Windows phone
Forgot to post a link to this earlier:
“Microsoft held a ‘Phone Camp’ at the College on 9February to give students the chance to develop their own phone app, to be published on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The free event included the software needed to develop an app, a coding session, presentations and guidance from Microsoft. Take-away pizza was even thrown in afterwards as brain-food for the budding developers!”
“The event was really well receievd by students and Microsoft were suitably impressed with the results with some innovative apps being created on the day, such as the one created by Cardonald student Iain Lennox. Iain is currently in his 2nd year of a HND Software Development Course.
His phone app is aimed towards tourists and uses Satellite Navigation (GPS) to locate the current area; showing the user where their nearest underground station is and offering them directions to the station, either by foot or by car. It also shows the current running status of both the inner and outer circles on the Glasgow underground. There is also a social aspect incorporated into his app in that it will show the user what events are on within a specified radius of the area they are in.”
Easy Windows 8 install
I was going to write a short guide to installing and testing Windows 8, but why reinvent the wheel eh?! Scott Hanselman from Microsoft has an excellent guide here, if you want to try it with minimal interruption to your current install this is the best way.
PC or Mac
The debate over what is better between a PC and a Mac has raged on for years. I have an elegant solution to the argument. Use both because a PC is a Mac and a Mac is a PC, PC as in Personal Computer. Of course what most people refer to as a PC is actually a Microsoft Windows PC vs. Apples Mac operating system. Since 2005 MacOS has run on the same processor architecture as Windows, that is x86 (AMD & Intel) mostly. To prove my point you can now run Windows on a Mac and a lot of people do, Apple even support this by providing a mechanism for installing and supporting Windows called Bootcamp(you could also use a VM). So the real differences or arguments for and against come down to software. I take all sorts of flack from people personally and professionally on an almost daily basis because i use some Apple products, I have an iPhone 4 and a MacBook Pro (Mid 2009 Model) I used the Mac laptop exclusively for almost two years before building a new Windows based desktop. In that time it has proven time and again that the recent generations of Apple MacBook’s are with out any doubt the best laptops in the world. Sure they are more expensive but absolutely worth every penny.
Back to my solution, if you have a specific need to use Apple software and an alternative is not generally available then get a Mac and run Windows on it, you shouldn’t need to be limited in your choice in this day and age. You can either boot Windows natively on a Mac or use a Virtualisation application like VMware, you could also boot a natively installed Windows partition using VMware from inside the MacOS environment giving you the best of all worlds. Its even supports what is called unity mode, where you can see your Windows applications on the Mac desktop as if they are running in MacOS on the doc.
Backup backup backup
Recently I’ve had a few people I know lose data from computers and other storage devices. Over the years I’ve lost my own fare share of computer data, the number one thing I hate losing is photos. Almost everything else I have that is digital can be replaced but photos cant. Photos are very important to me and I’m sure everyone else.
Hard disk drives are getting bigger and bigger and unfortunately built in redundancy and backup on computers out of the box seems to be overlooked. It seems crazy to me that people would keep all their data on one massive disk drive.
My own backup solution is complicated at first look but I absolutely can not tolerate data loss.
Current setup at home.
Windows 7 Desktop PC
Physical Backup: I have three hard disk drives in the desktop, 2x500GB drives setup in RAID 0, this means Windows sees a 1TB drive and I get almost double the performance as there are two disks spinning, the downside to RAID 0 is no redundancy if one disk fails I lose all my data and this is unacceptable, I could backup the data in a conventional way but that would involve days reinstalling, setting up software and configuration. Instead I have the third disk drive that has the combined size of the other two, once a week I run an image backup on to this, that way if I do get any issues or hardware failures I can replace / fix the issue and have an exact copy of my system imaged back onto my computer that takes around an hour. 
Network backup: On top of that I run the built in Windows 7 backup utility that connects to a box on my local network in the house, its a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, essentially a box with two disk drives in RAID 1 (Each disk has an exact copy of the other). On to this I have daily backups of all my photos and other documents.
Offsite backup: I have a free subscription to iDrive that allows real time backup of only my photos from my photo library, so even if my house burns down I still have a backup I can get to. I also use Windows Live SkyDrive with Windows Live Mesh to sync and backup my documents between the computers that I use.
Windows 7 Tablet PC
On the Tablet I have Windows 7 running the built in Backup utility as well as SkyDrive & Mesh.
Apple MacBook Pro
The MacBook has built in backup software called TimeMachine, it create a similar backup to the Windows machines on to the network ReadyNAS box, I also use Apples iCloud service to back up other documents and settings.
Netgear ReadyNAS Duo backup box
As mentioned this is a box that plugs into your home network and has two hard disk drives that are mirrored(that is each disk has an exact copy of the other) for more info Link to Amazon Netgear ReadyNAS
Booting Windows 7 from your USB Drive
Every now and them you need to reinstall your operating system, if you have a notebook or netbook that does not have a CD/DVD drive this can be a problem, thankfully most modern laptops have the ability to boot from a USB Disk/Pen drive.
To do this you need tow things, a 4GB USB drive and a Windows 7 install DVD or the Windows 7 ISO file.
There are two methods to doing this, one is using the GUI (Graphics Interface / Windows point and Click) and the other at the command line.
If you are familiar with DOS or entering commands at a prompt like this C:\ ~ then Id recommend using the second method. If your new to computing and looking for the quick and easy way to install, or more likely reinstall Windows 7 then use the second method.
The first method:
STEP 1 – Open the command prompt .
(you cant just launch it like a normal program, it need administrator permissions)
At this point the drive you want to install and boot Windows 7 from should be connected to the computer, you should also have your Windows 7 boot DVD or .iso file ready.
Click the Start button (bottom right) in the search box type”CMD” without the quotes, then right click once on the CMD at the top of the list, this will give you a menu like the one below.
Alternates are:
*Type cmd in Start menu search box and hit Ctrl+ Shift+ Enter.
Or
*Go to Start menu > All programs > Accessories, right click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
Step 2 – Start the Disk part tool
type DISKPART and hit enter to see the below message.
Step 3 – Select the USB drive that you are using.
Type LIST DISK and then make a note of your USB Drive number, you should be able to tell what Disk number your USB drive is by its size.
Step 4 – Select the USB disk and format.
Enter the following commands, using your disk number from above.
SELECT DISK 1
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
(wait for the format process to finish)
enter the next two commands
ASSIGN
EXIT
Step 5 – Make the USB drive bootable
using the same command prompt as above and with your Windows 7 DVD inserted or ISO Mounted enter the following command.
D: CD BOOT
Then
BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 E:
Where D: is the drive that has your Windows 7 DVD or ISO mounted.
Where E: is the drive letter assigned to your USB Drive.
Step 6 – Copy all the Windows 7 files.
Now that the USB is ready to boot all you need to do is copy all the files on your Windows 7 DVD and copy them to the USB drive.
Insert the USB drive into the computer you are installing onto and select the appropriate option to boot from the USB drive.
The second method, use this tool provided here:
http://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/en-GB/Service-Centre/Windows-7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool
Its a small tool that basically automates the steps above.
Amazon Kindle!
I’ve been using an Amazon Kindle for almost a year now, the 3rd generation keyboard device. As a student its very useful in many ways:
- I can carry all my books and music on one device, I can view them up-to-date on any.
- Because it uses whisper-sync, all my books are available from the web browser, mobile phone and computer desktop application.
- It has a built in dictionary that has been extremely useful when I come across a word that I’m unfamiliar with.
If your a student the new Amazon kindle is out and Id highly recommend it.
Click here to view the new Kindle and get info: LINK
LSL Linden Scripting Language IDE
For part of my course we are learning to use Second Life and its built in Scripting language. As I’m just getting started I don’t have a lot to say at the moment with the exception of learning tools.
To write and edit scripts you are required to use the built in IDE, unfortunately my graphics chip isn’t that great at running 3D Engines like Second Life, I want to learn the Scripting language with out running Second Life, I was planning to use something like notepad++ but a quick search turned up something even better, the LSL Editor, its an open source script editor for Second Life and its open source via Source-forge, you can download and use it for free although they are asking for donation.
Its a tiny download and a single executing file.
Its quite similar to a lot of code editors that are available for other languages.
You can create single scripts or group them together in projects.
It has an inbuilt debugger that lets you run the scripts and interact with them.
Download is here: LSL Editor
Have a quick look at these screen dumps
Using your Microsoft hosted email account / Windows Live services (part 1)
Thankfully the college I’m attending is using Microsoft hosted services to provide email accounts to students. Its a hosted Microsoft Exchange solutions that provides email, calendar & contacts stored on an Exchange server, its integrated with Windows Live, so you can use it very much like a Hotmail account.
You can logon from almost any web browser, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc. If you have a Smartphone, iPhone/Android/Blackberry device then you should be able to set up your account to sync with your email, calendar & contacts, it also supports syncing of your to-do/notes. This is very useful if you put your timetable and meetings/appointments on as your phone can remind you and help keep track.
I have Microsoft Office 2010 Outlook installed and all these things sync here too, If I make a change on my phone it copies to the computer and vice versa.
What do I use?
My current setup: Paper free as much as possible.
Almost everything I do relating to my time studying this course is done on a laptop, a Dell Latitude XT.
The XT is a 13” multi-touch ink enabled convertible tablet. You can get the XT/XT2 models on eBay for around £400 refurbished.
You can find an excellent review here http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080118/dell-latitude-xt-tablet-pc-review/
The operating system is Windows 7 Ultimate
http://www.software4students.co.uk/Windows_7-software.aspx
The full retail price is £249.95 but is on offer for £59.22
I also have Microsoft Office 2010 installed, if you are a full time student you can get a really good deal here:
http://www.software4students.co.uk/Microsoft_Office_2010_Professional_Plus-details.aspx
The full retail price is £392.10 but is on offer for £37.89
I also have the Windows Live suite installed, http://download.live.com using this software in combination with Microsoft SkyDrive/cloud services is really useful, ill probably post something with more details about this on here later.
Totally free, includes some useful tools including Window Live Writer that I use to write/edit this weblog
If you are a software development student in the UK you can get a lot of free software from here:
http://www.dreamspark.com you just need to register with your institutions .ac.uk email address.
I have both Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 & 2010 Pro installed all for free.
How did i get here?
I’m just about to start my second year of a software development course at Cardonald college. Getting here has been quite a journey, at the time of writing this I am an unemployed 30 year old who has worked in various IT Support roles for the last 8 years. My last full time job was with Telefonica O2 providing technical customer support, for just over two years I worked in various roles, providing support to customers over the phone via email and using remote desktop tools to solve various technical issues, the job its self was not bad but ultimately I was not happy there, I was also diagnosed with a heart condition that required surgery, not long after returning to work full time I was offered a redundancy package as the company was trying to save on costs across the board, after careful consideration I opted to accept the offer and consider what to do next. I spent almost 3 months considering different options including studying full time, again. I was not happy with the idea of going back into another support role, especially working in the environment of a large company, having worked for Dell & O2 I really dislike the environment that you have to work in, something that Ill probably write about on a separate post in the future.
I’ve always had an interest in how things work, growing up I was never satisfied with the standard answers, anyone who was a teacher or a person in authority would soon get to know me as the awkward annoying kid who always asked “why?”, my parents were bemused when they bought me toys or any electronic gadgets for xmas/birthdays as after a short period id taken them to pieces to find out how they work and what’s inside. When ever I learn about a new device or gadget, some piece of ground breaking technology I get lost in my own excitement, searching and reading all I can about it online, Id say I get super excited about gadgets and technology, I’m very much the stereotypical geek type.
Software has always been something I’ve had an interest in, yes or no, on or off, you can write code that does exactly what you want it to do, and it will always work in a very predictable way, if you get an error or problem you can go into the code and work out exactly what’s wrong, to me that’s something that is very appealing.
There are two main reasons I wanted to create this blog and website:
I can share what I’m working on publicly, allowing anyone to see, contribute and comment on code and various aspects of my course. Hopefully I will be contributing something useful along the way.
In the future when I apply for jobs I can easily point to the projects that I have worked on.
I’m planning to update this blog as much as is possible in the future so please subscribe via RSS or come back for updates.
Iain