The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Disk2vhd – new tool from SysInternals

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/10

Recently, SysInternals introduced Disk2vhd.

This is a tool that generates a VHD (virtual hard disk image) from a physical disk.
Even better: it can do this for a running system that is online!
They use volume snapshots (a.k.a. Volume Shadowcopy Service) to do this on-line.

From their site:

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk – Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion

via Disk2vhd.

Note: Sysinternals now has a Live Share at http://live.sysinternals.com where you can download the most recent versions of their tools.

–jeroen

Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »

Windows 7: new shortcut keys (windows hotkeys and more)

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/06

In the past there were already a lot of shortcuts, including a few including the windows key.

SEO Consultants has a good overview of both lists.

Microsoft has the classic list.

Windows 7 introduced quite a few more, which I’ll list below.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Event, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User | 5 Comments »

Microsoft: IE9 also favours HTML5 over Flash (IEBlog : HTML5 Video)

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/04

Last week, I blogged that we should move away from Flash to HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, commenting on Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash post announcing support for HTML5 including video playback of H.264 encoded video.

In the mean time, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team announced that in IE9 they are going to support HTML5 and that H.264 will be the only supported video encoding standard.

There is a truckload of hardware that supports H.264 decoding acceleration.

So  the movement is from a plethora of video encoding standards into one broadly accepted H.264 standard.
When you look at the combination of support in HTML5/H.264 for all the major browsers, only FireFox has not announced support. This is probably because H.264 is not a free (as in beer) standard: commercial use requires payment. But  – if I read the H.264 article right – content that is free for end users requires no royalties to be paid.

This combined hardware and software support means that there is a pretty strong backing for H.264!

–jeroen

Reference: IEBlog : HTML5 Video.

Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, HTML5, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

WhiteHouse.gov releases part of their code as Open Source

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/03

I just noticed that WhiteHouse.gov last week released some of their code as Open Source.

In addition to using the Open Source Drupal project, they actually contribute to the Open Source community as well.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

Scott Adams Blog: That Lost 4G Phone 04/26/2010

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/03

Scott Adams blogged about the lost 4G phone; the blog includes two drafts of comics that will never get themselves into the Dilbert comic pipeline.

Fun nonetheless.

–jeroen

Posted in Geeky | Leave a Comment »

10 tips for getting rid of stubborn malware | News | TechRadar UK

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/05/02

It is easy – even for experienced power users – to get your PC infected by a virus, trojan horse or other form of malware.

These 10 tips for getting rid of stubborn malware from TechRadar UK should help you getting back on track.

–jeroen

Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »

Thoughts on Flash – we should use HTML5, CSS and JavaScript in stead

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/30

Steve Jobs just posted his Thoughts on Flash.

Let me add another thought: I hate flash apps.

Flash should go, and we all should go for HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.

The primary reason I dislike Flash is similar to this quote from Steve Jobs’ post: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in CSS, Development, HTML, HTML5, Software Development, Web Development | 2 Comments »

SQL Server 2008 R2 got to RTM last week

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/29

After the excitement of .NET 4.0 and all the tools around it, I totally forgot to mention that SQL Server 2008 R2 got to RTM.

If you are an MSDN subscriber you can download it there.

If you are not, you can download the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM – Express with Management Tools.

Brent Ozar wrote a pretty nice FAQ on the new SQL Server 2008 R2 features, much better than the “what’s new” and press release by Microsoft.

Feature conclusion so far:

  • nice new stuff for Business Intelligence
  • no new stuff on the engine and T-SQL front
  • watch your licensing when doing virtualization; the non-R2 is far cheaper for that

–jeroen (who just turned 41 today)

Posted in .NET, Database Development, Delphi, Development, Software Development, SQL Server | 2 Comments »

TeamViewer beta for Linux is available

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/29

The TeamViewer team announced they have a beta version available for Linux.
The current beta is version v5.0.8252, so it has newer version 5 features.

There are installers for:

  • Red Hat, Fedora, Suse, Mandriva (32/64-Bit)
  • Debian, Ubuntu (32-Bit)
  • Debian, Ubuntu (64-Bit)

And there is a generic .tar.gz file.

You can find them their Linux download page.

With the new beta, they now cover Windows, Mac OS, Linux and the iPhone.
Very convenient indeed!

–jeroen

Posted in *nix, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0

Posted by jpluimers on 2010/04/28

The Microsoft patterns & practices Developer Center released the Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0 last week.
This version of the Enterprise Library has a ton of new features, and now has full support for .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010.

Next to using it from C#/VB.NET, I’m looking forward to see how well this can be used from the upcoming Delphi Prism 2011 release (scheduled to be released on May 15th).

Lots of stuff to experiment with :-)

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C# 4.0, Delphi, Development, Prism, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

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