Last Sunday (10 May 2009) it was Mothers Day in the US.  To mark this occasion, my parents sent Jen some flowers and a card.  This was completely unexpected and a wonderful surprise, and as you can see from these pictures, the flowers are wonderful too.

Check out this YouTube video of three guys messing around drifting some trikes down some US country roads.  This is completely stupid and I sooooooooo want to give it a go :-D

For most of my professional career I have been a Windows guys with some Sun Solaris and Linux experience interspersed.

With my role change to an Enterprise Architect and my current interest in computer security, I thought it was about time that I took a closer look at what’s happening in the Unix world.

SPSS support a number of Unix distributions and Red Had Enterprise Linux.  While I was over at Red Hat, I discovered that the free distribution with all of the potential future packages is now distributed with a different brand, Fedora.

I’m a big fan of virtualisation for playing around with technology and therefore I wanted to install the latest Fedora distribution (Fedora 10) within my Virtual Server 2005 environment.

A bit of Google hunting found a blog post by Paul over at The Ideal Copy, Running Fedora 7 on Virtual PC 2007.  Paul has detailed the changes you need to make in order to get Fedora to work in a Virtual Server environment.

• Download the i386 Fedora 10 DVD torrent (Fedora-10-i386-DVD.torrent)
• Setup the environment with network share and boot with the downloaded Fedora DVD ISO
• When the virtual environment boots, Fedora will present a start page with a number of options.  Press Tab and enter the following:
  • vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img vesa i8042.noloop psmouse.proto=imps clock=pit

Fedora will now install using the graphics installer, follow the wizard selecting the options you want.

Just came across a post on the http://www.sans.org website called CWE/SANS TOP 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors.

The top 25 most dangerous programming errors is a very interesting list of which I have working knowledge but could do with more focus.  As I push forward with my Technology New Year's resolution, I fully intend to get a much better working knowledge of computer security, penetration testing and Test Driven Development (TDD).

My intention is to find / build an automated TDD .NET toolkit for these errors and other common testing issues.

Happy coding.

As part of my technology New Years Resolution, I've decided to take a more structured approach to get my Microsoft .NET development skills up to scratch.  While reading one of the many emails I get from Microsoft I came across a link to the Visual Studio 2008 Ramp.

As a piece of free training material, I've been very impressed and if like me you've let your .NET development skills get a little rusty I recommend you give it a go.

The following link will take you to the MSDN page for the Visual Studio 2008 Ramp up http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/rampup/cc562987.aspx.  There are two tracks:

• Visual Basic 2008
• Visual C# 3.0

Development track notes

I will list any notes related to the steps of the C# 3.0 development track below:

Step 4: MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft Learning- What's New in C# 3.0?

Step 4 uses MSDN Virtual Labs, these are great resources for learning without the pain of setting up your own environment.  Microsoft use their own Virtual Server 2007 technology to provide virtual environments in order to complete the learning tasks.

However, there are a number of limitations:

1. You only get a set amount of time to use the lab - 1.5 hours for MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft Learning- What's New in C# 3.0
2. No way to leave the lab and return another day with your state saved
3. No way to get data on/off the lab
4. These restrictions makes sense for Microsoft but may cause you problems.

Luckily the lab exercises and the lab environment can easily be created in your own environment.  Items needed:

• Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit (ensure your environment meets the System Requirements)
• Microsoft Virtual Labs C# 3.0 Language Enhancements manual, available to download when you start the Virtual Lab

Step 5: MSDN Virtual Lab: Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008

Like step 4, step 5 can be setup in your own environment.  Items needed:

• Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit – as used in step 4
• Microsoft Virtual Labs Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008 manual, available to download when you start the Virtual Lab