Diverse & Colorful - MichiGreat

Shortest URLs of the Internet

2012-02-23T12:06:00.002-08:00

Some TLD operators have DNS entries of type "A" directly on their DNS, so these are the shortest possible URLs in the Internet. I wrote a small program in just ten minutes that finds all of them using a list from IANA:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;

namespace TldDns
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
WebClient wc = new WebClient();
string TldList = "http://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt";
string[] allTlds;
using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(wc.OpenRead(TldList)))
{
allTlds = sr.ReadToEnd().Split('\n');
}
int cnt = 0;
IPAddress[] addresses;
foreach (string tld in allTlds)
{
if (cnt > 0)
{
try
{
addresses = Dns.GetHostAddresses(tld + ".");
if (addresses.Length > 0)
{
Console.WriteLine("Entries for {0}", tld);
foreach (IPAddress address in addresses)
{
Console.WriteLine(" " + address.ToString());
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine("Quering host entry for {0} caused an error.", tld);
}
}
cnt++;
}
Console.WriteLine("\nFinished.");
Console.ReadKey(true);
}
}
}

Unfortunately, if a domain has no A entry, Dns.GetHostAddresses throws an exception which slows execution down dramatically. The programs needs about 15 minutes (!) on my PC to run.

Here are the TLDs I found and if a web site is available too (having an A entry doesn't necessarly mean that a web server runs on that address):

http://ac/
http://ai/
cm (points to 195.24.205.60, no web site available)
http://dk/
gg (points to 87.117.196.80, no web site available)
http://io/
je (points to 193.223.78.212, no web site available)
kh (points to 203.223.32.21, no web site available)
ph (points to 203.119.4.7, no web site available)
http://pn/ (404?)
http://sh/ (forwards to http://www.nic.sh/)
tk (points to 217.119.57.22, no web site available)
http://tm/
to (points to 216.74.32.107, no web site available)
http://uz/
vi (points to 193.0.0.198, no web site available)
http://ws/ (forwards to http://www.website.ws/)
XN--O3CW4H (that's a IDN in some non-ASCII coding)

Interesting, isn't it? :-)

Grazer Hauptbahnhof Februar 2012

2012-02-15T04:37:00.000-08:00

Heute habe ich vom 10. OG des Bauamts aus Fotos vom Grazer Hauptbahnhof gemacht und vorgestern und gestern vor dem neuen Bahnhofvorplatz.

Blick vom 10 OG des Bauamts auf die Straßenbahnunterführung und den neuen Bahnhofvorplatz (15.02.2012)

Blick zur Baustelle von ca. 1 OG des Bauamts (14.02.2012)

Blick auf die Baustelle vom nordseitigen Ausgang aus (13.02.2012)

Blick auf die Baustelle von der temporären Bushaltestelle der Linien 58/58E/63 aus

Thank god there is convmv

2012-02-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Some years ago, a stupid error happend to me: As I found in some tutorials, I mounted a Windows share from my Windows 2000 Server on my Ubuntu machine with "mount -t cifs" and so on, and moved a lot of pictures files from the Windows server to my Ubuntu server. Some weeks later I discovered that a lot of filenames got srambled. In detail, it was some umlauts and the "ß" (we use these letters in German) and some "é" and "è" from french descriptions that were replaced by some strange characters. Today, I searched the web for a solution and found it: convmv! Just do a "apt-get install convmv" to get that small program and call it like this:

convmv -r -f cp850 -t utf-8 *

If would show you for every file in your folder and its subfolders, if there would be something to do. If you are happy with the results, you put a "--notest" at the end, so it reads like this:

convmv -r -f cp850 -t utf-8 * --notest

And your file names are fixed. :-)

Hint: It's quite more intelligent to leave file names as they are (for example, my digital camera gives them names like DSCN0305.JPG) and save remarks and descriptions in the EXIF metadata or the like. In previous times (before 2009) I used to rename photos and I found out that's it's a bad idea, not only because of encoding problems when transferring or archiving those files, but also because it's the default setting of almost every file system browser like Windows Explorer, Nautilus, Thunar and so on to sort files alphabetically. If you leave the default names from your camera, your sorting is always in the same order as you have taken the pictures (sorting by EXIF data is possible too for example in Windows Explorer, but this forces the file system browser to look up the EXIF data in every file which takes much longer than sorting by file name on current systems).

Ist das am Nordpol oder in Leoben?

2012-02-11T06:23:00.001-08:00

-12 °C haben's in sich... *bibber*

Google Toolbar in Firefox 10

2012-02-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

Recently, Mozilla has released Firefox 10 and at the first start, the Google Toolbar disappeared. I did the trick I have reported about some weeks ago and voilà, Google Toolbar is here again. :-)

Erste Fahrt mit dem elektrischen Stadler GTW

2012-01-23T23:25:00.000-08:00

Am 25.10.2011 bin ich ja schon mit Tobias mit dem dieselelektrischen Stadler-GTW (VT 5063 bei der GKB) gefahren. Nachdem ich heute Tobias in den Kindergarten gebracht habe, habe ich heute das Vergnügen, das Erste mal mit dem elektrischen Stadler GTW von Leoben Hbf (Abfahrt 08:18) nach Graz Hbf (Ankunft 09:03) zu fahren (4062 002). Wie bei neueren Zügen scheinbar üblich, hat auch dieser ein lautes, nerviges Gepiepse beim Schließen der Türen.

Das Innere gefällt mir ganz gut. Es ist sehr viel Platz - eigentlich fühlt man sich wie in der 1. Klasse! Im Gegensatz zu den sonst ganz tollen Talent der ÖBB hat dieser Zug auch eine Stromversorgung bei den Sitzplätzen! Das erinnert mich wieder daran, dass ich mal einen Zugbegleiter fragte, ob der Talent nicht irgendwo eine Steckdose hätte und dieser mir entgegnete: "Nein, das ist ja ein Nahverkehrszug!" Hm. Ich frage mich, was das eine mit dem anderen zu tun hat. Nachdem das Wort Nahverkehr für ÖBB auch eine mehrstündige Zugfahrt (z.B. Graz - Unzmarkt mit dem REX 1763: Fahrtzeit 1 h 48 min) bedeutet und nicht alle, so wie ich, ein Notebook haben, wo der Akku mehr als 8 Stunden hält, wäre es ja wohl nicht zu viel verlangt gewesen, wenigstens ein paar Plätze mit Steckdosen auszustatten.

Leider ist der REX um 8 Uhr 18 derzeit noch der einzige Stadler GTW von Leoben nach Graz. Mal sehen, was der nächste Fahrplanwechsel und die seit ca. 2002 alljährlichen Zugstreichungen der ÖBB in der Obersteiermark so bringen.

Die Sitze sind in etwa so hart wie beim Talent und nicht so weich wie beim Cityshuttle. Vor der Haltestelle ertönt eine kurze Melodie und eine weibliche Stimme sagt: "Nächste Haltestelle - Frohnleiten".

Vielleicht habe ich in Graz dann schnell die Gelegenheit, kurz in der Führerstand zu schauen. :-)

English Wikipedia blackout / Ausfall der Englischen Wikipedia

2012-01-17T00:45:00.001-08:00

Tomorrow, on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia will be shut down for 24 hours, beginning at 5 o'clock UTC. Read on here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

Herewith I would like to announce that I fully support this activity! Freedom and democracy are values that are worth to fight for every day! Our prosperity is based on freedom and democracy!

--

Morgen, am Mittwoch, 18. Jänner 2012, wird die Englische Wikipedia ab 5 Uhr UTC (6 Uhr MEZ) für 24 Stunden abgedreht. Weitere Informationen befinden sich hier (in englischer Sprache): http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

Hiermit möchte ich verlautbaren, dass ich diese Aktion voll unterstütze! Freiheit und Demokratie sind Werte, für die es sich jeden Tag zu kämpfen lohnt! Unser Wohlstand basiert auf Freiheit und Demokratie!

How to enable Google Toolbar in Firefox 5+

2012-01-15T03:46:00.000-08:00

So far, I've denied upgrading Firefox, because the very useful Google Toolbar stopped working as from Firefox version 5. Due to the new strategy of Mozilla to release a new version of Firefox every 6 weeks, add-ons turn "incompatible", even if the API hasn't changed at all. But not upgrading Firefox exposures it to several security flaws, as Mozilla stops maintaining "old" Firefox versions.

I thought that Firefox would just deny executing the add on because of "some data". Something tells Firefox, "don't execute Google Toolbar". I raked up my profile's directory and found a solution. Here it is:

Quit Firefox
In the "extensions" folder of your profile's folder, there should be a folder named "{3112ca9c-de6d-4884-a869-9855de68056c}"
There is a file "install.rdf"
Open this file with an editor of your choice (in Windows, I recommend Microsoft Visual Studio (there are free versions, so called "Express Editions", out there))
Find a phrase like this one: 4.0.*
Just change "4" to your Firefox version number (should be 9 at the time of writing this blog), so it is: 9.0.*
Start Firefox

At least for Version 9, this method worked. I will repeat this in every new version and once it fails, I will report it.

The first abundant snowfall in Leoben in winter 2011/2012 / Der erste ergiebige Schneefall in Leoben im Winter 2011/2012

2012-01-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

My son Tobias and I were riding downhill with a bobsleigh after the first abundant snowfall in Leoben in winter 2011/2012.

Mein Sohn Tobias und ich sind mit einem Bob gefahren nach dem ersten ergiebigen Schneefall in Leoben im Winter 2011/2012.

Watch video on YouTube/Schau das Video auf YouTube an: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEhlXWW5rsU

Meine dritte Fahrt mit dem ÖBB Railjet

2012-01-03T23:27:00.001-08:00

Heute fahre ich bereits das 3. Mal mit dem ÖBB Railjet. Letzte Woche war es zwei mal der RJ 754, mit dem ich von Graz nach Bruck/Mur gefahren bin, heute fahre ich mit dem RJ 551 von Bruck/Mur nach Graz.

Mir gefällt der Zug auf jeden Fall sehr gut! Vor allem die Anzeige, wo man gerade ist, hat's mir angetan. Denn am Abend weiß man zwischen Frohnleiten und Bruck/Mur nicht, wo man ist, da man auf mehreren Kilometern nur Dunkelheit sieht.

Man sieht auch die kommenden Haltestellen mit voraussichtlicher Ankunft:

Mittlerweile sitze ich schon wieder im RJ 754, das ist somit meine vierte Fahrt. :-)

Etwas nervig finde ich, gleich wie beim Stadler GTW, den ich am 25.10.2011 getestet habe, lediglich das Gepiepse, wenn sich die Türen schließen.

Schade finde ich, dass es im gesamten Zug nur einen (!) Kinderwagenabstellplatz gibt (eventuell passen zwei kleine Buggies hin). Familien sind bei den ÖBB offensichtlich unerwünscht! Wenn dem so ist, brauche ich meine bald auslaufende "Vorteilscard Familie" auch nicht verlängern, dann werden in Zukunft eben wieder mehr Kilometer mit dem Auto heruntergespult. Schade!

Ansonsten ist der Railjet aber ein toller Zug!

Find the error on this wonder wheel entry card

2011-11-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

Horrible support of Eee PC 1005 HA in Xubuntu 11.10 Beta 2

2011-10-01T13:10:00.001-07:00

I just tested Xubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 and experienced a horrible support for my Eee PC 1005 HA. While it worked almost perfectly in Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix (NBR), I already learned to live with the fact, that Fn+F1 (go standby) doesn't work in Xubuntu 11.04 and Fn+F2 (WLAN on/off) behaves strangely. So far so bad - Xubuntu 11.10 Beta 2 is even worse! The only things that work is adjusting screen brightness with Fn+F5/F6 and volume with Fn+F10/F11/F12. All other combinations are dead. Also the special key for deactivating the touchpad, which is quite useful while typing longer texts, doesn't work. The touchpad is just a normal touchpad in Ubuntu, while it is multitouch capable in Windows XP. It is really sad that nobody could develop a driver for the Eee PC 1005 HA and compatible touchpads in all those years. It's clear, that Linux can't be a winner over Windows, if you have to cope with so many disadvantages and you're brought back 10 years by just using Linux.

Test pictures with my new camera

2011-09-30T12:41:00.001-07:00

Quite interesting: There's is definitely no green light in the ground floor, but the sensors record such.

If you look in the windows of that train, you see yourself distorted. But for the camera the window is actually merely a mirror.

My new camera: Nikon Coolpix S3000

2011-09-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

Because my old camera (Fujifilm Finepix, bought in January 2002) already had some technical problems, I wanted to buy a new camera. I planned this already for some months, because my cell phone's built-in cam isn't even good enough to take quick snap shots (pictures look ugly, even under camera-friendly circumstances). So, yesterday I went to a shop in Graz and asked for used cameras, because I wouldn't need a brand new one. The guy at the shop showed me some cameras, where two of them were more recent models. In the evening I searched the web for addtional information about these cameras and finally I decided to buy the Nikon Coolpix S3000, which I did today in the morning. Here it is:

Picture taken with my cell phone's cam - you see the worse quality.

Another advantage of an extra camera is, that nobody can call me there while taking photos. ;-)

Sugar vs. Salt

2011-08-22T08:53:00.003-07:00

Sometimes I think reality fools me. The name of Facebook's boss is - as you may be know - Mark Zuckerberg. One of the competitors of Facebook is Diaspora and its boss's name is Maxwell Salzberg. The funny part is not just that their names both end in "...berg", but the meanings of their names: "Zucker" is a German word that means "sugar", "Salz" is also German and means "salt", "berg" (well, it's German too) means "mountain". So, their names mean "sugar mountain" and "salt mountain". Crazy!

Funny bug in Google Toolbar

2011-08-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

On 19th of June 2010, a funny bug happend in the Google Toolbar translator:"Eierbecher" means "egg cup" in English. The random characters seen on the screen indeed don't means anything similar to "Eierbecher" - at least not in German. May be in Icelandic (watch at the word that I looked up in Wikipedia some time before I took the screenshot)?

2011-06-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

I just got this dialog when I downloaded Google Chrome and Internet Explorer crashed. When I read it, I thought: "Yes, there is a solution available. I just installed it." :-)

Fight against Tomcat 6 under Ubuntu

2011-05-27T11:38:00.001-07:00

This blog post is for all people who fight against Apache Tomcat 6 under Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution. The goal is to install a servlet application.

Tomcat has an built-in manager. To make it running, you first have to create an entry like this in your /etc/tomcat6/tomcat-users.xml:

No - /usr/share/tomcat6/webapps is not the directory where your servlet files go to, even if that looks logical or intuitive. Instead, you have to use /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps

Have a look at you application's WEB-INF directory, where you could find a web.xml file, it could contain paths that you would like to adjust.

Ubuntu's ubiquity still fails to generate initrd sometimes

2011-04-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

Under some circumstances (whatever these are - I have no clue), ubiquity - Ubuntu's installer - fails to generate the initial ramdisk file (initrd). This bug is already known for a long time. One solution is to enter the just installed system from another (working) system and let it generate the initrd. Another solution is to get the initial ramdisk file from somewhere else. Either from another computer where ubiquity did it's job correctly, like I did, or from some other resource. The best way is to check if everything worked accordingly after installation and in case the initrd file (located in /boot) is missing, you can for example download it from here:

http://temp.mkcs.at/linux/ubuntu-1104-natty/initrd.img-2.6.38-7-generic.bin

Windows Server 2008 R2: NTLDR is missing

2011-01-11T08:30:00.000-08:00

Just use the search engine of your trust and let it search for "Windows Server 2008 NTLDR is missing" and you will find many occurences of this problem. It happens every time I do Windows Update or if I connect my other hard disk and try to boot Windows Server 2008 by GRUB (which normally is possible easily). Then I have to search for my Windows Server 2008 DVD - yes, Microsoft still uses technology from the 1990s to distribute their OS, while booting Ubuntu means just entering 4 lines in my grub.cfg and it boots off the desired ISO file from my (much faster) hard disk - and boot it while having my second hard disk disconnected, doing some quirky repair, rebooting and boot again from DVD, repairing again, and rebooting and hoping. Hm, is that the way I expect my computer to work? No. So, I won't install Windows any more on real hardware, I only will install it inside virtual PCs where it is "alone" and can't do anything bad (although I still like Windows Server 2008 R2, it's basically a great product, just the boot loader sucks).

Taktverdichtung 58er/63er: Es geschehen noch Wunder!

2011-01-11T08:12:00.001-08:00

Manchmal geschehen offenbar doch noch Wunder: Habe ich im Juni 2010 noch darüber schimpfen müssen, dass die Linien 58 und 63 in Graz an Werktagen im Sonntagsintervall verkehren, obwohl die Busse hier seit Jahrzehnten überfüllt sind, hat sich hier durchaus etwas positiv geändert: Die Linien 58 und 63 fahren seit September 2010 werktags den ganzen Tag im 10-Minuten-Intervall (und sind trotzdem relativ gut ausgelastet) und zwischen 8 und 10 Uhr fährt außerdem die Linie 58E zwischen Hauptbahnhof und Uni. Ich finde jedoch, der 58E könnte ruhig schon ab 7 Uhr 30 fahren. Toll wäre auch, wenn die Studenten sich nicht alle in den 63er quetschen und dessen Abfertigungszeit unnötig hinauszögern und den 58E fast leer abfahren lassen. Wenn in den nächsten Monaten und Jahren noch die zu liefernden Variobahn-Straßenbahnen in Graz auf den Schienen rollen, werden die Graz AG Linien vielleicht auch in der Lage sein, die Linien 1, 5 und 7 öfters fahren zu lassen oder auf bestimmten Ästen zu verstärken, da diese momentan ja auch notorisch überlastet sind. Dann sind wir in Graz ein Stück näher Richtung akzeptablen ÖPNV, was diesen als Alternative zur ungeheuren Umweltverschmutzung durch Autos, die fossile Treibstoffe verwenden, machen könnte. Meine Lunge (ich leider mitunter stark unter der schlechten Luft in Graz) wird's danken!

Qtek 8100 vs. Orange Boston (Android 1.6)

2010-08-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

This time I want to write an article honoring my new smart phone, I own since July, 23rd, 2010. It is the replacement of my Qtek 8100 smart phone which I purchased on December, 30th, 2005. Since mid 2008, the "green" and "red" key for answering and quitting phone calls and - the latter - for locking the key pad didn't work any more, so I always had to select these functions from the menus - annoying. Since then, I searched for a worthy follower, which was very difficult. Once you're used to such a good phone like my Qtek 8100 was, your expectations are very high. Most of the phones that are produced today are technical crap, with may be one exception: Apple's iPhone. But that phone has one big disadvantage: its price. The greatest producer of crap seems to be Samsung: Their mobile phones seem to have severe stability problems (i.e., they crash very often and need to be restarted, which seems to be accepted by most customers and is obviously considered to be "normal") and the software has never gone through testing, not even rudimentary testing. Samsung is stingy with updates to their phones and doesn't care about their customers. Once they paid, they're lost. I read hundreds of comments on Amazon and my picture of Samsung turned bad. Similar applies to LG. One of the few smart phone producers that create reasonably products is HTC, but I also coudn't afford one of their phones. However, after reading a lot and searching a lot, I found a good offer of a Android 1.6 driven smart phone at Orange Austria. I got it for "free", so I thought, it it doesn't do its job very well, I could replace it in a few months if I have the money. But my old phone had to be replaced urgently, as described above. The biggest challenge for me was to find an easy and quick way how to transport all of my phone numbers and calendar entries to the new phone. This was the critical point that made most of the current phones unusable for me, because there is no acceptable synchronization software. Transferring all my data was easy: I sync'ed the Qtek with my PC, exported my phone book as a CSV file and uploaded that file to my Gmail contacts - finished. I did the same with my calendar and all my data was not just on my phone but also in the cloud, so I can now edit my phone book and calendar online. That's great. :-) It took me about 10 minutes to achive this task. That's how it should work! After using the phone for almost two weeks, I can figure out its positive and negative properties:

Positive

If I turn the phone, the screen flips in about a second
The virtual keyboard is simple to use and offers everything I need
The touch screen works very well (but I think, iPhone's touch screen is more precise)
The overall usability is satisfying
Phone shows how much energy which components are using
The mechanism to lock the screen is pressing shortly on the on/off button, to unlock you have to press the on/off button and touch the menu button. So, unlocking can't happen unintentionally very easy.
The phone has a built-in 5 megapixel camera. The pictures taken with it look much worse than the ones from my 2 megapixel "real" digital camera, but hey, it's a cell phone, that's okay. Sony Ericsson phones are known to take much better photos, if that is important for someone.

Negative

The screen that shows the state of the battery shows that only in 10% steps. I've installed an app that shows the state on the screen and it also displays in 10% steps. That might be okay for simple phones or for smart phones with strong batteries, but for a phone where you can empty the battery in less than an hour (by turning on WLAN and GPS), this is not good. Whereby it's worth to notice, that it's very simple to do the calculation (present state divided by design capacity).
There's an alarm clock installed, but it only supports annoying ringtones that I don't want to hear in the morning! There's no possibility to use one of the other ringtones that are used for calls and also there's no possibility to choose a file from the SD card. The app I installed (Alarm Clock Plus V2) crashes regularly, once it crashed even at night, so I need a "backup" alarm clock.
The camera doesn't write or only sometimes writes metadata like date/time, width, height, and orientation. But it writes geo data... nice. :-/
It the phone is connected to a PC and the phone is used as a mass storage device, the SD card can't be used on the phone. I know that other phones also have this problem, nevertheless that is ridiculous.
The preinstalled app for watching photos doesn't react to gestures, instead you have to touch two arrows for selecting the previous or next picture. Alternatively, you can touch the screen so the arrows appear and then - as quick as you can - use the track ball (you have to move around and then click) to switch to the next picture. If you're not quick enough, the arrows disappear and you have to try again.

Despite of some annoyances, I'm very happy with that phone and I don't regret choosing it.

Übersiedlung der Konzernzentrale - Erfahrungen mit den Graz AG Verkehrsbetrieben

2010-06-28T08:37:00.001-07:00

Unser Konzern hat eine neue Zentrale in St. Leonhard und heute war für viele der erste Arbeitstag dort. Darunter war auch meine Wenigkeit. In der Früh habe ich mir überlegt, welche Variante ich heute wohl nehmen werde, um in die Arbeit zu kommen. Ich entschied mich, mit der Buslinie 63 vom Hauptbahnhof bis zur Haltestelle Merangasse zu fahren. Nun, das werde ich - zumindest um 7 Uhr 26 - nicht mehr machen, weil das ist nicht so gut für meine Magennerven. Es fängt mal damit an, dass der Bus 3 min vor Abfahrt schon voll ist. Dann kommt er fast nicht aus dem Bahnhofsareal raus, weil idiotische Autofahrer die Kreuzung zusperren. Wieso auch nicht, schließlich wird das nicht geahndet und das Gefühl, erster zu sein (auch wenn man es nicht ist) ist doch viel wert, da kann man doch schon mal ein paar Leute behindern und denen Zeit stehlen. Oder, liebe Grazer Stadtverwaltung? Dann ist es im Schneckentempo die Keplerstraße runtergegangen. 10 min hat der Bus vom Hauptbahnhof bis zum Lendplatz gebraucht, genau so lange, wie man auch zu Fuß braucht. Nun, ist schon klar, in der Früh ist viel Verkehr und dass der durchschnittliche Autofahrer gerne in Kauf nimmt, im Stau zu nehmen, weiß ich mittlerweile auch, das Problem ist jedoch, dass das ja nicht erst seit einer Woche so ist sondern seit Jahrzehnten. Sicher, die Sperre der Annenstraße verschärft die Situation noch weiter. Allerdings hätten die Leute, die die Fahrpläne machen - und ja, ich weiß auch, dass das keine leichte Arbeit ist - dies einrechnen können. Immerhin verfügen die Graz AG Verkehrsbetriebe über relativ genaue Verspätungsdaten, welche man ja verarbeiten könnte. Wenn man denn nur wollte. Offenbar klappt bei den Graz AG Verkehrsbetrieben die Mitarbeitermotivation nicht besonders gut, was wiederum angesichts der Tatsache, dass höhere Positionen in solchen Unternehmen ja politisch motiviert vergeben werden, fast logisch erscheint. Über die seit Monaten nicht funktionierenden Fahrkartenautomaten will ich mich erst gar nicht auslassen, nicht zuletzt weil ich ja ohnehin im Besitz einer Jahreskarte bin. Wie auch immer, der Bus hatte dann bis zur Merangasse 10 min Verspätung und für mich war klar, dass ich diese Relation morgen wahrscheinlich nicht mehr nehmen werde. Nächstes mal werfe ich einen Blick in die Keplerstraße und wenn die frei ist, setze ich mich in den Bus, andernfalls gibt's ja noch die (nicht klimatisierten) Straßenbahnen.

Bin ja schon gespannt, was ich morgen dann erlebe, falls ich morgen nicht ohnehin die Kombination Rad-Zug-Rad nehme.

Windows Server 2008 R2: Who has control?

2010-06-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I started setting up a system for testing some new Microsoft technologies that I am interested in. These are:

Windows Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2008
Visual Studio 2010

I made a primary partition with 45 GiB on the hard disk that is normally only for data, but it's just a test system that will be removed at some time, so I though it's a good idea to use the faster drive (because the hard drive where my Windows XP and some other operating systems are on, is a not-so-fast PATA drive). I did not want to install it inside a virtual machine because I wanted to know how fast it runs natively. Especially SQL Server and Visual Studio demand a lot of ressources, so I am quite sure this was a good idea.

So, I started installing the operating system - Windows Server 2008 R2. I think in general the installation application is okay so far. When I remembered back in recent Windows clients and servers, the installer told me how long it will approximately need to finish. I have missed this part in the Windows 2008 installer. I have seen that they still haven't removed that poor activation "feature" that makes only problems to people who use Microsoft's software legally (like me) than for those who use illegal copies. If Microsoft thinks that such annoyance helps them increasing their market share, okay. Other operating system vendors think different. Once Windows was up and running, I began to install SQL Server 2008. When I started the setup.exe on the DVD, a message box told me about compatibility problems with my operating system and that I should apply SP 1. But I was a little bit afraid: Will my system still work afterwards? Will it run stable? The message box didn't tell me what could happen. I decided to let it run. As suggested, I installed SP 1 immediately after the SQL Server setup was finished. I tried out SQL Server Management Studio and obviously everything went correct. Then Windows reminded me that new updates for Windows are available. Because I am a good citizen, I let it download and install these updates. Windows wanted to restart and that was okay for me. When it booted up again, there was some message "Configuring updates...". No information on how long it will need, what it really does... Then there appeared a text with a percentage counting up. I still didn't know what Windows does in details, but at least I could estimate how long it will need. When it reached "100%"... no, it did NOT let me log on, it said "Stopping services" and "Shutting down". Then it restarted and the jokes began again. "Configuring updates...", counting up to "100%" and again... reboot! It repeated that procedure three times and all the time there was no information for me what it does or when I will be able to log on again or whatever information that could be useful. Windows just did what it wanted. During that I wondered about the roles of my computer and me. I am used to that I am the master and my computer is my slave. Obviously, Microsoft thinks different about that. If you use Windows, these roles are inverted: Windows does something and you are expected to follow. It is also some kind of behaviour: Just imagine, you want to work with someone together and suddenly this person begins to do something and always says "wait, wait, wait" and you have no idea when you can continue working. Would you like that person? I think it would be a good behaviour of Windows, if it would at least say how many steps it has to complete and how many it has completed already and at least an estimation of how much time this would consume. Then I am able to do something else and are not required to stare at the screen which doesn't tell me much useful.

Next I installed Visual Studio which was no problem. Meanwhile - because staring at the screen is just too boring -, I wanted to watch a video. When I double clicked it in Explorer, I realized that there was no Windows Media Player installed. That's okay I think. Who needs a Media Player on a server anyway? :-) Installing it is easy: I opened an applet in Control Panel that allows me to add Windows features. The feature of choice has the name "Desktop experience", or something like that. It installed Windows Media Player and some other applications and while doing that, it informed me that a restart of Windows would be necessary. What??? I have to restart my operating system because I installed an application? I was wondering. While I was wondering, I opened Firefox and googled for "vlc player", downloaded it, installed it and watched my video.

Unfortunately, it was already late then and I couldn't yet try out the new features, I hope I can do it in the next weeks.

Welcome - Willkommen

2010-06-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my first blog! I will use this blog mainly to write about any technical experiences I have during my day. Sometimes I intend to write about personal things too, if there is something interesting. Most things will be in English, but some things will be in German.

Topics I will write about: Software development (Visual Studio, MonoDevelop, C#, C/C++, Vala...), Database related topics (SQL, PL/SQL, T-SQL, SSIS, SSRS...), Windows Client & Server, Linux (especially Ubuntu), Web technologies (HTTP, HTML, JavaScript, XML...)

Willkommen bei meinem ersten Blog! Ich werde ihn hauptsächlich benutzen um über die technischen Erfahrungen zu schreiben die ich während eines Tages mache. Ich beabsichtige auch manchmal etwas Persönliches zu schreiben, wenn's was interessantes gibt. Das meiste wird in Englisch sein, manche Dinge in Deutsch.

Themen über die ich schreiben werde: Softwareentwicklung (Visual Studio, MonoDevelop, C#, C/C++, Vala...), Themen zu Datenbanken (SQL, PL/SQL, T-SQL, SSIS, SSRS...), Windows Client & Server, Linux (vor allem Ubuntu), Webtechnologien (HTTP, HTML, JavaScript, XML...)