Grolsch

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Grolsch is an OK tasting european premium lager. It falls into the category of mainstream lager and therefore there are no suprises where taste is concerned.

Grolsch

Grolsch

Grolsch has a nice refreshing taste to it when served seriously cold, but then so do most lagers… I can’t find anything special that makes Grolsch stand out from the crowd of mainstream premiums but it shouldn’t be snubbed. It is a decent lager and is fairly decent when it comes down to cost. It can be gassy like most of the northern european lagers. As for rating it I am going to give it this…

Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

MTG: Vampires

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I have been working towards a deck consisting of vampires, to begin with it was a standard deck but it is slowly evolving into an extended deck with me thinking of adding some cards outside of standard. The whole idea behind this deck is to get counters on my vamps. Rakish Heir and Curse of Stalked Prey help with this and Volt Charge is handy with Proliferate. Usually if I can get a Bloodline Keeper into play and keep him there until he flips I win. Stromkirk Noble plays brilliantly against white human decks but suffers against cards like Fiend Hunter and Oblivion Ring. The deck plays really well when Stromkirk Captain comes into play and even better when Vampire Interloper is in play receiving counters from either Rakish Heir or Curse of Stalked Prey… or both!

Vampires

Creatures (23)
2 Stromkirk Captain
2 Blood Seeker
1 Olivia Voldaren
3 Vampire Interloper
3 Markov Blademaster
2 Bloodline Keeper
2 Curse of Stalked Prey
2 Captivating Vampire
3 Stromkirk Noble
3 Rakish Heir

Land (23)
14 Mountain
9 Swamp

Spells (14)
4 Volt Charge
1 Go for the Throat
3 Doom Blade
2 Shrine of Burning Rage
4 Shock

Plans have been to replace the Shock with Lightning Bolt, get hold of 3 more Go for the Throat to replace Doom Blade and maybe add some Falkenrath Marauders. Erdwal Ripper is on the subs bench at the minute but she might make an appearance. I am also keen to add some red/black dual lands such as Dragonskull Summit and Akoum Refuge. Originally there were 2x Child of Night in here, once they get a few counters they can seriously turn a game around with their lifelink ability. I opted to replace these for the Captivating Vampires. 1 more mana to cast and they have a rather neat bonus and ability!

Tuborg

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OK so Tuborg, not something I regularly drink but something I will be buying again. I have memories of drinking this as a teenager is cans and just dismissing it as a cheap lager… it probably was back then and it still is relatively cheap compared to the likes of Heineken.

Tuborg

Tuborg

To drink it isn’t bad, it is a solid lager that is decent enough to be compared to good mainstream premiums like Heineken. The bottles I got had a pull top lid which is similar to the screw tops but more novel.

To rate this lager is difficult as it is a middle of the road lager with nothing bad but nothing stand out. I would have to rate it as follows.

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Enjoy!

WinRAR SFX and 64-bit redirection (SysWOW64 etc.)

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Recently I have been bundling software meant for 64-bit deployment using WinRAR to create an SFX archive that extracts files to C:\WINDOWS\System32.

We all know by now that this is split into SysWOW64 and System32. SysWOW64 being the place where all 32-bit stuff ends up and System32 being the 64-bit stuff. The same happens in the registry with Wow6432Node. The problem I faced was when extracting stuff from WinRAR to C:\WINDOWS\System32 it would always end up in SysWOW64 and any registry scripts ran from an SFX would end up under Wow6432Node. This is to be expected but it is a bit of a problem!

To get around this problem you need to create your SFX as you would normally with all the paths as System32 etc. etc. Now if you don’t want any redirection to SysWOW64 to take place you need to open up in winrar the exe created and click the SFX icon. Click the SFX tab and under “Select SFX Module” click the Default64.SFX module and then click “Advanced SFX Options”. Make sure all the settings here are correct and click ok, then ok again and it should re-compile the exe to use the 64-bit SFX module. This will mean anything referencing System32, will end up using System32 and NOT SysWOW64… which is what we want right?

Cheers!

Creating an unattended installation of Visual Studio 2010 for use with SCCM.

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I have tried for a while following various online guides to do this but none are comprehensive enough. This guide will show you how to do what it says in the title. Every step I take is documented here and anyone reading will be able to follow it and have a finished WORKING deployment.

1. Copy the files from visual studio DVD to your computer. This part is quite important, copy the files to” C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\” This should leave you with the following folder structure at the above path.

Folder Structure

Folder Structure

2. Launch an elevated command prompt and type in the below command:

Cd C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\setup

3. Then type in the following command:

Setup.exe /createunattend C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\setup\unattend64.ini

NB: This example is being performed on a 64 bit system, if you are creating an unattended deployment for a 32-bit system you will need to perform these steps on a 32-bit system. I have named my file “unattend64.ini” to make it clear it is for 64-bit deployments.

4. You will see the below screen, let this screen finish and click “Next”.

Visual Studio 2010 Create Unattend ini file fig 1

Visual Studio 2010 Create Unattend ini file fig 1

5. You will see the below screen, some of the items in the list on the left may be different depending on your existing setup. I always create this deployment on a VM that is vanilla so to make sure everything that is needed is part of the deployment. Tick the box to accept the licence and hit “Next”.

Visual Studio 2010 fig 3

Visual Studio 2010 fig 3

6. You will see the below screen, here you should just normally click “Next” but again if your deployment situation demands a custom setup then adjust as you require. When finished click “Save Settings”.

Visual Studio 2010 fig 4

Visual Studio 2010 fig 4

7. Once done you should see the below completion notice and find the ini file created at C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\setup\. The reason it is important regarding paths and locations is because the ini file contains paths back to the location of msi files at C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\. When running from SCCM this location doesn’t exist so the deployment normally fails. I have found a solution to get around this.

Visual Studio 2010 fig 5

8. Open up notepad and type the following batch code into the file.

C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\setup\setup.exe /q /norestart /unattendfile C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\setup\unattend64.ini

Save this file as something like setup.cmd, save it at C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\

9. This is where it gets a bit bespoke/different. Using WinRAR or 7zip or some other program that is similar we are going to create a self-extracting archive (SFX). These archives normally use the .exe file extension. For this example I am going to use WinRAR. You can download it for free on a 40 day trial licence but best to check this out yourself via google etc. In this example I have used the latest 64-bit version downloaded from the winrar website. Where I work we have a few licenced copies of an older version.

10. Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\ and select all the files (ctrl+a). Right click and select “Add to Archive”. See the below screenshot.

Visual Studio 2010 fig 6

Visual Studio 2010 fig 6

11. Tick the box “Create SFX Archive” and out of habit I always tick the box “Put Recovery Record” and change the compression method to “Best”. See the below screenshot.

Visual Studio 2010 fig 7

Visual Studio 2010 fig 7

12. Click the advanced tab and then click “SFX Options” , this will bring up a screen like the one below. Review the below screenshots and enter the information as shown.

Visual Studio 2010 fig 8

Visual Studio 2010 fig 8


Visual Studio 2010 fig 9

Visual Studio 2010 fig 9


Visual Studio 2010 fig 10

Visual Studio 2010 fig 10


Visual Studio 2010 fig 11

Visual Studio 2010 fig 11


Visual Studio 2010 fig 12

Visual Studio 2010 fig 12

13. Once you are finished in winrar you should have an exe file called vs2010.exe located at C:\WINDOWS\VS2010Cache\vs2010\. This exe file is what you will deploy with SCCM either in a task sequence or using software distribution. The reason why we used this method was to keep the paths consistent with our unattend64.ini file. You will notice that parts of the ini file reference absolute paths specific to where the VS2010 source files were located when the ini file was created. Using this method of deployment we maintain these paths avoiding any errors.

14. One option might be to try and edit the ini file to contain the paths to the distribution point on SCCM. This probably breaks all the rules of best practice and might result in poorly maintained packages. Far easier to bundle it up and store the setup files locally. If you wanted you could write into the setup.cmd file that launches from the SFX to delete the setup files. Obviously you won’t be able to delete setup.cmd as it will be running.
I have created a video of me doing this on a VM just so you can be 100% sure of how I did it. I will also try to get a video of it deploying with SCCM up on here as well.

Cheers!

PS – Here’s the video and as always it is best viewed in full screen mode.

Carling Chrome

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Carling Chrome… Where to start. Carling is not the nicest lager in the world. Carling Chrome being associated with Carling made me think that this was going to be similar. The fact it was on offer… 12 bottles for £8 in our local morrisons made me take the punt purely so I could express what I think about it.

Carling Chrome

Carling ChromeI

It’s different from Carling. It’s one of these light beers/lagers, like corona, sol or bud 66. It tastes OK when compared to these brands and infact if I was going to buy such a lager/beer I would go for Carling Chrome… only when it’s £8 for 12 bottles. It isn’t anything to write home about, it tastes very dry, especially after you have had a few. Adding a lime in the top makes it tastier but I am not going to go mad over this and neither is anyone else.

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

Carling are obviously trying very hard to attract customers, I have never really drank carling much, infact the last time i had it knowingly was when I was a 14 year old kid being allowed a drink at new year. Carling back then tasted amazing! Now I really don’t give it the time of day and Carling Chrome is no different to be honest. I didn’t rate it high because it is clearly just Carling jumping on the band wagon. What I will say is this. It is better than regular Carling so don’t let yourself be put off by the Carling brand. A good cheap alternative to Corona or Sol.

Story… Visual Studio 2010

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OK this is a bit of a story, we are having an important guest visit a new campus of ours soon. in fact it is friday today and they will be here on Monday. On Wednesday at 16:00 I was asked to make Autodesk education suite and Visual Studio 2010 available for use on about 8 machines.

I immediately knew we had an unattended installation for Visual Studio but not for the Autodesk stuff… in the past this has been a ballache to get working. So I set to the Autodesk suite, thankfully they have a wizard to create an unattended deployment… it essentially creates a lnk file users can click to install the software. For the life of me I couldn’t get this working from SCCM task sequence or from software distribution. In the end I didn’t think it would be too much of a big deal to go and double click this lnk file… so I got autodesk sorted.

I moved onto Visual Studio 2010 next which I thought would be a singe since we had it working on another site on windows 7. The difference here was that this environment was 64-bit. It turned out that the other unattended installation that worked brilliantly on 32-bit didn’t work so well on 64-bit. So on a 64-bit system i did the old…

Setup\Setup.exe /createunattend C:\unattended64.ini

This created the ini and I was thinking to myself that I was on a roll… problem getting this to deploy via SCCM didn’t work either… time was short so I opted to manually run this from the SCCM cache on the clients, there was only 7 or 8 afterall. I logged in as a domain user and ran the command…

Setup\Setup.exe /s /unattendfile C:\unattended64.ini

I was prompted to enter an admin password so did… .\administrator Pa$$w0rd (that’s not our admin password) it ran and asked for a reboot… I did the reboot and logged back in as the same domain account. I launched VS2010 and was prompted with a load of errors as stated here:

http://saintgimp.org/2012/01/10/fixing-the-vsts-for-database-professionals-sql-server-data-tier-application-package-did-not-load-correctly/

and

http://techsolutions-at-desk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/radlangsvcvs-version-10000-culture.html

Both solutions seemed similar and seemed like they worked from the comments. I implemented these and applied SP1 for visual studio… the problem remained. Then by chance I logged into one of the machines as the local administrator… VS2010 setup immediately launched upon logging in… I then realized that because I had ran the setup as administrator that the reboot and subsequent configuration must only take place under the administrators shell… perhaps a similar issue was preventing me from running successfully from SCCM. Anyway upon doing this on all the machines VS2010 started working fine.

The experience tells me that despite my knowledge and other experience whenever your working to a tight deadline in a rush you always seem to overlook simple soloutions. Normally the domain account I had been using has local admin rights and had it done so on these machines then I probably wouldn’t have faced this problem. Rushing never seems to work out for me and it always seems to end up taking me longer fixing my own mistakes.

Stella 4%

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Stella 4% is a fairly dull unassuming taste in my opinion. The taste that regular stella offers is more flavourful. This stuff is good if you don’t want to get hammered and wish to appear slightly more articulate than the other folk around you drinking fosters!

It isn’t that bad really but for me to buy it there has to be a pretty poor choice of lagers/beers on the shelf. I would always choose Grolsch, Becks, Bavaria, Bud/Coors before picking this up and even then the price tends to force me into buying the cheaper supermarket own brands like St. Omer or Bier Speciale.

Stella 4%

Stella 4%

Don’t get me wrong, I grew up drinking two bottles of stella artois to start the night but this 4% version is just an attempt to try and corner a piece of the market like becks vier. If you want my advice stick to regular stella!

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

You might ask how I came to be drinking this particular can… well I had ran out of my tipple so was drinking somebody elses… I was ever so slightly drunk! :)