After 6 months of running Windows 7 on my Sony Vaio, I accidentally ran a rogue EXE file while trying to install a driver for an HTC Evo so I could install an Android app on a co-worker's smartphone.
By the next day, my Windows 7 installation was showing some signs of being defeated. By 5pm that Friday, I was no longer able to boot into Windows 7.
To make a long story short, I installed Ubuntu 11.04 after moving all the data from the laptop to an external media drive. Since that time, I have been struggling to get the 11.04 installation running smooth on the laptop.
I installed Linux Mint 11 to see if it would be any better. Since it is based on Ubuntu 11.04, it suffered from the same freezing problems.
After following some advice on the vaio-f11-linux Google Group, I upgraded Mint 11 to the 2.6.39 Kernel. I started with Linux Mint because it wasn't my production OS and all my data was still accessible on the Ubuntu partition. Mint is also based on Ubuntu, so if he kernel upgrade went without problems, I may consider doing the same on Ubuntu. On Mint, with the new kernel, the problem I was facing with the laptop freezing appeared to be resolved.
Because I've been telling my coworkers I'm going back to Windows 7 if this isn't resolved, I went ahead and repartitioned my hard drive and installed Windows 7. Also, I'm facing a problem with my USB Controller, which Sony says can be resolved by updating the BIOS, a task only possible from Windows 7 64 Bit. I left the other operating systems intact and also left room for more Linux OS installs to see if another platform might run better on the Vaio. Even if I move to Windows, I still want to see if I can get a good, stable Linux platform running on the Sony Vaio.
So, I ended up triple booting Ubuntu 11.04, Linux Mint 11, and Windows 7.
However, after recovering Grub2 after the Windows 7 install removed it, I noticed that all of the Logical partitions on the extended partition were missing, and in their place was 1 large unallocated block.
GParted and the Ubuntu Disk Utility both showed the same scenario. I decided to just go ahead and reinstall Mint as all of the steps I did to make it stable were still fresh in my mind.
After getting the live CD loaded, I thought to Google the situation first. I'm glad I did, because it led me to a really cool utility by CGSecurity called TestDisk.
TestDisk 6.12 detected the lost partitions and repaired them, all from the Mint Live CD. After rebooting and running update-grub, I'm now writing this article from my formerly missing Linux Mint 11 installation.
Had it not been for this tool, I'd be spending another weekend installing operating systems.
Basically, if you think you've done something to your hard drive. STOP! Download TestDisk, and see if it can help you rebuild your partition tables or save any lost data.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Building Social Networks for Experts
I created a Building Social Networks proposal on StackExchange for a Q&A site dedicated to questions for expert and enthusiast Social Network builders.
The purpose of the site is for people to ask and answer questions related to building social network platforms. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have prompted the creation of other innovative social networking platforms, such as Wisedame and many other mobile social networks.
As mobile gains more and more of a foothold in terms of connecting people, those experts who are building these networks will need a place to ask great questions and contribute knowledge back to the community.
If you want to see this proposal succeed, please check out the StackExchange "Building Social Networks" proposal on Area51. Please be sure to "Follow" the proposal. We need 50 followers to proceed to the next phase.
The purpose of the site is for people to ask and answer questions related to building social network platforms. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have prompted the creation of other innovative social networking platforms, such as Wisedame and many other mobile social networks.
As mobile gains more and more of a foothold in terms of connecting people, those experts who are building these networks will need a place to ask great questions and contribute knowledge back to the community.
If you want to see this proposal succeed, please check out the StackExchange "Building Social Networks" proposal on Area51. Please be sure to "Follow" the proposal. We need 50 followers to proceed to the next phase.
Friday, March 18, 2011
How to Use IE7 in Windows 7
Try to ignore the fact that this post is about a Microsoft tool. After my rant about how Microsoft people are horrible, anyone reading this is probably a bit perplexed about the title.
To make a long story short, I got a new laptop, and it came with Windows 7.
I am working on deploying live chat software for a client, and despite my hatred of Internet Explorer, more than 50% of the world's population still uses it, and it's up to me to put aside my personal distastes and make my clients' happy.
I found a bug in IE7 using IECollections. Generally, when I find IE bugs that I can't seem to immediately find the answers to, I figure it's just caused by the fact that I'm not using a real version of IE7. I spent over an hour trying to find someone in the organization who had IE7 installed, and another 20 minutes trying to get a screen share started to verify that we were really looking at IE7.
Well, after stumbling around Webmasters Stack Exchange, I found this question about How to Test IE7 on Windows 7. It turns out it's very simple. That link will show you a picture that will speak a thousand words. Go ahead, check it out!
To make a long story short, I got a new laptop, and it came with Windows 7.
I am working on deploying live chat software for a client, and despite my hatred of Internet Explorer, more than 50% of the world's population still uses it, and it's up to me to put aside my personal distastes and make my clients' happy.
I found a bug in IE7 using IECollections. Generally, when I find IE bugs that I can't seem to immediately find the answers to, I figure it's just caused by the fact that I'm not using a real version of IE7. I spent over an hour trying to find someone in the organization who had IE7 installed, and another 20 minutes trying to get a screen share started to verify that we were really looking at IE7.
Well, after stumbling around Webmasters Stack Exchange, I found this question about How to Test IE7 on Windows 7. It turns out it's very simple. That link will show you a picture that will speak a thousand words. Go ahead, check it out!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
StackOverflow Changes Name to StackExchange
The best time to make changes to something is during times of change. If you know your name isn't marketing your products to the right target market and need to change it, the best time to make that change is when everyone is watching, such as when you're recently awarded $12 million in venture capital funding.
If no one is watching and you change your name, there is a very strong likelihood you could skip away into obscurity. If no one was paying attention, there will be no transition of existing brand loyalty and brand recognition to help keep you afloat.
The name "StackOverflow" speaks to programmers, but it is meaningless to non-programmers. Non-programmers know "StackOverflow" as some wierd, obscure programming term. If you're a Motor Vehicle Repair enthusiast and your friend tries to convince you to join this Q&A network that was originally a Q&A site for programmers called StackOverflow, they may look at you like your crazy and pretend they never got your email invite to the private beta.
The reason for the name change was to fit the contours of the other Q&A sites that have absolutely nothing in common with programming. It was a strategic decision, and it was the right decision.
It's important to understand that the famous programming Q&A Site, http://stackoverflow.com, is still called Stack Overflow. The company changed it's name, not the Q&A site itself.
I am working on one of the newest Q&A sites, targeted at project managers. Project Management Stack Exchange is in public beta and has some great, experienced users who are able to help answer your professional project management question. If you have project management experience, we could use your expertise. Sign up for an account today!
If no one is watching and you change your name, there is a very strong likelihood you could skip away into obscurity. If no one was paying attention, there will be no transition of existing brand loyalty and brand recognition to help keep you afloat.
The name "StackOverflow" speaks to programmers, but it is meaningless to non-programmers. Non-programmers know "StackOverflow" as some wierd, obscure programming term. If you're a Motor Vehicle Repair enthusiast and your friend tries to convince you to join this Q&A network that was originally a Q&A site for programmers called StackOverflow, they may look at you like your crazy and pretend they never got your email invite to the private beta.
The reason for the name change was to fit the contours of the other Q&A sites that have absolutely nothing in common with programming. It was a strategic decision, and it was the right decision.
It's important to understand that the famous programming Q&A Site, http://stackoverflow.com, is still called Stack Overflow. The company changed it's name, not the Q&A site itself.
I am working on one of the newest Q&A sites, targeted at project managers. Project Management Stack Exchange is in public beta and has some great, experienced users who are able to help answer your professional project management question. If you have project management experience, we could use your expertise. Sign up for an account today!
Monday, March 7, 2011
How to Convince Project Team Members to Use Web-Based Tools
As Web technologies get more and more advanced, and as user interfaces become richer and snappier, desktop tools will decline. However, it's tough to convince some people to use the Web based tools. According to this resource on How To Encourage Team Members to use Web Collaboration Tools, it's important to get over the initial reluctance.
There are some tips that you can use to help motivate people to accept the change:
Show them the value of the tool
Managers want to know that the tool isn't something that you just happen to find on some obscure website that hasn't seen a pageview of more than 10 in the last two years. From a risk perspective, if no one else is using the tool, then what's the point of the original developers spending their time maintaining it. Managers want to see that there are recent updates and that other reputable organizations are using the tool. It also helps to show a Google Insights search demonstrating upward trends.
Get support from others in the organization
As a project manager, it's your job to persuade people to join your cause. To accomplish this, you'll need to be attentive to who your audience is. While managers want to see low risk, employees on the team want to know that it's not going to create more unnecessary processes that impede their workflow.
The best time to try something new is during a time of change. For example, if the team has reorganized and has a new technical leader, he or she may be open to new ideas simply because no patterns have yet been established. If the team has new employees, the training they receive can include the new software. Trainers should approach the new employees with the software as if it were something already used within the organization.
Sometimes the best way to gain support for a new tool is to just simply start using it. For push-based tools like Basecamp or Manymoon, this is easy, just sign up members of your team so that they get emails from the tool. With Basecamp, for example, the users who reply to the emails end up unwittingly using the tool. After a few weeks, it will become a habit to continue using it.
Some of these tips were originally suggested by Pawel Brodzinski, a consultant and coach in the field of software project management. For more information, check out the Project Management Stack Exchange Q&A Site.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
How to Use Stack Exchange Area51 Advertisements
I was part of the Project Managers Stack Exchange Private Beta. We were brainstorming some ideas as to how to promote the site, and so far the ideas we came up with include a Facebook page and blog articles. The idea of placing banner ads on a blog or website is of course another creative way to help spread the word.
The problem is, the only banner ads available are within the Stack Exchange network itself. They're essentially inlined into the page using data:image URLs, which doesn't make it easy to just grab some code and place it on your website.
Armed with Chrome Debugger, I set out to see what would be involved in placing an Area51 banner on my blog.
On one of the Stack Exchange sites, I used the inspector to view the HTML for one of the banner ads. It consists of inline CSS, a DIV and TABLE element that contains a hyperlink to the Area51 proposal, and the commit percent. The hyperlink innerHTML contained the name of the proposal.
While It's possible to paste the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in an HTML page, the only way Blogger would accept the inlined CSS was through an IFRAME. As you can see, I've embedded the Running Q&A Proposal in this article:
DISCLAIMER: Stack Exchange and Area51 images and content are property of the Stack Exchange Network and are subject to the Terms and Conditions. Use of this content in this article falls within the "fair use" section of the Terms and Conditions. You must obtain written permission from Stack Exchange prior to use of this content.
Feel free to view the source of the IFRAME to get the code. Just paste everything within the opening and closing BODY tag on your site, or copy the entire HTML page to your Web server and use an IFRAME to embed the advertisement in the desired location.
I made comments in the code to show the 3 items that represent the proposal link, proposal display name, and percent committed.
View Ad Source
Since the view source link doesn't work in the inferior Internet Explorer browsers, you can also download the code here by right-clicking and selecting "Save File As", or "Save Link", or whatever the most popular way to save files in Internet Explorer is these days.
The problem is, the only banner ads available are within the Stack Exchange network itself. They're essentially inlined into the page using data:image URLs, which doesn't make it easy to just grab some code and place it on your website.
Armed with Chrome Debugger, I set out to see what would be involved in placing an Area51 banner on my blog.
On one of the Stack Exchange sites, I used the inspector to view the HTML for one of the banner ads. It consists of inline CSS, a DIV and TABLE element that contains a hyperlink to the Area51 proposal, and the commit percent. The hyperlink innerHTML contained the name of the proposal.
While It's possible to paste the CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in an HTML page, the only way Blogger would accept the inlined CSS was through an IFRAME. As you can see, I've embedded the Running Q&A Proposal in this article:
DISCLAIMER: Stack Exchange and Area51 images and content are property of the Stack Exchange Network and are subject to the Terms and Conditions. Use of this content in this article falls within the "fair use" section of the Terms and Conditions. You must obtain written permission from Stack Exchange prior to use of this content.
Feel free to view the source of the IFRAME to get the code. Just paste everything within the opening and closing BODY tag on your site, or copy the entire HTML page to your Web server and use an IFRAME to embed the advertisement in the desired location.
I made comments in the code to show the 3 items that represent the proposal link, proposal display name, and percent committed.
View Ad Source
Since the view source link doesn't work in the inferior Internet Explorer browsers, you can also download the code here by right-clicking and selecting "Save File As", or "Save Link", or whatever the most popular way to save files in Internet Explorer is these days.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Project Management Stack Exchange Launches Public Beta
Project Management Stack Exchange is now in public beta, meaning that anyone can now join the Q&A site and contribute by asking questions or posting answers.
The site is in need of more expert level project managers. Many questions are basic questions, but I'd like to see more questions asked that are more advanced. Most basic information about any field is available in droves; it's the specialized, expert-level information that is oftentimes more difficult to obtain.
With three years in the field, I'm no expert, but I'm also beyond many of the basic questions about the definition of change management, for instance.
However, some individuals have posted some thoughtful questions, such as How to approach a project given to new PM during execution with vague requirements?. The question involves a specific experience by a project manager and not a random what-if scenario.
The site is still in it's infancy, and it's success will be defined by it's early members. If you have experience with project management -- no matter if your field is software, construction, engineering, or some other project management field -- create your account today at Project Management Stack Exchange.
The site is in need of more expert level project managers. Many questions are basic questions, but I'd like to see more questions asked that are more advanced. Most basic information about any field is available in droves; it's the specialized, expert-level information that is oftentimes more difficult to obtain.
With three years in the field, I'm no expert, but I'm also beyond many of the basic questions about the definition of change management, for instance.
However, some individuals have posted some thoughtful questions, such as How to approach a project given to new PM during execution with vague requirements?. The question involves a specific experience by a project manager and not a random what-if scenario.
The site is still in it's infancy, and it's success will be defined by it's early members. If you have experience with project management -- no matter if your field is software, construction, engineering, or some other project management field -- create your account today at Project Management Stack Exchange.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Project Management Stack Exchange Begins Private Beta
On February 7th, 2011, the Stack Exchange network launched the private beta of the Project Management Stack Exchange website, a Q&A site run by the community to address questions regarding the field of Project Management.
The site is a place where professional project managers can go to ask objective or subjective questions regarding their field. The people who run the site encourage participation by professionals who either have a problem they seek the answer to or who would like to help other project managers improve their skills.
The Stack Exchange network works on a voting system, similar to Yahoo Answers. Users who ask really good, helpful, well-written questions will be rewarded with upvotes awarded by other users on the site. Similarly, users can vote on answers given by other users.
Upvotes and downvotes affect users' total reputation score, which represents how well the community trusts the user. As a user increases his or her reputation, the number of priviledges on the site increases. After reaching a score of 10,000, a user pretty much has access to the same tools as the moderators.
In short, this means that you, the user, runs the site. With enough reputation, you have the tools and community trust to close questions that are off topic or spam, edit questions and answers to clean them up, see vote counts, create chat rooms, and much more.
Out of the 57 total questions as of the time of this writing, here are a few of the questions asked so far:
How To Resolve Leadership Conflicts In The Project?
One of My Projects Was Cancelled Very Early. Will This Be Deterimental To My Career?
Do Technical Leaders Compete With Project Managers?
The Stack Exchange network consists of 44 different Q&A sites spanning from Programming, IT, Website Management and other technical topics to music, cooking, and parenting. It began as a single Q&A site, Stack Overflow, as a place for software engineers to ask objective questions.
New sites first go through a proposal phase where the community picks examples of on topic and off topic questions. After the proposal phase, the site undergoes a committment phase where a certain number of users must commit to asking at least 10 questions or submitting 10 answers in order to help get the site started.
After the committment phase, the site enters a private beta phase. The purpose of the private beta is to seed the website with some really good questions and answers, so that when the site launches the public beta, it already has some really strong content to attract good, professional project managers.
Although the site is still in private beta, anyone can view the current questions and answers by following the link to the Project Management Stack Exchange Site.
The site is a place where professional project managers can go to ask objective or subjective questions regarding their field. The people who run the site encourage participation by professionals who either have a problem they seek the answer to or who would like to help other project managers improve their skills.
The Stack Exchange network works on a voting system, similar to Yahoo Answers. Users who ask really good, helpful, well-written questions will be rewarded with upvotes awarded by other users on the site. Similarly, users can vote on answers given by other users.
Upvotes and downvotes affect users' total reputation score, which represents how well the community trusts the user. As a user increases his or her reputation, the number of priviledges on the site increases. After reaching a score of 10,000, a user pretty much has access to the same tools as the moderators.
In short, this means that you, the user, runs the site. With enough reputation, you have the tools and community trust to close questions that are off topic or spam, edit questions and answers to clean them up, see vote counts, create chat rooms, and much more.
Out of the 57 total questions as of the time of this writing, here are a few of the questions asked so far:
How To Resolve Leadership Conflicts In The Project?
One of My Projects Was Cancelled Very Early. Will This Be Deterimental To My Career?
Do Technical Leaders Compete With Project Managers?
The Stack Exchange network consists of 44 different Q&A sites spanning from Programming, IT, Website Management and other technical topics to music, cooking, and parenting. It began as a single Q&A site, Stack Overflow, as a place for software engineers to ask objective questions.
New sites first go through a proposal phase where the community picks examples of on topic and off topic questions. After the proposal phase, the site undergoes a committment phase where a certain number of users must commit to asking at least 10 questions or submitting 10 answers in order to help get the site started.
After the committment phase, the site enters a private beta phase. The purpose of the private beta is to seed the website with some really good questions and answers, so that when the site launches the public beta, it already has some really strong content to attract good, professional project managers.
Although the site is still in private beta, anyone can view the current questions and answers by following the link to the Project Management Stack Exchange Site.
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