Category Archives: Personal

Personal/Other Posts.

.NET Certification

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A few weeks ago (http://kyriakos.anastasakis.net/prof/blog/?p=24) I posted that I was interested in .NET certification. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to work on it since then. The main incentive was to get acquainted with the DSL tools provided in .NET 3.0 (even though the available certification exams are only for .NET 2.0).

Today I read an article in ComputerWeekly that there is a shortage of .NET skills (http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/09/03/226513/employers-struck-by-shortage-of-.net-skills.htm)

It would be interesting to work on a contact .NET project and see the potential of applying Model Driven techniques in practice… But I guess I will have to find some time to study for the certification first.

.NET 2.0 Certification?

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Lately I have started becoming interested in becoming a .NET certified professional. But is it worth it starting to work towards a .NET 2.0 certification, considering the visual studio 2008 will be out in 6 months time? However it will probably take sometime after the release of VS 2008 for MS to review their certifications.

For the time being I am thinking of working in my spare time for the MCPD: Web Developer certification. The main reason for this is that I need to get my mind off the PhD from time to time. I also have a free copy of VS 2005 Professional, when I attended the launch tour, so practising for the exams shouldn’t be a problem. My plan is to be ready for the first exam by sometime at the end of August. Let’s see if I can make it!

Weird files (advertismen.com and pushowXX.dll)

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Last night I found on a P2P network an exe file that was supposed to be a screensaver. Well…yes I did double click! It gave me a usual “do you want to proceed with the installation?” window and I said yes! Well… that was it! It finished the installation, but I could not find any new screen saver on the control panel or anywhere else. Weird isn’t it?

Now, I downloaded a trial version of Ashampoo Uninstaller platinum to see the changes the installation made to my system. I installed Ashampoo and run the “screensaver” installer again. This time I noticed that somewhere in the text of the terms and conditions a company named “ADVERTISMEN.COM” appeared. Tried to google it but wasn’t lucky. I also did a DSN lookup of the url and found out that the domain name was registered on the 5th of April of 2006. Is it a new spyware?

Well, after the installation was finished, Ashampoo generated a log file, which showed that the install.exe had installed two files in the windows/system32 folder. The files were called pushow67.dll and pushow55.dll. I used DLL Export Viewer to find out that they exposed one interface called “Uninstall”. It also created a registry key under: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ called “UninstallString” with value: rundll32.exe C:\WINNT\system32\pushow55.dll Uninstall

It also created another key under: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows called AppInit_DLLs. The value was pushow55.dll.

All this is weird! I deleted the files and the registry entries, run ad-aware and spybot and they didn’t find anything. Finally I logged to my online banking system (didn’t enter my real credentials though) running Etheral. After inspecting the packets I didn’t find anything alarming.

Well… I am not sure if it is a new spyware, Trojan or something, but I know I should have thought twice before running that bloody exe file. Now I just hope I have cleaned my system from whatever it was!

At last a new monitor!

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Well… I am so excited! It’s 9:00 am and I am typing into my blog. I got a new 19” monitor, which I am now using as an external monitor for my laptop.

My laptop’s lcd screen got completely screwed up over the last days. It’s full of blank horizontal lines. After a quick market research it seems that a new one (even a used one) would have cost me around £200, which is quite a lot for a 15” lcd screen. So… I decided to get a new external 19” monitor to use with my laptop for £175.

I got a Yusmart 198QP LCD monitor. It’s… big! It’s a wonder how both the monitor and the laptop fit on my tiny desk. I got two pictures, one of the desk and one of the monitor. The quality of the picture is acceptable and I can now have 1280×1024 resolution, which means I can see more text while I type (or program).

At last I can now work from home! (Well… the desk is still too small and the house does not inspire me to study, but I have that option when I want to program, check or type emails etc).


My desk with both the monitor and the laptop.

The new monitor!

The only problem I am having is that it has around 20 cm depth, which means that it’s too close to my eyes when I sit on the chair to type. I will see if I find a solution to that problem soon.Regarding the rest of the news these days… I will post an update!


Wow!!

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Things back home are getting a bit rough! They had two 6R earthquakes (one at 8:45 in the morning and another one at around noon), but I just read on naftemporiki that a possible bird flu incident has appeared at Aignousa. I suppose it’s a bit too much news for a day.

Yesterday we were supposed to play basketball for the IMS league but the medics did not even show up, so we just trained for a while! It was really fun!

I also established a rough timetable for each day of the week and try to follow it. It seemed to work well today, though I had a rather big break after 16:00. Tomorrow the whole day is assigned to demonstrating tasks. We have a meeting at 10 in the morning and then lab sessions. I am planning to go to the city centre to watch Panathinaikos against Barcelona. It should be a nice game and if we lose by less than 5 goals… I am happy!

Researchwise I have started writing rigorous transformation rules from OCL to Alloy in the ATL language. I am going to define the rules for a very small subset of OCL initially and then implement them to a tool. Right now I am just too tired to write about anything! Going home to relax.