isobuster for your Dreamspark Images

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If you are making use of your Dreamspark access to get hold of lovely free Microsoft software then you might have noticed that a lot of the good stuff arrives as ISO disk images. The idea is that you burn these images to disk and then install the software on them.

However, if you have a netbook with no CD-ROM drive, or are simply in a hurry I can recommend IsoBuster. This tool lets you copy files from ISO images onto your hard disk or memory key so that you can install programs from the disks without needing a physical disk.

There is a copy you can pay for, but I’m told that the free version will do all you need to get hold files from a disk image. IsoBuster is also useful if you have a damaged disk that you need to recover.

So Much for the Second Year

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I was doing a lecture on our Software Engineering course today. We were talking about UML (Unified Modeling Language) and how to map language specific features (for example C# properties) onto UML diagrams (if you want to find out more about this you can go here for some useful ideas).

Anyhoo, I thought it would be a good idea to show an example of a property in action so I wrote some C# on the board:

Rob.Age = 21;

The idea was to start an instructive discussion about the difference between fields and properties in C# objects. I asked the class to consider the statement and comment on it. A hand at the back shot up. “What do you think the statement means?” I asked. The reply came straight back “That you’re a liar”.

Thanks for that.

Gain Weight with Live Mesh

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I really like Live Mesh. This is a Microsoft file synchronisation thingy where selected folders on your machine are reflected onto the Live Mesh storage out in the cloud, and also onto other machines that run the Live Mesh add-in. It runs quietly in the background and doesn’t seem to intrude much on normal life (unless you are daft enough to make changes to files on two different machine before connecting them both to the network – at which point you will have to resolve a bunch of conflicts).

I’ve got all my courseware for the current year stored on Live Mesh. You get up to 5G of space on the server behind the system and this is plenty for a year’s worth of PowerPoint slides and Word documents.

The really good news for me is that I now no longer care which machine I’m using. As long as I allow it a few minutes to “catch up” with the latest versions (if I’ve not used that particular machine for a while) then I can use any device. The net result of this is that I no longer carry the same laptop to and from work.

I guess I could have used an external drive for this, but I’m always afraid of dropping/losing/having stolen the device which holds the only copy of my stuff. Live Mesh means my data is held on multiple machines, as well as on the central server.

However, my bag is now much lighter and easier to carry, and this means that I’m missing out on some exercise and will probably gain some weight as a result.

But I reckon it is worth it.