Completely Backup Android Devices To PC Without Root Or Bootloader Unlock

Posted by jasper22 at 14:09 | Saturday, September 8, 2012

Unlocking the bootloader and consequently rooting an Android device, means loosing all your apps, the data that followed along, and all your settings. This may not seem like a big deal to experienced Android users who will take a few minutes in setting up their phone as it was before, but if a user has build up quite some data on a completely stock Android device and now wishes to root it, it’s safe to to say, will be caught up in loads of trouble trying to get the apps back and obviously the data will be lost. Luckily for such users, XDA-Developers forum member Gigadroid has released a Windows based tool called Ultimate Backup Tool that lets you backup all data onto your PC, letting you restore it later. The specialty that Ultimate Backup holds over its peers is the ability to backup apps and data without root! The tool was tested by the developer on a Galaxy Nexus and is said to work for an Android device running Android 4.0 and up.

Xen-Based Secure OS Qubes Hits 1.0

Posted by jasper22 at 23:45 | Friday, September 7, 2012

Joanna Rutkowska, CEO of Invisible Things Lab, today released version 1.0 of Qubes, a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS. It is the most secure option among the existing desktop operating systems — even more secure than Apple's iOS, which puts each application into its own sandbox and does not count on the user to make security decisions. Qubes will offer users the option of using disposable virtual machines for executing tasks they believe could harm their computer. These VMs will be lightweight, easily and extremely speedily created and booted, and would be just as easy to discard.

2012 Update: Running C# on the Browser

Posted by jasper22 at 23:26 |

With our push to share the kernel of your software in reusable C# libraries and build a native experience per platform (iOS, Android, WP7 on phones and WPF/Windows, MonoMac/OSX, Gtk/Linux) one component that is always missing is what about doing a web UI that also shares some of the code.

Until very recently the answer was far from optimal, and included things like: put the kernel on the server and use some .NET stack to ship the HTML to the client.

Today there are two solid choices to run your C# code on the browser and share code between the web and your native UIs.

JSIL

JSIL will translate the ECMA/.NET Intermediate Language into Javascript and will run your code in the browser. JSIL is pretty sophisticated and their approach at running IL code on the browser also includes a bridge that allows your .NET code to reference web page elements. This means that you can access the DOM directly from C#.

You can try their Try JSIL page to get a taste of what is possible.

Saltarelle Compiler

The Saltarelle Compiler takes a different approach. It is a C# 4.0 compiler that generates JavaScript instead of generating IL. It is interesting that this compiler is built on top of the new NRefactory which is in turn built on top of our C# Compiler as a Service.

It is a fresh, new compiler and unlik JSIL it is limited to compiling the C# language. Although it is missing some language features, it is actively being developed.

This compiler was inspired by Script# which is a C#-look-alike language that generated Javascript for consuming on the browser.

Native Client

I left NativeClient out, which is not fair, considering that both Bastion and Go Home Dinosaurs are both powered by Mono running on Native Client.

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Running a Storyboard as a Task

Posted by jasper22 at 16:14 | Thursday, September 6, 2012

Sometimes you have some code that needs to run after a storyboard has completed. In my case I'm working on a little board game, and after each move (which I animate using a Storyboard), I need to figure out the next move, and either start a new play-animation or pass the turn to the other player.

Therefore I run in a loop until the turn is over. You can detect when a storyboard has finished when the "Completed" event triggers, but that makes for some recursive spaghetti code. It's much easier if I could just "await" the storyboard using a task. So I created the little extension method below that makes this possible. All you have to do to start and wait for the storyboard to finish is:

await myStoryboard.BeginAsync();

Below is the little extension method (which also serves as a general example on how you turn an event-based class into an awaitable Task using the TaskCompletionSource):

using System;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Animation;

namespace SharpGIS

{

public static class StoryboardExtensions

{

public static Task BeginAsync(this Storyboard storyboard)

{

System.Threading.Tasks.TaskCompletionSource<bool> tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<bool>();

if (storyboard == null)

tcs.SetException(new ArgumentNullException());

Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

Posted by jasper22 at 15:24 |

One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that?

Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”.

Creating design time data for your app

When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element.

The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal.

The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here.

Design time data in MVVM Light

One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio.

Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates.

Start Visual Studio 2012.

Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app.

MVMC RTW's (Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Solution Accelerator is now available)

Posted by jasper22 at 10:20 | Wednesday, September 5, 2012

The Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) Solution Accelerator is a Microsoft-supported, stand-alone solution for the IT pro or solution provider who wants to convert VMware-based virtual machines and disks to Hyper-V®-based virtual machines and disks.

Quick details

Version: 1.0

Date published:9/4/2012

Language: English

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Administration Guide.docx, 520 KB

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Solution Accelerator.msi, 4.3 MB

MVMC_ReleaseNotes.docx, 36 KB

MVMC provides the following features:

Converts and deploys virtual machines from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts including Hyper-V on Windows Server® 2012. As part of the machine conversion MVMC converts the virtual disks attached to the source virtual machine. It also migrates configuration such as memory, virtual processor and so on from the source virtual machine to the converted virtual machine deployed on Hyper-V. It adds virtual network interface cards (NICs) to the converted virtual machine on Hyper-V.

Converts VMware virtual disks to Hyper-V based virtual hard disks (VHDs).

Supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 4.1 and 5.0 hosts to Hyper-V.

Note MVMC also supports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 4.0 if the host is managed by vCenter 4.1 or vCenter 5.0. You have to connect to vCenter 4.1 or 5.0 through MVMC to convert virtual machines on vSphere 4.0.

Offers fully scriptable command-line interfaces for performing virtual machine and disk conversions that integrates well with data center automation workflows and Windows PowerShell scripts.

Has a wizard-driven GUI, making it simple to perform virtual machine conversion.

Uninstalls VMware tools prior to conversion to provide a clean way to migrate VMware-based virtual machines to Hyper-V.

Supports Windows Server guest operating system conversion, including Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 SP2.

Enables conversion of Windows® client versions including Windows 7.

Installs integration services on the converted virtual machine if the guest operating system is Windows Server 2003 SP2.

QR:

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UICloud: Самая большая база пользовательских интерфейсов

Posted by jasper22 at 14:14 | Monday, September 3, 2012

UICloud — это база бесплатных пользовательских интерфейсов с поисковой системой, рейтингом и каталогизатором в которой собрано все от исходников в формате PSD, до готовых решений на HTML, CSS или jQuery: формы, слайдеры, кнопки, календари, элементы и полноценные интерфейсы для мобильных и веб приложений. В проекте уже сейчас можно найти практически все что нужно для облегчения процесса разработки дизайнерам и разработчикам.

На данный момент в базе 23586 элементов и почти тысяча UI-сэтов включающие в себя готовые решения в едином стиле. Проект создан Британской студией Double-J Design целью проекта является создание самой обширной UI базы.

I'm not calling a virtual function from my constructor or destructor, but I'm still getting a __purecall error

Posted by jasper22 at 10:35 |

Some time ago, I described what __purecall is for: It's to detect the cases where you call a virtual method with no implementation (a so-called pure virtual method). This can happen during object constructor or destruction, since those are times when you can validly have a partially-implemented object.

Well, there's another case this can happen: If the object has already been destructed.

If you call a method on an object that has already been destructed, the behavior is undefined. In practice, what happens is that the method runs on whatever leftover values are in memory where the object used to be. Depending on how lucky or unlucky you area, this may resemble the actual object closely enough that the method doesn't notice, or at least doesn't notice for a while, or maybe it can't even get off the ground.

Basics of Memory Addresses in C

Posted by jasper22 at 09:27 |

Memory Addresses

It is helpful to think of everything in C in terms of computer memory. Let’s think of computer memory as an array of bytes where each address in memory holds 1 byte. If our computer has 4K of memory for example, it would have 4096 elements in the memory array. When we talk about pointers storing addresses, we are talking about a pointer storing an index to an element in the memory array. Dereferencing a pointer would be getting the value at that index in the array. All of this is of course a lie. How operating systems handle memory is much more complex than this. Memory is not necessarily contiguous and it is not necessarily handed out sequentially. But the analogy provides an easy way to think about memory in C to get started.

Confused about pointers, addresses and dereferencing? Take a look at this 5-Minute Guide to Pointers.

Say our computer has 4K of memory and the next open address is index 2048. We declare a new char variable i = ‘a’. When the variable gets declared memory is set aside for its value and the variable name is linked to that location in memory. Our char i has a value ‘a’ stored at the address 2048. Our char is a single byte so it only takes up index 2048. If we use the address-of operator (&) on our variable i it would return the address 2048. If the variable was a different type, int for instance, it would take up 4 bytes and use up elements 2048-2051 in the array. Using the address-of operator would still return 2048 though because the int starts at that index even though it takes up 4 bytes. Let’s look at an example.

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