June 2010 Archives

Return to Building PHP Backends for Flex Applications from Arthur Lockman on Vimeo.

Due to the amount of questions I had on my last video about writing backend scripts for Flex applications, I decided to remake that video to help answer those questions and really explain what I had made in more detail. Enjoy!

(PS: Try Full screen mode to get the full picture)

All for Now!

In my everlasting search for the perfect way to use the full potential of Google Voice, I have stumbled across several solutions to make free VoIP calls from my Mac. I had stumbled upon Gizmo, which is still what I use for this purpose. However, I today stumbled across a new frontend for Gizmo that makes the whole experience that much better.

Today, when starting up my Windows 7 VM to perform routine updates and installations, I came across this little notification in the right corner of my screen letting me know ever so kindly that "My copy of windows is not genuine". Well as you can imagine, I was not pleased. I see this and think I might have a virus or something, but Kaspersky told me that I in fact didn't. After working for a little while, a little notification popped up and told me that 'My copy of windows is not genuine' and 'I may be the victim of Software Counterfeiting'. Great. So I follow its instructions, and come to the conclusion that my copy of Windows is no longer activated. 

Well, previously I gave my thoughts on the validity of a 'leaked' iPhone 4. As made apparent at WWDC this year, i was wrong. I for one do like the new iPhone design, although i have not held one in my hand yet. I want to as soon as it is available, to see if it really is as amazing as it is said to be. I'll post a review as soon as I get my hands on one.

This entry originally appeared on the Parallels Consumer Tech Blog.

As many of my readers know, I am on the FIRST robotics team known as the NorthernForce based out of Gorham/Falmouth Maine. I am the lead student programmer on our team. this leads to some headaches, but I'll get to that later on.

As a programmer for FIRST, we have two options for languages to program in. We can choose from either Java or C++. This year, we decided upon C++. Or i should say 'we' as in our mentors. I personally do not like C++, especially when we have that or Java as options. Our IDE for C++, WindRiver Workbench, only runs on Windows machines. As many of you know already, I am a mac man, and do not have a Windows machine. What did I do? Virtualize, that's what i did.

At first, I went the free way. Using VirtualBox for virtualization. This worked okay, I have to admit. Although the one feature of VirtualBox that I didn't like was the fact that my fans on my MacBook were running all the time, and there seemed to be no way to stop that. I used VirtualBox for a while, and decided my legs could withstand the heat of Windows no more. 

I had heard from my father, an avid parallels user before me, that Parallels was much better for Virtualization than VirtualBox was. So I tried it out. First installing Parallels 4, since we had an unused key for that. I tried to use the Migration utility in it to import my VirtualBox VM, but it wouldn't work. I exported the VM from VirtualBox in several different formats, all to no avail. For some reason Parallels 4 refused to import a VM from anything but itself. After finding that out, I had to take the plunge and install Parallels 5.

Once i got that installed, migration went much smoother. Everything just worked exactly as expected. I was surprised, and happy. So now i had all of my VM's imported, and everything was running smoothly, and our FIRST team was getting ready for competition. 

Now, I being the lead programmer on our team, I had to be able to compile code to the robot in order for me to be any use to anyone. I was able to do this with VirtualBox, but had never tried with Parallels. I tried to compile, and had success instantly. It was fantastic to be able to get things done correctly and quickly, unlike before. 

Our team went to competition at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, however did not come home victorious. We did not come in first, but we did end up in the final elimination brackets with some pretty decent teams as our allies. We did't do as well as we would have liked, but did come away with the team spirit award. So i guess we didn't do that badly. 

All for now!