<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>Joe Chin</title>
        <link>http://www.joechin.com/</link>
        <description>Software develop, technology, thoughts, and life.</description>
        <language>en</language>
        <copyright>Copyright 2010</copyright>
        <lastBuildDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:18:39 +0100</lastBuildDate>
        <generator>http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/</generator>
        <docs>http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification</docs>
        
        <item>
            <title>36 hours and 2 oceans later...</title>
            <description>I&apos;ve just arrived back from a very long trip. A trip to Hawaii to see my sister get married. It was a hell of a long trip and completely worth it. I&apos;m still in the process of sorting through the insane amount of photos taken on my iPhone (my son broke the good camera months ago) and as soon as I&apos;ve found some gems I&apos;ll be sharing them with you.

The trip was incredibly long but the cabin crew on Air France and American Airlines were great. I did have some complications while waiting for the LAX-HNL leg. American cancelled one of the earlier flights and there was a standby list of 15. Me and a couple from Australia were the last on the standby list (both of us traveling on staff concessions) and just as they were about to close the gate they let us on. And put us in First Class to boot.

The return flight was even longer due to the fact that Hawaii is 12 hours behind my homebase, and I had a 8 hour layover in LA. With such a large amount of free time on my hands I decided to take a trip to the beach.

(To be continued...)</description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_06.html#000175</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_06.html#000175</guid>
            
            
            <pubDate>Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:18:39 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Steam released for Mac: First Impressions</title>
            <description><![CDATA[If you’ve been under a cave than you probably haven’t heard that Valve’s Steam game service is now available for Mac. I’ve had an on/off relationship with Steam over the years. Using it on a PC, getting a Mac and all but forgetting about it, trying dismally to use it in Crossover Games, and finally using a native Mac version. You can grab it here at <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/browse/mac">steampowered.com</a>. There is also a limited time free download of Valve’s Portal to start the show and garner interest from Mac gamers.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

​

If you’ve already bought some of the games from outside the Steam store (in my case I have Tales of Monkey Island I bought through the last <a href="http://www.macheist.com">MacHeist</a> nanobundle. You can enter your license key and it will be included in the steam menu. I haven’t tested the to see how it deals with Mac to PC and vice versa gaming. But all will be done in due time. Until then, I’m going to take this time to enjoy Portal. A game I’ve been curious for a long time that I didn’t work up the nerve into purchasing.

As for my PS3? It’s still dead to me until Sony gets off their high horse. With the price of quieter blu ray players coming down constantly that also have standard remote IR functionality. This device “that only does <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYeVSEmOLsQ">everything</a>” has gotten less useful as more capable devices in my apartment have replaced it. It does less than my HTPC, it does less than my region-free DVD player, it doesn’t seem to connect to my ReadyNAS. I’m a little unhappy with it frankly.
]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_05.html#000174</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_05.html#000174</guid>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">All Things Mac</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Software</category>
            
            
            <pubDate>Thu, 13 May 2010 11:42:16 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Welcome to MacJournal!</title>
            <description><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center"><span style="font-size: 36pt;">Welcome</span></p>

To get started, create a new entry by clicking on "New Entry" in the toolbar or choosing "New Entry" from the File menu. You can also drag files from the Finder in to the Sidebar or the Entries list to import them as an entry. Show the Inspector from the View menu to see settings for the current entry, journal, and document.

<strong>What's new in version 5?

</strong><ul style="list-style-type: disc"><li>All new interface, built for Mac OS X Leopard.</li><li>Add any kind of content, not just text. Drag PDFs, QuickTime movies, images, and more into the Sidebar to create an entry with anything on your computer.</li><li>Open more than one MacJournal document at a time and save them wherever you want, or just use the default document and never worry about saving.</li><li>Create Smart Journals from searches you perform.</li><li>Create aliases to entries that you can store in other journals.</li><li>Assign each entry a rating, status, and priority, and sort any journal by those values.</li><li>Record video from your iSight and attach it to any entry.</li><li>Performance enhancements for working with large numbers of entries.</li></ul>

I've downloaded MacJournal and linked it to my blog. So I'll never need to log directly into the system through the portal. This should make it more convenient for me. Instead of having to open a browser, enter the URL, login, and password. Then make a new entry, upload photos, and create the appropriate links. This system should do fine. I'll have to see on how it handles different image sizes. MT has a good system of creating clickable thumbnails for large images. This has been on my 'things to do' for a while, just never got around to downloading and registering MacJournal. Now I see why people like it.

Shout out to <a href="http://www.macheist.com">MacHeist</a> who made it possible. I didn't really think about this program until it arrived in my bundle.]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_05.html#000173</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_05.html#000173</guid>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Software</category>
            
            
            <pubDate>Sun, 09 May 2010 14:21:50 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Writing iPhone applications for jailbroken iPhones</title>
            <description><![CDATA[<p>
As a developer I don't enjoy paying for things when I don't have to. One of them happens to be Apples iPhone Developer program. I could find better ways of spending $99. Debugging my own stuff isn't one of them. So what is a developer to do when he can't or won't pony up the money to be allowed to load and debug his own applications. He uses that tiny developer brain to bypass all the checks that's how.
</p>
<p>
I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of jailbreaking the iPhone. There are plenty of tutorials on the net to do exactly that. If you are in over your head at this point you should probably bail now, shit is definitely not going to get easier from here on out.
</p>
<big>Creating a certificate</big>
<p>You'll need your own self-signed certificate. iPhone OS will check for it, jailbreaking will tell it that it's good, regardless of who it came from. So crack open Keychain access and create one for yourself. It's in /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app. From the menu choose Certificate Assistant &gt; Create Certificate.
<br>
<a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/keychain_access_1-10.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/keychain_access_1-10.html','popup','width=727,height=277,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/keychain_access_1-thumb-400x152-10.png" width="400" height="152" alt="keychain_access_1.png" class="mt-image-none" style=""></a></p>

<p>Give it the name "iPhone Developer" and check overide defaults.
<a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_1-11.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_1-11.html','popup','width=617,height=437,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_1-thumb-400x283-11.png" width="400" height="283" alt="certificate_1.png" class="mt-image-none" style=""></a></p>

<p>Give yourself enough time. 10 years sounds about right. And change the type to Code Signing.
<a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_2-12.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_2-12.html','popup','width=616,height=436,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_2-thumb-400x283-12.png" width="400" height="283" alt="certificate_2.png" class="mt-image-none" style=""></a></p>

<p>Add as much or little information as you want to the personal information screen.
<a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_3-13.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_3-13.html','popup','width=617,height=436,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/certificate_3-thumb-400x282-13.png" width="400" height="282" alt="certificate_3.png" class="mt-image-none" style=""></a></p>

<p>After here, click next until the end. It should be shown in your Keychain Access application list.
<a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/keychain_access_2-14.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/keychain_access_2-14.html','popup','width=769,height=393,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/keychain_access_2-thumb-400x204-14.png" width="400" height="204" alt="keychain_access_2.png" class="mt-image-none" style=""></a></p>

<big>Update the Developer stack</big>
<p>We'll need to make a modification to the Info.plist of the SDK. Go to /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform. Create a backup of Info.plist and open the original in Property List Editor. Change all instancese of <strong>XCiPhoneOSCodeSignContext</strong> to <strong>XCCodeSignContext</strong>. There are 3 instances of them in SDK 3.1.2. There might be more or less in future versions.</p>

<big>Back to XCode</big>
<p>In XCode open your project and change the <strong>Active SDK to iPhone Device - 3.1.2</strong>. Run the build command with Command-B. Go to the Directory with your project, open the <strong>build</strong> folder and into the <strong>Release-iphoneos</strong> or the <strong>Debug-iphoneos</strong> folder you'll find the executable. We're going to need to get this file into the iPhone.
<img alt="project_folder.png" src="http://www.joechin.com/images/project_folder.png" width="385" height="329" class="mt-image-none" style=""></p>

<big>Copy your application to iPhone</big>
<p>You won't be able to get your application onto the phone using the normal channels. iTunes won't allow it. So the alternative is to copy it to the phone using SSH or iPhone Explorer. As with all things Mac, iPhone Explorer provides a GUI. And a GUI is always handy. Using iPhone Explorer go to the /Applications folder on the device. And upload your app folder. When complete it should appear like this. In some cases the app won't be set to executable. If this is the case you'll need to run the "chmod a+x" on the app folder to allow it to run.
<a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/explorer-18.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/explorer-18.html','popup','width=451,height=364,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/04/explorer-thumb-400x322-18.png" width="400" height="322" alt="explorer.png" class="mt-image-none" style=""></a></p>

<p>Your application won't be present on the springboard. For that you'll need to restart the springboard. There are jailbreak applications that allow for this. You can also install the UIKitTools and run uicache from the commandline to update the springboard without restarting it.</p>

<div class="zemanta-pixie" style="margin-top:10px;height:15px"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/6fbb268c-e5e2-4b29-893d-3ca13634e389/" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6fbb268c-e5e2-4b29-893d-3ca13634e389" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" style="border:none;float:right"></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_04.html#000172</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_04.html#000172</guid>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">All Things Mac</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Programming</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Software</category>
            
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Handhelds</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">IPhone</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">IPhone OS</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">iTunes</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Jailbreak</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Smartphones</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Software development kit</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Xcode</category>
            
            <pubDate>Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:40:20 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Ker-plink!</title>
            <description><![CDATA[Ker-plink! That was the sound of the hard drive in my Hackintosh that died. While normally I've been a stand up guy about archiving (not to be confused with backups) of data. In this case the blood drained from my face as I walked into the study and heard the noise that everyone dreads to hear. So I jumped into action, tried to find which drive was making the racket (there were 3) verified that indeed it was no longer responding, console was spitting out streams of errors, and all the folders came up empty. I shutdown the Mac, took it out, weighted a few seconds for the platter to spindown (it makes a thunk when it comes to a complete stop). reconnected and restarted.

BIOS reports no drive 3. Hmm. Take it out again, slowly rotate the drive listening closely for grinding noises, nothing. Well this is slightly better than terrible. You see Watson, this disk has fallen for the Sector 0 error, commonly known as the "click of death". The read head tries to find Sector 0, and slides right past it, slamming the head into the spindle. So technically my data is still on the drive, I just have no possible way of getting it off. 

Using my years of expertise, I know I can hopefully calibrate Sector 0 by freezing the drive and reading the data before the platter gets too warm. Into the freezer she goes. This hard drive has been sitting there while I order another hard drive and a NAS. I'm taking this opportunity to do something I know I should have done from a long time and formulate a real backup plan.

You see, the <a href="http://www.free.fr">Free</a> people came by and installed fibre to the apartment building. They assured me the units would be lit after the new year. Well that was 3 months ago and no fibre yet. My backup scheme sort of hinges on it, because pushing 60GB of data over 800kbit/s (that's 100KB/s) aDSL is mindfuckingly slow.

So the scheme is use the ReadyNAS Duo <a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/03/duo_reflect2-5.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/03/duo_reflect2-5.html','popup','width=588,height=256,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/03/duo_reflect2-thumb-150x65-5.jpg" width="150" height="65" alt="duo_reflect2.jpg" class="mt-image-none" style="" /></a> as the local NAS. And have it push my backups to an offsite point. In my case, Amazon S3. That way I can use the NAS as a local storage pool, torrentclient, and DLNA server. My energy sucking workstation Q6600/HD3870 doesn't have to be running continuously. And if the hard drives die in the next year or 2 (the dead drive lasted 3 years) I can restore the data using 100Mbit/s fibre.

If it sounds good to you, it sounds good to me.]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_03.html#000171</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_03.html#000171</guid>
            
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Hackintosh</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">NAS</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">S3</category>
            
            <pubDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:42:34 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Media Browser 2.2.2.0 is out</title>
            <description><![CDATA[<p>For the Media Center enthusiasts, like me, I'd like to point out a new version of Media Browser has been released for the public. Except for the pictures and music, Media Browser is how I view most of my videos and podcasts on my PC. While the standard video library on WMC is fine for viewing videos, this plugin improves the interface by a factor of 10 if not 100. Some of the things I take advantage of is the screen previews for TV shows and movies, banners and background.
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/03/avatar_mb-1.html" onclick="window.open('http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/03/avatar_mb-1.html','popup','width=784,height=439,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false"><img src="http://www.joechin.com/assets_c/2010/03/avatar_mb-thumb-400x223-1.jpg" width="400" height="223" alt="avatar_mb.jpg" class="mt-image-none" style="" /></a></p>
<p>One of the things I especially like it about it that it automatically downloads all the show data, images, and season artwork. There is very little you have to do.  Once Media Browser finds it it scans the filename to retrieve the internet data. This is great for those that don't like the overhead of having to manage your files, like mymovies. And it definitely is more informative than the default mediacenter browser. I've been looking into replacing my PC with a cheaper device, like PS3 or popcorn hour. The thing that keeps me staying is the interface of mediabrowser. Nothing else, I've seen, compares
</p>

<p>Don't take my word for it <a href="http://www.mediabrowser.tv/download">download it</a> yourself and give it a try.</p>]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_03.html#000170</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_03.html#000170</guid>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Software</category>
            
            
            <pubDate>Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:47:13 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Screenshots of Windows Home Server 2 leaked</title>
            <description><![CDATA[I've been watching the Windows Home Server market for a while. It looks to be successful and Microsoft is aiming for version 2. Today, the screenshots of the next edition have been leaked. You can view them <a href="http://www.windows-now.com/blogs/robert/windows-home-server-v2-leaked-screenshots.aspx">here</a>. Some notable changes are the use of the Server 2008 platform (previously Server 2003 R2), 2 editions Premium and Standard, higher system requirements, and inclusion of a full Desktop. It appears there is some media integration but they don't work so it's not confirmed if it will make it into the final release. 

Unlike the author of the other blog. I don't think its the biggest news since Apple released the iPad.]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_01.html#000169</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_01.html#000169</guid>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">Software</category>
            
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">backup</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">beta</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">PC</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Windows Home Server</category>
            
            <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:33:13 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Happy New Year</title>
            <description><![CDATA[<img src="http://i45.tinypic.com/14dpr2t.jpg" border="0" alt="Image and video hosting by TinyPic"><br />
I know I'm a little late but I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I was celebrating with my son and didn't have time to post on this blog. Because we bought a house and all the expenses of moving into it, there wasn't a lot of available money to go crazy balla' style so I kept it simple: a bit of champagne, a walk to the top of Sacre Coeur, and watching the countdown from home. My son, who didn't take his afternoon nap, didn't have the energy to stay up til midnight. I had to carry him down the mountain.

THe following next days were spent trying to get my computer to boot. The hackintosh is failing hard since the last chameleon update and the problem doesn't seem solvable. The quickest option would be to backup our data and build a new install but I'm all out of capacity and need a new hard drive.]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_01.html#000168</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2010_01.html#000168</guid>
            
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Family</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Hackintosh</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">Macintosh</category>
            
            <pubDate>Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:04:24 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Updating redmine and changing from mongrel to passenger</title>
            <description><![CDATA[The support server at the office has been using <a href="http://www.redmine.org">redmine</a> for a few years. When I set it up way back in the days it was configured to use a <a href="http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/">mongrel</a> cluster behind an apache server. This setup has been great, lately it has started to show it's age. Sometimes a mongrel would get stuck, eventually the others would suffer the same fate, and the server wouldn't process anymore requests. So now that the holiday season is in effect I'm taking advantage of the lighter traffic to update the server.

Since this isn't a brand new install I'm taking a different track than most other redmine installs. And I've found upgrading to be more fraught with problems than a clean install. This is a production machine so in addition to normal backups I have to be cautious of breaking shit irreparably.

So let's get to work:
After logging in the update your gems
<pre>gem update --system</pre>

Depending on the version of redmine you are using you will need to update your rails accordingly.
<pre>bash#: rails --version
Rails 2.2.2
</pre>
According to the redmine News page 0.9 uses Rails 2.3.5 so now is a good time to update the rest of your gems
<pre>gems update</pre>
Then download the redmine updates
<pre>cd /var/redmine/
svn update
</pre>
In my case I've made some customization to the code and this sometimes conflicts with the update. You can monitor this by looking for 'C' in the left column while svn update is running.

If it isn't done so you should install passenger
<pre>gem install passenger</pre>

As I mentioned before, redmine was running through a rails mongrel cluster. Now I'm moving it to passenger and apache. After passenger is installed it is time to build it into apache
<pre>bash: redmine# passenger-install-apache2-module
Welcome to the Phusion Passenger Apache 2 module insaller, v2.2.8.
This installer will guide you through the entire installation process. It shouldn't take
more than 3 minutes in total.
...
</pre>

At the end it will ask you to add the module to the apache configuration file. We won't be doing that. Instead we will make a module file and use the a2enmod.
<pre>bash:redmine# nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/passenger.load

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.8/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.8
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby1.8
</pre>
Ctrl-O and Ctrl-X to save and quite. Then
<pre>bash: redmine# a2enmod passenger
Module passenger installed; run /etc/init.d/apache force-reload to enable.</pre>

Finally, update your redmine database:
<pre>bash: redmine# RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate
bash: redmine# RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate_plugins
</pre>

Modify your vhost.conf file to point the DocumentRoot to the redmine/public folder (mine was just pointing to the redmine root) and then run the apache force-reload command.

If you have anything like webrick or mongrels running it is alright to terminate them now. Point your browser to your redmine site and bask in your awesomeness :-)]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000167</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000167</guid>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#category">All Things Linux</category>
            
            
            <pubDate>Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:34:23 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Things I&apos;ve discovered today</title>
            <description><![CDATA[<br />

<a href="http://mono-project.com/Main_Page">Mono</a>
I've downloaded, installed and used the Mono project IDE on my Mac. Compared to the last time I tried it many years ago it's not so bad. I created a small Windows application and the debugger was able to start and display the window. I'm not sure how much support for Windows Forms it provides but this would be to develop cross-platform applications.


<a href="http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/">Favicon from Pics</a>
It's a site that you upload a picture and it creates a favicon for your site. I'm not a graphic designer or artist so this is great for taking some photos and graphics I have and make it into something useful.

<a href="http://pictorymag.com/">Pictory Magazine</a>
An online photo magazine with user submitted photos and stories.

<a href="http://simplebits.com/">Simplebits</a>
A blog that I found while googling for something else and has impressed me with the content and usefullness of the posts.]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000162</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000162</guid>
            
            
            <pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:19:06 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Pics around Paris</title>
            <description><![CDATA[<p><a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/sHGddBIcwoBBjkkGrmDIEigoyndyyrhFGxlwwwJDaDAeJHFisAdxfosFEoyJ/IMG_0000.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/sHGddBIcwoBBjkkGrmDIEigoyndyyrhFGxlwwwJDaDAeJHFisAdxfosFEoyJ/IMG_0000.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"/></a> <img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/BFAfwroCvIkedHjrCpfCqGmxykrFtIsAzBFrAJllzuwJrsmhlAywIcCcJkEb/IMG_0001.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="453" height="604"/> <a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/nBHblGFboHlckcpCgEuGJytCzztmBiwlzxcHDaoyfFsxDzdpglDDBzEbErJb/IMG_0002.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/nBHblGFboHlckcpCgEuGJytCzztmBiwlzxcHDaoyfFsxDzdpglDDBzEbErJb/IMG_0002.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="375"/></a> <a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/ujCIGmlnGumhbxCploiaIgguqbDcwbuCnEpkEudBsqjgqteGtwGpBxJkBJiy/IMG_0003.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/ujCIGmlnGumhbxCploiaIgguqbDcwbuCnEpkEudBsqjgqteGtwGpBxJkBJiy/IMG_0003.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"/></a> <a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/kHvquDjrxAysDvmewlarrJeikIrcjDsugbDaipHqbhcwbJgwEEvxgrhgoJpx/IMG_0004.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/kHvquDjrxAysDvmewlarrJeikIrcjDsugbDaipHqbhcwbJgwEEvxgrhgoJpx/IMG_0004.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"/></a> <a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/zxfIzahdlGAADGEAtFlsphqGfiHoEGICmjiFlHtHHeverpxlirkrCpvbHcJo/IMG_0005.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/zxfIzahdlGAADGEAtFlsphqGfiHoEGICmjiFlHtHHeverpxlirkrCpvbHcJo/IMG_0005.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"/></a> <a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/xCwDtafjvjpzzgIhHcyDiIedExfwCmDnhziHaufmwmcGxGlmwheuabrcAjkj/IMG_0012.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/xCwDtafjvjpzzgIhHcyDiIedExfwCmDnhziHaufmwmcGxGlmwheuabrcAjkj/IMG_0012.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="667"/></a> <a href='http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/gjlizFtsFdkAibAEDhjbdivAhBgukmjEukJjufyaJsJuxbktimGxEcbwgmqr/IMG_0013.jpg.scaled1000.jpg'><img src="http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/joechin/gjlizFtsFdkAibAEDhjbdivAhBgukmjEukJjufyaJsJuxbktimGxEcbwgmqr/IMG_0013.jpg.scaled500.jpg" width="500" height="375"/></a> <div><a href='http://joechin.posterous.com/pics-around-paris'>See and download the full gallery on posterous</a></div></p>      <p style="font-size: 10px;">  <a href="http://posterous.com">Posted via web</a>   from <a href="http://joechin.posterous.com/pics-around-paris">joechin's posterous</a>  </p>  ]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000160</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000160</guid>
            
            
            <pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:18:31 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>One last thing</title>
            <description>I finally got off my ass and set the blog back up again. Lot&apos;s of security changes and permissions to set and reset. Now I&apos;ve got the one little headache of fixing my CSS. I&apos;ve never been able to get it just right when using blogging software like movabletype. I guess the translation from internal system tags to real html tags caused a breakdown because what I wrote was not what got published.

This weekend is looking pretty miserable (Paris is cold rainy, and quite depressing this time of year) so I&apos;ll take the time to do some home improvement, clean out the media library and play with my blog.</description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000159</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000159</guid>
            
            
            <pubDate>Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:14:55 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Things have turned around</title>
            <description>Well it&apos;s taken a little while but I finally took the blog out of storage. Found a new host and now I&apos;m back and blogging. The server has been upgraded from a little duty shared hosting service to a medium duty VPS. Expect to see more as time goes on.

It&apos;s far from the end my friend.</description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000152</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_12.html#000152</guid>
            
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">blogging</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">shared hosting</category>
            
                <category domain="http://www.sixapart.com/ns/types#tag">VPS</category>
            
            <pubDate>Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:25:23 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>Virtual Machines are the future</title>
            <description>Before the holidays the office got to request new computers. This has been going on for at least a year I think. My boss would say, &quot;let&apos;s order new computers&quot;, I would work it out with my colleagues and we would decide Apple, Dell, Sony, etc. Someone would check out one of the numerous computer review sites and be impressed by the latest offering from Acer, Apple, Dell, or HP. A budget would be drawn and we would all finagle our dreams into the perfect setup and try to stay under budget (ie. smaller screen for more processor, smaller hard drive for more RAM). Requests would be submitted and we would wait for the partners to approve. Complete silence for months. By now state of the art has passed on, our requested machines would be lowered as new products came in, or by unavailable.

So right before Christmas we try one more time. By now I was used to the idea of having my computer forever. It&apos;s a Pentium D, quite power hungry, RAM is limited to 3.5GB but it gets the job done. And that&apos;s all you can ask for. New Intel Core i7s have arrived and I put in a request for a Dell Studio XPS thinking there&apos;s a chance in hell it might actually show up. 2 days before Christmas this little machine is sitting on my desktop. I&apos;m imagining all the simulations I can run, how many virtual machines can run at the same time. This thing is seriously no slouch. I install a trial of VMWare workstation and give it a run. Configuring a Windows 2003 Server to use 4GB of RAM (this is where I notice the problem that Windows can&apos;t use more than 3GB of RAM to a virtual machine). Bumped it to the maximum allowable RAM, SCSI drive of 40GB and we are good to go. I was trying to get an application in the VM to use all allowable memory for a mem test. It took a minute to find a good chunk of data. A 12GB dataset on 3 DVDs did the trick. More testing and I can say, yes this application can use more than the 1 or 2GB windows had locked in before.</description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_02.html#000151</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_02.html#000151</guid>
            
            
            <pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2009 12:44:02 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
        <item>
            <title>When to use tables in a web layout....</title>
            <description><![CDATA[This site provides a great reference of when and where to use tables instead of css for page layout

<a href="http://www.shouldisusetablesforlayout.com">http://www.shouldisusetablesforlayout.com</a>]]></description>
            <link>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_01.html#000150</link>
            <guid>http://www.joechin.com/movabletype/archives/2009_01.html#000150</guid>
            
            
            <pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2009 12:52:02 +0100</pubDate>
        </item>
        
    </channel>
</rss>

