Sean Deasy

Since this blog is of a technical nature I plan to be posting more code snippets as time goes on. I obviously want the source code to appear pretty on my blog with all the syntax highlighting that one is used to in modern IDEs (including Visual Studio .NET 2003/2005). I run this blog using WordPress and I have just installed a plugin to take care of the Syntax highlighting called WP-dp.SyntaxHighlighter. It supports many languages and I’ll be interested mainly in the .NET languages. Below is an example of a code snippet in C#

using System; 

public class ReverseArraySort
{
   public static void Main()
   {
      string[] strings = {"beta", "alpha", "gamma"};
      Console.WriteLine ("Array elements: ");
      DisplayArray  (strings);
      Array.Sort    (strings); // Sort elements
      DisplayArray  (strings);
   }

   public static void DisplayArray (Array array)
   {
      foreach (object o in array)
      {
         Console.Write ("{0} ", o);
      }
      Console.WriteLine();
   }
}

Microsoft released a Virtual PC Image a while back which had Internet Explorer 6 installed on it. This was required because
you can’t successfully (I have tried) run both IE7 and IE6 on a Windows PC at the same time. Microsoft put a time limit on the
Virtual PC image so that there wouldn’t be copies of Windows floating around that anybody could use without a license.
The expiry date for the original image was April 1 so they have now released a new Virtual PC image with an expiry date of July 23rd.
This allows web developers to test their apps with both browsers succesfully during testing.

From IEBlog:

IEBlog : IE6 VPC Refresh Now Available
IE6 VPC Refresh Now Available

In my original blog post about releasing the IE6 Virtual PC Image, we mentioned that it would expire on April 1st, 2007 (no, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke), and that we’d be releasing a new VPC image to replace it sometime in March. Well, I’m happy to report that I propped the new VHD up on Monday morning. You can download the image here. Take note that a free download of Virtual PC 2007 is now available, replacing VPC2004.

I didn’t make any major changes to the image other than adding the latest security updates. I also managed to reduce the download size to just under 400 megs, shaving off almost 100 megs from the previous image size. This image is time-bombed to July 23rd , but we will continue to release these images as long as they are needed. They are time-bombed because you get them for free. If you want images without time-bombs, an MSDN subscription is the way to go.

I wanted to give my PC a bit of a boost so I decided to stick some more RAM in. The extra memory really helps out when you want to run VMWare images or Virtual PCs. So I wasn’t too sure which type of RAM I needed, there seems to be a ton of different questions/options when choosing RAM.

• PC2700, PC3200, …
• Parity or Non-Parity
• Value of CL
• How much RAM can I put in each slot ?
• Do I have to keep the RAM chips balanced across slots ?

Even though I built the PC myself two years ago I still needed a bit of help when choosing the correct RAM chip.
Two resources which came in really handy were the following:

• DABS Memory Selector
• Crucial System Scanner

The Crucial System Scanner runs either in your browser (as an ActiveX) or as a downloadable exe and it scans your computer and gives you a report on what RAM that you need to buy. At least then you can be sure that what you buy will do the trick.