John’s Website

vhdTools

So I’ve just started a new project called vhdTools to manipulate Virtual Hard Disk files used by Microsoft’s Virtual PC. Microsoft opened up the VHD specs as a part of its Open Specification Promise on the 17th. Microsoft also recently released Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Beta2 which includes vhdmount, a driver for mounting VHD files to a drive letter for use like a normal hard drive (you can elect to only install vhdmount if you like if you don’t actually want the VM). A very useful trick to use along with this is adding mount and unmount actions to the context menu of VHD files which I found over at VirtualPC Guy’s site.

Why would you want to do something like this you may ask? Personally I like to partition certain things in nice little packages so I can easily transport them around and so they take up less disk space. A good example of this is sourcecode and development in general. When programming you inevitably end up with a bunch of small sourcefiles and object files when you compile them. Now with the ever increasing size of Hard Drives today the size of these files is often less than the allocation unit size of the filesystem, wasting a lot of valuable space. Creating a VHD for coding makes sense because you can make it any size which usually results in a smaller allocation unit, thus wasting less space. You’re also gaining the added benefit that compiling and recompiling doesn’t fragment your main disk but only the VHD which doesn’t impact the performance of the rest of your system.

I’ve got a simple VHD parser and a simple fixed-size VHD creation utility working now and am working on expanding the functionality a bit before I make a public release. I’m trying to figure out if I want to host it here or start a SourceForge project for it. Any thoughts?

Note: if you use vhdmount and are having trouble with it not working try opening up Device Manager and right clicking on “Microsoft Virtual Server Storage DeviceXX”, click ‘Update Driver’ then click ‘Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)’ then select ‘Don’t search. i will choose the driver to install.’ and hit next. Now click ‘Have Disk’ and browse to ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Vhdmount’ and hit Ok, the compatible hardware list should read “Microsoft Virtual Server Storage Devices”, select it and hit Next – it should copy the driver and then say it has finished installing the software – you should now press Finish and the drive should work.

Traveling

Since I’ve moved out to the west coast I’ve had more opportunity to do some traveling thanks to discount airlines, a stable paycheck and not being the furthest away from everything except Europe and I’ve been gleefully taking advantage of this.

I had my first encounter of Texas back in March when I traveled to Austin for South by SouthWest and to meet with the RoosterTeeth guys. I’m told that I didn’t truly get to experience Texas since I only went to Austin but I had a great time none the less, especially after driving nearly an hour with the RoosterTeeth guys to the middle of nowhere to experience true Texas BBQ. Mmmm brisquet…..

In May I headed up to San Francisco with my friends Adrian and Christine to run in the annual Bay to Breakers 12K (7.5 mile) race. This is the first run I’ve ever participated in and we decided to go so late that I didn’t have much time to get any training in so I’m amazed that I finished at all, let alone in under 2.5 hours. We all had a great time and the only thing I’d do different next time is not miss my ride back after the race and have to walk back to our friend Liz’s place in the pouring rain, adding another few miles to day. Oh did I mention we painted ourselves up as Smurfs for the race?

Just after I got back from SF I had the pleasure of traveling to the California State capitol of Sacramento to help the RoosterTeeth guys upgrade their servers. I ended up spending most of my time trapped inside an air conditioned data center pulling my hair out because of uncooperative hardware but what i did see of the city looked fairly nice, just somewhat small and spread out.

In July Jay came down to visit and we headed to Catalina Island with a bunch of my friends from San Diego do my Open Water certification dives. Jay did some snorkeling while we did our cert dives and then later did a discover Scuba dive and got hooked – too bad the water is freezing as hell back home and certs cost 4-5 times as much as they do here. It’s ok though I’ll just have to get him enrolled in a class the next time he comes down to visit.

In August I had my first trip to Mexico since I immigrated through Tijuana in January. I went to La Bufadora with Jack, Charity, Geoff and a bunch of the people from a local dive club, the Dive Bums. About 3 hours south of the border on the Baja penninsula La Bufadora is a very small town with some great diving and a natural ocean powered blow hole. We ended up doing 4 dives out of somewhat small wooden doreys with motors attached over two days in somewhat cold water (66 degrees). It was a great trip and not only did we get to see some really neat stuff like underwater arches, huge beds of sea urchins and lobsters but I got to experience the pleasure of the hour long wait at the border waiting to get back into the US where you get continually harassed by street vendors walking between the rows of standstill traffic.

In October I headed back to Catalina for a mini vacation and to start my Advanced Open Water cert. I ended up staying 5 days, made 9 dives and made a few new dive buddies. Catalina is probably my favorite diving site right now seeing as it’s only about 2 hours away and is a very relaxed, laid back place to spend a few days and dive.

Just a short week and a half after the Catalina trip I made my first trip to the Hawaiian islands with a trip to Maui with Jack, Charity, Nancy and John and his wife. We stayed in Kaanapali at a cottage owned by former Colts Punter Rohn Stark which was surprisingly affordable and very comfortable. While on Maui we did four dives at Molokini and saw a wide array of sea life including some black tipped reef sharks, did some snorkeling at Black Rock and saw (and touched) a sea turtle, biked down Mount Haleakala’a but not with one of those cheesy tours – we rented our own bikes and started right at the summit, all 10,530ft of it. Finally we drove up to the North side of the island and watched the famous surf break of Peahi (Jaws) and joked about the various ways we’d all die if we tried to go surf it and then continued on the famed windy Road to Hana with its 600 turns. We stayed our last night in the small town of Hana on the Northeast coast in a 4 bunkbed treehouse in the middle of the woods – it was nice to be out of the cities and in the middle of the wilderness again.

So there you have it, a somewhat abbreviated tale of my travels this year.

Where am I?

I’ve been really neglecting my blog lately so this is the first of what will hopefully be a flood of updates over the next few days.

So I left Newport Beach in mid January and have been working for a tech company in San Diego since then and I’m loving it. I can’t say anything about my job yet, but you I’ll post news about it here as soon as I can.

I have to say I love San Diego, it’s about 70 degrees Fahrenheit pretty much all year round which is a far cry from Nova Scotia let me tell you. Within a week of my being in San Diego my boss had convinced me (quite easily I might add) to start surfing and although I’m still not that good at it I have a lot of fun with my 6′4″ Hybrid Fish. Since then I’ve also taken up Scuba Diving and completed my PADI Open Water cert in July on the beautiful Catalina Island (warning crappy popup flash site) then got my Enriched Air (Nitrox) cert two weeks ago and started on an Advanced Open Water cert, again on Catalina.

For those of you in Nova Scotia, I’m coming back for Christmas and will be staying a few days in Halifax before heading home to Liverpool to spend Christmas with my family. If you’re going to be around give me a shout and we’ll all get together for some drinks.