Ufnik's Garbage Can

IPHA - An Open Source Framework for Development of Strategy Games based on Microsoft Technology

2009-08-20T17:53:00.004+03:00

It's official. I became a writer after all...

GRIN Publishing is a nice place where you can submit your written work and let it spread, without your intervention, over the various online resources (such as Google Books).

It's a good way to advertise yourself and get some dividend for the work, instead of letting it just lay in the drawer for good.

So, I published the project I wrote during my studies.
It calls "IPHA - An Open Source Framework for Development of Strategy Games based on Microsoft Technology" and basically contains some interesting information regard the thoughts and possibilities of developing computer-based strategy game.

Take a look at Google Books
OR
Order it from GRIN (and maybe enrich my bank account a little...)

The reasons for the economic slump: My version

2009-03-05T00:42:00.016+02:00

Well, it was a result of a big bang...

When the economic world is full with seething explosive agendas, it is necessary that only one of the agendas will crash to cause the grandiose Tower of Babel to fall down.
And it's true: The sick agenda that light the explosive barrel was the subprime mortgage financial crisis. Sir, you can't expect anything else to happen, and if you do - you just turned a blind eye from the reality, shamelessly.

I'm not a professionally educated economist, but (at least) in one thing I good at, and that is the objectively observing of reality and concluding obvious things that prejudice professionalists are not thinking about at all.

Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts. The facts are these:

The subprime mortgage financial crisis

OR: "RING RING... Hello! I would like to speak with the manager of the bank. (interval) Good morning Mr. Jackson! Listen, I just bought a new house in Miami and I need some cash... ah... no no, don't you worry about my negative current! Hey, I'm about to get a fat heritage in the next six months so there's not a problem.... Yeah sure sure, you can count on me about it... OK... aha aha, so you agree to lend me 300K? Great! Thank you very much Mr. Jackson. Have a nice day!"

The collapse of the American car industry

OR: That's what happened when your private car's engine is 5000cc. The gas is cheap you say? Hah! maybe in Texas, not in Tel Aviv or Paris.

Alcoholic legend

Bad times for the global real estate market

OR: That's what happened when you don't have the shame to ask 2.5 million pounds for your 2.5 rooms, ruined place, and just because it is located in London!

Retailers of consumer electronics are closing

OR: How many times should I tell you that? I don't need another 25" LCD television in my home!

Software companies are shutting down

OR: Reinventing the wheel and call it "a new product" just becuase it has a smoother GUI won't cause me to replace my steady, working system. And NO! I don't want to get your new ERP system in half price.

Hardware companies are shutting down

OR: Why do I need to replace my dual core processor to a quad-core processor if every software is running in the speed of sound? It will run Crysis much faster you say? But I'm 60 years old for god sake! Why would Crysis interests me at all if I don't even know how to do Average in Excel???

Mobile phones manufacturer are shutting down

OR: I'm... I'm really confused now. Tell me again what's the difference between 3.5G cellular and 4G? What else, except of stereo MP3 player, 2MP camera, 1000 different applications, hair drier, frying pan and stapler my mobile phone should be able to do? Let me stay with my 3G phone and watch high quality (NOT) YouTube video in the terribly small screen. That's all I need till the parents home.

It's nice. Really. It's just I don't really need this

Airliners industry is dying

OR: Get a brand new Airbus A340-600? Are you joking? I already have five A340-400 in my fleet! You suggesting A380? Hmmm... intersting, but for the transatlantic routes the A340 is truely enough. By the way, when will you start developing supersonic, CHEAP, airliners? We're at 2009 and the Wright brothers are just a distant memory now.

Airlines are collapsing

OR: How it comes that we still flying these non-economy airliners? Are we captives of the airliners industry and OPEC? (answer: yes, but shhh.....)

It's not the size that matters

The stock exchange is not a safe place anymore

OR: Day traders? Day troublers maybe! And left his words hanging.

And the list continues... but what the root for all of these?

It will be a shock to hear that, but the capitalism as we knew it is no longer relevant. In the last 30 years the world was developed too fast (exponentially, it is claimed) in all subjects: from construction to nano-technology. The growth of the worldwide population was not coherent with the supply and demand model of the capitalistic economy. The industry is producing too much supply for too small demand, and even though the prices for the goods are relatively low - it doesn't trigger the public to make a purchase. The supply and demand balance was out of control, becuase there's no real control in the capitalistic agenda. Theoretically you're allowed to produce whatever you want as long as you have the money to do it.

That's leads us to another slap in the face: The lack of regulations is a terminal disease. As an entrepreneur, when you don't have enough money to hold your business by self revenues, you know you can always use the famous crack: the venture capital. This financial invention, the tricky endless pool of funds, is the major factor to inflation. As long as the business does not live by itself, it is considered as a leech to the financial world, and the venture capitals, with thier flighty profligacy are only encouraging it!
True, in order to build up something new, moreover when it is a pioneering one, you need to put some risk. But the problems start when you put too much risk. In other words - there's no regulation. And where there's no regulations, people are playing with fire and for the big bang mentioned in the begining of the post, a small uncontrolled fire is enough to trigger it and leads us to the uncomfortable situation that we're face with these days.

Altough I defamed the traditional capitalism, please don't consider me as a communist. My world-view is that pure socialism unequivocally leads to a sad world settled by sad and embittered people. Fact: Every man in this planet, from china to the USA wants his space for creativity and self-fulfillment. The development of the society and quality of life is a direct derivatives of that fact, and in practice we where witness to the flourishing of the western bloc upon the eastern bloc for most of the time. The major problem with the communist regime is that only small group of people are enjoying the freedom of creative work and suitable pay back, and that is the over-powered government.

Is the "open source" is a camouflaged socialistic attitude?

The solution is a capitalism under a set of very strict regulations. Give the people a maximal freedom to produce and create whathever they like. Just give me a favour: keep your money close to you and don't fund every enthusiastic one.

So, the world is going to a big change, and it is inevitable. The big question is: Do we need a third world war to complete the transit or can we do it peaceably?

WCF Insights, OR: Playing Hide and Seek with it

2008-07-14T17:10:00.026+03:00

I'm writing this post about 5 minutes after I succeeded solving my 3-days-going-round-in-circles code problem.
Yeah... it's those days you want to forget and repress. You feel lost, you feel confused, you've tried every code change, every trick. You drank tons of coffee and went back and forth. You Googled and Yahooed and Altavistad everywhere. Nada. As the old saying: "A prophet is not without honor save in his own country".

Finally (sooner or later), you're solving the problem and you immediately think about three things:

"I'm so so smart that I managed to solve this problem!"
"Damn! it was so easy and so around the corner that it make me sick!"
"I'm gonna kill who created this API / framework / service. Bring his head to me now!"

Well, I thought about those three things right after the miracle has happend and the code suddenly worked. Now, after calming down, let me share with you some of the insights I exposed to during the problem I had using the WCF .NET component.

Problem with passing large and complex objects using WCF

This is a common one with many reference in the serach sites. You may want to pass large DataTables or complex object with many nested lists you created. If you encountered an exception in the client side it might be caused by several reasons. Check this list to see if you configured everything correctly:

Too short timeout confiugration
Too small received massage size
Too small buffer size
Too small buffer pool size
Too small value for the "maxItemsInObjectGraph"

Here is the WCF configuration schema as a reference. You should be aware that giving too high values in the configuration section, may lead to DoS (Denial of Service attack). So if you care for your server, give it reasonable values according to real size estimations you have. If you don't have a clue about size estimations, tune it by starting with relatively small values and continue increasing it until everything runs ok.

If the communication is duplex (i.e., the server and client both send and receives data), you should set this configuration in both sides.

WCF service started it's job, but the client crashes or stuck

Unsupported types: Make sure that all data members in your data contract objects are serializable and has no known problems in the serialization period. Specifically in my code, there was a problem using DateTime type. Several websites support this phenomenon (such as this one) and suggests to use the OffsetDateTime instead. The OffsetDateTime type has also the advantage of controlling time zones, which is a very important issue in distributed, service-based, systems. Here is the MSDN reference for it.
Unhandled server-side exceptions: You should know that that the server may encounter with exceptions it may suppress, and thus - not letting the service operation to be completed. Thus, the client is unaware of the reason why nothing happens or crashes. Handling this situation requires the usage of the "FaultContractAttribute". See more details about it, and how to use this attribute, here.
Use a suitable binding method for your purposes: There is a big difference in the funcionality among the built-in binding types that WCF supply. Queued, HTML based, TCP based, secured or not, reliable or not, duplex communication or not. This article will help you decide. Make sure to configure the client endpoint and the service sections with matching definitions (for example, don't mess wsHttpBinding with netTcpBinding).

WCF service methods are not responding during asynchronous calls

If you're using asynchronous calls with the WCF service, and it "just doesn't work", it might be caused by other problems which are not part of the asynchronous game. If you isolated the problem and sure it is an async problem, check out that:

Your proxy class code is synchronized with the one in the server. Sometimes you just forget to recreate the proxy class after performing changes in the server code.
You didn't miss the "IsAsync=true" attibute of the OperationContract in the relevant method.
You're using safe operations (using locks) when multithreaded operations are involved.
You're waiting for the async operation to complete (like using "WaitOne" method in the IAsynchResult model), and the calling thread not "running away".

You should know that WCF has two main attitudes to manage asynchronous calls. Make sure you follow it's rules:

The tranditional way. Event based or IAsynchResult model. Take a look in Dan Rigsby's wonderful series of posts, here.
Using WCF callback interface. CallbackContract attribute is used here to determine who is the interface which is managed to perform the callback operations. Take a look in idunno.org website, here.

That's it for now. If you have more insights and tips to share, a reply would be grateful for everyone.

Have a nice WCF experiments!

Tipeysh! - Add-in that helps you creating C/C++ header files on a single click

2008-06-01T11:38:00.005+03:00

As part of the "Open Up" open source code competition that Microsoft organized here in Israel, I decided to contribute my modest portion for it.

Thus, I developed a small but useful Visual Studio add-in named "Tipeysh!" (in honor to our "Advanced C++" lecturer style of speaking...).

Mainly, this add-in intended to help C/C++ programmers to instantly create header files and their respective implementation code; a frequent-to-death routine when using Visual Studio.

It also contains some configuration abilities.

It was written in C# using Visual Studio 2008.

The add-in (binaries, source code and readme) is hosted in the CodePlex website, and licensed under Ms-PL. Take a look!

Windows Vista - an unripe fruit?

2008-02-16T19:24:00.010+02:00

OK, let's start from the end and write down the bottom line:

I'm sure it is.
But, please read the next anyway. It's a nice story:

The Vitruvian Man: Old GUI masterpiece.

Genesis

My story with Windows Vista starts somewhere in the mid. of 2006. During one of Microsoft's conventions we received a green DVD copy of the Windows Vista, labled "Windows Vista Beta 2 x64". "Terrific!" I thought. "No I'll have the chance to examing the new 64Bit based HP laptop I just bought!". After all, as many people said, the 64Bit world is much more faster and enjoyable. I want to enjoy!

So I installed the DVD in my computer. The installation was fast like the speed of light and easy like eating hamburger after a fast. Really, I think I took maybe 20 seconds from the point I turned on the computer to the desktop to appear. And it wasn't "such" desktop. It was a super desktop - shining, glass-like, bright. The dream of every user. Yes, even linux users mumbled some words in praise of the exciting new UI.

Looking at the device manager, I've noticed that most of the devices wasn't installed and wasn't recognized as the manufacturers didn't create any driver that supports Vista. Legitimate. It's only a Beta version and nobody knows how to program drivers to the rich world of computer devices.

Satisfied from the what I saw, with due respect I formatted the computer again and installed the well-known Windows XP.

The Vista Age

January 30, 2007. The worldwide public release of Windows Vista. There you go! Microsoft has finally finished the grandiose and well-spoken development of the new exciting operating system in the neighborhood. Time to see this in live. In a golden opportunity I had the chance to buy the Ultimate version on a very comfortable price.

Jubilantly I installed it on my computer and was very pleased to find that it recognized and installed almost all the devices. Except of several sepcific drivers which I found in HP's website - it was just ok. One problem I've encountered was that it could not installed the Lexmark P6250 printer (which I bought only half a year before), exited with a weird error message. Lexmark's support asked me to donwload and install some thin driver they developed for the P6250 to work with Vista, but it didn't do the job. The same error message appeared and I was still printerless.

Lex-shit

Three denounces for the Lexmark company:

Your support asnwers are too robotic. It is so clear that you try to satisfy the clients with pre-defined answer - for questions he didn't ask at all! You repeat several "solution" suggestions without even know your chasing after the tail of an empty help. If you can't solve a problem - just say it immediatley. But please, don't exhaust your customers with redundant email ping-pong. I don't need a psychologist, I need an technical person.

You have a too short forward compatibility for your printers. In private with the P6250 model which was bought only half a year beofre launching Vista! You also created an unworking driver for Vista while declaring it is working. I'm pretty sure you didn't check it at all.

Althogh it is a Windows Vista article, I would like to say that the fact you don't have driver support for linux is just a shame. While other printer companies does support linux - you just ignore this like it was an air. And no, answers like "try to search for a third party solutions" is not a professional answer.

Next time I won't buy Lexmark!

Lexmark P6250: Not supported in Windows Vista!

First marks

And continuing the story. After several days of usage, I start to notice that the Vista acts strangely.

Sometimes it was unable to complete a simple operation of copying files from folder to folder, it was stuck without noticeable reason - then jumping the "Would you like to find a solution for the problem?" form.
In other occasions I was unable to "kill" processes!
And no, it is not a virus nor spyware. A little respect please... I have a maintained computer with all the latest windows updates and such reason is even somethig you don't say loudly...

After it was just unbearable, I downgraded to XP. Home sweet home.

The last straw

Two weeks ago, after discovering that my HD is too small for doing cool things, I decided to buy an external HD. Searching here and there I found the "Western Digital My Book Pro 500GB" as a suitable accessory. To mark this happy event I thought about something special:
Re-install Windows Vista.

In fact there were two "real" reasons to do so:

The first is that a long time passed since my last bad experience with Vista and I thoght that maybe Microsoft stabilized it meanwhile.
The second is that I started programming with Microsoft's new WPF and WCF .NET technology and I wanted to maximize the user experience. After all, Vista is native for that technology.

And so, backuping all the important data in a safe placec, I said goodbye to XP once again and took the Windows Vista adventure. Indeed, it is always exciting to return to this wonderful GUI! And wow! even all the drivers are automatically recognized and installed! "Maybe Microsoft didn't disappoint after all" I thought.
The Lexmark P6250 printer still wasn't working. "Leave it" I said to myself. "I will anyway buy a new one shortly. Not from Lexmark".

Then I connected the external HD...

I will make a long story short: The HD did A LOT of problems. Starting from freezing after a short period (which cause the entire system to freeze) to be unrecognized by several applications.
After contacting with all possible Western Digital support centers in the world, and almost reaching the president of WD, blaming that the HD is sucks and doesn't work properly and I want my money back, a little thought raised in my mind: "Could it be Vista? Naaaa, I can't blame Vista for everything. But, who knows... lets check it out.".

Western Digital My Book Pro 500GB:
Not fully supported in Windows Vista!

So once again I downgraded to XP.
Surprisingly, the external HD was working like new (well, IT IS new!). Doing all the required job perfectly. Didn't hang, didn't freeze. Worked around the clock without any problem!

Conclusion

What can I say. I truely wanted to support Vista, to be the guy that say to everyone "Hey, you're just prejudicing Vista and the true is that it's a great operating system!"

But I can't. Vista is an unripe fruit.
Smart man he was, the one who said before: "lets wait for the Service Pack 2 of Vista. Only after it will be released it'll be safe enough to be used.".
And I would say: "let's wait for SP3 of Vista. After all, Windows XP, wihout any Service Pack installed, was much proper than Vista in it's parallel stage".

Wait and see, but don't install Vista!

What to do when the computer's CD/DVD doesn't play smoothly

2007-06-02T23:54:00.000+03:00

Since three months ago, when I decided to format my laptop's HD and reinstall Windows (ahem... the reasons for doing so are reserved to myself), I've noticed a very disturbing and annoying phenomenon: When I played some music CDs and all kinds of DVDs, the sound (or in case of a DVD - the movie) was played unstably. Also, the slow burning speed was reasonless.

For the purpose of demonstration, say I wanted to hear the song "I walk beside you" of Dream Theatre from their masterpiece album "Octavarium".

Normally, it should be sound like this:

"...Summon up your ghosts for me / Rest your tired thoughts upon my hands / Step inside this sacred place / When all your dreams seem broken..."

But actually it was heard more like:

"...Su____mmon up yo__ur gho___sts fo _r me / Rest you___r tir_ed thou__ghts up on my hands / Step inside th__is sacred place / Wh__en all your d__reams seem bro__ken...".

It is that song that sounds broken, damn it!
Therefor, I decided to take a long breath and fix this thing once and for all. So I thought for the most possible reasons:

The DVD's reading ocular is dirty
The CD is scratched
There's some copyright feature that causes this
Codecs conflict cause a distort playback
"Nero" become crazy
BIOS problem
Driver problem

Instantly I rejected the first three options, since I already cleaned up the reading ocular, the CD is as good as new and it is completely genuine and legal.
So for the Codecs issue, I started to isolate each codec by uninstalling one by one, but it didn't solve the problem.
About "Nero": It wasn't the only CD burn software that has the problem of slow burning operations, every software acted the same.
Next, I searched for an update to my laptop's BIOS. I seached for a compatible BIOS for the HP Pavilion dv5000 series, and I found it here (F.54 of Phoenix Technologies). After installing the update (I was surprised it went very fast and without any problem...) and restarting, I found it didn't solve the problem. Dirty.
Next is driver: Well, I searched the web for a drvier update, but I already had the latest version.

Ok, so here is what DID solve the problem:
It is the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller. Each IDE device (for example, a CD drive or a hard drive) can work under Windows in two modes. The first is called "PIO" (Programmed Input/Output. read more here) and second is called "DMA" or "UDMA" (Direct Memory Access. read more here).
To make a long story short, The PIO is the older technology for data transfer from a hardware to the physical memory while the DMA and UDMA are newer and much faster methods to do the same operation.
So from some reason, the IDE channel for the CD/DVD drive was set to work in PIO mode. Also, I couldn't change it to UDMA. So what I did is:

Go to the Device Manager
Under "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers", right click on "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller" and then "Uninstall".
The Windows asked me to restart
After the restart, a "new hardware" was discovered and installed automatically.

And like a magic, all IDE channels worked on a UDMA mode.
Everything is now working properly and I can hear "Octavarium" smoothly!

How to do it in Flight Simulator: The SimHow.com way

2007-05-24T15:35:00.000+03:00

SimHow.com is a welcomed raising project of "How-To" database which contains several guides in the scope of Flight Simulator activities. Or as it said in the web site:

"...support to all the Flight Simulator fanatics".

Fanatics is the most precise word I guess.
Thus, it presents an arranged downloadable how-to manuals such as

How to Build Hardware for FS
How to perform professional repaints
How to stay align with the runway
How to fly online in a virtual airline
How to fly the 737

And more (currently over 50 manuals).
All of the manuals were created and contributed by personal users. You should register for free to be able to download the various stuff.

The more the merrier!

FSX SP1 and SDK SP1A has been released!

2007-05-18T12:09:00.000+03:00

Both Flight Simulator X SP1 and it's SDK SP1A has been released this week.

Download FSX SP1 from here.
Download FSX SDK SP1A from here.

I think that I don't need to say that those updates are a must have...

Here are some of the main enhancements, according to PTaylor's WebLog. Click here.

FSX SP1 is approaching

2007-05-11T15:27:00.000+03:00

According to PTaylor's WebLog, the Flight Simulator X SP1 is now in final test.
The SP1 is very promising since it about to contain several bug fixes and some essential improvements. Rumors says that the SDK SP1A (note the "A") will be released together with the FSX SP1 package. We'll see.

According to FSInsider.com, the SDK SP1A should contain something I'm waiting for a long long time: The Modeless Dialog API (part of the SimConnect component) that will give the

"ability to utilize an ATC-like XUI menu to allow modeless interaction with a SimConnect client. This was the last remaining feature of SimConnect required to meet the needs of FSUIPC interaction without binary offset manipulation. Supports both native and managed interfaces, and includes ability to manipulate a subset of the text format. Documentation and samples are also provided."

If I do understand what it says, it means that we will finally have a fixed and straightforward method to create child windows inside the main Flight Simulator window!
No more guessing games about "what is the best way to create a window inside the FS window" or "how do I make the window to work properly in full screen mode"...

This thread for exmaple, demonstrates the frustrating and work-around attitude for such operation.

If that so, complex add-on modules creation will be simple and flourishing. I hope.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that this feature of creating a modeless dialog via the SimConnect is no more than a set of wrapped exposal calls to the Flight Simulator UI-related functions which lays down in the "xuipc.dll" (unattached to the FSUIPC...), and "fsui.dll" files located in the main FSX directory. Apparently, the "FSCreateModeless" (one of billion undocumented functions inside the fsui.dll file) is a prime method for creating modeless windows (this post strengthen my suspect).

In the last few days I hardly tried to decipher the fsui.dll file in order to use some of its functions, but without any luck (I could only read the function names...), and to this moment the purpose of the functions in this file has left under the title "the occult"...

Oh, by the way - I took the picture above in Ruzyne Airport, Prague, about two years ago...

Ubuntu 7.04 is here (...and it includes NetBenas 5.5)

2007-04-27T12:51:00.000+03:00

All Ubuntu fans waited to the moment when 7.04 (code name "Feisty Fawn") will be released, and it was finally released last week (April 19).

Download Ubuntu 7.04 installation from here
What does it include? A lot of goodies. Check it here.
Here is a great setup guide.

Ubuntu 7.04 supports 3D desktop effects
(somebody saied "Windows Vista"...?)

No, no... you must see this one:

And my favour - it includes NetBenas 5.5 as part of the applications repository. Indeed, the best Linux OS environment with the best Linux development environment, together in one box.
What else can we ask for??

So, installing NeatBenas on "Feisty Fawn" is more than simple, just write the following command, in the Terminal window:

sudo apt-get install netbeans5.5

In order to find a required package name to be installed (i.e.: netbeans5.5, netbeans5.5-doc, netbeans5.5-platform, etc.) just write:

sudo apt-cache search netbeans

That's all.

Toronto Raptors' desktop wallpapers for 2007 Playoffs

2007-04-20T13:02:00.000+03:00

As the NBA Playoffs approaches, and the Raptors' game VS the New Jersey Nets is seen around the corner, I found some nice wallpapers for this particular time: Click Here.

(If you're wondering what wallpaper did I pick, it's Anthony Parker's of course...)

NetBeans 5.5 as an excellent C/C++ IDE for Linux

2007-04-19T14:54:00.000+03:00

There are several ways to program and develop C/C++ applications under Linux. Here are a few of them:

Use a simple text editor (Kate for example) for code writing, and running the gcc (for compliation) and gdb (for debugging) with needed paramters inisde the Terminal window. Well, this is really not a comfortable way to program things, but works with no problems.
Popular IDEs such as XEmacs and KDevelop, which I'm not so fimiliar with, but I heared only good things regard them.
NetBeans by Sun Microsystems (freeware) in it's Linux version. A really powerful, nice and easy to use IDE with a similar user interface as the Windows version.

But hey! Isn't NetBeans is an IDE for Java programming?! Well, basically it is, but it has several intersting extension modules and one of them is the C/C++ programming add-on.

Screenshot of the C/C++ IDE in NetBeans 5.5
(Windows version, but similar to Linux...)

Advantages

Currently, the latest version of NetBeans is 5.5 and it has an excellent user interface. Everyone who familiar with NetBeans 5.5 for Windows will feel at home when using NetBeans 5.5 for Linux. Newbies will quickly get the drift (of course previous acquaintance with Visual Studio IDE and alike is an advantage).
It has an easy compiler, debugger and other runtime settings configuration manager. You want to compile with the gcc? No problem. You want to use Sun's compiler for C/C++? It's easy to set! Want to determine warning levels? 64bit mode output? Debug on demand? Really, a piece of cake!
It is a very stable environment. I ran it under Ubuntu 6.10 and it has never crashed (so far...). Even when I accessed an unauthorized memory section again and again...

Installation

Even the installation process is very simple (OK, I know I'm starting to sound like and advertiser, but I'm completely not).
Generally, You must have an installed version of JDK (version 5 or higher) before you can install NetBeans 5.5. So:

If you don't have JDK in your machine, you will want to download this version, which is the "Java SE Development Kit and NetBeans IDE Cobundle (JDK 6u1 / NB 5.5)". The instalation file is something about 142MB.
If you do have previous installation of JDK, just download the NetBeans 5.5 IDE from here (note that other languages are available). The file size is 55MB.

The file is of "bin" format and in order to install it, you just need to drop it inside a Terminal window (don't forget the "sudo" prefix!). Shortly, a graphical wizard will be open and the rest will be straightforward.

Now, after the installation was completed successfully, you need to install the C/C++ add-on module. Only after this installation you'll be able to start programming and compile your C/C++ applications with NetBeans. Download the Linux version for the C/C++ add-on from here. Again, just drop this "bin" file in the Terminal window and the next will be straightforward. Good luck!

Allowing widescreen support (1280X800) in Ubuntu 6.10 using VMware Workstation 5.5

2007-04-17T15:05:00.000+03:00

After installing Ubuntu, I've noticed that the display was stretched to the size of my screen (HP Pavilion dv5000 series). All fonts, pictures and UI elements were spread horizontally and the display wasn't sharp.

I tried to change to screen resolution inside Ubuntu to fit my widescreen (1280X800) but the maximal available resolution set was 1024X768. Strange, it was like it didn't recognize my screen abilites or couldn't detect the graphical card accurately.
Searching the web (and after disqualifying some registery changes as one techie was advised. In principal, "registery games" are definitely last solution) I managed to fix the problem by installing VMware Tools.

VMware Tools are a set of components that installed inside the guest OS and operates in cooperation with the VMware Workstation. These components allows us enhanced configuration control over the guest OS, which one of them is the ability to determine an exact required screen resolution.

As I found VMware Tools is not such an easy to install in Ubuntu, I searched for some help, and found this superb "how to" post written by Khairul Faizi: Click Here.

A real troublemaker: AppToPort.dll

2007-04-15T10:14:00.000+03:00

OK, now I'm really mad!

In the last couple of days I've noticed that my both IE 7 and Firefox 2.0 (all recently updated) browsers are crashing randomly. Sometimes it's when I'm clicking an image, sometimes it's when I open a new tab, and in the other time it's just crash without any logical reason. BOTH IE 7 and Firefox 2.0 (did I already mention that?).

So, a red light was turned on. What, in the name of the holy Anthony Parker, was happend now!? Wasn't I good enough to my computer?
Alright alright, relax and think! The first blame is automatically ascribed to Microsoft - it's easy, you know, to get mad of them, not always because of their products but (most of the time) because of their endless funds... jealousy. Human nature. Linux users nature.

Googling for a good reason, I found two repetitive symptoms:

A problematic windows update (a.k.a as KBxxxxxx)
A malware

...Of course! those windows updates! I've just update my computer with recent windows fixes - it must be one of them! And regard a malware - no chance. My computer is fortified like a 17th century british castle: Anti spyware (AVG anti spyware 7.5), antivirus (NOD32), firewall (Netlimiter 2).

So, turning to my best psychologist, the "add/remove programs" window, I started remove the latest windows updates, one by one - in order to find the troublemaker. Restarting etc... and at last - Nothing. Both browsers remains on their own crashing behavior. Damn.
So, turning back all updates (restarting bla bla bla), I switched to option no.2: a possible malware.

A malware? in my precious computer?! how could it be??

I started scanning my computer with all my weapons: full antivirus system scan (twice! - took all night), full anti spyware scan, using registry fix tools, monitoring the firewall again and again. Nothing. Except of standard tracking cookies I found nothing.
Thus, to my great sorrow, I turned to google for some more help.

One system tool attracted my attention: HijackThis, produced by Mergin.org (download here). This freeware is scanning all active processes (hidden and unconcealed) and gives a general expertise for each found process - is it evil or a good one.

A screenshot of HijackThis 2.00

I passed all the results one by one - and of all entries I found one suspect: some dll file named "AppToPort.dll" which lays down in the folder "C:\Program Files\bulletproofsoft.com\BPS Spyware & Adware Remover\". Hmm, interesting. In one of the last days I remember I downloaded and installed an evaluation copy of an anti spyware tool named "BPS SpyWare/Adware Remover" from here (I DON'T recommend you to download it now, unless you want to get mad for next two days as I was...). A web advertisement said that this anti spyware tool is one of the best, so I gave it a try. A few hours later I concluded it is not good enough for me, so I uninstalled it tidily.

So I thought...

Googling once again for the "AppToPort.dll" file, I couldn't absolutely conclude that this is a kind of troublemaker, but since 90% of the results was in the context of spyware and malware problems, it strengthened my suspicion.
Continue googling I found a free anti spyware software called "Spybot S&D" (download here). I heared of it before, but never had any experience with. The installation is very simple, and after a short software update I started to scan my computer once again. This software is awesome! 10 minutes passed and the bell ring wasn't late: "BPS SpyWare/Adware Remover" was found as (quote) "a software that pretends to be an anti spyware but actually is a trojan". What the hell?

A screenshot of Spybot S&D 1.4

Moreover, the Spybot couldn't delete all the remains of the "BPS spyware" (and as I said, I unistalled it tidily) becasue our friend, "AppToPort.dll", was in the use of the system. So I tried to remove this file on a Safe Mode, but it didn't go. It still was in the use of the system.
Again, googling, I found what I was looking for: a little application called "LSP-Fix" produced by cexx.org. It seems that the "AppToPort.dll" is a type of "Layered Service Provider" (read more here) and it cannot be removed elegantly. So I downloaded this little application from here, and did as follows:

When LSPFix has started, put a checkmark in "I know what I am doing".
In the Keep column, select all apptoport.dll entries and click the arrow to move them into the remove column.
Click the Finish button to remove them.
Boot into Safe Mode
Delete the following folder: "C:\Program Files\bulletproofsoft.com"
Restart as usual.

A screenshot of LSP-Fix v1.1

At last, my saga was ended. The IE 7 and Firefox 2.0 was once again a stable and pleasant place to browse on.
(And I truly regret about the previous slurs regard Microsoft's updates... They are just great!).

And for all of you, be aware: DON'T USE "BPS SpyWare/Adware Remover"!
IT'S AN UGLY TORJAN!!!

Monitoring blog activities with Google Analytics

2007-04-05T19:45:00.000+03:00

I've just started to monitor my blog with the Google Analytics service.
This free service enables you monitoring all of your websites by collecting information about users' geographic location, the frequency they visit your website, how did they came to your site (e.g. directly by entering the site url, through another site/blog, using a web search etc.) and more.
All of this done by comfortable reports it produces for you, such as visual geographical map and various informative graphs. It is also has the feature to export the stats. to an XML, Excel or txt formats!

As a matter of fact, this service has powerful abilities which preeminently intended for the small to medium business. That is reflected as "Marketing goals" you can create - which analyzes exact usage of your site.

As they say - "it's more than a counter".

HD files and folders collects dust

2007-04-05T18:37:00.000+03:00

Recently I've noticed that my HD has left only a little space. Wondering how can it be I started searching for an appropriate software that will answer my question. Googling here and there I finally found what I was looking for: JAM Software's TreeSize Professional.
This great software is analyzing the HD completely and gives you several easy to understand gauges regard the files and folders resting in the obscurity of the HD (take a look).

What I found:

Need for Speed Carbon (didn't play it for a long time): 6GB
Some old help files of an ancient IDE which I removed a long time ago: 1.2GB
Unused Flight Simulator aircraft files: 2GB
Images and movies I never knew I'm still keeping them: 3GB
Very very old documents, PDFs and PPT files: 2GB.
Sum: 14.2GB (!) of wasted place.

Satisfied, I can now Install Command & Conquer 3 - Tiberium Wars.

Installing Ubuntu 6.10 using VMware Workstation 5.5

2007-04-03T20:47:00.000+03:00

Installing Ubuntu, my preferred Linux version, seems to be pretty hard at the beginning, but as a matter of fact it is not so scary.
Indeed, several Ubuntu installaion guides already exist over the internet, but I couldn't find any comprehensive guide explaining how to install Ubuntu under VMware Workstation 5.5 from A to Z. So I decided to write one...

Before we'll begin, make sure you have an Ubuntu 6.10 CD or an equivalent .iso file. You may download Ubuntu for free in Ubuntu site here.

The concept
Well, in the distant past, when the linux underground assembly decided to set up a new revolutionary, innovative, open source operating system (OS), they didn't intend that this operating system will lay upon MS Windows, but actually they wanted linux to replace it completely.
That was their vision, and I truly respect it.
But sometimes you do need linux and at the same time you do want to stay with your loyal Windows XP OS and you don't want to mess up again with hard drive partitioning or losing you're native OS handling.

For that reason, and some more, an old/new player came to town. It is the Virtual Machine guy (from now and on we will call it "VM"). This is an emulating software which able to, well, emulate another PC (one or more) running in your physical computer. Sounds weird?
It is! It resposible to create a virtual hard drive, manage the memory and isolating the runtime environment of that pseudo PC while it runs under the main operating system - Windows XP in our case. By terminology, the OS which runs the VM (the real OS) is called "Host Operating System" while the OS which runs inside the VM (the virtual) is called "Guest Operating System".
OK - for those of you which never heard of VMs I'm sure it sounds really strange, but believe me - it works and it even pretty easy to handle.

What VM should I use?
There are number of VMs in the market (just google for "Virtual Machine" and you'll get a lot of results...) - and three of them are very popular:

Microsoft Virtual PC: Microsoft's version to the VM is offered completly for free. You can download it's 2007 version from here. Personally, I like its simple and straightforward user interface, but it's main lack is the basic (too basic) functionality, which prevents from doing some essential operations. So it's nice VM for basic tests - but in this manual we are not going to use it.
VMware Player: The VMware company is offering a free VM software which presents almost the same functionality as the Microsoft Virtual PC offers. I can't point an exact fundamental advantage of this VM over Microsoft's. Maybe it's user interface is a little more friendly. You should watch that there are few known bugs which (up to date) the relevant support forums are full with people who desperately trying to by-pass them. Bottom line: Only a free taste for it's "big brother" - the VM Workstation (next...). By the way, you can download it here (last known version is 1.0.3).
VMware Workstation: In my opinion - the flagship of all VMs around. This product is also by the VMware company and it costs money. You can download an evaluation copy of it from here (30 days) and I suggest you to do so in order to fulfill this manual. The latest version (currently 5.5.3) offers an easy-to-use but yet very functional interface, and it runs successfully many types of OS. So let's go!

Recommended hardware
An important attention should be to the hardware you need in order to successfully run a VM on your machine. After all, running two PCs simultaneously is not a trivial job...

For the basic user I suggest:

AMD or Pentium processor from the last generation
512MB RAM
Free 8GB

For the advanced user (programmers etc.) I suggest:

AMD or Pentium processor from of the cutting edge
1GB RAM and the more the better
Free 15GB

Preparing the VMware Workstation

1. Doubleclick on the VMware Workstation Icon

You'll get a "Tip of the Day" screen, read it or skip it by clicking "close".

2. Press Ctrl+N to create a new Virtual Machine. A wizard screen will be open:

Click "Next" to continue.

3. In the next screen choose "Typical" and click "Next".

4. On this screen you need to choose the operating system you're going to use with the Virtual Machine ("Guest"). Choose "Linux" in the upper selection and under the "Version" list - choose "Ubuntu". Please note that only if you have Windows XP 64-bit edition installed, you may choose the "Ubuntu 64-bit", but you can't choose the "Ubuntu 64-bit" if you have a standard 32-bit Windows (even though you may have a 64-bit processor, the VM will alert that you're not using a valid 64-bit machine).

Click "Next" to continue.

5. On the following screen you need give a name for the VM you're creating. The wizard suggests you the name "Ubuntu", it's good enough so leave it as is. The second thing you need to supply is the location of the VM dynamic files. These files are basically: log files (*.log), configuration files (.vmx) and the virtual machine disk file (.vmdk).
The "vmdk" file is actually the virtual hard drive the VM created for you. Every time the VM is starting up the guest operating system, it loads the vmdk file. In fact, every operation you're doing in the guest operating system - saving documents, installing new software etc. - is stored inside the vmdk file (and it's done transparently to the user). That's why you'll notice as time goes by that this file becomes huge. Give a location where you have enough space and then click "Next".

6. Here you need to choose how a network connection is going to set up and operate using the VM. VMware Workstation has a cool feature which is sharing the host operating system's Ethernet network connection with the guest operating system. This way, the guest operating system will automatically get the host's IP and an instant access to the host's network resources. In other words, you'll be able to access the internet from within the Ubuntu without ANY setup! In the screen check the second option as follows:"

Click "Next" to continue.

7. In the last screen of the wizard you need to supply the maximal amount of disk capacity for the guest operating system. The number of GB you'll enter will actually determine the virtual PC's hard drive capacity. The only option is to set a fixed, non-sizeable disk capacity. If you'll choose "Allocate all disk space now" you'll benefit from a faster loading. However, I won't recommend this unless you have a really large free HD capacity. Note that if you're a "basic" user - an amount of 8GB disk capacity will be enough. But if you're an advanced user (like me...) - you may find that 15GB is most suitable for you. I'll also suggest that anyway you won't check the last checkbox.

Click "Finish" to end the wizard.
You'll notice that a new tab named "Ubuntu" will appear on top of the screen.

8. No it's not over, but we almost there. Now, in the middle of the screen, under the "Commands" subtitle you'll find the text "Edit virtual machine settings" as follows:

Click on it.

9. This is the Virtual Machine Settings screen. Here you're able to control many of the abilities of your guest operating system. As time goes by you'll become more familiar with most of the settings, but for now we'll setup only the necessary parameters. Click on the "Hardware" tab, if it is not in focus. Then choose "Memory" from the list on the left hand.
You can adjust the maximal amount of memory the guest OS will consume. In "VM words" it is the size of the physical RAM you installed in you virtual PC. 256MB will be enough for the basic user, while advanced user (especially programmers) will probably need about 512MB.
Of course, the amount you set is derived from the physical RAM size "in stock" that you're able to supply while Winodows XP is running (don't forget that Windows consumes "some" memory by itself...).
Here is the screen:

Only if you downloaded an Ubuntu 6.10 .iso file, you should set the following: In the "Hardware" tab, click on "CD-ROM" in the left hand list. Then, Choose "Use ISO image" and browse for the .iso file you have downloaded. Generally, it is recommended to keep the .iso in the same directory where the VM files are located (see paragraph no. 5). This setting let us startup Ubuntu from an .iso file, as it was a real CD. Here is the screen:

Again, you can adjust and play with more settings later. For now, all other default settings are just fine.

By the way, another cool feature in VMware Workstation is that the guest OS will recognize your USB devices (including Disk On Key) when you'll plug them inside. It will take care of unmounting the devices in the host OS when you'll be in focus of the guest OS and will mount them again automatically when you'll return to the host OS. This way, no hardware interference will happen.

Now, Click "OK" to close the settings screen and we're ready to install Ubuntu!

Ubuntu installation

1. Under the "Commands" subtitle click the "Start this virtual machine", as follows:

After a few seconds the Ubuntu initial menu will come up in a "Live CD" mode. Click with the mouse inside the Ubuntu screen. That will cause the VM to "grab" the control of the input devices of your computer. From now and on, until pressing Alt+Ctrl, the mouse and keyboard will operate only the current session of VM.

2. Using the arrow keys, choose "Start or install Ubuntu" from the menu, and press Enter. The Ubuntu logo will be displayed as well as a progress bar. Finally, the Ubuntu OS will appear and you'll see the following screen:

Note that the Ubuntu wasn't installed yet. It just started up in a "Live CD" mode, which means that it has been loaded into the RAM and will be erased right after exiting Ubuntu. Moreover, you won't be able to save anything to the HD but only to a USB key device, if you own one. Now, press Alt+Ctrl+Enter to enter the full screen mode. Again, pressing Alt+Ctrl inside Ubuntu will return us back to the VMware console display.

3. Doubleclick the "Install" icon appears in the desktop. The welcome screen of the installation wizard will appear:

4. Choose your preferred language for the installation process and as the default language for the final system. Then click "Forward". In the next screen you need to choose a city in your country and time zone:

5. Make your choice and click "Forward". Next you'll need to determine your keyboard layout:

6. Make your choice and click "Forward". In the following screen you need to enter some personal details, such as your name, your username, password and computer name:

Note that it is VERY IMPORTANT to remember your username and password, as this information is needed for login to the system and for some other administrative operations during the usage of the system, such as further software installations. Click "Forward" to continue.

7. Next you should select the disk where you want to install Ubuntu. Don't worry, this operation will not erase ANYTHING in your real HD. It just uses the virtual HD file as it was a real HD, and for Ubuntu - it doesn't know it's inside a VM environment... good for us!

So leave the first check mark checked and click "Forward". Finally, a summary screen will appear and you'll need to confirm that all information you've entered so far is correct. So, if everything is OK, click "Install" to start the installation process.

8. The installation process will take about 10-20 minutes. At last, you'll be asked whether to restart the comoputer or continue using the live CD. Select "Restart now" and wait until the Ubuntu will come up once again (note that you'll need to press Enter in some phase of the restarting process).

In the login screen of Ubuntu, enter your username and password. The "Software packages" dialog window will pop up. Click "Cancel" to close it (you can manage packages later. Please refer the online manuals regard this subject). You'll notice that the install icon is no more displayed on the desktop. That's because we have installed Ubuntu. Yes, we've finished!

My online photo album

2007-04-03T20:01:00.000+03:00

You're welcome to visit my online photo album at