to upgrade to Vista

Microsoft® Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V, formerly known as Kidaro) enhances deployment, management and user experience for Virtual PC images on a Windows® Desktop, independent of the local desktop configuration and operating system (OS). MED-V leverages Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to provide an enterprise solution for desktop virtualization streamlining OS upgrades, and increasing IT control and user flexibility in enterprise environments.
MED-V solution for Application-to-OS incompatibility accelerates the upgrade path to Windows Vista®. Applications that cannot be installed on Windows Vista® or have not been fully tested on Windows Vista® may be installed by the administrator in a virtual machine that runs a previous version of the OS (e.g., Windows XP or Windows 2000) and operate in their native, supported environment.

To learn more about MED-V and MDOP visit
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/med-v.aspx

x64 support on my Vostro 1510

I’ve tried installing 64 bit versions of Windows 7 and Ubuntu. All devices were recognized out of the box – a relieve for me, as Dell doesn’t support 64 bits on this model.

I’m now expecting a Latitude E5500. Let’s see how it goes.

Musical sketchbook

Here’s another cool app from Microsoft research labs: Songsmith software. Microsoft Songsmith lets users create music in a novel way by attaching a microphone to a Windows PC and singing into the mic. Here’s something we’d expect from Apple. Cool!

<update>

Here’s how it works:

Songsmith basically does three things when it’s making music to go with your melody:

1. Songsmith figures out roughly what frequencies (and thus what musical notes) you sang using a technique called autocorrelation. We don’t figure this out quite so precisely that we could write down sheet music for your melody (that’s still something a computer can’t do as well as a trained musician), but it turns out we don’t need to figure out exactly the melody you sang in order to make good backing music.
2. Songsmith chooses chords to accompany the notes you sang, using the algorithm we describe in our papers about MySong. Basically, we’ve used a database of about 300 popular songs to train a mathematical model with the basic statistics of what chords sound good with each other and what chords sound good with different types of melodies. Note this is a statistical model... we’re not taking your melody and peeking into a database to find similar bits of melody when we make new chords. Instead, Songsmith has learned the basic statistics of chord sequences, and uses those statistics to generate new chords when you sing a new melody.
   Of course, there’s no single correct sequence of chords for a given melody – in fact there are lots and lots and lots of chord sequences that might sound good for your song. So Songsmith incorporates the “happy” and “jazzy” sliders to let users – both musical novices and experienced songwriters – quickly explore all those different sequences. If you want to know howthose work, you’ll have to go visit the MySong project page.
3. Then we turn those chords into the music you hear using different musical styles (Songsmith comes with 30 styles, ranging from pop to rock to country, etc.). Songsmith tells the styles what chords it wants to play, and the styles help Songsmith turn those chords into a musical arrangement. These styles are provided through a partnership with PG Music, and Songsmith gives you a way to purchase additional styles from PG Music if you want an even broader range of styles. Then we turn that musical arrangement into the sound you hear using a musical synthesizer and a (very high-quality!) set of virtual instruments provided through a partnership with Garritan and Plogue. And yep, you guessed it, Songsmith also gives you a way to purchase additional styles and instruments from Garritan if you want an even broader range of sounds.

</update>

Chrome on Windows 7 64 bits

For now we have to start with the –in-process-plugins switch:

>C:\Users\<account>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.ex
e --in-process-plugins

As expected, it won’t keep you from receiving:

Heard about it here.