Category: Life of Blake

I will write things that are going on in my life here.

IIS7: What a change

Blake

In the next few weeks, I am required to use one of my most scariest server products I have used. IIS. I use to manage a small network that used IIS for hosting internal mail interface and other web based products our company used. Back then, we were running IIS6 on Server 2003 R2, and what a scary machine that was. IIS6 wasn’t very intuitive compared to other Microsoft server products at that time. When you needed to add a site or add a CGI extension, it always felt you had to hack it to get something to work and you never went back to it after it was working.

I was required to install it for a programming class and what a change. For someone that never had proper training on IIS, the new interface has defiantly been improved and is now very intuitive.

To install IIS7 was open Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> “Turn Windows feature on or off”. I checked the “Internet Information Service” in the list and that was it. Windows installed the service without needing the disks.

It was that easy to get the new web server up and running on my local development machine.

IIS7 Main screen
Browsed to http://localhost to make sure my new IIS server was running.

I remember spending hours in the server room trying to get PHP installed on the old IIS6 machine we were running. I thought, I wonder how easy it will be on IIS7? Turns out very easy! Microsoft now has an installation you can download that installs PHP 5.3.13 into your IIS.

A few things need to be done first. Make sure you have installed CGI. Windows does not do this by default.

CGI Installation
Be sure “CGI” is checked.

IIS is now ready for the PHP installation. Go to php.iis.net to download the executable. Once you have it download, run it and follow the on screen instruction.

That is it! You have now installed PHP on your IIS server. Create a phpinfo() file on the root of your web-server to make sure everything is working.

My phpinfo().

If you run into the error “Handler “PHP53_via_FastCGI” has a bad module “FastCgiModule” in its module list” it means CGI is not installed. Go back into Windows Features and check “CGI”.

Alesis MultiMix Hum

Blake

The following information addresses how to repair a power supply issue with the Alesis MultiMix. I first noticed the problem about a 7 months ago.

Symptoms are as follows:

  • Clip & Sig LED are on solid (FX section)
  • XLR Inputs hum
FX Section
Here are the LED’s lit up. If you try using the FX section, it hums.

The XLR input hum is the worst problem in my case. So after some Googling and reading, problem is that 2 of the power supply capacitors are blown. To change the capacitors is fairly simple. First thing is to remove the screws on the bottom and the back of the mixer as shown below.

Rear Screws
Remove all the screws on the bottom of the mixer
Three rear screws on the mixer.

Now that the rear plate is loose, disconnect the black 8 pin connector to the power supply, then disconnect the 2 pin SPDIF connection to the main bored on the right.

Disconnect the black 8 pin connector.
Disconnect the 2 pin SPDIF connector.

There should be enough room to get a fillips screw driver in there and remove the power supply bored. But first the connecting wires need to be disconnected.

From left to right:

  • Power Connector
  • Power on/off switch
  • Phantom Power switch
  • Main power to the the mixer
Next step is to remove the 4 screws from the power supply bored. You will need to pry off the components from the heat sink.
Right capacitor has the bottom blown right out of it & the left one is leaking at the top.

As many posts online have said, both capacitors are going to need changing at the same time. Here are the specs of the capacitors. Voltage doesn’t matter to much.

Right Capacitor – 1000uf @ 35V

Left Capacitor – 2200uf @ 35V

My local electronics shop had the right capacitor in stock but I had to use a 50V cap on the left one. It was a little bit bigger so my new cap sits a little sideways on the bored.

New capacitors are installed. You can see the left cap had to be a little to the left so the top part of the mixer would clear.

That is it. You have now successfully change the 2 capacitors causing the hum in your mixer. Follow these steps backwards to put your mixer back together.  Be sure to evenly apply pressure  to the heat sink. Also, when putting the base plate back in, be patient, it will slid in together easily.

DJ Kellner… Is alive

Blake

Back in 2008, I had posted a tutorial on how to adjusting the crossfader works on the Behringer DX1000. I had messed with VirtualDJ with it but never really got into it. Last new years I was asked to DJ a house party a friend of mine was having. Figured this would be the perfect time to learn more about the DJing profession.

The party was a huge success! Few days following the party my friend and I were talking on MSN and he suggested the idea that I make a 20-30min mix of some dance songs. I said sure but I needed a name. 2 Years ago I got the nick name Bartender Blake because I was behind the bar serving the drinks. So with the help of Google Translator we took Bartender, and it came up with the Kellner is German. That was it, My name was DJ Kellner!

Over the last few weeks I have setup another Blog, Facebook page and Forum. Included in the blog is the podcast! This is where my creative side will be shown.

There you have it. The birth of DJ Kellner.

New Laptop #2

Blake

Well for those of you I don’t talk to on a regular bases here is a little update:

I have graduated from Canadore College and received my “Computer System Technology – Networking Program”. So that’s it, I’m done. Not so much. I have deiced to go back for another 3 years for the “Computer Programmer Analyst”. So this now brings me to the reason for this post, I got a new laptop. 🙂

I knew my old Dell 640m just wasn’t going to cut it for the new program. So I order my self a Dell Studio XPS. Here are the specs:

  • Intel® CoreTM i5 540M (2.53GHz/3MB cache)
  • Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-Bit
  • 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3
  • ATI HD5730 Mobility RadeonTM
  • 15.6 inch display (1920×1080)
  • 500GB5 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)
  • 8X DVD+/-RW Slot-load Drive
  • 6 Cell Battery
  • 2.0MP Integrated Webcam
  • 802.11n

Doing the comparison to my old one, this is quite the beast.

The new one doesn’t excite me as much as the old one does. I plan on running Kubuntu on the old one, and get to enjoy having a real web test server again. Also want to play with some of the new KDE environment stuff as its been a few years since I have used it.
If you have ideas of things I should post please comment below!

OpenSUSE – You suck

Blake

This semester at school we have a class called “Second Operating System”. Just like you would expect, we are learning Linux. Unfortunately, the teachers have opted to go with OpenSUSE as the primary OS to teach. First day was to do the setup on either our laptops or the desktop machines the school provides. I opted to install OpenSUSE in Sun’s VirtualBox.

VirtualBox is a great desktop test environment mostly used by programmers to test programs in. It supports Linux and Windows as a gust operating system allowing you to install operating systems on a base Windows install. This means that I don’t have to dual boot 2 operating systems.

After installing openSUSE, first thing I wanted to do was install the Addition tools that come with VirtualBox. This will allows the mouse to flow between the virtual machine and the actual machines desktop freely. It also allows the display to run in “Seamless mode”. Seamless mode run the guest OS right on top of the desktop of the machine seamlessly.

The problem with this is you need to install the kernel source headers. Not a big deal with most OS’s but with OpenSUSE, she wasn’t going to go willing. In Ubuntu when you go to install the kernel source headers it asks you if you really want to do this then enables the correct repositories. OpenSUSE says it doesn’t exist then you have to go hunting for how to do it. So I did what ever n00b does and went to Google and tryed finding a site that shows how to install the files that were required.

Turns out that if you go in about 5 menus deep in the crap thing they call a control panel, there is a spot where you can add the repos. It gives you a nice list of about 20 repos that if you didn’t have any prior Linux knowledge you would have no idea what one to add. So I added all of them.

I ran a repo update using there crappy application manager. It took 30 minutes to check all the repos and 6 of them failed. Explain that to me. :S So after using the search feature found exactly what I was looking for. After that everything installed and ran fine, accept a few things:

  1. Seamless mode doesn’t work
  2. Internet is up and down (no other VM does this)
  3. Installing any application is the biggest pain in the but ever

To conclude, I hate OpenSUSE. I don’t recommend using it at all. They make doing anything twice as difficult as it should be. Why make it so hard?