code & chips

I use TeamCity as the continuous integration to our projects.  It requires less setup and has nice GUIs for you to play with.

QAs with any new application, I installed all the plug ins, one of which is for Visual Studio. 

I didn’t really pay much attention to it, I was just happy to have three new icons in my toolbar and soft satisfaction that TeamCity was a click away from Visual Studio.

I read a post today that informed me of the “Personal Builds”.  This is the idea that – if I’m reading it right – you can test your changes against the server BEFORE committing. Obviously, there are conditions you can set to auto commit on success, but the main idea is to test your local changes do not break the build.

You can probably tell from the tone of my post that I am not all that convinced.  The reason is because all I get is this:

Everytime I try to set the SVN path, I am presented with the message:

“Unable to use selected svn.exe" from xxxxxxx”

I am hoping this is because we are running two builds behind on TeamCity.  I’ll update it on Monday and see if anything changes.

I’m not completely sold on the idea unless it can highlight this scenario:

Developer uses references to assemblies that are not included on the server or in the project, but only on his local machine.  If you were to upload the changes, the build would break.  But would this “Personal Build” notice this?  If not, then what is the point?

I’ll see on Monday….

I finally got round to buying myself one of these babys!

And so far, the experience has been a joy. I haven’t got it up and running properly yet. I am still moving over archives from my old NAS drives and configuring the taxonomy.

But I will be updating this post with my findings at some point….

Until then, here’s a site that seems useful for the WHS: MediaSmartHome

Update: I have spent pretty much all day trying to configure the server – but with little luck but lots of frustration. The WHS console hung every time I tried to access. I was not looking forward to returning the box after I had done so much.

But – as normal – the fault was ALL me. I should have read the documentation properly.

After installing the “add ins” the server will run a LOT slower as each newly added service is busy indexing all the files on the server. And as my server is almost full already – it makes sense why it didnt want to play nicely.

I am going to bed now and hoping that it will all be cleared up in the morning.

I have this way about me that annoys a lot of people. Rather than enjoy something for what it is, I HAVE to know how it works. All the while missing the point or the purpose of the “something” in question.

Poker bots are no exception.

Building a poker bot

I often wanted my physical machine to be a virtual one, either because I want a back up or because I find virtual images simpler to manage what with snapshots and portability – I carry the images on disk to and from the office.

However, I was never sure how to do it until now:

• VMWare
• Microsoft VPC