Category: microsoft

TechEd 2007: Started!

It’s been a long day: coordinating and uploading stuff. Watching the world register and flow into the Gold Coast version of TechEd 2007. Wall painting. Tears of joy and new friends made.

There are lots of people here. Lots. Some even recognise me. From being NickElvis at WebJam in Melbourne. Ooops.

And at the back of the exhibition hall, it is the great calamari hunt.

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Had a quick chat to Long Zheng. Saw Will Hughes. Bronwen and John. Spruiked for Virtual TechEd.

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Neville with his 3D “nighttime geek shed project” Breeze Designer that now emits Silverlight 3D objects:

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Blogger’s Lounge at TechEd

Happy Caturday Everyone!

Next week (actually, from Caturday for me) is TechEd.

This year, Zaakera is over from Microsoft US to capture the spirit of TechEd in a video-bottle for release on Virtual TechEd.

Also, we have a “Blogger’s Lounge”. WTF? Oh, and there’s a Blogger’s lunch

This is an area on the Exhibition Floor where I will be with my laptop, talking to people. All are welcome, bloggers or not. Chat, photos, linking up. We’re keeping it a little less structured so anything could happen.

Oh, and I’ll be storing your “The Geek Stories” for publishing http://on10.net/

late night edit geek

Let’s just Blame Windows.

Adobe Premiere and Photoshop are a critical part of the application set I use daily to produce videos and online content. Therefore, I (actually Microsoft) owns an Adobe Production Premium to edit and create all my thegeekstories.com

Some months ago, I installed a beta of Adobe Soundbooth CS3. And a beta of Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. In retrospect, probably this was the root cause of my headache.

Having installed my new Production Premium on my Vista laptop; Setup.exe brings up a notice that SoundBooth CS3 could not be installed as I had previously used a Beta. OK, using the Adobe supplied WinCS3Clean script (written in Python, BTW), I de-installed everything and attempted to install a fresh.

No go. None of the applications that make up the Suite would install. “Components Failed to Install”

Reading the installer help support files suggests using msconfig.exe to restart without startup applications; no go. Restart in safe mode (F8 at startup) and install. No go. Move the installer DVDs (4x) onto the hard drive and install from this image. No go.

This time, it is my usual practise has been to “blame the OS” (note: even the install notes for Creative Suite CS3 on MacOS X runs to 23 individual points!) . Launch the Setup.exe as Administrator. No go. Run WinCS3Clean as Administrator, and use the Windows Install Clean Up. No go. Log into the Microsoft network just in case there is some weird Group Policy thing on my account. No go. 

Finally, I stumble across this on the Adobe support site: “License has Expired” . Right; my serial number has already been recorded and the apps cannot be installed again. Whilst not the exact error I was seeing, it seemed to be where I was ultimately at as the next step.

It worked.

What the? I notice that there are a couple of steps prior to removing this file. Re-installing onto another PC “as a test” and most probably re-installing your whole OS . If I hadn’t removed this cache file, I may have resorted to a complete OS re-install step.

The problem ultimately was Adobe’s draconian and flawed install process. Not the OS. I want my 24 hours of lost productivity back, please.

If I had reinstalled the OS, yes the problem would have been fixed. But it’s like opening an almond nut with a H2 Hummer going at 100. It will surely solve the problem; but lesser force and better information earlier can open the nut, too. And save lots of time and a barrell or two of oil.

Oh, and as a part of my near scorch the earth clean up, I de-installed Acrobat 8 Professional. Having not used Professional for anything apart from reading PDFs in the last 6 months, I am not going to re-install it.  Using the .xps format printing out stuff I need to keep is great.

How does someone who doesn’t have a day to install software navigate this? How does someone who hasn’t been installing Windows and Adobe applications for 10+ years get through this?

Mind Migration: Orcas / Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and LOLCODE.net

aka: I CAN HAS EAT FREEWILLY NOW?

before reading this: note I am a scripter at best; and am learning C# and all the Microsoft tools. I know more than I’ve done which means I am super dangerous. Doing this is purely an experiment in what is possible, not what really should be done to ensure that the world cools down so whales don’t get eaten by Orcas.

Why LOLCODE.net? Does the world really need another obscure programming language?

Why doesn’t the world have one standard language. You know, like French or English?

The brain is a strange thing. Language helps people communicate ideas, or memes, from one person to another.

Programming Languages are more formalised as they map to a very binary computer underneath. No memes here.

Making a programming language from a meme is an attempt to bridge the LULZ we have in our head to the mundane art of punching in zeros and ones. Esoteric programming languages r0x0rz. 

Enough esoteric blathering on languages as noone cares and onto my personal LOLCODE  journey.

http://lolcode.com/ is LOLCODE central, where the language is being formally specified (more formally than Ruby, albeit less functional. Pun, get it?)

Orcas. Sort of like a black-and-white cat of the sea that eats seals, but has no paws. Orcas are pretty smart beasties. Love eating the tongues of whales. Funny code name for Visual Studio 2008. For this, I’ve installed beta 2.

LOLCode.net. Grab the .zip file from the archive and pop into a directory “c:program fileslolcode”

Readme.txt:
This distribution includes the compiler (lolc.exe), compiler library (lolcode.net.dll),
standard library (stdlol.dll) and code samples.

Read the readme. Hmm, according to the Readme and the LOLCODE forum, “We’d need MSBuild support and a VS extension“. Quick live.com search on msbuild. Ah, msbuild is a build platform. Gotcha. Visual Studio extention.  Now that looks harder.

Might just stick to the documentation and use command line. Firstly, let’s stick the directory into my %PATH%

OK, run cmd

type cd c:Program FilesLOLcode

Let’s be brace and just lolc fulltest.lol   (that is, compile the .lol file fulltext.lol)

Error at line: 2. “Library ‘STDIO’ not found” (line sez: CAN HAS STDIO?)

Probably best to go from source. I’ve been putting this off for months: it’s time for an SVN client for Windows. Off to TortoiseSVN so I can download a build.

Using TortoiseSVN checkout http://lolcode-dot-net.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ Revision 35 at the time of posting.

Double-click on the .sln file (Visual Studio solution file) and convert to VS2008.

Ahh, 51 compile errors and 17 warnings. Need NUnit. http://nunit.org/ here I come. Installed, and 0 compile errors, 11 warnings. Forget the warnings. If they were serious, they’d be errors. Coolio. Set my code to generate a Release version.

Again, run cmd

cd C:Program FilesLOLcodelolcbinRelease

lolc test.lol

Success! I have a test.exe

test

Number guessing game. I CAN HAS LOLCODE, compiled from source.

 

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Want to be famous? Go large at Virtual TechEd 2007

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Virtual TechEd will be at TechEd Australia. This is a major coup as Microsoft continues to evolve the TechEd format.

As you can see from the existing content on Virtual TechEd, if you have something to say to the world: now is the time to stand up and be interviewed!

Comment here/send me an email and we’ll schedule you in.

Also, I’ll be at the Blogger’s lounge with video camera, laptop and a wireless connection. Come and have a chat!

frankarr detritus to give away

Trinkets to giveaway

Each of these individual items need a good home.

  • 0 x Foam head “Tablet PC” guys
  • 0 x C# shot glasses (need washing)
  • -1 x geek button-pins

ALL over at 12:33pm

Qualifications: First email to nhodge@microsoft.com. Nominiate your item. I will only send to AU or NZ. Non-Microsoft people only. One per person. I will pack the C# shot glasses as best I can but cannot guarantee they will arrive in one piece.

Lost in Microsoft

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Up, to work. Parking easy as everyone is somewhere else. Frankarr on the internal TV system not doing LOLCATS. Speaking Shakespeare to promote TechEd. Even when Frankarr is not in the building, his Hamlet-ian ghost haunts us.

On way to desk, speak to Jeffa about his two way cool posts: Windows Server 2008 and the new cool roadshow demo hardware case.

I’m however, I am still Lost in Microsoft. Resolution: Need coffee. Need Neil Finn

saveferris

Get a way cool email from my very own high school Ferris Bueller: Paul Dalby. Not only was he smart, he was funny. Everyone wanted to be Dalby. Paul sends me a link to Sam de Brito’s blog post: “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the secret to life”

‘…life moves pretty fast… you don’t stop to look around once and while, you could miss it.’

Crowded House and Ferris Bueller, and we’re away.

This is not the darkside, the moss is just greener here.

Moss is greener after 2 weeks away