I recently bought a new Dell D630. I maxed out the memory (a mere 4GB). I wanted to be able take advantage of all that memory so I installed Vista Ultimate 64-bit. When I rebooted I got this nasty bluescreen before Windows started. After much dismay and very little help from Dell, my good pal and co-worker Brian found the answer. Since Brian doesn't have a blog I thought I would post it here.

The solution is pretty simple. Just install the latest Intel Turbo Memory drivers. They can be found here under the SATA drives section.

I had some experience installing Coldfusion 8 on a Windows Server 2008 box last week. I captured some screenshots so I could do this brief tutorial.

First, Microsoft has locked down everything in Server 2008. Thankfully they've been a bit smarter about it this time. Rather than installing everything by default and prompting you to "cancel or allow" it they have introduced server roles. This means that if I want to setup a webserver I need only install the pieces of software for hosting webpages.

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I've been offically bitten by the "testing bug". Meaning, I'm sold on unit testing. I'm always a johnny come lately when it comes to development tools and processes. Usually it's a real pain to switch tools or add something to my development process.

So I've been hearing about this thing called "unit testing" for a while. "Unit tests will change your life!"..."Unit testing is the way to go Joe!"...blah blah. You mean I have to write more code?

A resounding YES I WRITE MORE CODE! I write better code and I write alot more of it.

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My hard drive crashed on Wednesday so I've been without my Dell laptop for a couple of days now. I have a Mac mini that I use to test my webpages in Safari so I've been using it (sparingly) while I wait on my new hard drive to arrive.

Normally my interaction with OSX is limited to starting Safari , testing my page, and closing Safari. I'll admit that my experience with OSX is quite limited. For this reason I've never been that critical of the software. However, my recent catastrophe has led me to really dislike using it.

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Thanks to Tim Jackson for bringing this one to my attention. Since I've worked in Coldfusion I've always used code similar to this:

So that I could avoid the "This page contains unsecure items." message when embedding Flash, Javascript, images, etc.

Tim advised me that he had found a new way to avoid this without using server-side code:

Apparently the browser retains the current protocol. I've tested this in IE7 and Firefox using images, Flash, anchors, and javascript.

As a developer I'm always trying to find ways to encapsulate functionality. For years I've tried to encapsulate UI code so that I could "quickly and easily" build user interfaces. However, I'm starting to understand that this type of thinking can get me into trouble.

Don't misunderstand me, there are some great UI libraries like sebForm/sebField.

These libraries are great for creating full blown web applications in which you want a consistent look and feel across 100's if not thousands of pages.

However, these libraries just don't provide the type of layout flexibility that is needed for your standard every day website. Each website I create has it's own look and feel and creating a standard UI library for this type of development would be impossible.

So I find myself sort of "recreating the wheel" on each project and I think that's ok.

On each new site I implement the UI consistently across the site, but little bit different from the last site I created.

Since I'm so lazy I really try to reuse code when and where I can, but I think there is a minimum amount of uniqueness to each project that requires me to make a new wheel.

Is it just me or does everyone with a blog feel the need to report the exact same news?

For instance today I must have seen over 30 blog posts about the Sun/MySQL aquisition. (I'm sure that's a conservative number.)

After running this blog for almost a year I fully understand how hard it is to come up with blog topics. So I can see how these authors are compelled to pounce on ANY news just so they can have a blog post for the day.

Let me take this time to say that I'm as guilty as anyone. I've used news stories to help fill out my blog a bit. I vow NEVER to do that again.

Some of these stories deserve the attention they receive, especially if the author has an opinion or unique insight. However, I don't need to see 30 blog posts that have been cut and paste from CNN or some other news source. I already have RSS subscriptions for that.

Leave the news to the reporters that get paid to report it and start providing some original content.

I'm all for recycling, just not when it comes to the news.

My little blog has been neglected lately. With the busy holiday season and a recent period of illness I haven't had much time to think about a good topic. Honestly, I still don't have one, but I thought it was time to get back to updating this thing.

http://projects.nikhilk.net/Projects/WebDevHelper.aspx

It's so hard to debug my pages in IE. While this isn't Firebug it does make debugging AJAX requests in IE so much easier.

This game rocks! The graphics are gorgeous and the gameplay (while repetitive) is alot of fun. It also has a fairly unique story and a nice cliff hanger ending. Definitely one of the best games this year!

Although written specifically for ActionScript this book really helped me further my understanding of design patterns and how to apply them to all my software development projects. Additionally, the the last few chapters cover some advanced ActionScript topics like E4X. Recommended for any experienced developer interested in design patterns.

Advanced ActionScript 3 with Design Patterns