Build server, NAnt and Vault intergration.

I set out to move the Sem project to a fully automated daily buiid system about 3 weeks ago.  I estimated then that it would take me about 3 days to get the build intergration server done. 

I’m overshot my mark, more than just a little bit, severly understimating the work involved.  I’d like to think the end is nearly in sight, at least.  Every day, for the past 4 days, I’ve come into work in the morning (well, what’s morning for me… I guess that’s "lunch" for most people) and announced that I would be finished with the build server work by the end of the day.  And, well, there’s still quite a bit left to be done. 

To be fair on myself, the lion’s share of the work involved scripting out the databases.  If that process had already been implemented properly, this build server would probably have only taken a week.  Maybe a week and a half.

We’ve been faced with a lot of complication on the database scripting level.  Probably the biggest challenge has been learning (and learning to work around) the database replication job that we have set up on the Sem database.  Most of those kinks have now been worked out, and now I’m working on one of the final phases, the push from the Build server to the QA server. 

All in all, once I’m done with this, I expect that we here are Ardent Development will not know what we did without it.

Chalk one more up for the books… NAnt.  One more technology I started off hating…. and learned to love.

 

 

 

I fixed my desk

Well, after last week’s April Fool’s day dishwasher catastrophe (I should have written about that, but I was too busy vaccuming out 200+ liters of water from the downstairs kitchen), I needed to accomplish something that didn’t make me feel like a completely destructive force in my new home.  So now that I finally have everything put away to it’s proper place (mostly in boxes in the attic) I set down yesterday to the task of finishing off repairs to my Ikea desk, aquired from ex-roomate Valerie during her unsuccessful experiment with joining the Tibetan Buddhist temple in Toronto.

The desk broke fell apart early in March, nearly crushing Jen’s foot and could have, minus a few inches, killed Jen’s cat, Sapphire, who was sleeping under the desk when it fell apart.  It fell apart mostly due to structural weakness caused by a rather thoughless modification I made to it back in Toronto, where I put casters on it so I could wheel it around the apartment.  It would have been allright if I had added some extra support, like L brackets to the underneath.   Well, you live, you learn.  Luckily no one was badly hurt.

I had already applied plastic wood to the portions that had torn themselves out when it collapsed, so last night should have been just a matter of drilling a bunch of holes and reinserting the bolts.  No problem, an hour tops, right?  Instead, the job took me around 3 hours.  But this time the casters are off (I didn’t like how they raised the desk, which is too high anyway) and replaced with felt pads.  Also, since this poor desk has been to hell and back (well, Toronto and back, close enough) I added on some much needed L braces.

Of course, I should be typing all of this from my computer at home at my newly repaired workstation… but due to a stroke of Rogers Cable brilliance, I’m been out of an internet connection since Tuesday.  I have to waste (yet another) afternoon tomorrow, waiting for the cable guy to show up.

 

My file extension pt2

Well, it didn’t take me too long of hacking around to figure out how to paste in Html. I checked the help file and it mentioned the rich text editor is only used by IE. So I pop over to Firefox, and voila. Here is the file extension that describes me. 🙂

Which File Extension are You?

So that’s my first peeve with this Msn Spaces blog utility: no clear way to shift between Plain Text/Markup/Rich Text editing modes. Of course it works by moving over to Firefox, but that’s not a terribly convenient way, just to paste a link or an external image reference.

My next peeve is that I had to delete and recreate both of these entries, because I could not simply delete an image I added to the blog entry. I can add photos till the cows come home, but can I delete? Nooo.

This space is soon to be renamed 1001 Things that Annoy Anthony. I think Sebas made a joke about that once.

I should probably create a list of things that annoy me about Msn Spaces… In an attempt to be cute and postmodern, I think I’ll use the Msn spaces List creator to make that list of things that annoy me about Msn Spaces.

My file extension

Gerry sent me this link this morning.

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2004/10/extension_quiz_results.php

I came up an .ogg file.

"You are .ogg Even though many people consider you cool and happening, a lot still find that you’re a bit too weird to hang out with."

This was so laugh out loud funny that I had to immediately rush over here and paste this. I would really like to start using this space for keeping track of day to day thoughts and trivial events, mostly because I have such a terrible memory and feel that most days my life belongs in the pages of a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

I’m disappointed that the blog editor does not have any utility for pasting Html markup. This is a serious flaw. The extension test provided the below Html markup to be pasted onto a personal site. A great idea. Too bad this Msn blog does not have much flexibility. It definitely scores high in ease of use and accessibility, but I would definitely appreciate a couple more advanced options. Maybe when I get a spare minute or two I will snoop around and see if there is any way to hack the output, so I can paste in Html.