Miguel Carrasco's Real World

This Blog has Moved

2008-05-17T08:40:45-05:00

For those that haven't noticed, I have not been blogging on this blog for quite some time (over a year). I have focused my efforts on writing mainly on software development and technology.

That blog is located here: http://www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com

The Software Development in the Real World Blog is my main work over the last 12 years as a software developer. It's main purpose is to share the knowledge with everyone, and have everyone learn and contribute back to the world of software development.

Hope to see you there!

Funniest Videos on the Internet - March Edition

2008-03-16T13:29:43-05:00

This month there are some new funny videos you should check out this month. Let's get going on the guided tour through some of the funniest videos on the Internet you should check out this month.

Frozen Grand Central

On a cold Saturday in New York City, the world’s largest train station came to a sudden halt. Over 200 Improv Everywhere Agents froze in place at the exact same second for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station.

Evolution of Dance - Optimus Prime Edition

A few years ago, the evolution of dance was the funniest video on the Internet. In fact even today it is the most viewed video ever. Watching Optimus Prime perform the dance moves was hilarious.

Cat Striptease

Here is a cat that is thinking she is Demi More. Great video, well done with the music. A really funny video, you will want to forward it around to your cat lover friends.

The Internet

A great video done by Molly Meme on the Internet. Makes you laugh because it's so true. Although not necessarily one of the funniest videos on the Internet, it is a great video and parody on how the Internet works, and how people access it.

Star Wars According to a 3 year old

Kids do say the craziest things. This three year old has a very interesting perspective on Star Wars. It will definitely put a smile on your face

Vista Microphone Issues Resolved

2008-03-16T10:50:02-05:00

About a year and a bit ago I had a issues with Vista and my Microphones. I do a lot of stuff with the Microphone and my computer, and this was a huge issue! Why on earth could I not get the microphone to work In Vista! Within Vista, there was no way to get the microphone audio to play through the speakers. It always seemed muted. How could I un-mute the microphone?

Luckily within a few days of posting the Vista Microphone issue, hundreds of people started posting their solutions to the problem. The main issue was that the Microphone Line Monitor in the sound control panel was nowhere to be seen. Therefore, by default as Vista mutes the line, there was no way to turn it on.

If your soundcard uses the Sigmatel Audio Codec, you are in huge luck as there is a simple way to enable the Microphone on vista with a simple registry hack.

Simply go to your start menu and type in regedit and hit enter to get into the Vista Windows Registry

Next you are going to want to find the following folder:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\Settings\filter\SpeakerHp\

Then you're going to find the key: EnableIntSpkrMute

Change this key from 01, to 00.

Reboot Vista, and you are ready to go! Next time you go into your sound control panel, you will have the ability to un-mute, and change your microphone levels in Vista!

Hope this helps everyone out there with what I have found to be the most annoying issue in Vista out there. Who knows what made them decided to lock out the Microphone from 90% of the people out there, but at least now you can resolve the issue pretty easily!

Of course if you don't want to go into the registry to fix your Vista Microphone issue, simply download this Reg file, and run it on your machine, then reboot. Simple. Enjoy your microphone!

Technorati Tags: Vista,Microphone,Microsoft,Technology

The Alkaline Diet

2008-03-12T23:29:31-05:00

Well I must admit, when Christmas came this year, I fell off the rocker when it came to following my Acid Alkaline Diet. At first, everything seemed fine... but gradually, I started to feel week again. I had a lot of trouble waking up in the morning, and was back to drinking over 3+ cups of coffee a day just to stay awake and keep moving. Our company is growing at a ridiculous pace, and renovations where underway, I couldnt seem to keep up, and get back on the rocker.

I started getting sick more, felt terrible, and once again started having other health issues that had literally vanished once I had switched my diet. What was I doing to my body! I was back up to 208 pounds (February 29th, 2009)!

Last week, I had it. I couldn't do this to my body anymore. I started once again on my my path to a healthy lifestyle. I started with a colon cleanse. I used Dr. Natura's product for this. It's by far the most impressive product out there. I changed my eating habits slowly, where I am now once again completely rid of Coffee (Sorry Starbucks) and Pop. Today was my first day without wheat products, and I went over to Sobey's and picked up some great Organic Rice Pasta which is wheat and glucose free. I boiled that up and in a separate pan, put some red peppers, onions, garlic, and some natural fresh seasoning I cut up myself (Parsley, Basil, Oregano).

I've also been drinking a TON of water, and taking Noni, Goji, and Mangosteen juice.

My goal is to have my body cleaned out and detoxed by next week, and we shall see how I feel. I can honestly say that after a week on the path to Alkaline goodness, I am already feeling a million times better, and am excited once again to be living life to it's fullest!

I know there is not a lot of "scientific" research or proof that following an Alkaline Diet will actually be good for you, or that Noni, Goji, or Mangosteen aren't anything more than expensive fruit juices, but here is my question to all the scientists out there.

Why do I feel like a million bucks when I eat organic, fresh food and vegetables, and feel like garbage when I eat lots of pasta, bread, sauces, some vegetables, meat, and take antibiotics to cure my "sickness's".

I don't need "scientific" proof to know what I should be doing. I hope you don't either.

Dominic Miguel Alexander Carrasco

2008-03-07T19:58:06-06:00

Hi Everyone! My name is Dominic Miguel Alexander Carrasco! I was finally born 6 pounds 7 ounces born 37 weeks on March 5^th, 2008 at 5:45pm.

I kicked mom in Prenatal classes and the water went everywhere, it was quit entertaining for me. I couldn’t wait anymore I wanted to meet everyone! We had awesome care, and had 3 doctors, 4 nurses, My dad, A Doula (Theresa Janzen), and three premature baby team people all over me when I came out (I was born 36 weeks five days, but officially I am 37 because I was so strong, they weren’t worried). Mommy is doing great, I am feeding like crazy (I’m very hungry!), and dad understands what stress and being tired is now.

We came home on Friday, and let me tell you, it was cold! But mom and dad did a great job of keeping me warm. I love all the neat toys, clothes, and things everyone bought me. My room is full of stuff!

Thanks for all the nice emails and thoughts. Took me a while (22 hours of labour) , but your thoughts and prayers really helped motivate me! Thanks to all the doctors and nurses at St. Boniface Hospital as well! You really did a great job of taking care of me and my mom.

Until I can start my own blog in a few years, this is Dominic saying "You ain' t seen nothing yet!"

Free TV on Media Center

2008-02-16T10:43:33-06:00

Want to watch television for free steaming over the Internet? Do you have a Media Center enabled machine? If you do, there is an amazing plugin that I downloaded the other day that lets to watch tv for free right on your Media Center. It works surprisingly well!

MiraWorldTV is a free TV plugin for windows Media Center. Miraworldtv consolidates various Internet TV streams and lets you watch them from your Media Center PC for free. It can be installed on Vista Ultimate or Vista Premium. Thousands of mainstream channels from all over the world are in-built with MiraWorldTV, and the database is updated frequently.

I really enjoy it because I love to listen to music from other countries, and this lets me do that. By the way this is totally legal as these stations simply stream their signal over the Internet, and MiraWorldTV simply gives you a nice interface to access all of them! It's sweet!

Download the Free TV Plugin here.

Technorati Tags: Free TV,Television

Ultimate List of Web 2.0 Music Sites

2008-02-11T01:06:31-06:00

I love music, and so do most people! It keeps them moving when times are tough, and it gives you time to relax and sets the mood. It even lets you grieve when you need to escape and be alone. These are some of my favourite sites.

Social Music

Unique Interface

http://www.musicmesh.net/

Karaoke

Lyrics

Music Sharing

Music Playlists and Mixes

Music Storage

Music Player

Remix Music

Live Music News

P2P Music

Music Search

Music Download and Rip

Radio Stations

Mobile Phone

MusicStation omniphone

Music Widgets

sonific

Music Videos

muvibee

esfresh

Technorati Tags: music,web 2.0

Silverlight is Here .net User Group Presentation

2008-01-29T22:10:59-06:00

Hope you enjoyed the presentation tonight! Slides will be posted shortly at: Software Development in the Real World: www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com. While you await the slides, examples, and more, why not read some of the articles!

Thanks for coming out, it was record attendance, and we hope to see more faces over the year in 2008! Feedback was pretty good, and we will try and get more food next time! We thought because of the weather, we would get less, but we actually got more than we though we would!

Thanks,

Miguel Carrasco

iContact Community

2008-01-07T23:51:27-06:00

Back in the day, before blogs where around, people used to subscribe to newsletters to get the latest information delivered to their inbox. I actually still subscribe to a few newsletters. However these days its very difficult to actually find good newsletters worth subscribing to. This is where iContact Community comes in! iContact Community uses a similar system to Digg, where the more interesting and relevant the content the iContact customers publish is, the more likely it will get votes from visitors leading to more exposure and more subscribers. The top ranked content in each category will show up on the community home page. All community content as well as the community profile will be indexed by Google and the major search engines, allowing publishers to get more visitors and subscribers.

iContact Community also allows email marketers to create a public profile, publicly archive their newsletters and blog posts, tag and categorize their newsletters and blog posts, get their content indexed in Google, participate in discussions with subscribers, and easily grow their opt-in lists.

Visitors to the iContact Community can vote on their favorite content, comment on content, view the top ranked content within each of the 18 categories like Entertainment, Politics, and Travel, create a public profile, discuss topics that interest them in the forums, and find new publishers who are creating email newsletters, RSS feeds, and blogs about topics they are interested in. It's an exciting experience to be able to vote on a newsletter that you feel has great content and see it move up in its category.

The iContact Community already has over 120,000 registered members and 212,000 pieces of content on it three days after launch. Check it out!

Rick Mercer Talking to Americans

2008-01-06T01:00:00-06:00

Get Ready for a laugh, Rick Mercer is the ideal Canadian comedian! Smart, funny, and extremely witty. Talking to Americans aired on 22 Minutes on CBC. In 2000, Rick Mercer became an international name when he included the then presidential candidate, George W. Bush in one of his segments. In Talking to Americans, Rick Mercer travels to major cities in America, and conducts basic interviews on the street.

Although this video is funny, I look on it with two sides. On the one side, yes we laugh at how silly and uneducated they seem, but it should also serve us in Canada as a reminder of how arrogant we can be about other countries. While we laugh that some American's might think that we only have 1,000,000 people in Canada, how many people does the United States have? Do you come close? Don't Google it!

Canada is such a multi-cultural country with so many people from so many different places, and we all get along so well! Let's remember to not just get along, but also to learn about the cultures in other countries. Lets not laugh at the American's, and then not know what the capital city of Australia is! Sydney? Sorry that would be wrong.

Some of the funny lines that Rick Mercer manages to get the Americans to say on camera include:

Congratulations Canada on Legalizing Staplers!
Congratulations Canada on preserving your national Igloo!
Congratulations Canada on allowing Dogs as house pets!
Congratulations Canada on a second area code!
Congratulations Canada on moving to the 24 hour Clock!

I really enjoyed watching Talking to Americans, it is one of the most brilliantly put together segments CBC has ever aired. Hopefully you don't miss the hidden message, which is how nice and genuine they were on camera.