Some of you may be remembering the old CS-Wiki project that I had launched a year or two ago. Well, it's finaly time to update it. But for many reasons, we're unable to simply update the existing project to work with newer versions of CommunityServer. It just dosn't make sense when faced with the release of the Community Server Wiki in the 2008.1 release. So we're launching a from-scratch stand-alone wiki project: dWiki. (d is for db4objects, my employer, but will not be using db4o for the primary datastore)

More details will be coming out as the development proceedes. But our goal is a stand-alone wiki project that will play well with CS and our other websites.

Labels: CS-Wiki, wiki dWiki

http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/

http://www.uniqlo.com/motion/
http://www.uniqlo.com/try/
Click on the English in the bottom right.

It's not new, but its new to me, and I thought it was soooooooo funny.

I'd made the switch a few weeks ago to Windows Server 2008 after my Vista installation finaly started crapping out on me. (and I needed to do some specialized script debugging) I'm not 100% positive that the improvements I'm now experiencing are directly due to some under-the-cover improvements in Server 2008, or if it's just a clean OS install with more up-to-date drivers. But it does feel *almost* better/faster. This website (http://www.win2008workstation.com/) has detailed all the wonderful tweaks and bits to install so that you can have all the "benefits" of Vista available to you in Server 2008.

The only problem that I'm having now seems to be that the entire machine seems to hang for a 1/2 second when an app opens a window for the first time. It feels like a DMA delay when the window resource is allocated. Its frustrating only because it causes any MP3 or video I've got playing to stutter and stop for a second or so. I've looked for more up-to-date audio drivers or graphics drivers, since that seems to be the most likely culprit.

Labels: Vista, Windows Server 2008

So, as many IT admins have found out, Microsoft released KB950049 the other day. (Taylor Brown's announcement) This patch updates Hyper-V from RC0 to RC1. But it dosn't work. On 100% of my servers, applying the patch to the guest OS left the guest without a network card and when logging into the console via Hyper-V, there was no mouse integration. Applying the patch to the host OS seemed to work ok.

Let's say first that I'm not the only one to have issues with this update.

This post on John Howard's blog pointed me to the VMBus device. Sure enough, it was in a "having problems" state. Then I went back to Taylor Brown's announcement and noticed the line that says that there are new Integration Components and that they are part of the disk image. Nice! So I'll just reinstall the integration components! ... NOT!! The integration components don't show up in Programs and Features control panel or in the Installed Updates, and you can't reinstall them. The setup just says that it's already installed, and goes away.

So I went surfing through the integration components disk and I found that the disk is basically a bunch of drivers and an installer wrapper. So here is the process that I finally managed to use to restore all of my virtual servers.

1. Remote into your host system. Logging into the console is better so that you can use your windows keys, but remote desktop will work too.
2. Connect and log into your busted guest OS.
3. Use the Action > Install Integration Components menu item to attach the IC disk.
4. If server manager comes up, then good. If not, figure out how to launch it using only the keyboard. :(
5. Navigate to Diagnostics > Device Manager
6. Find the VMBus device (under System devices) and use the windows context-menu-key (right click) to start the "Update Driver Software..." process. Or press enter, and navigate to the Driver page and the "Update Driver..." button.
7. Choose "Browse my computer"
8. Enter the path "CD_DRIVE:\support\x86\", Include subfolders, and press Enter until the driver is updated.
9. Reboot the guest.
10. YOUR MOUSE SHOULD NOW WORK IN THE GUEST OS.
11. Do the same thing for these devices without rebooting:
    
    • Display Adapters > Microsoft VMBus Video Device
    • Human Interface Devices > Microsoft HID
    • Network Adapters > Microsoft VMBus Network Adapter (it's probably yellow right now)
    • System Devices > Direct Virtual Machine Bus Acceleration Filter Driver (both of them)
    • System Devices > Hyper-V Data Exchange
    • System Devices > Hyper-V Guest Shutdown
    • System Devices > Hyper-V Heartbeat
    • System Devices > Hyper-V Time Syncronization
    • System Devices > Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy
12. Reboot and enjoy your working Hyper-V Server.

Really, someone at Microsoft needs to take notes. If you're going to publish an update that can't be remove, please at least provide a means to Reinstall or Repair the installation.

Labels: Hyper-V, KB950049, Microsoft, Windows Server 2008

I have an urgent request, I need a good book (or better yet, the name of someone I can hire) to help me write a Lexer/Parser for my wiki system. There must be some out there? I need to understand the concepts that go into parsers, not just how to use some of the existing parsers that are out there.

Labels: .NET, Lexer, Microsoft, Parser

Since I'm on a roll, here's a great-looking-site gallery: BestWebGallery. It looks like I've got some work to do.

And here are some CSS tips that look interesting:

• CSS Sprites: Using a larger image and displaying only part of it, many times over a page to reduce load instead of using many smaller images.
• What does beautiful HTML code look like?

Labels: CSS, CSS Sprite

Try any CMS system. (e.g. Graffiti or MODx) and just add FoxyCart. The cart functionality is generally the same as PayPal's, but better.

Labels: CMS, E-Commerce, FoxyCart, Graffiti, MODx, Shopping Cart

I had a friend recently point me to a website: OneManga.com. Let me say this first: I completely abhor sites like this, and I find it despicable. Now, in summary, this website appears to take public submission of scanned and translated Japanese manga, and makes them readable via your browser. They have hundreds of titles, and hundreds of thousands of scanned pages. Here's what is wrong with it:

• None of the content is accredited to either the original author, publisher, source, or translator.
• None of the translations are checked for accuracy or quality.
• It is commonly accepted "grey practice" on the internet to cease distribution once a title has been licensed for release in English. (note LICENSED, not RELEASED) Many of the titles on this site have since been licensed and released. The only note on this site is on the chapter listing page stating "This title has been licensed for release in the US by publisher X." There is no link to the publisher, nor to Amazon. And all of the content is still entirely readable. Sites like AnimeSuki will de-list series immediately upon licensing. Note that actual international treaties have been prooven in the court of law that this is still illegal.
• The site is plastered in banner ads and promotions. I bet the site operators are making tons of money on this site, and not a single dime is going to anyone responsible for the content that is bringing them the traffic.

So, in short: this website pisses in the face of international treaties, copyright law, and moral behavior. It refuses to even make a statement on the legality of its content or even to take credit for its own actions. Not only that, but its usage policy states that the uploaders (who are uncredited) are liable for any uploaded content, that they are the legal copyright holders or representatives, and that OneManga may reuse anything uploaded in any manner that they wish. Why, according to this usage policy, they could legally take the content uploaded, and print it up in a book and start publishing without any regard to the Japanese artist or publisher or even to the legal American license-holder or publisher.

Ok, maybe that wasn't so short.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading GOOD manga. I buy any manga I love. And I think that fan-translated mangas ('scanlations' as they are currently called) are important to growing the popularity of a series to the point where an American publisher will pick it up. I would easily pay $10/month for access to a site like this. Hell, I wonder why Amazon dosn't have an all-you-can-read plan available for their Kindle e-book reader, as layered in DRM as it is. I'm still waiting for publishers to include electronic versions of their books after purchasing the paper version. It should be included. But simply ignoring the law not only isn't a good idea, but it just isn't moral.

I have the same problem with sites like YouTube or any other site that allows users to upload video. Especially when the videos commonly uploaded are plain outright infringing. A perfect example of this are the episodes of Eureka Seven, Naruto or DragonBall that are uploaded by users to GameSpot whenever a new game based on these titles is nearing release. If these user-uploaded-video websites were nearly as commited to "supporting the industry" as they say they are, they would have a button clearly labeled "flag for copyright infringement" right next to the button that says "flag for inappropriate content".

Labels: copyright, manga, OneManga.com

It took me a few weeks to find this project, but I knew it was out there: a component that provides common task-bar/tray notifications (ala Toast in OSx). The Mac version is called Growl. The Windows version is caled Snarl.

Labels: growl, notification, snarl, toast

The Internet Renaissance is back! Google Gears, Dojo, HTML5 spec draft, AJAX, Firefox 3, Air/Flex, Silverlight, that-ugly-flash-thing and lots more! I think my head is going to explode.

Labels: dojo, firefox, flex, gears, HTML, html5, javascript, silverlight