Through the Interface

Virtually done

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Over the weekend, from Friday to Sunday, I spent far more hours than I'd have liked finishing off my AU Virtual class for this year, "Secure Your AutoCAD Environment" (I'm increasingly involved in security-related activities for the AutoCAD development organisation). Preparing material for AU Virtual is often pretty tough, whether it's being recorded in person (I've done a couple of those) or being in advance and needing extensively editing.

This year's format was a bit different, in that it required multiple modules to be recorded separately as opposed to a single, monolithic recording. Better from a consumption perspective, apparently, and probably also a bit better in terms of getting presenters to chunk up their material and record it separately, but it felt to me like it added some overhead during the recording and editing phase.

Anyway, it's now all done and has been uploaded to the AU website. Hopefully that's it until I start to get viewers' questions through.

Now I can start to think about other things, once again. I still have my physical AU classes to prepare for, although thankfully most of the coding is done: I mainly need to update the various projects to make sure they work with the latest releases of products & frameworks that were in Beta when I wrote the code – particularly Visual Studio 2012, ASP.NET MVC 4 and Windows 8 – but it shouldn't be too arduous.

Speaking of Windows 8… I've now installed the RTM build both on my dedicated build machine and inside a Parallels VM, and it looks great. I'm looking forward to using it more as a primary OS.

And speaking of Parallels, the big news on that front is that the Kinect SDK now has a version that supports working in a VM – something I begged Microsoft for over a year ago. Thankfully they listened (it wasn't just me asking, of course) and delivered v1.6 of the Kinect SDK and its accompanying Developer Toolkit, which allow me to connect my Kinect up to my Mac and run my AutoCAD-related Kinect projects, albeit inside a Windows VM inside Parallels. This should help me do more with Kinect as I now no longer have to switch across to my secondary machine to work with it.

And the final bit of "hot of the press" excitement is around the newly expanded Raspberry Pi Model B, now with 512 MB of RAM. It probably won't make much difference to the face-recognition security cam project, but may well let me run more advanced games in more complex console emulators. Happy days!

6 responses to “Virtually done”

  1. James Maeding Avatar
    James Maeding

    your post made me think, is there a tool that tells you what files are being loaded at startup?
    While some parts of that would be easy, a bunch of findfiles (using lisp lets say) looking for known files acad loads on startup for a given version.
    What about menu mnl's, and other items that get loaded by startup lisps (say, acaddoc.lsp)?
    The tool would basically watch for the loading of .lsp, vba, .arx, .dll and so on. This has been asked in DG's many times. Is this a tool you could try to make? The resulting list of files would be a great diagnostic tool.
    thx

    Reply
  2. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    I personally use the Process Monitor (and before that FileMon) to give me exactly this information. It not only tells you what processes are loading, but (and this is almost more important) trying to load and from where.

    technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

    Kean

    Reply
  3. Anonymoose Avatar
    Anonymoose

    "Speaking of Windows 8… I’ve now installed the RTM build both on my dedicated build machine and inside a Parallels VM, and it looks great. I’m looking forward to using it more as a primary OS."

    Perhaps you're referring to the Aesthetic aspects?

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2012/10/20/early-look-at-windows-8-baffles-consumers/1646077/

    Reply
  4. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    Not solely, Tony, although I admit I like them. Here's a more balanced review of the OS, in case you're interested:

    gizmodo.com/5934932/windows-8-review-incredibly-innovative-incredibly-important-not-quite-incredible

    I generally prefer to form my own opinions on these things (I've been using Windows 8 on-and-off during the developer and consumer preview releases - it's a rock solid OS), but if I'm going to trust an online opinion it's almost certainly not that of USA Today (especially not for technology coverage - I mean, seriously?).

    Kean

    Reply
  5. Anonymoose Avatar
    Anonymoose

    Well, I'm not so naive as to trust anything coming from sources that are primarily in the business of reviewing products (who in many cases keep the products they're sent for review), and have a significant dependence on revenues derived from paid advertising from the companies whose products they review.

    USA Today doesn't seem to be up to its eyeballs in conflicting interests, so while they may not have the same level of technical expertise, they are simply conveying the reactions and opinions of both IT professionals and plain everyday consumers.

    Reply
  6. Kean Walmsley Avatar
    Kean Walmsley

    The opinion I've formed of the newspaper in question (over years of it being forced upon me during trips to the US) is that it's a tabloid dressed up as serious journalism that has a nasty habit of presenting snippets of facts without broader context.

    I think it's bold to assume they don't serve their own vested interests, even if those are to sell more copies or advertising via sensationalist journalism.

    Anyway - I'm not naively trusting anything like a review (even if it happens to provide more depth and balance - the Gizmodo review is far from being one-sidedly positive, which is why I chose that: it's easy enough to choose a position and find a review that fits it).

    I've used the OS and I personally like it a great deal. Whether it proves popular or not isn't hugely relevant to me. I'll be switching across to use it full-time when I get the chance.

    Kean

    Reply

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