The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Tag: Tech

  • Chef, Sql Express, and Installers

    Over the past week or so I have been reviewing the landscape of Installers that I can use to get Chef installed on people’s machines. The landscape has changed quite a bit since the last time I looked, with a lot more small install authoring tools available. Before, it was just InstallShield or Wise Installer – now there’s NSIS, InnoSetup (I know, not new..), AdvancedInstaller, and several other viable tools.

    And after carefully reviewing many of them, I’ve run into road blocks with my setup needs that can’t be fulfilled without spending upwords of $500. So I now have a setup using Visual Studio 2005’s deployment projects. It’s not quite what I wanted when I first started down the road but it’s not too bad either. In fact, I may actually end up liking this method a bit more. Read on for details.

    (more…)

  • Taskbar Shuffle

    I’ve been using this great utility for a few months now, and it’s installed on every one of my computers now. If you’re using Windows and find yourself inundated with applications in your taskbar you should give it a shot. I started using it just to rearrange running applications but I just installed the latest version (2.0) and it has some cool grouping options that are going to come in handy.

    Oh, and it’s free. The author does take donations, however.

  • New Photo Gallery

    Due to some technical issues, I’ve upgraded to Gallery 2.  Bookmark http://gallery.ejinnovations.com.

  • Mozilla Thunderbird Gripe

    Every time I install Thunderbird on a new machine I have a hard time finding the option to have my replies begin before the quoted text in an email.  I can never remember that it’s under Account Settings…Composition and Addressing and not under, oh.. Tools..Options with other composition-related options.  Really pisses me off, but hopefully by writing this out I’ll somehow magically remember in the future.

  • Programming Languages for Beginners

    This article appeared on Slashdot this morning, definitely worth a read. It’s something I have thought about on more than one occasion.

    In grade school, every once in a while my math class would have a computer lab day where we would sit and type in those commands found in the math books (and other exercises). That was on an Apple II, and I remember going home and asking my dad if there was a way to do the same on our PC. After a little poking around on the hard drive, I found qbasic. I also recall saving up $40 to buy… this book. I read every page and did almost every question/exercise at the end of each chapter. I have tossed many of my old programming books, but this one still sits on my shelf.

    I agree with the author that it’s a shame there aren’t accessible languages/tools for curious kids to explore with. I think Microsoft may be starting to realize how important this is, with their attempt with Visual Studio Express. But I think the kids still could benefit from something as simple as the old qbasic to ease them into the programming mindset.
    I cringe when I hear younger relatives and those their age not even considering a use for their computers other than MySpace (more on that in another post), IM, and games. I know that it’s not for everyone, and that that generation has grown up around computers like my generation has grown up around toasters. But it still bothers me that none seem to take any deeper interest in this stuff.

    I guess I’ll shut up now. Hopefully that made some sense.

  • New laptop

    It has been long, long overdue.  I bought a new laptop at Sam’s Club of all places last night.  It’s the HP DV2047CL which has an AMD Turion 64 X2 (64-bit, dual core) HP DV2047CL.
    Jay created an OS CD for me last night so I could wipe all the preinstall crap off of it, and I spent the next couple hours getting all the drivers reinstalled.

    It’s a fast machine, I hope it lasts the 4.5 years my Sony has.

  • C and .NET

    A coworker and I have been trudging through a lot of code recently. .NET code written by a C programmer. Folks, these things should never mix, because when they do, you end up with:

    byteArray = new Byte[hexString.Length >> 1];
    That’s right. Don’t divide by 2. Bit shift. And nevermind that there is a builtin .Net function that does what this line of code came from. And nevermind yet again that there’s a good helping of HEX shit like this in an ASP.NET web app.

  • Axialis Icon Workshop 6.0

    A week or so ago I purchased a copy of Axialis Icon Workshop 6.0 Corporate Edition so I could crank out good looking icons for Chef. I have used trial editions of past versions and found it to be a very good product, but never pulled the trigger to buy it.

    6.0 changed that in a major way. They’ve come up with a fantastic way to allow the user to take stock “objects” and quickly and easily compose them into great looking icons. With their older versions it took me a long time to come up with icons, and they still never made me very happy. But that is surely not the case anymore, great work guys.

    I’m halfway expecting some of those computer graphics wizards out there to start putting out “object” libraries of their own.  I’m really looking forward to such a thing (anyone?! anyone!?).

    Ontop of their great software sits a reasonable pricing model and the lifetime upgrades are nothing to balk at!

  • Well I’ll be…

    In order to try to fix my wireless problem, I decided to give Windows’ System Restore a shot.  I picked a restore point from about a week ago, let it do its thing, and bingo!  I’m connected again.

  • Day of code

    Today I probably spent a good 6-8 hours working on Chef.  I was able to get a lot done and move it to the point where the recipe management side has a functional, basic object model.  You know what that means??  Time to move on to the UI!

    I already started to play around with the basic look and feel of the UI, and I’m excited about it.  Its unlike anything I’ve done before; I look forward to being able to give a sneak-preview in the coming weeks.

    Today also saw me beginning to hunt for a good, cheap Help Authoring tool.   I ran across a promising, free product shipped with the Visual Studio SDK called HelpStudio Lite but upon installation discovered the license prohibits it being used for anything other than Visual Studio-integrated help solutions.  That was mentioned nowhere, but was bright and shiny in the EULA.  WTF!  The next candidate is WinCHM.  It appears to be basic and with a good price tag ($50), so I’ll try and dig up some reviews on it.