Arian Kulp's Blog

New E-Ink Display

Arian T. Kulp — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:13:45 GMT

A new company called Plastic Logic, born from Cambridge University research, is coming out with a very nice looking E-Paper display early next year. It's much slimmer than the Kindle, wirelessly gets content, and has more screen area than the Kindle. It's actually heavier, but it's still small enough to be a very nice gadget. I would love to have a laptop with an E-Paper screen for coding, email, and document work. Smartphones, PDA's, SideShow devices, and remote controls would all benefit from this technology if it would ever be available cheaply. Within a few years we'll supposedly have color screens with fast enough refresh for light video work. Obviously that would be even better, though I'd like to know if that's really the biggest hindrance to adoption at this point. Anyway, I'll be keeping my eyes open. I think the Kindle is very nice looking, but it's too locked down. If it could do more, and wasn't quite so expensive, I'd consider it. For now, I'm pretty happy with my Asus Aspire One.

Source: http://thefutureofthings.com/print.php?itemTypeId=2&itemId=5748

Hardware Virtualization for the Developer

Arian T. Kulp — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 06:33:28 GMT

I gave a talk today about hardware virtualization with a focus on Virtual PC. I gave a similar talk a month ago or so in Cedar Rapids at the CRINETA meeting. Virtualization just offers so many benefits to developers, and of course testers too. I talked about how it all works (hopefully without boring anyone to death with details!) and why it makes sense. Here’s a quick list of benefits if anyone isn’t sold on it yet:

Run legacy operating systems (Windows 95, OS/2, Windows NT)
Run other platforms (Linux, Solaris)
Install (questionable) software without messing up your computer
Avoid dual-boot
Test multiple scenarios without reimaging your computer each time
Run a domain server/client environment on a single computer
Test various browsers/runtimes/service packs on one machine
Start and stop machines without losing productivity
Keep your base machine in standard company configuration
Work with preconfigured environments (MOSS, OCS) to save time
Guarantee consistent installations for gotcha-free testing

In case any of these benefits are too vague, let me know and I can expand on them. Perhaps I can do a series focusing on each one! My talk today was at the Iowa Code Camp. It wasn’t exactly code, but it enables new ways of working with your code (developing and testing) that are complex or not really possible otherwise.

Virtualization Roadshow

Arian T. Kulp — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 06:22:00 GMT

So two Mondays ago I took a drive to Chicago. I haven’t been there for months and I always like going there (minus the driving!). I was going to a Roadshow event for Microsoft to help promote virtualization. The event had many sponsors (it was free to the public) and a hall of vendor tables. The lab had around 40 computers and two other proctors. We got to wear “Certified Veek” shirts, though no one was 100% sure why. Presumably we were (V)irtualization G(eek)s or something like that. Oh well, we wandered around and helped people.

There were about a dozen labs for people to go through to get used to Hyper-V, SCVMM (Virtual machine manager) and various scenarios. They were pretty well put together and ran with few hitches. I got to help people when they had problems with the labs or computers, and answer general questions. Of course there were a few problems due to forgetting or not quite understanding something, but there were also quite a number of good questions about how to do things in specific situations.

Really, for anyone facing real-world problems, these events are ideal for talking face-to-face with experts. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than working with a consultant! In some cases it turned out that virtualization wasn’t really the right solution. In other cases it almost seemed like the textbook example. It felt good helping people to see the point to it all and how to apply it in ways that added value to them and their companies.

One of the proctors coincidentally used to work for the company that I currently work for in Oregon. The other proctor does consulting work in the Chicago area, especially in the virtualization arena. It’s a bit of a niche, but I’m guessing a pretty lucrative one. The Iowa City area couldn’t support specialization like that, although it could fit into a skill set nicely. He also does presenting at a local training center from time to time. This sounds good to me. I really like presenting and it’s good for me to get out of the house sometimes to do it! It’s nice to get a chance to meet people and have some in-depth technical discussions in-person.

I need to keep my blog updated with my “appearances” better. It’s a good record for me, and if anyone wants to discuss a certain technology with me, it’s a good way to get together.

Going small

Arian T. Kulp — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:04:17 GMT

I've decided to go get into the netbook craze. I've been very excited about them ever since the Eee PC came out. Unfortunately the super-small SSD drives have been a deterrent as have the micro-small screens on the first generation. It's got to be a touch balancing act to create a small notebook that isn't too small to be useful. The second and third generation netbooks are getting better with this, though some have just gone crazy with price point and features. I'm getting an Acer One with 1.5GB RAM and 120GB hard drive. I don't need that big of a hard drive, yet a 12GB SSD seemed too small. I guess 40GB would have been fine – and 40GB SSD even better. Those SSD prices really need to drop -- it's a bit ridiculous. I'm tired of lugging around a full-size notebook or tablet for web browsing and text editing. Of course, once you have something with you, you want photo management, gaming, Visual Studio (well I do anyway!), and maybe even Virtual PC…. It's too easy to drift between the two extremes. On most trips that I take, the netbook will be just the right size. My laptop now is basically a desktop replacement. It's perfect for my day-to-day work, but overkill for simple tasks. I hope to install Visual Studio onto the One at least for simple demo purposes. It's got a VGA connection so I should be able to use it to drive my presentations too. All in all, it should be a very nice unit. As portable as I could want, and as capable too.

Adding Google Analytics to a Subtext Blog

Arian T. Kulp — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:23:39 GMT

Just a stream of new posts from me! This is a pretty quick one though. I wanted to add my Google Analytics tracking code back to the site without modifying templates as I've had to in the past. Too annoying. I saw somewhere that you could also modify the DTP.aspx page in the root, but I discovered an even easier way. Perhaps this was before 2.0, but regardless I just noticed it tonight. It turns out that in the Admin tool, under Options, then Configure, there's a handy field called: Sitewide Tracking code. Just fill in the <script> block and it automatically adds it to every page. What could be easier!

Manually turning on a power supply

Arian T. Kulp — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 02:46:24 GMT

I bought a Shuttle KPC from Newegg for my Windows Home Server and I couldn't be happier with it. My only complaint was no case fan and not very many ports on the power supply. Until I could get a hold of a power splitter I decided to just plug in a spare power supply (why do I have so many?!) so I could install a fan. Yeah, it's a waste of power using a second power supply, but only temporary! The problem is that modern power supplies don't turn on when you switch them on. It's up to the case power switch to fully activate them. I figured there must be a way to get it on anyway, and sure enough, I found a site with the instructions. It's actually incredibly simple:

…use a wire or paper clip to short the green wire (PS_ON) to any one of the black wires (COM).

So I did. A paper clip did the trick nicely and now the fan works great! Not a common scenario, but nice to know there was such a simple solution!

Source: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/22

New addition to the family

Arian T. Kulp — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 02:36:47 GMT

So today we went to our two boys' soccer games. We went home with a new dog. Of course! Isn't that what happens to everyone? Well, Iowa was playing Wisconsin so there was a lot of game traffic so we took a different route home. That took us by the pet store. Not much into pets, I walked across the parking lot to a Panera for coffee. In the time it took me to get my coffee and walk around a bit my family had fallen in love! My wife, Karen, has been looking into the Japanese Shiba Inu breed for some time now. I had decided that if we were to get a dog that would be my first choice since they are cat-like. I don't want a dog jumping on me. I want one that will keep to itself more. Pet stores never seem to have Shiba Inu's, so in the past I've always been safe, but this time was to be different! In fact, they had two – a black one and a sesame (red) one. Karen and the boys held the sesame one and just loved it. I have to admit that it's a pretty nice dog so far. Pretty mellow, no barking (part of the breed), small (up to 20 pounds or so), and no slobber!

Both boys are really loving him so far. We named him Kenji – a common Japanese name. This picture makes it look like his eye is messed up, but it was just the light or something. He will take some time getting used to his crate, but he looks like he's adopted us as much as we've adopted him!

Microsoft Image Composite Editor

Arian T. Kulp — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 07:38:47 GMT

In case you missed this, Microsoft recently released the Image Composite Editor (also known as ICE). This is a very cool app for doing panoramic pictures. I love Autostitch, but you need to reset settings each time, and you can only choose JPEG output (though 100% quality is darn good). ICE lets you output in JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, HD Photo, and even the interactive Silverlight Deep Zoom format. It defaults to 100% scaling (Autostitch defaults to 25% or something like that), and it even auto-crops for nice clean borders. Not only that, but it’s fast, and the user interface is pretty darn intuitive. I’ve really grown to love the built-in stitching in Live Gallery, and I’ve even suspected that they licensed Autostitch behind the scenes (they wouldn’t be the only ones to do that), but ICE is a great step forward for free panoramic photo stitching tools. Definitely worth the download!

Link: http://research.microsoft.com/ivm/ice.html