Yesterday I installed a SSD drive in the 2nd HDD bay of my HP Pavilion DV7-1210ed laptop. Installation of Windows 7 went fine and after I had moved all important data from the original HDD I decided to format that disk so I could use all of its storage space. But as soon as I did that I was unable to boot into Windows that was installed on my SSD (2nd HDD bay).

I was getting errors about winload.exe and something about an incorrect digital signature for the file. Turns out it was loading the bootloader from the recovery partition from the HDD in bay 1, which was actually for the old Windows installation.

Looking into the BIOS of this laptop I couldn’t tell it from which disk to boot first. With Acronis Disk Director I was able to make the SSD bootable by setting the active-flag on it. When booting the laptop I could press F2 and then F9 to select from which HDD to boot. It would boot into Windows 7 again. This still wasn’t a solution, as it requires you to interrupt the boot sequence every single time you fire up the machine.

Again with Acronis Disk Director I decided to flag the recovery partition on the HDD in bay 1 as active. Then I booted into the Windows 7 recovery console using the installation disc and ran the following command.

bcdboot d:\windows /s c:

In this example d:\windows is the location of the installed Windows 7 on the SSD in bay 2. The flag /s c: tells it to install the boot files into the c: partition, which was the recovery partition on the 1st HDD.

Just to be sure everything will boot again also execute the following commands.

bootsect /nt60 ALL /force
bootsect /nt60 ALL /force /mbr

Hopefully this helps you out when removing Windows from the HDD in bay 1 as it’s impossible to change the HDD boot order in the BIOS of the HP Pavilion DV7-1210ed. I later found out about EasyBCD which seems to make this a lot easier to do.

I’ve again returned to Windows 7 after having used Ubuntu for about 3 months on the desktop. For some reason Linux on the desktop always breaks down after about 3 months, give or take. My main reason for trying out Linux again was so I could develop in a *nix environment. I’m comfortable with a terminal and lots of cool and useful libraries compile without any hassle. And most of the programming I do ends up running on a Linux server anyway. On Windows 7 you can get quite far with MinGW and MSYS, but it usually takes quite some effort to get something to compile. MSYS is also very slow on my machine(s). And although with Strawberry Perl it has gotten a lot better, from time to time you run into modules that won’t compile and are almost impossible to fix.

This wasn’t the first time I ran Linux on my desktop PC. About 7 years ago I started out with Gentoo. It actually ran fine on my laptop, aside from WiFi issues. The compile hell that came with it was terrible though. I’ve ran Ubuntu 7.10 on my desktop without much issues, until I upgraded to 8.04, which broke everything. After that I used Windows Vista for a while and eventually Windows 7. Somewhere late December ’11, early January ’12 I decided to try Linux again. At first I wanted to use CrunchBang because it was so lightweight, but couldn’t get my system to boot into it. Then I tried Fedora 16, which featured Gnome 3 out of the box. I really liked how Gnome 3 looked, but Fedora 16 was way too unstable for me. After that I gave Ubuntu 11.10 a chance, installed Gnome 3 on it and simply enjoyed it a lot.

For 3 whole months I was able to run Ubuntu 11.10 without issues. Some software didn’t work out of the box, but I was able to fix that and I don’t consider that Ubuntu’s fault. Before I tossed the towel into the ring my NVIDIA 9800GT got too hot and the system would just freeze. I was using the open-source drivers (nouveau). I found out that this driver always runs the GPU at 100% and it simply wasn’t able to not do this. After replacing these with the official NVIDIA drivers the problem was solved. But shortly after an update for this driver made my system freeze at startup. I rolled back to an older version and again, the problem was solved, though the rollback was pretty hard to execute. The real misery started after I did a normal package update, which sometimes happened daily, and everything I needed malfunctioned. The VPN software I used wasn’t able to setup a tunnel, which I need to connect to the company’s network. I also run a virtual server in Dropbox for several things, but I no longer could fire it up anymore. It had something to do with Virtual Box drivers that couldn’t load anymore.

When all that happened I had enough of it and waved Ubuntu, or Linux for desktop in general, goodbye forever. I’ve had enough of it and in all these years it hasn’t gotten any better. In my expectation Linux on the desktop will never get big. I’ve still got Xubuntu installed on my netbook, but haven’t booted to it in ages and will probably uninstall it soon as well.

I don’t want to be too negative though. Ubuntu 11.10 did have a number of pros as well (though most are software you can run on other platforms as well):

• Gnome 3 - after a couple of tweaks I found myself to be very proficient with Gnome Shell. Lots of people hate its guts, but I really liked it
• Remmina – a great remote desktop client for RDP
• ShreSoft VPN (ike) – easy to use VPN client, but you have to compile it yourself since the supplied package doesn’t work.
• Vim/GVim - yes, it’s multi-platform, but seemed a bit more responsive in Linux
• Terminal (Bash) – some tasks are faster done on the terminal and Git for example is a lot faster than on Windows
• Compiler toolchain - you pretty much install build-essential and you’ve got almost all the compilers and other related things you need
• Nautilus - a much better file manager than Explorer will ever be
• Skype + Bluetooth headset - I’ve had no issues using my Bluetooth headset under Ubuntu and Bluetooth in general just works. Can’t say that for Windows 7.

Currently I’m back to Windows 7. It works, but could be more responsive (I’m looking at you Explorer). I know that for my terminal needs I could use Cygwin, but I don’t see that as a proper solution and the last time I tried it installation took forever and it just didn’t work. Since my desktop PC is already 4.5 years old I’ll be replacing it sometime this year. I’ve decided to try out a Mac, either an iMac or Mini. All I want is a fast system, with a stable OS that doesn’t require much attention to stay running and a *nix environment. At the moment I think OSX will be able to give me that. The wait is now till Apple renews their models.

I’ve released htbaapub.zmq 0.03, a wrapper for ZeroMQ. This release fixes data corruption when sending messages. The corruption was caused by BlitzMax collection String data a bit too soon. This was a tough one to find as garbage collectors are hard to predict.

As of now htbaapub.zmq also contains several unit tests to make sure everything works as expected. It doesn’t have full coverage, but I’ll improve this in the future. In case anyone is interested, the test module used is bah.maxunit.

You can install this version with maximus, download it or fetch the sources from GitHub.

This is just a short announcement on my Blog to let people know I’ve been busy wrapping ZeroMQ (or ZMQ) for BlitzMax. The result of this a new module called htbaapub.zmq. It’s available from the Maximus website, meaning you can install it using Maximus. If you rather fetch the Git repository that’s possible as well.

The module is still very much a Work In Progress. Most of ZMQ’s functions are available from BlitzMax and both Windows and Linux are supported. It should work fine on a Mac as well, but I’m unable to verify since I don’t actually own one.

A couple of examples are included as well. Have fun playing with ZMQ and if you encounter any bugs, please report them. I’ll then be able to look into fixing them.

Today my mom brought home a Hondo II HDLP-2B, a Les Paul model. I’ve always wanted a Les Paul and am happy I finally own one now. It’s not in a usable state at the moment and as you can see from the picture it’s extremely dirty. I’ve never really seen a guitar that dirty really. Dirt can be cleaned, but dirt isn’t the biggest issue with this guitar. The pickups and screws are rusted and the electronics don’t work anymore either as well.

I do however plan to restore it. This will be a first time for me, but I’m excited about it. I have a little bit of material about replacing components on a guitar and I’ve had an education in electricity and wiring. Luckily I’ve still got my soldering iron!

First steps will be to clean the guitar and figure out what exactly needs to be replaced. I also need to do some research on guitar pickups. I don’t need a hard rock or metal guitar. My ESP LTD Viper 200-FM is suited for that. I hope to make a guitar out of this one that’s suitable for blues.

Another thing I’m excited about is that the guitar is quite old (to my standards). I believe it was build somewhere in the 1970-1980′s. It definitely shows that this guitar has been used and I’m rather curious about its life story! One can only guess…

Update: The guitar has been dated to 1977. Thanks Wietse!

Earlier today I released Maximus 1.1.1. Maximus is a BlitzMax module manager. With Maximus it’s possible to easily install and update BlitzMax modules which are provided by 3rd party module developers.

Version 1.1.1 improves the usability for the GUI users. If maximus-gui can’t find your BMXPATH it will now present you with a directory dialog in which you can select your BlitzMax installation directory. Another improvement is in communicating back to the user when a certain action has finished.

Binaries for both Windows and Linux are available from maximus.htbaa.com/client as well as an installer for Windows.

To everyone that takes the time to visit my blog I’d like to wish to a happy new year!

Lets hope 2012 won’t be the end of the world !

Just like last years review I’m now doing a review of 2011. With my big decision late 2010 of going back to school to get my bachelors degree I had planned on 2011 to be a much better year than 2010 was. For most of it this has been true, but it hasn’t been without struggle and hardships.

What dominated 2010 was the issues with my hands and the brain tumor of my mothers friend (technically my stepfather). This was also mostly the dominating theme of 2011. Finally around late July, early August, the pain in my hands was mostly gone. By now, end of December, I’m mostly without pain, though I still have some bad days and still can’t stand cold. I’m really happy the Vitamin B12 and Vitamin D has done its job.

The brain tumor my stepfather (for the record, I don’t call anyone my father, but this makes writing easier; he’s an OK guy though) is suffering from was removed in 2010. So far on all scans now further growth has been detected and it’s all stable for the time being. The bad thing though is the trauma caused to the brain has affected his motor skill, memory and thinking. He’s now getting therapy, but it’s all going pretty slow. So I hope for him and my mother that in 2012 this will improve a lot, as well as that the tumor stays away.

In March my car needed to get its yearly checkup. I just owned it a year but I already had to spend about 1000,- EUR on reparations. It turned out that the timing belt should’ve been replaced when I bought the car. This was something the car salesman should’ve have told me, or rather, he should’ve fixed it before selling it to me. This was a bit of a downer.

I stopped working full time on the 1st of July. My plan was to have 2 months of me-time before school started in September. I haven’t fully quit my job though as I’m still working part time from home. Only 1.5 week after being home my mother suffered a Myocardial infarction. About a month later it almost happened again. On top of that my dog also started crippling after stepping out of car. Aside from all that misery and stress it were 2 nice months.

At the same time I’ve also finally released the 1.0.0 version of the Maximus client and website.  A few months later I also added a graphical user interface for the Maximus client and kept on working on the webapplication. I’m currently working on the 1.2.0 release of the webapplication and still have plenty of ideas to add.

In September I finally started university and it has been a blast so far. I’ve had my doubts in the first 2 weeks because I had trouble with getting up to speed with the Mathematics we were being taught taught. But I decided to pull through and in the end got an average of a 7 on my exams. Not bad, considering the last time I was being taught math was 8 years ago and the topics we were handling were almost all new to me!

Time for a conclusion! More than half this year hasn’t been too good, but I really can’t complain. My hands are doing much better, my mom is doing very good as well considering she nearly died and my dog isn’t cripple anymore, though we’ve got to be careful. In the end I’m just very happy and grateful I’ve still got my mom around, that my dog is doing well and that my health has been getting better. School doesn’t disappoint either and in general I’m fairly happy I suppose!

All that’s left is to win the new years lottery .

Earlier this year I posted about which languages I planned on learning in 2011. A few months later I posted about my progress. Now that 2011 almost has come to an end it’s time to review and see if I actually met any of those goals. How exciting.

I had listed 4 programming languages I planned on learning: Lua, C#, Haskell and Java. And with absolute self confidence I can proudly tell you I’ve fully learned none of them! So, what happened?

Lua

I believe I haven’t written a single line of Lua this year at all. Or maybe I did, I can’t even remember. I do know I was experimenting on a BlitzMax based IRC client, which could be scripted by Lua. But this just might’ve been in 2010… In short, the reason I haven’t done any was because I didn’t have any project I wanted to embed Lua in. Perhaps Maximus? Sure, I know I can use Lua standalone, but I think the true beauty of Lua is the easiness of embedding it. So I think I’ll give my IRC client experiment another go in 2012.

C#

Of all the languages to learn I’ve spent most time with C#. Reason for this was because I needed it to do my homework assignments in it as well as several small projects. Heck, I’ve even used XNA! But I can’t say I’ve spent enough time with it to say I actually learned C#. I can read the code just fine, it’s just that I haven’t memorized some of the basic syntax. Overall I’ve made most progress on C#. In general I don’t enjoy C# too much, but LINQ makes it a lot more fun, that’s for sure.

Haskell

I actually did try some Haskell examples from the book Learn You A Haskell For Great Good. But didn’t come much further with either reading the book or trying stuff out. I have however come to use Amanda, which is another functional programming language which has borrowed a lot from Haskell. It’s what we use at university for the discrete math course. Since I’ll also have to do a couple of exams on it I decided to let Haskell wait a little bit longer. The reason for this is that even though the syntax of both languages are very much alike there’re subtle differences in syntax, which could cost me my head at the paper exams. But I do feel Haskell has given me an advantage in picking up Amanda and discrete math.

Java

Oh Java, thy dreadful beast. I’m most glad I haven’t done anything with Java this year! Turns out we’ll only be using it starting the 2nd school year, together with C++. I’ve already used C++ for a short year, so that won’t be too much of a problem. But finding out I don’t enjoy C# too much (yet), makes me fear how awful programming in Java will be . Perhaps I should give Java a chance though before burning it to the ground.

What’s next

So for 2012 I’m still planning on working with these 4 languages, though Java totally depends on my university. I’ll most likely pick up Haskell somewhere at the beginning of the summer. Perhaps earlier. C# will be needed for more school projects. For Lua I’ll be sure to find a project to integrate it into (probably the IRC client). In the meantime of me not using Lua 5.1, version 5.2 already came out. I haven’t checked yet but I hope they don’t differ too much.

I’ve also still got the book Seven Languages In Seven Weeks which I plan on working through. I’m at the final day for Ruby if I remember correctly. So I’ll be touching several different languages briefly as well.

As a final conclusion I’m not too disappointed. For most of the year I was still having issues with my hands (sometimes still have) which has since been getting better and better. All in all 4 languages might’ve been a bit too much, especially if you consider it was only more or less 6 months I was able to spend time on it. Not forgetting school and work eating up a considerable amount of time next to it as well.

Just a quick reminder when installing BlitzMax on a 64-bit installation of any Ubuntu flavor.

Always install ia32-libs or you won’t be able to execute programs compiled by BlitzMax, even though the required shared libraries are available (not actually true, as these are the 64-bit libraries). Installing this package makes sure you’ll be able to run them.

Additional info at:

• http://blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=96246
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/32bit_and_64bit