devenv - building a .NET solution from the command line

The easiest way to build a .NET solution (or a project) from the command line is to use devenv command.

However, there are two devenv files - devenv.com and devenv.exe. Today, I have noticed one really essential difference between them. The former one is a console tool, while the latter one is not. If you type devenv.exe to build a solution, it will start a background process and immediately return control to the console. It means that, if devenv.exe is used in a batch file, the commands succeeding it may be executed before the build process completes.

UPDATE:

The above happens only when you type something like devenv.exe SomeSolution.sln /Rebuild Release in the command line and hit Enter. It does not happen when such a command is used in a batch file.

How to load subtitles in Kaffeine Player

I finally found how to manually load subtitles in Kaffeine Player.

An appropriate option is available only in the playlist context-menu.

Not very intuitive, in my opinion.

There are too many geeks around, when...

... somebody asks:

And would you pass a Turing test?

and everyone starts to laugh.

Maximum number of tables per SELECT statement

Have you ever wondered whether the number of tables that you can use in a single SELECT statement is limited or not?

Well, I haven't. But there is a limit. And, contrary to many maximum capacities of SQL Server 2000 specified here (like Databases per instance of SQL Server - 32,767, for example), it is possible to reach it.

When you do, you will see the following error:

Could not allocate ancillary table for view or function resolution.
The maximum number of tables in a query (256) was exceeded.

UPDATE:

I started a discussion about this problem at StackOverflow.

eMusic & Linux (continued)

This is a follow-up to my previous post about eMusic.

If you don't like console applications (gasp!), you can consider using eMusic/J.

eMusic & Linux

If you use Linux and you want to download music from eMusic, visit http://frumppyoldwoman.com/emusicdlm/ and get decrypt-emp.pl script - you will be able to download entire albums with a single click (using EMP files), but without eMusic Download Manager (there is a Linux version of this application, but its development has been discontinued).

This is my .decryptemprc file, if you're not sure how to create one:

FileMask=%artist/%album/%tracknum %track.mp3
MP3Dir=/home/user_name/emusic/
CleanNames

Shortest iron manual

This is the shortest ironing HOWTO I've ever heard - a friend of mine told me this when I mentioned that I hadn't used my new iron yet, since I had wanted to read the manual first (it's not that I don't know how to use an iron; I just usually read manuals):

An iron had two ends - one of them is a plug and the other is hot.

:)

Normalizing tracks when burning Audio CD's with K3b

K3b currently does not support normalizing when writing on the fly, so, if you installed normalize-audio application, and 'Normalize volume levels' option is still inactive, make sure that 'On the fly' option is unchecked.

How to install lame on Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger)

If you want to install lame encoder using Synaptic or apt-get, you should add the following two lines to /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse

Ubuntu unstable due to BIOS settings

Just a quick & dirty note this time.

These settings caused my machine to be unstable.

CHIPSET
FSB:  166 MHz
RAM
freq: 199 MHz (DDR 398)
CAS:  3-3-3-8

Various applications (for example, Firefox, Synaptic, GNU Gadu) and both GNOME and KDE environments crashed because of segmentation faults or unknown reasons. Memtest86 detected RAM errors during moving inversions test.

With these settings everything seems to be working fine:

CHIPSET
FSB:  166 MHz
RAM
freq: 166 MHz (DDR 332)
CAS:  2.5-3-3-7

UPDATE:

A friend of mine has sent an e-mail to tell me that this post might be a little confusing. So to make things clear:

• The problem described above was caused only by wrong BIOS settings and it was by no means Ubuntu's fault.
• The above RAM timings are useful only for me; this blog is, among other things, also my notepad, so I will sometimes jot down things like this.