Recently I purchased a Dell laptop that comes with Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit. As you know, Windows Vista Home Premium edition comes with a media center software installed, called Windows Media Center. As great as Windows Media Center is, just like Windows Media Player, it is not able to play AVI and MKV (Matroska) files straight out of the box. You need to install some AV Codecs in order to play those files in Windows Media Center. The problem is that there are gazillions AV codecs out there, which one works? Here are the breakdown of all the codecs I’ve tried:

• DivX Codecs: This one works, but only for Windows Media Player. It does not work for Windows Media Center.
• FFDShow Tryouts: This one apparently does not work. Maybe I had to configure it to work in Windows Media Center, but straight out of the box it does not work for me.
• Media Control Plugin: This one uses FFDShow Tryouts. Doesn’t work.
• Shark007 Codec Solution: This is THE ONE, this one WORKS. It seems to use FFDShow Tryouts to do the job, but it works straight out of the box. NOTE: if you’re using 64 bit Windows Media Center, you need to install the 64 bit component as well.

RWendi

I got my XPS laptop on Tuesday this week. My first impression on the laptop thus far has been good. There are 2 words that can sum up my first impression, beauty and quality. I will write more about it once I’ve played around with it more. Stay Tune.

One of the greatest thing with buying from Dell is that you are given the opportunity to customize your system configuration before buying. You can upgrade any components you like, add more components to your system, or on some cases downgrade your component. These upgrades do not come free, they will add up to your final price that you have to pay for your laptop.

If you’re like me, you probably have the “I want a future proof system” mindset, when configuring your Dell laptop. The only way to have a future proof system is to have a powerful system configuration that can withstand the trial of time. This does mean that you might be required to upgrade the base configuration offered by Dell.

When I was configuring my XPS 16 laptop, the biggest question that comes to my mind was “Is it worth it to upgrade these components now?”. Now that I have bought my laptop, I wandered if I made the right decision by not upgrading some components early. These are the component upgrades that I decided to leave out:

• Upgrading the 500GB 7200RPM hard drive to a 128GB SSD.
• Upgrading the DVD drive with a Blu-Ray Drive.
• Adding an integrated TV tuner.
• Upgrading the battery to 9 cells.

Lets take the first case, upgrading the 500Gb 7200RPM hard-drive to a 128Gb SSD. The reason for me not upgrading early is because the upgrade is too expensive. It would cost me $267 (AUD) to upgrade, and I would lose 372GB. Now how much does it cost for me to upgrade this on my own? If I take the price of a 7200RPM hard drive ($168) plus the upgrade, this means you actually paid $435 for the SSD upgrade by Dell. According to StaticIce (computer hardware price comparison search engine), you can get a 128Gb SSD as low as $322. That’s a $100 different, which is not bad.

The second case is to upgrade the DVD drive to a Blu-Ray Drive, which costs $266.60. This is quite a tricky one, because it is not easy to find a slot loaded internal Blu-Ray Drive. In fact I was not able to find any on the market, except for second hand ones which cost around $80 on Ebay. Another option is to get an external Blu-Ray drive, which costs around $170. Again another $100 different, and it’s external too! This means you can add blu-ray capability to every PCs that you’ve got. I think that is a BIG plus.

The third case is to add an integrated TV tuner. The TV tuner that Dell provides is an integrated DVB-T digital TV Tuner, which costs $79.20 to upgrade. Another tricky one to compare, because all the internal tv tuner that I could find will take up an express card expansion slot. The cheapest that I could find is AVerMedia Hybrid + FM Express TV tunner, and it costs $95. Yes it is more expensive, but it’s also an analog TV Tuner, Digital Radio tuner, and it comes with a remote control. With all those additional functionalities I think its worth the $15 difference. Another option is to get an external USB Digital TV Tuner. I’m able to find AVerTV Volar X USB Digital TV Tuner for $50. Very good price, and it comes with a remote control too.

The last case is probably where it makes sense to upgrade early. A 9 cell Dell battery is definitely something that you will not be able to find retail. Even if you can find retail, are you really going to trust those aftermarket batteries? Battery is a very crucial component of a laptop. I may be a little bit paranoid here, but I think there might be a chance in a case of mismatch, you might end up burning your system internal circuit. That is definitely something you want to avoid at all cost.

When it comes to upgrading your component early, whether it’s worth upgrading, it all depends on the nature of the component. Is it something that can be bought on retail market? If It is not, by all means upgrade it. If it is, then you better off upgrading later and save yourself some money.

RWendi

2 days ago I ordered through a New Dell XPS Studio 16 Laptop from Dell Australia website. Here is the basic spec:

• Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 (2.53 GHz/1066 FSB/3MB). Very tempted to upgrade to T9550 (2.66GHz/1066 FSB/6MB), but I don’t think it’s worth it. T9550 consumes more power (35W compared to 25W) and yet overall performance gain, in theory, shouldn’t be that much (unless in gaming of course). Comparison of Intel Centrino 2 CPUs.
• 4 GB dual-channel 1066MH DDR3. Sweet, DDR3.
• 500GB 7200RPM Hard Drive. At the moment I don’t think it’s worth it to get a solid state drive. I need to add $267 just to add a 128GB SSD. Surely it’s faster, but I have to trade off 372GB of space. No Thanks.
• Windows Vista Home Premium (64Bit) with Windows 7 upgrade eligibility.
• 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670. This worries me a bit, not sure how much power hungry this thing is.
• 6 Cells Battery. Wanted to upgrade to 9 cells, but it cost me $190 more. Hopefully the 6 cells battery will do just fine.
• Slot Load 8X DVD + /-RW Drive with double layer write capability. Again tempted to upgrade to blu-ray. Then I thought, I prefer to watch HD Movies on a 46” HD TV.
• 15.6" 1080p WUXGA (1920x1080) WLED display. Full HD, Sweet.

This system costs me about $1570. I think its a pretty good deal, considering the specs is not bad at all. The estimated delivery time is about 9-12 working days.  If you wander why it takes that long, it’s because most Dell computers are manufactured in and shipped from Malaysia. I hope I can get the laptop by the end of next week, can’t wait to get my hands on it. :)

RWendi

Last week I mentioned that I would start honing up my business skills by reading more business books/blogs. I haven’t started on blogs yet, but I have picked up a book that’s called “The One Minute Manager ” written by Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson. This book is light weight and only contains 106 pages. It’s a fairly easy reading book, which is good for me. Having very low business skills, I think it’s a bad idea for me to start reading books that is very in depth and hard to follow.

The writers deliver their ideas in a form of a story of a young man who was looking for the most effective manager, so that he can work for him and learn from him. His search led him to many kind of managers, and they can be sum up to two categories: managers who were primarily interested in results (autocratic, bottom-line, hard-nosed, realistic, and profit-minded), and managers who were primarily interested in people (democratic, participative, supportive, considerate, and humanistic). He learnt that those two type of managers are just partially effective, because they can only benefit/profit either the organization or the people, not both. The young man search finally led him to the “One Minute Manager” where he finally learnt the most effective way to be a manager.

The book promotes three management techniques, which are: 1 Minute Goal Setting, 1 Minute Praising, and 1 Minute Reprimand. If you wander if 1 minute actually means 1 minute, it’s not. It’s just an idiom to remind us that they are not as complicated as they seem. They should be clear and simple.

Management “lifecycle” has to always start from 1 Minute Goal Setting. Before starting any work/project, it’s important that all the goals/objectives and the desired output clearly defined and agreed on. The purpose of this is so that the people you’re managing are able to see what good performance behaviors look like. They’re encouraged to constantly review their performance to see if the current behaviors/situations match with the goals. The goals should be written on a piece of paper, and should not be more than 250 words. The idea is to keep them easy to read and simple to understand, so that re-reading them will re-clear your objectives.

After all the goals have been set, it is important to give constant and ongoing feedback of how your team is doing. This is where the 1 Minute Praising and 1 Minute reprimand come into play. Praising and reprimand should be given out immediately whenever you see good and bad behaviors. Constant feedbacks motivate people, because they become completely aware of how well they’re doing and progressing in achieving the goals set by the 1 minute goal setting. Here are some tips given by the writer on how to give praising and reprimand effectively:

• Let them know that you’re going to observe how they’re doing and constantly give feedback of their performance from the very start.
• Praise/Reprimand immediately.
• Tell them specifically what they did right/wrong.
• Tell them how you feel about what they did right/wrong.
• Additional steps for reprimands:
• Remind them how much you value them.
• Reaffirm that you think well of them  but not of their performance in this situation.
• Additional steps for praising:
• Encourage them to do more of the same

I think that the book gives a simplistic approach to management. It is more like the macro or brief general overview of what managers should do to give benefit to both the organization and the people their managing. His approach is pretty basic, and it sounds like it can be practical in real life. I think this book has met my expectations. I expected to gain basic knowledge in management and I believe that’s what I have got. I think I’m going to look something more of a heavy read next time.

RWendi

Read this great article about unit testing wisdoms, thought its worth sharing.

The Way of Testivus

• If you write code, write tests.
• Don’t get stuck on unit testing dogma.
• Embrace unit testing karma.
• Think of code and test as one.
• The test is more important than the unit.
• The best time to test is when the code is fresh.
• Tests not run waste away.
• An imperfect test today is better than a perfect test someday.
• An ugly test is better than no test.
• Sometimes, the test justifies the means.
• Only fools use no tools.
• Good tests fail.

RWendi

Yesterday, I found that my laptop was infected by a virus. I was a bit surprised by it, because, well, it’s my first time. I always try to keep my computer pretty clean whenever I’m using it, and I’m not sure where and how I got this virus. The virus is undetectable with AVG Free, which I have installed in my machine. This can mean 3 things: The virus is relatively new, the virus is not a BIG threat, and lastly AVG Free sucks. Anyway, the virus has the following symptoms:

• Internet explorer title bar has “[--Hacked by ROCKSTREET—] @InF” message.
• Your computer keeps on prompting you with “Drive was not found, please insert disk at location” dialog.

As you can see from the symptoms, the virus is not very threatening. The second symptom can be a bit worrying, but I’m finding that all of my drives can be found and work with no problem. Thus that dialog window is probably a bogus dialog window. After gathering some more information from the net, finally found a way to remove the virus, here is how:

• Go to “Start Menu” and then “Run”. In the dialog box type “msconfig” and click “Ok”.
• Select the “Startup” tab, and un-tick rockstreet entry. Click “Apply” –> “Ok” –> “Exit without Restart”.
• Go to “c:\windows” and the root of every drive that you have (e.g. “c:\”, “d:\”), and then delete the “rockstreet.dll.vbs” file.
• Go to the following registry key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run”, and delete the load key.
• Go to the following registry key “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main”, and clear up the “Window Title” value key.
• Restart your machine.

Hope this helps in removing the virus if your computer is having the same problem.

RWendi

Working as a programmer I feel like that I’m lacking of business skills. Whether that be my business knowledge, marketing, nor management skills, I have none of them. I think I focused too much on how to be better in what I do and completely forgotten of my long term goal. It’s always been my dream to run my own business, and I think I will have better chance of succeeding if I come well prepared.

I think there are many aspects of business that needs to be explored, such as:

• Running your business.
• Managing your employee/team.
• Marketing your product/services
• Leadership
• Sales/Revenue strategy.
• Others.

Those are pretty much gray areas for me. I have no experience in any of those business aspects, nor do I have the knowledge. I’ve decided it’s time to do something about it, so that when the time comes to run my business, I wouldn’t be a complete idiot and had no idea what I’m doing. My approach to getting my business skills hone up is simple, Books and Blogs. From today I’ll start reading more and more business related books and blogs. Hopefully they will help me to gain some business skills as they do with my programming skills.

RWendi

The last 2 weeks have been one of the most fun times working for Docscorp. The team were given the chance to redesign our comparison model to be a better one. At the current state, the model is one big giant blob of procedural functions which are contained in …. 2 CLASSES. Yep that’s right 2 classes. (Now you know how bad it is). Our job was basically to transform these 2 classes into a model that is much more object oriented.

I spent some times to skim through all the functions of the 2 classes. I realized that all the logics are already solid, its just that the code are not as “organized” as it should be. Or in other words, redesigning the current model means One BIG refactoring job needs to be applied to the 2 classes.

I decided to take a stab on it and started refactoring the classes. After a few days, I came up with a good clean model of how it should be done. While refactoring, I realized that all I’m doing is just applying a couple of programming principles to those 2 classes. These principles are:

• Single Responsibility Principle (SRP).
• Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY).
• Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS).

Yep, those are the only principles that helped me transform/refactor 2 giant procedural classes to be a modular object oriented model.

I think those should be the basis of your decision of when to refactor your code. If you find that you’re repeating yourself or writing the same/similar logic, then it warrants to refactor your code. If you find that your logic/algorithm gets too complicated, it’s time to break it down to make it simpler (doesn’t mean that you have to change your logic). Lastly if you find your code is doing to much or having to much responsibility, it’s time to refactor it out (I know by definition SRP is a class thing, but I think the same logic can be applied to functions).

You can always take things further and apply more programming principles to your code. But these three principles is a must in order to achieve a reasonable clean code. If you apply these three rules in your day to day code, I’m sure overtime you’ll find that your code will be a lot cleaner and much more maintainable. Thus, don’t be afraid to apply these rules to refactor your code.

RWendi

Visual Studio 2008 comes with a unit testing tool, MSTest. The coolest thing about MSTools is that it integrates so well with Visual Studio. Every time you build your solution, Visual Studio will automatically run your test projects and display the results in a nice graphical user interface (similar to NUnit’s one). I’ve been using MSTest for my side projects, until I found out that MSTest is not supported Visual Studio Express, which I have installed in my MSI Wind. Because of this limitation, I had to resort back to the good old NUnit.

After using NUnit again, I really missed MSTest integration with Visual Studio. NUnit provides a very minimal integration with Visual Studio, which requires you to create an external tool that points out to the NUnit console. When you run the NUnit tool, it will spit out the results into your Visual Studio’s output window. The simplistic approach works, but the problem with this is that I have to run it manually each time I run my build. It would be ideal to just have this automatically run each time we build our solution. Luckily, this can be automated by using Visual Studio macro and post build event. Here is how you do it.

Creating NUnit As A Visual Studio External Tool

First we need to create NUnit as a visual studio external tool. To do this, in Visual Studio, go to Tools > External Tools. You will be prompted with a form, in which you can manage all of the available external tools. Click on the Add button and fill in the form as follows.

You should fill in your form exactly as above, except for the Title field (if you wish to have different name) and the command field. The command field is the path to your NUnit console runner. Click the Ok button to create the external tool. Now that you have created it, if you go to Tools menu in Visual Studio, you will see NUnit in one of the available external tools. When you run the NUnit external tool, it will run NUnit through command line, and display it in your Visual Studio output window.

NOTE: the above will make NUnit runs all of the tests in the current active project. Thus make sure your active project is your test projects when running the tools. You can do this by having your test as your active file in Visual Studio when compiling. You can make it not to be bounded by your current active project by; hardcoding the arguments value to be your test dll and the inital directory value to be the location of your test dll. But keep in mind that the tool is not project/solution specific. That is, if you open up a different solution, it will still run the hardcoded value.

Automating NUnit Integration To Run After Compile

Now that you have the NUni integration set up, its time to make it run automatically after each compile. Here’s how you do it:

• In Visual Studio go to Tools > Macros > Macros IDE.
• This will bring up a the Macros IDE.
• On the left hand side there should be a “Project Explorer” panel.
• In the Project Explorer panel, double click on EnvironmentEvents module.
• Insert the following code in the module.

              Private
              Sub BuildEvents_OnBuildDone(ByVal Scope As EnvDTE.vsBuildScope, ByVal Action As EnvDTE.vsBuildAction) Handles BuildEvents.OnBuildDone

    DTE.ExecuteCommand("Tools.ExternalCommand1")

              End Sub

As you can see that the above custom macro tries to run an external tool by its order. Thus depending on where you put your NUnit tool, you might want to change the parameter of right number based on the order of your NUnit tool. For example, if your NUnit is the third external tool, you can change the macro to this: DTE.ExecuteCommand(“Tools.ExternalCommand3”).

Debuging Your NUnit Tests.

Now that you have everything set up, how can one debug their NUnit tests? Surely you want to debug your tests once it fails. Here’s how you do it:

• Right click on your test project and select "properties”.
• On the right hand side, click on the Debug tab.
• Change the start action from “Start Project” to “Start External Program”.
• Insert the path to your NUnit GUI runner as your External Program.
• In the Start Option section, insert your test dll, as your command line args, followed by “ /run”. For example: “tests.dll /run”.
• Lastly set your working directory to the path of your test dll.
• Your form should look something like this.

With this configuration set up, whenever you run your solution (don’t forget to set your test project as your Start Up project), this will run NUnit’s GUI runner to run your tests. Moreover, Visual Studio will automatically attach the debugger to the NUnit’s GUI runner process. This means that you can start debugging by putting breakpoints in your test code.

Wait a minute, isn’t this another way of automatically running NUnit after compile? Yes it is. So why mentioning the “External tool” method? Well the problem with running NUnit as external program is that, you have to always run your solution (F5) and set your test project as your start-up project. Doing it as an external tool, you can just build your solution and it runs your test automatically. Moreover, I find that NUnit runs much faster in the “External tool” method.

Hope you find this useful. Now write some TESTS!

RWendi

Saw someone tweet this link. It gives a good and simple explanation of the much misunderstood relationship between HTML and XHTML.

Misunderstanding Markup: [Link]

RWendi

Today marks the beginning of week 7. My current weight is about 60.5 kilos, which means that I have lost around 4.5 kilos since I have started my weight lost Journey. My upper and lower abs has started to look more defined, though my mid section is still covered with fat. I’m guessing that I’m probably about 17-18% of body fat right now. I think my diet and training strategy has worked pretty well.

Sadly I must say that I have injured my calve muscles. Last Saturday I was helping my sister moving in to her new house. I had to carry heaps of heavy stuffs from third floor to the ground floor, in which between each floor there are probably about 15 stairs. And then on Sunday I felt sharp pain on my calve muscles. I tried having a low intensity cardio, but it made the pain worse.

I decided to give my legs some rests and will stop doing cardio. But I’m not going to give up on my weight lost journey. I will still be on diet and do upper body training for the last of the two weeks. Hopefully without cardio, my weight loss journey will still be effective.

RWendi

Yesterday marked the end of week 2 of my weight loss journey. I have lost about 1-1.5 Kilos so far, which means that I lost about 0.5-0.75 Kilos a week. I think that is not too bad. There are still rooms for improvement and things to adjust, to make my weight lost journey to be more achievable. But I’m not going all out just yet, I’m taking it progressively and doing some adjustments to my diet and training every 2 weeks. Anyways, In today post, I am going to layout my workout routine.

I work out five days a week, which consists of 3 days of weight training and 2 days of cardio sessions. All my weight training is done with moderate intensity. Being in caloric deficit state (due to my diet), I may already have a chance of losing some muscles. Doing a high intensity weight training will definitely makes it worse. That is the reason why I weight train on moderate intensity as I don’t want to over train myself and lose too much muscles. Moderate intensity should be enough to maintain or built a little bit of muscle, and stimulate my metabolism.

I do cardio every weekdays, but only for 2 days will I be focusing solely on cardio. On weight training days my cardio will be done after I pound the weights, with low intensity for about 10-15 minutes. On cardio day, I will be doing high intensity cardio sessions for 20-30 minutes, followed by low intensity abs training. Weekends will be my rest days, but I may throw in 20-30 minutes low intensity cardio session depending on my mood.

This routine has been doing me pretty good. It gives me good recovery time,  which is crucial to keep me going on my weight loss journey. Anyways here is my typical workout routine looks like:

• Monday: Back, Biceps
  4x10 Deadlifts
  3x10 Wide Grip Lateral Pull Down
  3x10 Close Grip Lateral Pull Down
  3x10 Bent Over Barbell Row
  3x10 Barbell Curl
  10-15 minutes Low Intensity Cardio (Power Walk)
  
  
• Tuesday: Cardio
  20-30 Minutes of High Intensity Cardio
  2x15 Sit ups
  2x10 Leg Raise
  
  
• Wednesday: Chest, Triceps, Deltoids
  4x10 Flat Bench Press
  3x10 Incline Bench Press
  4x10 Machine Flyes
  3x10 Triceps Push Down/SkullCrusher
  3x10 Front Dumbell Raise/Shoulder Press
  10-15 minutes Low Intensity Cardio (Power Walk)
  
  
• Thursday: Cardio
  20-30 Minutes of High Intensity Cardio
  2x12 Cable Side Bend (both sides).
  
  
• Friday: Legs
  4x10 Squats
  2x15 Standing Calf Raise
  3x10 Standing Leg Curls
  3x10 Leg Extensions
  10-15 minutes Low Intensity Cardio (Power Walk)
  
  
• Saturday: Rest
  
  
• Sunday: Rest

RWendi

Early of the year I set my fitness goal of the year to be 70kgs @ 12% body fat. I have to admit that this goal is rather unrealistic, but I like to set my goal high so that I would do my best to achieve it. It is time to do something to get myself closer to my goal.

My current stats is more or less the same as to beginning of the year which is 66 kilos @ 20-22% body fat. I have decided to start my journey by losing some weight and get leaner. I will be on a diet phase for 8 weeks, and my diet goal is to get my body fat to be around 12-15%.

It is not going to be an easy task as I don’t have a professional trainer to help me with my exercise and my diet. I’m not an expert in losing weight and dieting either, thus I may succeed or I may fail miserably. I will make a post every two weeks with my progress, and talks a little bit about my training and diet. Wish me luck!

RWendi

Beginning of the week Microsoft released a new search engine called Bing.com, formerly known as Kumo. It is believed to be Microsoft last and greatest attempt to compete with Google’s supremacy in search engine world.

I have decided to give the new search engine a try to see if it is any good. I used Bing.com exclusively this week to do all my searches. I have to say that Bing is pretty damn good. In my first couple of searches, I would do the search in Google as well to see if Bing's result is as good, and it is. It did not give me the same search result as Google’s but it did give me what I was looking for. And after sometimes, I just stopped using Google and used Bing 95% of the time for the rest of the week.

Bings algorithm is definitely ALOT better than live search algorithm. I remember when I tried Live Search, it was pretty much frustrating. Its just not easy to get the information that you want with live search. With Bing it’s so much better. It gives me better search result, and in the case where it fails me, Bing recommends me with some searches that’s related with my search. I find this feature to be pretty awesome, and helps me not going back to google to get what I’m searching for.

I think Bing has what it takes to compete with Google. I had a great experience while using it, and I’m not going to stop using it. I believe that for a search engine to be successful, not only it needs good search algorithm, it needs support from a lot of users to use its service. The more users use the search engine, the more accurate the search engine will be. I’ll be supporting Bing for the time being, we’ll see how long will this last.

RWendi

Lately I’ve been busy working on my side project. Its nothing commercial, its a hobby project for fun and learning purposes. Anyway, due to procrastination, I have been using Excel as means to track my bugs/to-dos. Using Excel as a bug/to-dos tracking tool was alright at first, but as your list of bugs and to-dos grows, its getting tedious and inefficient. So I decided to use a proper bug tracking tool to make things easier to manage and I chose Trac to be my bug tracking tools.

Installing Trac is not hard, but can be very daunting due to their un-organized documentation. It will confuse you in every way you can possibly imagine. To install Trac, you are required to install a couple of its dependencies, and there are multiple ways of doing it. The documentation fails to logically group and place these several ways of installing Trac and its dependencies, which confuses me a lot when I tried to install Trac on my machine. In this post I will show how I installed Trac on my system.

Why I chose Trac

• It can use SQLite as its database.
• It comes with a Wikipedia component.
• It provides SVN integration.
• It comes with a standalone web server, which means you do not have to install a web server.

Trac Installation

• Download and Install Python version 2.4 or more. I was using Python 2.5.4.
• Download and Install SetupTools for Python 2.5.
• Run windows Command Prompt and go to the scripts folder in your python install directory [python install dir]/Scripts. e.g. (c:\Python2.5\Scripts).
• Run the following Command Line to install Trac: easy_install Trac
• Run the following Command Line to install SVN python bindings (Optional, but required to enable SVN integration): easy_install -Z http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/1.4.5-win32/apache-2.0/svn-python-1.5.2.win32-py2.5.exe

Getting Trac Up and Running

• Create a new folder where you want to place your Trac environment for your project. e.g. c:\projects\trac\my-project.
• Create your SVN repository (Only if you don’t have pre-existing repository).
• Run windows Command Prompt and go to the scripts folder in your python install directory [python install dir]/Scripts. e.g. (c:\Python2.5\Scripts).
• Run the following Command Line to initialize your project’s Trac environment: trac-admin.exe [Trac Environment Folder You Created in Step 1] initenv.
  e.g. trac-admin.exe c:\project\trac\my-project initenv.
• Follow the instructions.
• Run the following Command Line to fire up the standalone web server: tracd -p [port number] [Trac Environment Path].
  e.g. tracd –p 8000 c:/projects/trac/my-project.
• Open up your web browser and type http://localhost:8000

Enabling Authentication in Trac

• Run windows Command Prompt and go to the scripts folder in your python install directory [python install dir]/Scripts. e.g. (c:\Python2.5\Scripts).
• Download and save the following python script to the directory in step 1. You need to rename the file extension to .py. trac-digest.py
• Run the following command line to use the python script to create a new user: trac-digest.py –u [username] –p [password] >> [password file path].
  e.g. trac-digest.py –u rwendi –p foo >> c:\trac\myproject\password.txt.
• Run the following command line to give your user full permission: trac-admin [trac environment path] permission add [username] TRAC_ADMIN.
  e.g. trac-admin c:\project\trac\my-project permission add rwendi TRAC_ADMIN.
• Lastly you need to run the standalone web server on authentication mode by running the following command line: tracd –p [port number] --auth=[projectname],[password file path],trac [Trac Environment Path].
  e.g. tracd –p 8000 --auth=my-project,c:\trac\myproject\password.txt,trac c:\project\trac\my-project

Resources:

• Trac Website [link]
• Python Website [link]
• SVN Website [link]

RWendi

This is the patent that made Microsoft lost half a billion dollar to an Aussie bloke. A very interesting patent, it shows a very similar mechanism of software registration system as the one that Microsoft has in place for many of its software products.

System For Software Registration Patent. [Link]

RWendi