I use VMWare Server quite a lot at work for testing and evaluating operating systems and things, and this does a really good job of allowing me to take my work with me to any machine and just running the VM to get going.

I've been experiencing something strange recently, every now and again when I move a VM from our works laptop (Dell Vostro 1500, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2gb RAM etc) to my desktop VMWare kept giving me a "VT is Available but not Enabled" message, which was funny since my desktop (again a Dell Vostro 200, Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb RAM) clearly had "Virtualization Technology (VT)" set to "Enabled" in the BIOS. I'd even upgraded to the latest BIOS version from the Dell website to make sure there were not problems there.

Since Intel VT Virtualization Technology is supposed to be real good for helping improve the speed of virtualised systems and the only way to run a 64bit guest under VMWare Server, this morning I decided to have a go at fixing this and I managed to solve the problem.

It turns out that in order to enable VT technology on my Dell Vostro 200 desktop I needed to not just reboot the pc, not just power off the pc, but to unplug the power cord completely and allow the PC to go cold!

There is some kind of residual power consumption that means that changing the setting in the BIOS and rebooting is not sufficient to actually change the setting on the CPU! This even persists through a BIOS upgrade!

Let me know if this information is helpful to anyone :)

EDIT: 23/Jan/2008 - It would appear the setting didn't persist or something since I'm still finding the same problem again! Grrrr... If anyone from Dell knows how to fix this PLEASE get in touch!

EDIT2: 08/May/2008 - It seems Dell have fixed the problem in the latest 1.0.13 BIOS revision, available from the Dell support site.

Well, the first meeting of the DIGGSML Environmental SIG went very well, we managed to work out some ideas and produce the beginnings of a DIGGSML implementation which was an excellent result for three hard days of meetings (in a windowless room in true DIGGSML fashion).

I hired a car last night, tried to get the awesome looking Shelby GT-H but sadly missed the boat a little bit as by the time I got to the rental car station Hertz were all out of cars! Never mind, Dollar to the rescue in the shape of a zero-mile '07 Dodge Charger. It's no Shelby, the 2.7 V6 is a little breathless when you need it to kick, but it's fun enough, at least it's nice and comfortable even if it is a bit heavy on the gas (-I'm starting to even talk American now, what's going on?!) at 25mpg, but at $2.83/gal that's not the end of the world.

Roger and I spent the day traveling up to Gainesville, FL to visit DIGGSML Core and Geotechnical group member Dr Mark Hoit and DIGGSML developer Erica Hughes at University of Florida and that meeting went really well too, we've identified some things that need to be looked at but in general it was really good to meet Erica and hear comments and thoughts from someone else who's implementing DIGGSML in the real world!

We've agreed some extra functionality and content to go on the DIGGS Blog and it's looking like a really good site with all the major parties in the development of DIGGSML involved with creating content and writing features.

I'm actually writing this post from a hotel room just outside Ocalda, FL after dropping Roger at the airport and then back-tracking nearly 100 miles up the Florida Turnpike to visit the Big Daddy Don Garlits museum for a bit of rest and relaxation. Had an awesome rib dinner from Sonnys BBQ but it's real warm here and I've still not properly adjusted, I just seem to want to sleep at strange times and there's only Law and Order on TV so I thought I'd post up here with some news of the trip.

Anyways, gonna do the Garlits museum tomorrow then look at times and stuff, see if I can get over to Cape Canaveral to see Kennedy Space Centre on the day the shuttle lands, maybe try out the new simulator that's supposed to rock big style.

I'm flying back Saturday night, so I'll head back to Orlando tomorrow night, grab a cheap room on I-Drive and see if I can get round Universal Studios or somewhere on Saturday morning before the red-eye back to London on Saturday night! Kat's been a star this week, she dropped me off last week and she's picking me up from Gatwick on Sunday morning, then we're heading over to Essex for Sunday Lunch with some friends that I'm really looking forward to catching up with, seeya Sunday guys.

It's gonna be a busy couple of days but I think it's gonna be a good one, if I could only get a few hours sleep...

Christopher John Bray

Personal Details

Key Skills

Operating Systems

Extensive experience of:

• RedHat Enterprise Linux / CentOS Linux 3, 4, 5.x for server use.
  Certified RetHat Certified Systems Administrator.
• Ubuntu Linux 7.10 to 9.04 for both server and desktop use.
• Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
• Microsoft Windows 95/98, 2000 Professional and Server, XP Professional, Vista and 7. 
• Windows Server 2003 and 2008 / 2008 R2
• Microsoft Small Business Server 2008
• VMWare Server, Player and ESXi 4
• Zimbra Collaboration Suite

Development

Extensive use of:

• Linux shell and scripting languages such as Bash, PHP, Python, Perl and Ruby
• Linux C# application development using the Mono runtime 
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003-2010 (C# and C++ in web, server, desktop and mobile situations)
• Microsoft Compact Framework for development of .NET applications in C# on PDA's
• XML, XHTML, HTML, WebServices and Javascript
• MySQL 4.x and 5.x in single server and replicated distributed setups
• PostgreSQL, PostGIS and OGC spatial technologies
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 2008 R2, Oracle 10g XE and SQLite (on embedded system)
• UML modelling for the design and development of both software and XML Schema including GML Application Schema
• Agile Development methods such as DSDM 

Computer Aided Design

Extensive experience of AutoCAD and Autodesk Map (Release 12 to 2012 inclusive) use in both 2D and 3D and development in C++ (ObjectARX), AutoLISP, .NET (C#) and VBA

Publications

Bray, C., Chandler, R. J, Walthall, S., Hoit, M. and Lefchik, T. (2008) "Extending the Geotechnical Dictionary. Best practice for customizing the international framework for Geotechnical Data", The Proceedings of GeoCongress 2008, March 9-12, New Orleans, LA. - Buy From Amazon

Career History

April 2008 - Present - Proprietor - FreshlyHosted.com

In addition to my regular employment with Keynetix I applied my skills in a private setting. I have developed both enterprise level web applications and standalone applications for a number of customers using a wide range of technologies such as (X)HTML, CSS, MySQL and Object Oriented PHP in addition to content management systems such as Drupal and Joomla. As part of the operation of FreshlyHosted.com I maintained and managed the servers required to support these sites. My work for FreshlyHosted.com has included extensive experience of deployments and migrations to utilise cloud computing technologies such as Amazon EC2, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) and SimpleDB, including management and elastic scalability using Rightscale, Slicehost and Rackspace Cloud Servers as well as the NewServers.com hardware cloud for dynamic near real time provisioning of dedicated servers.

Ultimate Notifier

I also developed a cloud based iPhone application, Ultimate Notifier (http://www.ultimatenotifier.com) is an online notifier that uses Apple's push notifications system (APNS) to send messages to your iPhone or iPod Touch when you receive email, when your Google Reader account receives new items, when your Twitter username is mentioned and a variety of others. I developed the iPhone App, management web application and server side supporting services for Ultimate Notifier, including management and maintenance of the cloud based servers and services required to operate the system.

Ultimate Notifier is a geographically diverse, self healing, service oriented, distributed system, involving geographically distributed MySQL database replication, a fast and consistent queueing system, a PHP based website and and a number of distributed service oriented components, all logging results to a central log server and tied together by a collection of command and control shell (Bash) scripts, performance monitoring is provided by the 'monit' and 'munin' tools and the system will detect outages and re-start itself as required. The system also uses a number of cutting edge Open Source tools such as Redis, MongoDB, Memcache and Nginx to provide the best possible performance for its users.

July 2009 - June 2011 - Project Manager, IT Manager and Lead Software Engineer - Keynetix Ltd

Promotion to IT Manager gave me responsibility for Keynetix' overall IT policy and infrastructure, with a staff of administrators working for me and reporting directly to the board I held responsibility for a team tasked with both the initial definition of new systems and policies and also ongoing operation of internal IT systems both the VMWare virtualized servers themselves and the services they provided. These services included MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, SAMBA for corporate file sharing, Bacula for backups, Zimbra for collaboration and email, internet access including remote access via OpenVPN, the companies internal SugarCRM system, the internal Alfresco Share based Knowledge Base and a selection of QA systems, including both the off the shelf SpiraTeam and internally developed systems.

In recognition of the quality of my development skills I will also continue my work as both a Project Manager and Lead Software Engineer where I am managing multiple developers on software engineering projects using the internal Agile/DSDM based system.

May 2005 - July 2009 - Lead Software Engineer - Keynetix Ltd

In May 2005 Key Systems Geotechnical merged with it's sister company KeyGIS and their child company Keynetix Ltd to become Keynetix Ltd, my role as chief software engineer continued as did development on the existing projects as all products were carried on across the merger. I continued working on embedded systems, AutoCAD based visualization systems and a laboratory information management system. 

Since that time my work has included the design and implementation of C# applications and web services, accessible from everything from PocketPC's to Windows desktop computers and servers. I researched Binary and XML Serialization of .NET objects for their transmission via web service, facilitating the design, implementation, testing (implementation of an NUnit based unit testing procedure throughout the company) and maintenance of a company-wide object modelling and persistence framework. This allows objects to be modelled in C# and persisted to and from a number of databases or an XML file, and transmitted via web service.

I have recently been heavily involved with the DIGGSML project to internationally standardise transfer of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental data in an GML Application Schema (XML based file format) my input continues to the current day.

Sep 1999 - May 2005 - Software Engineer - Key Systems Geotechnical

As I studied at University I was putting the theory into practice in the workplace and rapidly gaining confidence as a developer. I was involved in large scale systems the UK Highways Agency, we developed a national GIS system for managing geotechnical data called the Highways Agency Geotechnical Data Management System. My initial responsibility in this project was a C++ COM component that inspected the database of UK roads conducting shortest path searches down routes, although my skills were later turned to an embedded system on Microsoft PocketPC based PDA's. Later my responsibility turned to mapping on the device, allowing the user to download hundreds of megabytes of aerial photography, to a PDA with limited resources. A third party component was used for the presentation itself to avoid re-implementing something that could be purchased, but this C component still needed to be integrated to our Embedded application. Extensive use of P/Invoke and various other .NET techniques saw a successful implementation. 

Qualifications

Facilitating Workshops and Project Estimation

RedHat Certified Systems Administrator (RHCSA)

The RH133 course and RHCT qualification is an industry qualification from RedHat Inc. designed to produce "A Linux system administrator who has proven competency by passing the RHCT Exam, a realistic performance-based lab exam that tests his/her actual ability to install, configure, and attach a new Red Hat Linux system to an existing production network."

This RHCT qualifiction was later upgraded to the RedHat Certified Systems Administrator (RHCSA) qualification.

Certificate number: 100-174-358 Verify my qualification at: http://bit.ly/CBrayRHCSA

Microsoft M6445 : Implementing and Administering Windows Small Business Server 2008

A three day course illustrating the planning, implementing and managing Windows Small Business Server 2008.

Strength Deployment Inventory

Conflict and relationship management and communication skills enhancement training from Personal Strengths, presented by Wingman Ltd.

DSDM Atern

I attended a one day course detailing the principals of DSDM Atern to aid with my understanding of the DSDM Atern software development methodology as we implemented it within Keynetix.

Autodesk University 07

I attended Autodesk's "Autodesk University" conference in Las Vegas, NV late 2007. Attending a wide variety of courses centering around technical advancement in Autodesk's product suite, including .NET development, ObjectARX development, AutoCAD customisation, Advanced AutoCAD use and Advanced 3d Modeling.

Programming AutoCAD in .NET

A two day course presented by Autodesk teaching the development processes involved in developing for AutoCAD using .NET.

Systematix SQLServer 2000 System Administration and Database Design

A four day, Microsoft Certified course about using the Transact-SQL language to query, program, install, configure, administer, and troubleshoot Microsoft SQL Server 2000 in a Windows 2000 Server environment.

1999 - 2004 BSc (Hons) Computer Science (Software Engineering) Second Class (Upper Division) 2:1

I studied Computer Science at Wolverhampton University whilst on day release from Key Systems Geotechnical, modules studied included Requirements Analysis, Specification (both formal and non-formal), Design, Estimation, Development and Implementation and Testing. We did extensive development work mainly using the C++ language, however other development work was conducted using Visual Basic, PHP, Python and Oracle PL/SQL. For my dissertation I wrote an Internet based mapping system, using dynamically generated and generalised Scalable Vector Graphics produced from both PHP and Python scripts to draw interactive maps on-screen in an SVG capable browser such as Mozilla Firefox.

Leisure Interests

I am a keen participant and observer of motor sport with my main pastime being the driving of my Volkswagen Golf GTi with the Volkswagen Drag Racing Club, I am also currently Chairman of the club itself.

My interest in computing and computer science continues out of work as I am an experienced Linux and UNIX user on my own desktops, laptops and servers. I also manage and administer my home network and the associated remote access systems.

I am a keen follower of music, particularly live music, attending concerts and I have been an amateur performer in the past having successfully produced my own CD.

Referees

References and exam certificates / further educational history are available upon request.

A blog for developers working with Autodesk technology.

The number one source of DIGGSML, geotechnical, geoenvironmental and related data transfer information in the world.

Written by geotchnics professionals, for geotechnics professionals.