Monkey Island: Special Edition

AT LAST!

SoapUI 3.0 Final Release

I was too busy using the beta version, I missed the Final Release. For who doesn't know what it is? It is the most featured, easy to learn, user friendly SOA-Testing tool ever written.

It makes the testing process even easier, fun and eye-candy to show off in meetings. I already covered best improvements for me in an earlier post. But overally this 3.0 series will be even cooler, it looks like. Here's the official web page of SoapUI. And Here's the direct download page. Let me tell you this, it is worth the price, without second thinking. Make your project team buy this tool if you are developing SOA in order to have a fully featured testing suit for semi-pro needs.

They say "As always thank you to all of our users that have reported issues and annoyances, we owe you :-)". And I say "no we thank you eviware."

Lucasarts Partners Up With Steam

This week's one of the top beautiful news came from Lucasarts. They announced this partnership out of nowhere and made us very happy in the meantime, with both free codes on net and great upcoming news. In the first line, we already had these 10;

1. Armed And Sangerous
2. Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis
3. Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
4. Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventure
5. Loom
6. Star Wars Battlefront II
7. Star Wars Republic Commando
8. Star Wars Starfighter
9. The Dig
10. Thrillville: Off The Rails

These are all awesome, but one has my love more than the others. LOOM. Oh gosh mmm. Even Republic Commando is my all time favourite game on PC platform, Loom has a special place in my heart.

As many times I stated my soul belongs to Lucasarts. Enjoy the partnership with Steam, go buy somethings.

Maybe they are gonna do more awesome things in the future for us, like Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion on iPhone kind of stuff. Why did I say that? No reason? Wink Wink Nod Nod.

PS: Apple Appstore Policy forbids to announce anything before they are really ready to release.

Windows 7 Performs Better Than I Expected

Hello all, today I want to write about my Windows 7 experience. I have been using it for 7 days now, and collecting data in order to write about it.

I was a Ubuntu user as I said it earlier cause I am in war with piracy personally. I do not pirate anything under any circumstances. Since I am not so rich. I am trying to avoid licensed stuff and stick with share and free ware whenever I can.

Back to business, when my Ubuntu last died, I was trying to install OpenLDAP so I can get some idea first and then decide to use it at work in development environment. Yeah, Yeah I had free time to try it out at home, that wa my mistake. Anyways Ubuntu died and I had no OS CD or DVD at that time except that MS sent Windows 7 RC 7100.

Since Ubuntu died completely at that time I had no internet connection to download anything to recover it or fix it or etc... I hopelessly put the 7100 dvd in. And my trip began.

It was a wonderfully fast installation. Under 20 minutes, and at that point I'll give my computers specifications. But under 20 minutes? wait a minute! Here goes specifications;

• Pentium 4 2.8 GHz Prescott [800 MHz bus]
• 1 GB ram [DDR 400 mhz]
• 160 GB SATA HDD
• ATI x1650

Installation ended in under 20 minutes, I was not impressed but shocked! Because last time I installed a windows on this computer it was an XP SP2 and it took twice that!

Yeah Installation ended anyway, It was a disaster from a point of finding the appropriate drivers. I had no internet connection cause it missed my NIC. I found the drivers that took my 3 minutes or so [yes I am going to count this time as setup time, at the end it was Windows' fault]. I showed the drivers. and excatly like another 3 minutes. It installed all my other drivers, including on board sound card, ATI, some other drivers that belongs to mainboard. Cause as soon as it gets the internet connection there wa appropriate drivers installed and Windowsgot updated too. So yeah it was a clear 26 minutes update. And under 30 minutes I installed the DivX codecs and start to watch movies on my LCD TV.

Along the whole week I noticed Windows is abruptly responsive on my old very old system. I am clicking on something and BAM! It is there, so fast so responsive. You know what it is even shocky that it does whole this with no HDD noise. After this week; I decided to give it a longer term chance, I found my original MS Office 2007 Home and Student Ed. installed it, give this old timer 2 GB more ram [It is now a 3GB machine with practically wings]. It is working like a magic. Looks everything right for the moment we'll see, who knows maybe this RC expired I buy a Windows 7? not go back to free Ubuntu or buy a Mac Mini? Who knows?

PS: Death To Software Piracy! I am living a true developer dream! Everything I am using is licensed or free of charge! YAY!

Chrome OS

It's been rather an exciting week so far. Google officially announced Chrome OS, which got me excited because I never pirate. For instance, I am using Windows only when MS sends an RC copy or something. Other times Ubuntu works for me.

You know at home, I am only using my computer for surfing and watching TV Series such as sitcoms etc. So Ubuntu is pretty much whatever I ask at the moment, but as I always say, if I ever become non-cheap, I'll buy a Mac. This is also because the actual Total-Cost-Of-Ownership wise, Mac is the cheapest system out there. You don't give much time to troubleshoot. Like you do with Ubuntu. You don't pay an overprice check for the Macos. Like you do with MS-Windows.

These are the reasons why I am excited for a new OS announced by Google. It'll be definetely free, and It'll be hopefully doing whatever I need at home. I think this is what I have to say about Chrome OS for now, you can check some details on this good blog here.

So, wassup on the MS side? I am hearing there is a very very majorly big major announcement coming over on Monday. I am anxious to know what it is. My tiny guess is something to do with Silverlight, which I adore nowadays. But we'll see on Monday. I need to be patient.

Till then I'll probably write somethings from the gaming world, there are some major announcements there too this week also.

Peace!

Being Something In The Past

Have you ever heard the name Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815, London – 27 November 1852, Marylebone, London)? She is today considered as the first programmer since she was writing programs for Charles Babbage's general purpose mechanical computer back then. Yes you heard it right. And at this point whatever I say will be quoting the wikipedia or any other pages.

So what I am saying is that if someone claims that he/she was something or was doing something in any given time. It could be very well true. Let me give you a good example. Nowadays' popular topic. Being and doing SEO back in 90s. The argument is there wasn't even a word for it. And there wasn't the term SEO around.

Maybe there wasn't search engines that we take granted today. But there were some algorithms involved nontheless. And some people gave their time and efforts to make their sites appear in the first pages of certain search results within those limited capable search engines. What were they doing then? If not SEO? Of course I acknowledge that what they were doing wasn't today's SEO. Even maybe irrelevant. But one must remember Lady Lovelace wasn't programming webservices back then either... We honour her by giving her name to programming languages and appreciating her as the mother of computing!

It is a process which evolves over time, I can agree with that. BUT the argument is broken, wrong! You can say someone he/she is not SEO now or back then. But you cannot argue that there wasn't SEO's in any given time just because the term wasn't around!

Moreover; stop whining if you are not the first one at something... if you are not the one who invents, or not one of the firsts who's doing it. Not for SEO, not for anything. It is irritating. Or maybe your motivation is something other than being the first, I don't care. It is very annoying to say someone that he/she cannot be this or that because of some ridiculous terms and terms history. Terms are nothing, have no meaning at all.

PS: I, myself, have never done any SEO but I understand people are doing it over decades by now. Respect.