- Details
Yesterday there was a cycling pilgrimage to Gietrzwałd, organised by the Institute of Christian Culture.
While I was at it I had the chance to test the NaviComputer program.
Its advantage over BikeDashboard is that it comes with a separate desktop application for preparing maps (and NaviComputer on the mobile device can fetch a map by itself as well). On top of that you can choose the range of zoom levels you want to keep on the phone.
You can pick from several map sources that are free to use. I use OpenStreetMaps. As I found out, the maps are quite accurate and even forest tracks are shown.
- Details
Since yesterday some nasty weed spammers have had the run of my site; unhappily I had not kept one of the plugins I use up to date :)
Today the site works again and the hole is patched.
P.S. I am against legalising marijuana.
- Details
On Wednesday the national stage of the Imagine Cup competition took place, in the Software Design category. The day before there had been a poster session, where the judges could look over every project and talk to the team members. The judges picked five teams, who then had 20 minutes each to present their ideas.
They were (in the order they presented):
- eVolve from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań – their project, reACT, made it possible to run therapy for various kinds of autism and phobia in a virtual environment, where the patient's own movements interacted with what was happening in that environment,
- Mutant from the Military University of Technology in Warsaw – PULSE, which monitored the working of the heart and warned the user (and an operator, whose phone would be alerted so that help could be called quickly) about threats to their health,
- Fteams from Lodz University of Technology – using two plain webcams they built interPeter, a system that translates sign language into written language and back, making communication easier in offices, at the post office and so on,
- The Eradicators from the Military University of Technology in Warsaw – with a parody of the series "House" they presented Care2, a system for modelling social networks and using them to analyse epidemics and to find the individuals whose vaccination, for instance, would defeat a disease fastest
- Dreamcraft from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań – the last project presented was Soundability, which recognises sounds in the surroundings (alarm signals, for example) and reports them on the phone screen and through vibration; it was intended for the hard of hearing.
First place went to Fteams, and it is them who will travel to the world finals in Warsaw in July; second place went to MUTANT and third to The Eradicators. Fourth place was shared by eVolve and DreamCraft.
Additional prizes were also handed out:
- the prize for the best interface designer went to Magda Jonczyk of the fteams team,
- honourable mentions in the Internet Explorer 8 Award category went to the teams BlueLight, Cieszak Team, OneTeam, Rhea and Sampi Design,
- prizes funded by Helix Ventures went to fteams and The Eradicators.
On top of that, the Ministry of Economy intends to start working with all of the teams. The ministry has prepared several projects whose completion would matter to the Polish economy.
Congratulations to all the teams, and we wish them further successes.
- Details
This year I entered Imagine Cup in the Internet Explorer 8 Award category only.
I wrote an application that monitors a game of chess (on Helion's server) and tells you when it is your move, lets you look at the board, and searches for other games, whether in progress or finished, and for players waiting for an opponent.
On the Imagine Cup 2010 IE8 Award page you can read that my (one-man) team, CieszakTeam, is among the winners of the Polish edition. On 19 May I am going to Warsaw to collect the prize ;)
The application itself can be found on the server made available to entrants: http://cieszakteam.imaginecup2010.net/
On 1 June we will find out what the judges decide in the world edition. I hope I pick up a prize there too. Sadly the IE8 Award category does not come with a trip to Poland :D
- Details
On 5 May 2010 (Wednesday) at 17:00, the Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch begins at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn.
On 12 April 2010 the new version of Microsoft's development environment, Visual Studio 2010, had its premiere. This latest instalment of an excellent product lets a developer build business applications faster and more efficiently.
The Polish communities gathered around Microsoft products are organising meetings in their cities to introduce the newest version of Visual Studio both to their own members and to anyone else who wants to broaden their knowledge.
One of the cities taking part is Olsztyn. On Wednesday evening there will be two presentations about Visual Studio 2010 to see:
- What's new in Visual Studio 2010 - the session introduces those attending to Visual Studio 2010, and above all to what has changed in it and what has been added.
- IntelliTrace - a new approach to tracing applications - the historical debugger is a tool that will change the way a developer works completely. It is a sort of "time machine for developers and testers". It records the history of an application's execution and lets you replay how a given bug came about. The session introduces the tool to its users.
In the break between the presentations there will be a chance to mix with the community and to gather strength for the second talk over a large quantity of pizza :)
Among those attending we will be raffling off valuable prizes worth around 10,000 PLN in total! They include licences for products such as Telerik Premium Collection worth $1299, ReSharper, Nevron Chart for .NET Lite, Gauge for SSRS, CodeRush with Refactor! Pro and Typemock Isolator. We also have books to give away, donated by O'Reilly – CLR via C# and C# 4.0 in a Nutshell.
Attendance is free, but registration on the site is required.
Come to the Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch, get to know Microsoft's newest development environment, broaden your knowledge and have a good time with us!!!
- Details
Yesterday Prometric sent me a voucher with a 25% discount on the Pro exams for VS2008.
"(...)Use your special voucher code when scheduling exam 70-563, 70-564 or 70-565 to secure a 25% discount.(...)"
Unfortunately I am still about four TS exams short, and the voucher is valid only until 30 June 2010, so I am unlikely to use it.
If anyone would like it, do get in touch :)
- Details
Yesterday, in a class on Artificial Intelligence Systems, I gave a presentation about state space search strategies. Along the way I learned to use a very nice library called QuickGraph, which "handles" graphs in .NET and can generate a PDF or PNG visualisation of a graph. Below are the presentation, the demonstration application I wrote, and a compiled build of the A+ Pathfinding Algorithm by Herbert Glarner
Metody przeszukiwania przestrzeni.pptx
- Details
Exams I have behind me:
- Exam 70-536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation
- Exam 70-502: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Presentation Foundation Application Development
And it is time to think about what comes next. I will be a student for a few months yet, so it would be good to make use of that and take a few more certificates free of charge. By the end of June I will be trying to pass:
- Exam 70-503: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Windows Communication Foundation Application Development
- Exam 70-505: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Forms Application Development
- Exam 70-562: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development
You have probably already seen the 70-536 study material put together by the eastgroup.pl group. I do not think there is any harm in letting one thing slip: we are starting another series of exam preparation posts before long :)
- Details
Yesterday the disk in my server went on strike. Even though I recovered the partition table successfully thanks to TestDisk, my Gentoo had trouble seeing the partitions (I tried configuring it every which way and none of it helped).
So I put Ubuntu Server 9.10 on it for testing, worked my way through the manual, and I have a box for my rsync backups again. I wonder whether it can host a virtual machine, say with Windows on it, and let me connect to it remotely... IT CAN :) and it is not particularly complicated.
This article is about creating virtual machines by hand. These days I would recommend using phpVirtualBox instead
Here are instructions for VirtualBox 1.5.2; VirtualBox is currently at version 3.1 and those instructions no longer quite fit it. So here is the procedure as it worked in my case
- Adding the package sources
First you have to add the repository for this Ubuntu release to your repository list (/etc/apt/sources.list)
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free
We have to use Sun's repositories, because the packages available in Ubuntu by default do not include the RDP, USB and USB over RDP features (those are in the closed edition of VirtualBox) About the VirtualBox editions.
Repositories for other distributions - Installing VirtualBox
sudo apt-get install virtualbox
- Creating and installing the virtual machine
This is where most of the trouble was. The following sequence of commands creates a virtual machine:
VBoxManage createvm -name "ws2008" -register VBoxManage modifyvm "ws2008" --memory 512 --acpi on --boot1 dvd --nic1 intnet VBoxManage createvdi --filename "ws2008.vdi" --size 10240 --register VBoxManage storagectl "ws2008" --name "IDE Controller" --add ide VBoxManage modifyvm "ws2008" --hda "ws2008.vdi" VBoxManage registerimage dvd /storage/isos/ws2008.iso VBoxManage storageattach "ws2008" --storagectl "IDE Controller" --port 1 --device 0 --type dvddrive --medium /storage/isos/ws2008.iso VBoxManage modifyvm "ws2008" --vrdpport 3390
- Create and register the machine
- Configure the machine: 512 MB RAM, ACPI on, boot from DVD, internal network
- Create and register a 10 GB disk image
- Add an IDE controller to the machine. (This was missing from the instructions for earlier versions; if any of you hit the error ERROR: Could not find a storage controller named 'IDE Conroller', that is exactly why - the machine had no IDE controller discussion on the VirtualBox forum )
- Attach the disk image to the machine.
- Register the image of the Windows installation disc
- "Insert the disc" into the virtual DVD drive (I am not sure the previous step was necessary, since I give the path here anyway; this step also differs from the 1.5.2 instructions quoted earlier)
- Set the port for VRDP (Virtual Remote Desktop Protocol)
- Starting the machine
VBoxVRDP -startvm "ws2008"
- Connecting with remote desktop
Now all you need is to connect to the machine with remote desktop on the port you set, in this example server:3390
- Naturally, until the Guest Additions are installed the mouse pointer will behave oddly :)
VBoxManage storageattach "ws2008" --storagectl "IDE Controller" --port 1 --device 0 --type dvddrive --medium /usr/share/virtualbox/VBoxGuestAdditions.iso
- Internet
If you need the machine to reach the internet, attach NAT (with the virtual machine shut down):
VBoxManage modifyvm "ws2008" --nic1 nat
- We can also forward a port of the virtual machine so that it is reachable from outside:
VBoxManage setextradata "ws2008" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/Protocol" TCP VBoxManage setextradata "ws2008" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/GuestPort" 3389 VBoxManage setextradata "ws2008" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/guestssh/HostPort" 3389
where guestssh is the name we gave the forwarding rule (I kept the name from the example in the VirtualBox wiki)
- Now we can connect to our Windows either over the VRDP that VirtualBox provides, or over Windows' own RDP. :D
- Details
My friends from the Eastgroup.pl group have just finished putting together study material for the 70-536 exam. I already hold that certificate, but it may come in useful for some of you.
Recommended :)