Category: General Topics

Illyama 4K screen for Developer, Use Of

I have developed with two or three screens connected to my PC (or laptop – using Matrox’s excellent Dual Head 2 Go) for many years. Like desk space, my view is you cannot have enough screen space to help keep organised and productive.

Recently I took the plunge and purchased a 4K screen from Amazon. Some motherboards have HDMI outputs, which support 4K, but my main PC has not, and as I use multiple screens in any case, I purchased a NVS510 quad port 4K card that can run 4 x 4K screens if necessary. At the moment it is running 3 screens: my 4K screen and two 1920 x 1200 screens on Windows 7.

I chose the screen based on the reputation of the manufacturer and the fact that this screen has many different ports on it, so I can use HDMI to plug my Macbook in, and even split screen between two inputs (doubt I’ll use this I prefer more not less screen space).

The results are amazing the 4K screen is exactly 4 times the screen area of 1920 x 1080 screens, so I could have stopped being greedy and replaced my 3 screens with the one 4K screen and almost gained an additional screen to boot. But its good having one 1920 x 1200 at least because I can get the main Visual Studio window I’m working on up on that screen and really focus on the code in that window.

What I did find was that with Windows 7 the text on the 4k screen was a little on the small side if I didn’t want it to be too big on the 1920 x 1200’s. Windows 8 is better in this respect because it allows you to set your text size individually on each monitor.

Photographs

Illyama 4K and Samsung 1920×1200

Illyama 4K screen

Samsung 1920×1200 screen

The images above show a comparison. This blog is shown maximised on the Samsung, with the same size window on the 4K screen alongside.

A More Realistic Development Scenario

More typical Development screen shot

To the left is a more realistic image, taken with four normal size browser windows on the big screen and a normal sized Visual Studio 2013, along with a maximised Visual Studio 2013 window on the Samsung.

An old, but useful podcast on developer hardware and screen space (multiple screens) can be found at Hanselminutes #74.

Links to Hardware mentioned in this Post

N.B. When considering the DualHead2Go, please check your display output on your PC, you may prefer a display port version of this product.

29th January 2015
WordPress on Linux vs Azure

Although I’m a .NET developer, and I haven’t used the LAMP stack for a number of years, when it came to creating this blog, there was no choice other than WordPress. Its well established, quick and easy to set up a WordPress blog, and this can be polished and finished off with little effort and the help of carefully selected plugins.

Having an Azure account, I couldn’t help but consider how Azure compared to Linux for running WordPress. Microsoft is clearly putting a lot of effort into Azure and the latest versions of ASP.NET, and Azure is coming on leaps and bounds as a result.

I was pleased to see that setting up a MySQL database is now a lot easier in Azure, with an unlimited number of free MySQL databases available through ClearDb. You can also run WordPress in multi site (if you run more than one site like I do) and share the same database, although I haven’t tried that.

I set up some example sites on Azure and Linux. The Azure sites were real Azure sites, not on a VM.

The first thing I noticed was the email needed setting up on Azure. Using the Swift Mailer plugin and SendGrid, this was easy to set up so that forgotten password and other emails could easily be sent (SendGrid provides a SMTP server for emails – this appears to be a good service that I’ll consider using and recommending for other websites, not just WordPress ones).

There were a couple of themes that didn’t work properly, so I would say WordPress on Windows from my limited experience is about 99%.

The one thing I did note though, is that performance was far superior on my shared Linux account in Germany than the North Europe Azure in Ireland. The startup times and also the response times when editing pages was markedly different – Azure took a few seconds and the Linux sites were instant. I’m guessing its not the MySql databases either, but I could be wrong there. So I’m staying with Linux for the foreseeable future.

24th January 2015
How to set up Wireless Networking Repeaters
I just wanted to relate this snippet of information. Often you get wireless networking gear and they are notoriously difficult to set up, the instructions often translated from chinese. Its only in recent years that I learnt of a good way to setup repeaters, which I have not seen in the instruction manuals.

Imagine you have a wireless network with a wireless access point at home. The signal strength is low in parts of the house, so what can you do about it?
1. You could run a cable
  You could use a mains networking device such as examples listed at http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Networking/cat/Network-Devices?q=mains+networking
2. You could use a wireless repeater such as these http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=wireless+repeater. To work this has to be in reasonable range of the wireless access point so it can re-transmit the wireless signal.
So whats the snippet of information I hear you ask? I always wondered how best to set the wireless networking repeaters up. The problem being if you use a different SID, the signal has to disappear altogether before your device even thinks about connecting to the repeater. Response times have long since gone really slow so you have to keep changing the Wifi source as you walk around the house with your iPad.

The best way to my knowledge is to Use the same SID in all devices but use different channels. So if the wireless access point uses SID A, channel 1, you could set up the repeater to receive from SID A channel 1 but transmit on SID A, channel 10. The same concept works if you have two access points in your house connected by a cable or mains networking – use the same SID but different channels.

This is helpful when you are walking around the house with your iPad because the iPad will go to the strongest signal, and will switch channels a lot quicker than switching SID’s. In fact, as related the original network usually has to be totally unavailable to get most devices to switch SID’s and even then it can take a few seconds.

Might be obvious to some, but it wasn’t to me until a couple of years back. Hope this helps somebody.
16th January 2015
Why Another Developer Blog?

Why, after more than 30 years as a developer, have I decided to create a blog?

First and foremost, a blog is a form of communication with other interested parties about subjects that are mutually of interest. I wouldn’t dream of disabling comments like some companies do, all forms of feedback are greatly appreciated and they are an important part of the blog/conversation.

Secondly, if I spend all day trying to work something out, usually this goes into my private wiki so I can refer to it if I ever need to come back to it. I would like to share this information with you. Also for me, the detail gone into on the blog will help cement my understanding and also allow me to refer back diary style on my developer life.

I have put a lot of effort into being a developer and doing the best I possibly can. I would like to share this knowledge and my reading list with you.

Finally, I would like to help developers with less experience (lets face it, even experienced developers have difficulty keeping up to date with everything; there is always lots to learn even about something you work with often, so I might know about some things that you don’t and vice versa).

This blog is going to have a bit of something for everyone, beginners and experts alike. If I spend what I consider to be excessive time finding or working something out, its a candidate for this blog so I can help others save time.

Thanks for reading, I’ll do my best to make this blog a useful resource for you.

Regards

Philip Johnson, Jan 2015

2nd January 2015