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Oh noes! Say it isn’t so. Part the sixth of The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, “And Another Thing“.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore the series. But, I mourn Douglas’ passing each year. This book will not, cannot be in the same galaxy as Douglas’ work. I cringe fearfully of what will come this October.

I’d forgotten that I had signed up for the JoliCloud¹ Beta a couple of months ago when I was trying to decide on a Netbook vs. a MacBook. Apple won and Steve has my money, but I got my JoliCloud Beta invite a couple of days ago.

The OS still looked cute and highly polished, if only in a GUI way. So I decided to try it out. Virtualization for the win!

Problem: Most Virts don’t like USB keys, at least not for booting. And that is precisely what JoliCloud needs. A bootable USB key.

Solution: After trying a variety of solutions with minimal success I found that the IMG file that you get from JoliCloud, you do have beta access right?, is a bootable HDD file that VirtualBox will recognize. So here are the steps I took:

1. Downloaded JoliCloud Beta Image File
2. Downloaded and installed VituralBox (Google It, I’m lazy…)
3. Created a new VM in VirtualBox
4. Assigned HDA to use the JoliCloud Beta Image File, set this to be the boot disk
5. Created a new Disk (HDC) for installation
6. Booted the VM
7. Ran JoliCloud in ‘Live’ mode
8. Played, installed some apps etc…
9. Used the built in installer and chose HDC as the destination. Defaults all around.
10. Shutdown the VM
11. Removed the two HDDs from the profile.
12. Assigned HDA to use the old HDC file.
13. Turned on the VM and it booted perfectly.

Pretty simple really. Glad I thought of it!

Really tho, VirtualBox, while nice is painfully slow. If you want to try out JoliCloud, build the USB key, walk into a BestBuy and reboot a machine into it. That is the only way to test it’s speed etc. Just don’t install it onto the store’s netbooks. It’s not nice to tease the GeekSquad nerds.

(See what I did there? When this tweets, the hashtag will be picked up!)

So in less than a month I’ll be attending php|tek¹ adn its high time I decided what talks I want to be seen at. Erm, I mean, which I want to attend…

Tutorial Day:

I’m torn bewteen MVC Development in PHP and Web Application Security Boot Camp but in the end I think MVC will win out…

PHP Code Review wins in the afternoon. And that evening I’ll be busy attending the ChiSox/Twins game.

Day 1:

Highly Scalable Web Applications

Streaming XML

MySQL Server Performance Tuning

SPL to the Rescue

Getting it Done

Security Centered Design

Day 2:

Exceptional PHP

Desktop RIAs with PHP, HTML and JS in AIR

Seven Steps to Better OOP Code

PHP Database Application Architecture for Scalability and Availability

Bend SQL to Your Will With EXPLAIN

Taking it All Offline with SQL Anywhere

Day 3:

Out with Regex, In with Tokens

Working with Microformats

It looks like I’m going to have a lot of fun and will learn a lot. I’m hoping some of my methods get justified as well by my peers.

Kudos again to my work for sending me on this trip, and to my wife for allowing it!

I’ll be attending php|tek 2009¹ in Chicago this May. If anyone is attending who knows me, we should make plans to meet up.

I’m excited for this conference. I can’t remember the last time I attended a programming conference, let alone one being paid for by my employer!

I’ve just spent a hour reading the first chapter of Aaron Hillegass’ excellent Cocoa Programming For Mac OS X¹

Aaron makes it easy to pick up Objective-C and start learning the ins and outs of event driven applications. This is the first time I’ve really started to ‘get’ this model of development. Granted I’ve got the free time to put into the project, but still.

I’m looking forward to future chapters and I apologize to my family now as I suspect I’ll have my head buried in this book for some time to come.