Installing VMware Player in Ubuntu

A while ago I posted how to install VMware player in Ubuntu 7.10. Today, I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 and needed to reinstall the latest VMware, version 2.5.

Things are now way easier, since VMware player is available as a bundle file. After you download the bundle file from VMware, then you can just run the following command in the terminal window:

sudo sh VMware-Player-2.5.0-118166.x86_64.bundle

It is pretty simple, eh? No need to extract the tar file and answer all those questions. Enjoy it!

Ubuntu 8.10 released today!

Canonical Ltd. released today Ubuntu 8.10 which comes with new cool features such as the 3G network support. You will be able to use your 3G cellphone network to connect your laptop to the Internet. The new features include:

• 3G Network support.
  
• Write Ubuntu to and Install from a USB Drive: Ubuntu will allow users to write Ubuntu to a USB drive, even a modified version of Ubuntu with their data on it, so it can be carried everywhere to plug in and use on any machine.
• Guest Sessions: guest sessions allow users to lock down a session easily so a guest can use the full system without interference with programs or data.
• BBC Content available through Ubuntu default media players.
  

If you are installing it on a new machine, then you can download it from here. Or if you are upgrading from 8.04, then you can just upgrade through the network, by following the instructions from here.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP Feedback

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio Team System 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP) are available to download and install from here.

Using TortoiseSVN with CodePlex

This is not new but I just realized today that CodePlex supports TortoiseSVN. I've been using Subversion for my home projects with TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN (a plug-in for Visual Studio).
This does not mean that Codeplex is using Subvesion as repository. They are still using Team Foundation Server as repository, but they added support for SvnBrigde, a tool that allows Subersion clients to connect to Team Foundation Server.

So far, I've been using Visual Studio Team Explorer with Codeplex projects. Team Explorer is an open source client for Team Foundation Server. It works fine, but I rather using TortoiseSVN/VisualSVN.

TechDays Canada 2008

Unfortunately I will not be attending PDC this year, but Microsoft is organizing TechDays Canada 2008. Of course it is not the same thing, but it is still an interesting event for Canadian developers. It is a 2 day event with tracks for developers and IT folks, see the sessions info here.

They will have in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax. Too bad they do not have in my hometown Edmonton, but I can just drive south to Calgary.

The early bird registration, until October 29th, is $249.99 for the two days event. It is pretty cheap and you will still get free Visual Studio 2008 Professional, MS Expression Web 2, TechEd 2008 DVD Set, and 30% off Certification voucher.

If you are a .NET developer living in Canada, do not miss this.

I hope to see you there in Calgary on December 10 & 11.

Microsoft Exam 70-536

I passed on the Microsoft exam 70-536 yesterday and I would like to share my experiences on it. The test consisted of 40 questions. The format is similar to the practice exam of the text book.

The exam has some annoyances. For example, the UI is still from the 20th century: it looks like an old Win32 application and the mouse wheel does not work! There is a big delay when going from one question to the next one. This happens because the current answer is saved on the exam server, so that data can be recovered in the case of a power loss. It is good to save it to the server, but this delay takes from 30 seconds to one minute!! Not sure if this is a Prometric problem or just on that specific test center. Although there is this delay, the exam timer is paused when moving from one question to the other.

When I finished answering all questions, I still had about 25 minutes to review. This is when things started not going well. During the review mode, the exam timer does not pause while moving from one question to the next one. So, I was wasting about a minute by clicking on Next and waiting for the next question to show!! Also, when the exam prompts a message reminding you that you have 5 minutes left, the buttons at the bottom of the screen (Next, Previous and Review) disappear. So, I got stuck on that screen and couldn't move to another question or even finish my exam. I tried to get help from the staff there, but the exam timed out and it didn't show anything for me, the screen was blank for a few minutes and it moved directly to the customer satisfaction survey. I did not know if I pass or fail, and I was afraid that I lost everything. After some minutes of panic, the exam administrator came and told me that the score report was printed properly and I passed!!

I reported these problems, and they told me that the 5 minutes reminder bug is an old issue that was apparently over but came back in the last few weeks. My advice is to spend more time answering your questions during the first pass (exam timer pauses while saving) rather than spending time reviewing them (exam timer does not pause while saving).
Also, finish your exam before the 5 minutes reminder buggy message appears, just to make sure that it finishes properly by showing your score/result on the screen.

How I added the words Oracle and MySQL to the SQL Server Developer website

No, I am not a hacker or either have access to the source of SQL Server Developer page. I just created a project in Codeplex, the Chinook Database, and tagged it with SQL Server. The SQL Server Developer page has a section at the bottom with recent SQL Server projects, and my new project is displayed there.

The result: the SQL Server Developer website has the words Oracle and MySQL!!



The Chinook Database project description contains the supported databases, and they all show on the SQL Server Developer page. Sorry Microsoft, this was not intentional but it was funny to accidently have the words Oracle and MySQL in SQL Server website.