The Joys of Installs

Today I decided to roll up my sleeves and install SharePoint 2010 beta.
First I decided that I wanted to use Windows 7 64-bit, which was a mistake. All the documents point to the fact that you can do an install on win7-64bit, but you can't. You need to alter the config.xml file.

So I alter everything, and now the setup likes it, yippee, and get the 300 prerequisites installed. (See: http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/10/25/sharepoint-2010-pre-requisites-download-links.aspx for pre-reqs) Now I'm ready to install SP 2010 and configure it. Oh wait, I'm not... error after error, and most of the answers are found here, www.google.com because Microsoft's help is crap.

Getting sick of the errors, and a glutton for punishment, I decided to format my HD and install Windows 2008, which is the desired OS for sharepoint.

Installation was long, but it went like a breeze, and I did have one funny moment when this appeared:

Take a close look, it says the file should be less than 1 mb, but it was well over 6 mb and growing. Thanks Microsoft.

Now on to installing Silverlight and the MapIt Demo.

Google Charts

Google charts is a great/free resource for doing charting.  Many organizations have restrictions on what software you can install, but with google charts no software is needed, just an internet connection.  See this link.  


Here is a simple example:

To get this image, all you have to do is reference this url: http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World


You can simply couple this with python using the webbrowser library. To open the image in a web browser via python try this:


import webbrowser
url = http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World
webbrowser.open(url)

Don't Buy This

This is the worst children's toy ever. I hate cubicles because they prevent creativity. I would never buy my child this.

Here is more information.

Working with ArcPy

If you haven't heard, ArcPy is the new geoprocessing module that will be out with version 10 of ArcGIS Desktop.


ArcPy has some great new features, especially if you use eclipse to program in python. It is intellasense capable, which makes programming nice and easy. It is also a well organized set of functions with libraries, class, functions, etc... Basically it follows OOP patterns.

What I don't like, is the case sensitivity. This can get annoying, since I'm a lazy programmer. Really, who has time to be pushing that shift key and another letter on the key board?

 

I think the future looks bright for ArcPy, but only time will tell.