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More on architecture

By Alexey Gavrilov on November 29, 2006

Unlike the previous post, this time I mean the real (construction) architecture.

I read today in New York Times’s web site that Gazpom is going to build some really interesting towers in St Petersburg:

28petersburgsmall1.jpg

The strange thing is that living in this city I never heard about it before. Moreover I always thought that the lack of skyscrapers in St Petersburg is caused by the fact that the city stands on “breathing” soil, which makes building high towers especially near the waterfront dangerous. I guess it was just a legend and the real reason is that nobody wanted to invest $2 billions in such project before.

2 comments | Permalink
(categories: Life)

C# function to parse HTTP query string format

By Alexey Gavrilov on November 28, 2006

This is not intended to parse your page’s query string (it’s already parsed by asp.net) but rather to parse data someone would return you in this format. In my case this was PayFlow Pro gateway response. I couldn’t find anything ready to use so I wrote this one myself. If you aware of better solution, please let me know.


Hashtable parseQueryString(string qstring)
{
        //simplify our task
        qstring = qstring + "&";

        Hashtable outc = new Hashtable();

        Regex r = new Regex(@"(?<name>[^=&]+)=(?<value>[^&]+)&", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase|RegexOptions.Compiled);

        IEnumerator _enum = r.Matches(qstring).GetEnumerator();
        while (_enum.MoveNext() && _enum.Current != null)
        {
                outc.Add(((Match)_enum.Current).Result("${name}"),
                        ((Match)_enum.Current).Result("${value}"));
        }

        return outc;
}
 
6 comments | Permalink
(categories: Solutions box)

Windows Vista is available for download!

By Alexey Gavrilov on November 18, 2006

Well… it was for some minutes. Today when I logged in to MSDN subscribers website I immediately saw a huge banner inviting to download the final build of Vista now. I followed the link to 2,5 Gbytes ISO image but download never started. Few minutes later the banner, the announcement, and entire Windows Vista item in Operating Systems node of downloads were all gone. The only thing remaining is this blog post.

I guess I wasn’t the only one who tried to get that ISO image today.

Update: 11/29/2006

Microsoft fixed this in few days but I already had the ISO by that time. Running it fine under VMWare now although installation was only possible from physical DVD-drive and not from ISO. It didn’t work however on the brand new ASUS A8Jp laptop (Core2 Duo, ATI X1700, 1G RAM — a crazy machine!) due to severe problems with video adapter drivers, even though it has “Windows Vista compatible” sticker on the chassis.

The first impression (even under VMWare!) is of course improved GUI — no Aero on virtual video adapter but still the difference with XP is dramatic, the second is that it’s getting closer to Linux / Mac OS X in many senses and also way overloaded with different security confirmations.

4 comments | Permalink
(categories: Technology, Vista)

Good architecture

By Alexey Gavrilov on November 15, 2006

arch.jpgThere is a very simple test to determine if your system architecture is good.

If adding new features / components becomes harder and harder as the system evolves then it’s bad.

In case it’s not getting harder nor simpler — you system architecture is good.

If the more you build the easier to build more, then it’s probably too good to be true.

2 comments | Permalink
(categories: Technology)

Upgrade monster strikes again

By Alexey Gavrilov on November 12, 2006

“Stupid is as stupid does.” Forrest Gump’s Mom

Have you ever downloaded and installed a new driver for your electronic something just because it’s newer than the one you have? Upgraded something, which was working fine, for the hope that it will be working even better? It’s quite obvious that idea of improving something, which is working fine is not the greatest one but the digital lifestyle taught us that the newer the better and version 2.037 is a great step forward over 2.034 and can be ten times better than 1.010. We are still conservative when it comes to objects of physical world but when it comes to the software we get completely crazy in no time.

Today I decided to upgrade processor’s driver on my wife’s laptop. It’s not that she was not happy with how processor worked or that there was anything, which I knew that could be improved. I just read in some forum thread that AMD has just released the new driver for their processors (including AMD Turion64, which Irina’s laptop is running on). I went to the download page, discovered that there is some newer driver there and clicked “download”. Why? I don’t know… I did had a feeling that this wasn’t something I should do but it was suppressed by the curiosity of testing the newest driver for the processor (AMD made it, right? Then there must be some reason for them to do that – maybe it would make the processor work 2x faster?).

Here is what really happened. I tried to run the installer but it complained that another driver is already installed and I have to remove it first from Add / Remove programs. This is not something unusual so I did so, rebooted, when prompted and launched installer again. It seemed to be working initially this time but then stuck with “Looking for installed drivers” text and then… system turned off. In this moment I already knew that this update wasn’t going to be that good but it was already too late. “Ok, let’s try again” – I told to myself and pressed “power” button. In few seconds I saw the message

boot.ini not found – trying to boot from c:\windows

and in the next moment
Continue reading…

1 comment | Permalink
(categories: Technology, Life)