Taking a Microsoft Learning course - my experience so far

I am currently studying for a Microsoft ASP.NET qualification
MCTS: .NET Framework 2.0 Web Applications.
I have paid for and begun one of the Microsoft Learning training courses:
Collection 5160: Core Development with the Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0 Foundation.

Here are my first impressions. I have posted most of this content on the private boards of the course provider.

I've been pretty pleased with the course so far. The coverage of the material seems good, and I have already learnt quite a few extra things even though I have been using ASP.NET in earnest for a couple of years commercially. The mix of presentation of content works well for me, with the video presentations, factual content, puzzles, quizzes and final lab sessions combining well to reinforce the new material.

The ability to use a virtual machine at the end of each module, loaded with Visual Studio 2005 is essential for those without a copy, handy for those of us who are no longer trapped in Bill's world and a neat trick even if you do have an msdn subscription.

Most of my feedback is minor annoyances. In my experience any form of education is often imperfect, and this would appear to be on the good side of such things, though it remains to be seen if it gets me through the exams!

My comments:
- Firefox support could be improved (except for activex stuff of course). I couldn't get into the course at all in firefox. (I don't atually run windows at all at home, so had to fire up a vm just to get in, even though most of the content is no more than html, css & flash).
- Page width and font size seem to be linked, so if I increases the text size I have to scroll side to side, which is a PITA, as i run a super hi res screen so default text is tiny. Particularly noticeable on the lab exercise pages.
- Providing a zip of the starter and solution files would be much better for those of us who have visual studio installed locally.
- As someone else said, why do you have to log in to the lab machines? It's trivial to get windows to automatically log a user in.
- I had a connection drop on me (while reading up), it would have been good to be able to reconnect to same session.
- It would be good to see the remaining lab time in the same window as the rdp activex control.
- The keyboard in the VM is set to US, which is a PITA as I have a UK keyboard, so " comes out as @.
- It's not clear if the forum emails you if someone replies. I'm not likely to monitor it, but the answers I get will affect my decision to buy the rest of the courses I'm planning on doing.
- The forums seem to be lacking in input from course staff in helping struggling (paying) students, and in providing technical support.

Blocking web adverts

A friend asked me to write this up.

To remove all those annoying adverts from the web as you see it:

• install & use firefox


• install adblock plus add-in


• install fliterset-g updater add in

Job done. Thanks for listening.

Ubuntu screen locking

Howto prevent ubuntu locking the screen when closing the laptop lid.

Thanks to jrib in irc://freenode.net/#ubuntu for this one.

• Run gconf-editor (with alt+F2)


• Go to or search for /desktop/gnome/lockdown


• Tick disable_lock_screen


• Restart gnome (ctrl+alt+backspace - after saving your documents it's a bit brutal!)

backing up your home folder

Here I outline the solution I chose for backing up my life, er... I mean home folder. (I'm sure there's life outside /home/tim somewhere...)

My requirements were:

• backup to dvd+rw


• >20GB of data to back up


• no obscure formats (in case I don't have the backup tool when I need to restore)

I looked at several solutions for backups but ended up writing scripts to meet my needs.

The main script creates a tar file of my home directory, excluding certain items, which is then split into files suitable for writing to dvd+rw discs, with tar based verification, md5sums and file list text files created at the same time.

The reason for splitting to 3 files per disc is that the iso 9660 spec has a 2GB file size limit, and it's important that the discs are as simple as possible (ie no UDF) to aid recovery in awkward situations. This is also why I avoided compression.

backup_home.sh
#!/bin/bash -v
#DVD+R SL capacity 4,700,372,992 bytes DVD, (see wikipedia on DVD)
#ISO max file size 2GB. 4.38GB/3 = 1,566,790,997bytes = 1,494MB
#1,490MB to leave some space for listings and checksums
tar -cvv --directory /home tim --exclude-from backup_home_exclude.txt | split -b 1490m - /var/backups/tim/home/home.tar.split.
cd /var/backups/tim/home
md5sum home.tar.split.* > home.md5
cat home.tar.split.* | tar -t > home_file_list.txt
cat home.tar.split.* | tar -d --directory /home tim > home_diff.txt
ls -l home.* > home_backup_files.txt

backup_home_exclude.txt
tim/work*
tim/.Trash*
tim/.thumbnails*

This leaves me with a big pile of split files (named .aa, .ab etc) and a few text files. I proceeded to write 3 split files per disc, and put the 4 text files on every disc for convenience. I used gnome's built in DVD writing to create the discs.

I also wanted to verify the md5 checksums as the discs were created, so I wrote another little script to make life easier. This ensures the newley written disc has been remounted properly, and runs the md5 check. So long as the 3 relevant checksums came out correctly on each disc I can be reasonably confident of recovering the data should I need it.
"eject -t" closes the cdrom, which is handy.

reload_and_verify.sh
#!/bin/bash -v
cd /media
eject
eject -t
mount /media/cdrom
cd cdrom
md5sum -c home.md5
cd /media
eject

In addition to the above mechanism (which is a pain at best, mostly due to media limitations) I keep my machines in sync with unison which I strongly recommend for both technical and non-technical users. I gather it also runs on microsoft (who?), so you might find it useful if you are mid transition.

My mum and her super ceramics

Thrown Handled Vase,
originally uploaded by Sarah Abell.

My mum has started posting pics of her fab ceramics work on flickr. Go mum!

One of her early pieces has pride of place in my display cabinet and is admired by all. Watch this space for more funky designs as she heads towards the end of uni.

Get emailed Tim's blog and photos

Can't be bothered to check here and see if I've written anything this month? Great news! You can now have my blog entries and latest flickr photos sent to you by email thanks to the feedblitz service.

You can subscribe to my blog using the email box on the bottom of the right hand menu, or by clicking here.

You can subscribe to my flickr photo feed here (public photos only - you have to be my flickr contact to see photos of friends I post).

starfighter

Whilst looking for backup packages on ubuntu via synaptic by searching for the word "tar", I stumbled across the package "starfighter". So I installed it. Then ran it. And played it. It's rather good fun. Ctrl to fire lasers, space to fire rockets, cursors to get around. Spend your time chasing enemy ships around the screen, and collecting bonuses / money. Has a decent sound track too.

Highly recommended. I love the open source world.



$ apt-cache show starfighter
Package: starfighter
Priority: optional
Section: universe/games
Installed-Size: 368
Maintainer: Debian Games Team
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.1-6
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4-1), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.0), libsdl-image1.2 (>= 1.2.3), lib
sdl-mixer1.2 (>= 1.2.6), libsdl1.2debian (>> 1.2.7+1.2.8), libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.0)
, starfighter-data (= 1.1-6)
Filename: pool/universe/s/starfighter/starfighter_1.1-6_i386.deb
Size: 116320
MD5sum: 959f894e78517a3411c3c2656d61b85c
SHA1: ac7e2f458d4bd8c57056e11bb3da8609f35b528c
SHA256: 29c9adee1ee2fb52f1d790254683579e919655ad01bb806a02a59d32abcb8d58
Description: 2D scrolling shooter game
After decades of war one company, who had gained powerful supplying both
sides with weaponary, steps forwards and crushes both warring factions
in one swift movement. Using far superior weaponary and AI craft, the
company was completely unstoppable and now no one can stand in their
way. Thousands began to perish under the iron fist of the company. The
people cried out for a saviour, for someone to light this dark hour...
and someone did.
.
Features of the game:
.
o 26 missions over 4 star systems
o Primary and Secondary Weapons (including a laser cannon and a charge weapon)
o A weapon powerup system
o Wingmates
o Missions with Primary and Secondary Objectives
o A Variety of Missions (Protect, Destroy, etc)
o 13 different music tracks
o Boss battles
.
Homepage: http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/starfighter.php
Bugs: mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Origin: Ubuntu