Published by Jim Parshall on 28 Aug 2008
Archive for August, 2008
Published by Jim Parshall on 24 Aug 2008
World of Warcraft in 5 Minutes
A quick dirty slideshow in iMovie of some of the better things in World of Warcraft. Not bad for 5 minutes work, though it still needs some titles and editing. Music is Exsultate Justi from Empire of the Sun.
You get to see me ( Grashio and Wildstar ) sweetie ( Bijou and Arabesque ) and a bunch of friends from Whisperwind Sentinels and Evade. Plus, at no extra charge an orphan 
and some great shots of scenic places in WoW. Oh! and DRAGONS!
Published by Jim Parshall on 24 Aug 2008
Angel of Music and The Mirror
Seriously, some of the best singing ever in history. These are my favorite scenes from Phantom of the Opera. Last night at karaoke we did these two and it was awesome! I got to sing the Phantom’s part!!!! OMG! I just wish my singing was 1/2 of Michael Crawford’s. Oh well, still, it came off pretty well. We didn’t do the whole play just a couple selected parts, but it was still fun.
For a libretto of Phantom of the Opera, theatre-musical.com has it posted.
This is Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman in Angel of Music and The Mirror.
Please enjoy the “music of the night”.
Angel! I hear you! Speak, I listen
Stay by my side, guide me!
Angel, my soul was weak, forgive me
Enter at last, Master!Flattering child you shall know me,
See why in shadow I hide!
Look at your face in the mirror, I am there inside!Angel of Music! Guide and guardian!
Grant to me your glory!
Angel of Music! Hide no longer!
Come to me, strange angel…
Oh and I should post a link to my friends site as well, Opera Gifts!
Published by Jim Parshall on 24 Aug 2008
Sarah Brightman and Antonio Banderas
The Phantom of the Opera with Sarah and Antonio? Yep! It works too! Hearing the Phantom with a Spanish accent is something I never thought I would hear. It is good though, if you like Phantom of the Opera you should watch this.
Published by Jim Parshall on 23 Aug 2008
Installing Adventure Works on SQL Server
This is a video tutorial on installing the Adventure Works sample database onto SQL Server Express 2005 on Windows Server 2003. The Adventure Works samples are not included with SQL Server Express and need to be installed for many tutorial ( including mine ) that are out there.
Installing Adventure Works - Click to Download
Published by Jim Parshall on 23 Aug 2008
SQL Server Sample Databases
Well, if anyone ever needed evidence that Microsoft is getting ready for an implosion / explosion just go check out the new SQL Server Sample Database site at CodePlex. Seriously, if this is not the most convoluted, messed up joke of a site I don’t know what is.
Do you people just sit around thinking up new ways to make things hard?!
What is it with Microsoft? I don’t know.
Published by Jim Parshall on 22 Aug 2008
Video Hosting Moved to Amazon S3
In the next 15 minutes I will finish moving all the videos from my web host ( GoDaddy ) to Amazon S3. Why? Cost. Amazon is so much cheaper for hosting large files and making large transfers it is just scary. Plus, one gets all the benefits of farmed servers and high bandwidth connections for basically nil. It just makes sense. It is also way easy to use because of S3 Browser.
For my next trick, sometime in the next 60 days, I am going to finally upgrade from shared hosting to a virtual server. Seems I have outgrown the little shared host and need a faster more powerful engine to run “the machine”. It won’t hurt to have better web stats too. GoDaddy is great for hosting, but they do kind of suck for statistics and I am all about stats!
Published by Jim Parshall on 21 Aug 2008
Install Sharepoint on Vista
How to install Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 on Windows Vista using Bamboo Nation’s setup program! This rocks and it was pretty simple.
Installing Sharepoint on Vista
Vista will need to have these things installed for this tutorial:
- Windows Vista 32 ( I have not tried it on 64 )
- Windows Vista Service Pack 1
- IIS 7.0
- SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
In the Windows Features Menu these are the things you need to install:
Internet Information Services : Web Management Tools select
- Everything under IIS 6 Management Compatibility
- IIS Management Console
Internet Information Services : World Wide Web Services : Application Development Features
- .NET Extensibility
- ASP.NET
- ISAPI Extensions
- ISAPI Filter
Internet Information Services : World Wide Web Services : Common HTTP Features
- Default Document
- Directory Browsing
- HTTP Errors
- HTTP Redirection
- Static Content
Internet Information Services : World Wide Web Services : Health and Diagnostics
- HTTP Logging
- Request Monitor
Internet Information Services : World Wide Web Services : Performance Features
- HTTP Compression Dynamic
- Static Content Compression
Internet Information Services : World Wide Web Services : Security
- Basic Authentication
- Request Filtering
- Windows Authentication
All in the install was smooth as silk. Just remember to use SQL Server Express, Developer etc. and not the Windows Internal Database or what is called the Stand-Alone install. That install option is not support at this time.
On a side note, while Vista is usable, the drivers currently available for VMware Fusion ( and regular as far as I know ) are not WDDM on the video side. So, no beautiful Aero Glass 
On the bright side; however, Vista runs quite well in Beta 2 of VMware Fusion with only a couple odd issues. I still prefer Server 2003 as far as snappiness for development, but it sure is nice to be Vista capable since so many of us use that for our developer platform.
On the bright side; however, Vista runs quite well in Beta 2 of VMware Fusion with only a couple odd issues. I still prefer Server 2003 as far as snappiness for development, but it sure is nice to be Vista capable since so many of us use that for our developer platform.
Published by Jim Parshall on 20 Aug 2008
StorageSpire 1 Terabyte Solid State Disk
I don’t normally post too much about the contracts I work but this one is just so cool I had to post something. One of the gaming companies I work with ( might be Blizzard me not say ) is working with some pretty hot tech and I am setting up a test site for them to pound it with data to see if it is worth the upgrade.
The first item is a StorageSpire
StorageSpire
This is about as cool as it gets. The StorageSpire is a 1TB Solid State Disk ( SSD ). It is made for high transactional operation ( like, um, World of Warcraft for example ). Very nice stuff and we are using FibreChannel to hook it into the test, but I am hoping to switch to InfiniBand for testing. We might end up with FibreChannel in the end, but I am a fan of InfiniBand myself.
We also are testing out some pretty cool rack mount SSDs made by Texas Memory Systems. These RamSan - 440s are the fastest SSD in existence.
RamSan 440 - Fastest SSD in the World
Serious, these things are FAST with all caps man. Anyway, we use drives like this for big banking apps and the like. I got brought in on this team to try how well they would work in gaming. MMOs are just big database apps anyway AND certain ones are making pretty good money, SO why not try putting the app on some serious server power.
To say the least, early tests are pretty impressive. I get latency of basically a couple MS like 10-12 ms even in a very large “instance” say, uh, for instance, Shattered Halls. Not to bad considering what the usual is.
I don’t know if this will ever make it into the real world, but it is pretty cool none-the-less.
Oh you want to know how much… uh, well, how about $250,000 a piece for the 512GB version and we have, uh, 4 of them at the test site. So, we are testing your game with $1,000,000 worth of harddrives! YES!
Published by Jim Parshall on 20 Aug 2008
Yeah! Meccha Holiday
Aya Matsuura’s Yeah! Meccha Holiday (Yeah! めっちゃホリディ / 松浦亜弥)
Very upbeat, live performance. Nice stuff!