Error: The Windows Phone Emulator wasn't able to ensure the virtual machine was running

Here's just another problem that I experienced while trying to create a Windows Phone app. It didn't come up last night for my last app. So, I figured out that I was running too many things at once for my 4GB RAM laptop. Or, should I say, Windows was running too many things? The one differentiating factor between last night and tonight was that tonight there was a "Windows Maintenance in progress". But, it wasn't too bad. I just closed out every other program I had open, including the Dropbox sync and I was able to continue opening the Windows Phone WXGA emulator so that I could take screenshots for the store.

Here's the full error report:

[Window Title]Windows Phone Emulator 

[Content]The Windows Phone Emulator wasn't able to ensure the virtual machine was running:
Something happened while starting a virtual machine: 'Emulator WXGA.danial' could not initialize. (Virtual machine ID C3F3456A-1234-ASDF-87GH-ABD23456GG90)
Not enough memory in the system to start the virtual machine Emulator WXGA.danial with ram size 1024 megabytes. (Virtual machine ID C3F3456A-1234-ASDF-87GH-ABD23456GG90)
[Close]

~ Danial Goodwin ~

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Developer Blog

Connect to Remote Database

Today, I tried three popular programs of connecting to a remote database. In this post I will compare the pros and cons of each of the methods. My motivation was to find a method to share access to a single database and not be able to see or access any other databases on my server. [My server (Bluehost), doesn't allow access to phpMyAdmin without going through CPanel.]

First, the summary:
 - I would use HeidiSQL for speed, responsiveness, and ease of use.
 - I would use phpMyAdmin if I wasn't on my own computer with HeidiSQL installed.
 - I wouldn't use MySQL Workbench at this time nor recommend for beginners.


HeidiSQL:
 - Very quick to learn
 - Shows exactly what I need to get started. (See lower-right window in the HeidiSQL screenshot below)
 - Very clean method of organizing everything.
 - Con: Must be downloaded first in order to work.

http://www.heidisql.com/

PhpMyAdmin:
 - Available with just about every server; on CPanel.
 - When setting up a remote login for team members, it took just 5 minutes. All I had to do was download the files from the site and upload it to my server. Then anybody can access the URL and see the login page.
 - Con: Seems a little show at times.

http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/

MySQL Workbench:
 - Harder to begin with.
 - Couldn't easily show table data.
 - When first starting, user is presented with a flood of information which was a turn off for me.
 - The interface may seem a little cleaner at first, but that comes at a cost of not being able to find functionalities quickly and easily. In order to efficiently use this MySQL Workbench, user needs to spend time looking through all the menus and right-clicking everything. My first thought about the program was that it was missing basic functionalities like being able to show data from the tables. But, I eventually found the function.
 - The screenshot below show this program using null to describe the data in the first row. Having null values in each cell is different that not having any rows of data...

http://www.mysql.com/products/workbench/

I'd love to hear your comments, reviews, and comparisons of these and other programs.

~ Simply Advanced ~

Disclaimer: I only tested each of these programs for about 5-10 minutes before drawing a conclusion. So, this can be used as a judgement for learning curve.

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Computer/Programming Blog

Windows 8 Power Users

There is going to be a new paradigm with Windows 8. I'm not just talking about the Modern UI (also was known as Metro UI).

Microsoft provides users many advanced mouse functionalities that hasn't been natively including in an operating system.

Typically, when we think of power users, we think of experts at the keyboard that have memorized many shortcuts and snippets of code. But, the new paradigm shift from Windows 8 is going to provide people the ability to call themselves mouse power users. Perhaps more people will learn about mouse gestures because of this. I'd give it at least another two years before mouse gestures become more mainstream, not just the mouse device gestures.

Personally, I typically prefer the keyboard to mouse, so much so that I created a script that allows keyboards to perform a double-click. But, there are definitely some times that the mouse is faster. Also, for those who don't like to use the keyboard at all there are many programs that you can download to provide your mouse the ability to do pretty much anything.

 - Just Gestures
 - Mouse Gestures

Let me know your experiences with mouse gestures.

~ Simply Advanced ~

*I did not personally try out these programs

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My Android Apps | My Windows Phone Apps | My Computer/Programming Blog