Thoughts of a Techie.... » Tech

New Windows Home Server!

slimboyfat — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:48:22 +0000

Following another failure of our home PC about 2 months ago, I got approval from the “the powers that be” (aka my lovely wife) to buy a new PC…. So I duly went off to the Dell website, and spec-ed up something suitable (and not too pricey).

Dual Core 2.8Ghz, 4 Gb RAM, Vista 64 Bit (soon to be Win 7 – but that’s another post) and a 22″ full HD screen to cap it off. Suffice to say, performance is superb – and knocks the old box into a cocked hat – not that it was shabby, just a bit old… 3Ghz P4, 2 Gb RAM, Shuttle RefleXion Chassis….

I was running an old HP SFF desktop with an assortment of external drives as my Home Server – and it was doing a wonderful job – it got all the data back following the PC failure, and it just sat in the corner of the Study humming away gently (if a little loudly). This week I took it upon my self to repurpose the old PC chassis as a replacement WHS box and to rearrange the layout of my LAN a bit

So, I started off by testing out a load of hard drives I had lying around – mostly in external USB enclosures, they had all “failed” in some way shape or form – I suspect thay had got too warm in the cases and “freaked out” a bit – so stopped being visible to WHS. They all worked quite happily whaen removed from their enclosures, so I set about working out the best arrangement for them in the Shuttle case…. there’s room for 3 disks (once I’d removed the card reader and DVD and grabbed a set of brackets from E-Bay to fit one in the 5.25″ bay) so I started with just one, SATA disk and loaded WHS…..

Everything went exactly as expected – as it should, and all the patches installed (eventually). I added the second disk, and dropped it into the storage pool – 1Tb… lovely….

Next up was the plan to move the server to the Garage – but there’s no structured wiring to there….. bring on the Devolo ethernet over power adaptors I bought AGES ago and never really got to work as expected (I put the original server in the garage when we first moved in – but it kept dropping it’s LAN connection – so I gave up and moved it next to the router)

The trick with these little devices is to not plug them into “Surge Protection” power strips – I discovered this after lots of searching…. and I now get 50 – 70Mb connections showing for all of them – which seems to be good enough for WHS

One weird thing I found was that I could only get an IP address on the server if I had one of the Devolo devices cabled direct to the router – rather than a switch away:

Router -> Switch -> Structured Cable Drop to Lounge -> Devolo Device -> Power Circiut -> Devolo Device -> Server gives NO IP

but…

Router -> Devolo Device -> Power Circuit -> Devolo Device -> Server works a treat….. bizzarre!!

It tool a fair bit of trial and error and a lot of walking up and down stairs to iron out this particular little glitch – but now that I’ve got it sussed, the new server is running very happily (and much cooler) in the garage.

I’ll be decomissioning the old server over the weekend – once I’ve copied all my data off it to the new one. Once it’s decomissioned, I’ll pull the remaining disks and add them to the new server – so I should end up with 1.75Tb connected to it initially, and I’ll look at adding more in the future

It’s been a while…..

slimboyfat — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:57:47 +0000

I know it’s been a long time since my last post – but as with everyone else in the world (seemingly) – I’ve been busy…..

Just got back from a week cruising the Venetian Lagoon (Le Boat do brilliant “self drive” trips) – Chioggia is MUCH nicer that Venice I have to say…. and Venice Lido is a dump…. but I’m suitably relaxed and feeling like posting something

I’ve wiped the X41 I blogged about last and I’m preparing to get it in condition to bung on E-Bay – I’ve found the restore CD’s, so XP will be put back on to give it that “factory fresh feel”. I’ve got a Vista Upgrade for it too – but I think I’ll just leave it up to the new owner whether to install that or not

Windows 7 has been pre-ordered for all the boxes at home – plus a spare licence (at £50 a pop it was a bit too good to not get my full allowance!)

I’ve also ordered a Xtreamer from Tranquil.co.uk to give me some additional options for the TV in the back room (Freeview signal no-worky with the internal ariel I got and I can’t be arsed getting an external one and doing all the cabling…..) but this solution should allow me to use the content in my Media Collection wirelessly – I’ll let you know how I get on….

I also invested in a DSLR camera – I’ve been hankering after one for a long time, and I finally bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago – a second hand Nikon D50 with kit lense from E-Bay was my 32nd Birthday pressie to myself…. with a bit of assistance from cash gifts from family So far, I’m VERY happy…. I’ll post some example shots from the Venice trip once I get them organised and pick out some good ones….

Anyway – seeing as this is the most typing I’ve done in one go in months… I’ll stop now and try and think of something meaningful to write about soon

Tablet PC’s Rule!

slimboyfat — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:17:17 +0000

I’m writing this in “ink” on an IBM/Lenovox 41 Tablet and it’s a surprisingly pleasant experience!

I’m running Windows 7 (build7068- gotta love those torrents hehe!) and I’ve given it no training at all for my almost Doctor-worthy scrawl and it is amazingly good at getting my scribble!

I was forced to upgrade from the beta (build 7000) by a lack of video drivers – it would work until Windows update ran. . . . then it would freeze…. I pinned it down to the Vid / Chipset drivers. A load of google-foo later, I discovered some posts that implied that support was improved in newer builds and they were right!

Support in this build appears superb - I have screen rotation, and the box doesn’t freeze! Way to go Microsoft / Intel…….

Mini-Note for sale

slimboyfat — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:26:40 +0000

I’ve come to the decision that the screen on my Mini-Note is just a little too small for my every-day use, it was a superb piece of kit for our trip round the world, but my eye’s are not coping so well with the small screen day in, day out…

If you’re interested in purchasing it, please let me know – the details are here:

It comes with a load of extras as you’ll see from the advert – the Waterfield Designs case is the thing I’m going to miss the most – it’s a beautifully designed case, and really well put together – not many cases will keep a laptop this immaculate for a 6 week trip around the globe!

I’ve got my eye on a Thinkpad X41 Tablet as my next toy…. I’ve always been intrigued by the form factor and I LOVE the handwriting capabilities …. so if I can make sufficient funding on this sale – that’s where the cash will be going….

Things I like….

slimboyfat — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:28:33 +0000

Top of the things I like has to be the 1-Click upgrade to WordPress 2.6.1 that I did a couple of days ago…. it’s such a doddle You click the “Upgrde Me” button and await an email telling you that it’s complete – the whole proces takes about 3 minutes and is utterly painless.

It copies your old install to a directory, and upgrades stuff as required – the only thing I needed to do afterwards were to click the upgrade button to do the required “stuff” (1) to the MySQL Database and to move my custom header image back into the appropriate directory in the live version…. all of 30 seconds work and none of the (slightly) painful download, unzip, upload, tweak, pray, tweak somemore, pray again process that was upgrading before I switched to Dreamhost.

I’m going to try and blog a bit more in the coming months…. honest! We’re going off travelling in a little over 2 months – so there should be photo’s and comments from around the world…. the tech focus might go for a while – but that’s hardly the end of the world when I average a post every 6 months at the moment We shall just have to see how dedicated I feel as travel.

I’m selling my “big” laptop (an Acer Aspire 9301AWSMi – see the details here and give me a shout if you’re interested) and hoping to by an HP 2133 Mini-Note to take with us for the trip….. I’m happy to hear any thoughts people have on “better” options – but cheap, light and decent build quality are of paramount importance. I’d also like to be able to run XP and have a copy of my music / photo’s (and maybe a couple of movies) with me – so I’ll need ~50Gb of storage for that….. hence an SSD netbook is probably not suitable…..

(1) This is a highly technical term that means I have absolutely NO idea what goes on in the background

I’ve moved…….

slimboyfat — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:47:20 +0000

not that it should be all that obvious

I’ve moved the blog to Dreamhost and so far so good….. it’s nice – a 1 click install of WordPress and a quick Import / Export of the old posts, change the header picture and here we are…..

So far I’m very happy, it’s all good and I get Google Apps / Mail for domains into the bargain…..

The hosting costs are pretty much identical to Crystaltech give or take $1 per month (and I get a lot more space and bandwidth for my cash) – but it’s on a Linux host rather than Windows – so all sorts of things should work better including posting from my phone a Nokia N95 8Gb which is very nice so far….

Anyway…. off for a bit more testing of phone posts etc and some plugins to install……

UPDATE – Some images seem to be a bit broken… I’m working on it

I know…..

slimboyfat — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:22:15 +0000

It’s been too long – but I’ve been busy!

Work is hectic, I’ve booked a round the world trip (more info to come soon on that…), and there’s just generally been a lot going on …..

I’ve been playing with U3 and the Portable Apps suite in the last couple of weeks – and Portable Apps has won the battle – my Sandisk Cruzer Micro 8Gb U3 drive has been formatted and Portable Apps installed – it’s mostly the same applications – but it’s less “intrusive”

My Home Server is a little more stable now – but I guess I’m going to have to save up and buy a “proper” one at some point (I like these), the mix and match approach doesn’t really seem to be conducive to a stable server and a happy backup database…. thankfully I’ve not had to try and restore any data recently!

Another bonus is that the “XBox360 as a Media Centre Extender” concept that I introduced to the house 6 months ago is finally gaining some traction, Becs is getting the hang of streaming DVD’s (converted to HD-WMV and stored on the Server) and I’m giving serious thought to getting an “Arcade” for the other TV in the Kitchen / Diner to allow us to stream to there as well…more for music admittedly, but with HDMI it’s as capable as my Elite for video I’m just waiting for a black version to appear now…..

Home Server – nearly home!

slimboyfat — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:32:57 +0000

Novatech have shipped my media! I should have a copy of WHS RTM in my hot little hands by the time I get home tonight…. my USB2.0 PCI card should be here on Thursday….all I need now is the time to install it!!

Bye-bye weekend…..

Excited barely covers it to be perfectly honest

Technorati Tags: WHS

Home Server – lost in post?

slimboyfat — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:21:56 +0000

Following my post yesterday, and my excitement at the availability of the RTM software it was only a matter of time before I was disappointed…… Novatech are now reporting that they are expecting stock on September 14th rather than yesterday

On the plus side, the wonderful guys at SVP have got stock of their 500Gb PATA drives again (£52.30 + VAT) – so one was duly ordered first thing this morning and is en-route now. I suspect that it should arrive along with its’ SATA siblings tomorrow if all goes according to plan This will give me all the storage I need to rebuild my server… Just a USB2 PCI card to come. I’ll have 1 500Gb PATA drive internally, 2 500Gb SATA drives in external caddies attached via USB2.0 (hopefully), and still have 2 USB2.0 & 4 USB1.1 ports free for expansion – loadsa room!!

I’ve managed to source a PCI USB2.0 card in the UK, but it’s also out of stock until ~18th September – so it looks like the big rebuild is gonna have to wait a while There’s also the small matter of no guarantee that it’s supported by WHS – it’s got Windows 2003 Server drivers – so I’m hoping that it’ll be OK… otherwise I may be in the market for a new chassis to house all the kit…. more expense I could do without….

In the meantime, I have my CCNA exam a week on Monday – so the study has commenced and so far, so good….. subnetting actually seems to be making sense this time around – I’ve “understood” it before – well enough for MCSE at least – but I suspect that a better understanding is required for CCNA

Enough waffle for one day – I’ll post my impressions of the new hardware once it arrives – especially the drive caddies…. I’m hoping they’re better than some of the previous ones I’ve had.

Technorati Tags: WHS, Windows Home Server, Storage, Upgrades, CCNA, Study, PATA, SATA, Drive Enclosures, USB

Home Server coming…. home?

slimboyfat — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 12:47:11 +0000

Having been in the beta since it first went public, and absolutely loved the product, to say I was very excited when the announcement was made that Windows Home Server (WHS) had RTM’d would be something of an understatement!!

Now that it’s available in the UK for a reasonable price…. I’ve ordered my copy

Novatech are selling it for £86.95 inc. VAT – considerably less that some other resellers in the UK, which is nice……

In addition to this, I’ve ordered up some big (500Gb) SATA disks and USB caddies for them. The disks are lovely and cheap from SVP and they are supplying the caddies as well – USB 2.0 ones that support SATA / IDE / eSATA so I’m future proofed for a while at least….The plan is to rebuild the server “properly” – this will involve wiping all the data and starting again – so there’s some BIG backups to run once it’s complete…. the only downside at the moment is that I only have USB 1.1 on my old server chassis so I’m looking for a supported PCI card with USB2.0 ports now.

I suspect it’ll be a week or so before I have all the bits and I’m ready to start – but I’ll post my first impressions of the finished product once I have it built. I’ll also be posting some stuff on the fun and games I’ve had trying to get a reliable wireless connection for my XBox 360 so I can use it as a Media Centre Extender - 802.11a might be more “reliable” but it’s not easy to find hardware (at least not here in the UK) - that’s all I’ll say for now…..

Technorati Tags: WHS, Windows Home Server, RTM

Technorati Tags: XBox 360, Media Centre, Extender, 802.11a, wireless

Finally…..

slimboyfat — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:31:03 +0000

I’ve got myself an XBox360! I waited for the Elite version to come out here before I bit the bullet… so I now have 1080i gaming on the 42″ flat screen in the lounge

They were released the day before my birthday in the UK – and I figured that turning 30 was a good enough excuse for going for it…. I have to say, I’m VERY impressed all in all, it’s a well joined up process, and moving my gamertag over from the old XBox to the 360 was a doddle (once I remembered all my login details heheh)

One fun thing I’ve found that ties in is that you can get your 360 to blog – it’s all automated, and you can see my consoles’ blog here …. I’ll be intrigued to see how this develops as I game more and play around with the Video Marketplace etc.

So far I have to say that my favourite games are Bioshock and Forza Motorsport 2 - both very different, but excellent in their own ways.

More to come as I delve further into the games etc. If you fancy a game then please feel free to ad me – gamertag is jackeales

Technorati Tags: XBox, XBox360, XBox 360, Elite, Blog, 30, Birthday, Gamertag

Changes galore….

slimboyfat — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 18:30:24 +0000

I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.2.2 and the latest version of Spam Karma as well … so there might be a few bugs that I need to iron out over the next couple of days – everything seems good at the moment – but I’ve not tested everything

Aside from that, all is good – I’ve finally passed the second part of the upgrade process to MCSE 2003, and I’m trying to get organised to sit my CCNA – but getting motivated to study is tricky…. with the weather being nice and the house being finished – I just want to chill out and relax in the garden….

There’s also the small matter of my impending 30th birthday…. the panic’s starting to kick in now…..

Technorati Tags: CCNA, MCSE, WordPress, Spam Karma, Upgrade

Day 3 – things are looking up!

slimboyfat — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:43:40 +0000

It’s improving…. OSPF, EIGRP, RIP – and least we’re covering something “meaningful” at last – I think I might have actually learnt something finally!!

It’s still slow – lots of talk and not a lot of do – but it might be worthwhile by the end of it…. I know that doing it as two course would have been the end of me – let’s put it that way!!

We’ll see how tomorrow goes – and then make a final call on Friday…. the jury’s out for now….

Technorati tags: ccna, global knowledge, bootcamp, boot camp, slow paced

Bootcamp – Day 2

slimboyfat — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:24:11 +0000

It’s not a lot better…. 25 minutes to “explain” Ping – for fuck’s sake! I’m not really in a suitable frame of mind to discuss the rest of the day – I guess it could have been worse – but it could of been an awful lot better…..

More to follow tomorrow……

CCNA Boot Camp – Day 1….

slimboyfat — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 21:13:08 +0000

Colour me unimpressed so far……. a 9:30 start… and by first break at 11 we’d just about got through introductions and associated bullshit…. this included the bombshell that was “we should be finished by 7pm each day…..” the course details talked of 9-5:30, and I figured that 6 wasn’t unreasonable… but 7?!?!?!

Fair enough… I never expected an easy ride – it’s a boot camp for God’s sake…. 9 days compressed into 5 – but I’m on a flight at 7 on Friday… so I’m going to miss the end of the course if I’d known, I’d have stayed until Saturday!

As it stands…. we got to 15:10 before anything as complex as “enable mode” was mentioned… so the pace so far… well, isn’t exactly racing along…. by the time we got to naming conventions for ports / slots etc. it was 17:15… and that took 20+ minutes – how fucking much do you want to explain something that simple!?

I don’t think anyone is finding it hard going – if they are, then they probably shouldn’t be on the course if I’m honest

More to follow…. hopefully tomorrow picks up the pace a bit….

Technorati tags: ccna, boot camp, bootcamp, ccna boot camp, ccna bootcamp, unimpressed

Too funny…..

slimboyfat — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:38:14 +0000

Props to John Montgomery for this absolute blinder of a mock-up!!

Technorati tags: funny, code, humour

Mea Culpa

slimboyfat — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:19:48 +0000

I know…. it’s boring reading posts from me (assuming I still have a reader….. you there Bobbie?) about how I’ve been a bad boy and not blogged for ages….. well here’s another one – but I kinda have an excuse….

“I’ve been busy” is a kinda lame excuse – but it’s valid this time… I’ve moved teams and house in the last 5 months – not to mention become a 2003 MCSA (I failed the second exam to become an MCSE last Monday… but I have the retake booked..)

Since Becs and I moved in together in our previous house (and especially since we got married,) we’ve been looking for a place to buy together – being a tennant has it’s advantages – but the time was right…. we started looking just after christmas, and found the ideal house in late March – it ticked everything on the “want” list and all of the “would like” list (downstairs loo – check, bigger kitchen – check, garden that faces “the right way” – check, utility room – check, garage / off-road parking – triple-check – 2 car dive & single garage!!) I’ll post some photo’s once I get back and actually take some of the outside from the front! In the meantime, here’s one of the back of the house about 2 months before it got finished.

It’s a 4 bedroomed detached house – and we’re very happy – thanks for asking!!

As for work and the team move – it’s been on the cards for a little while, and I finally joined the Core IP Transit team about 4 months ago – so I’m now a part of a team responsibile for all of our IP traffic from POP’s in London to CPE / ADSL routers in businesses / homes. We also take responsibility for our MPLS NGN core network in the coming months – so you can imagine what it’s been like for me – I’m a “windows boy” I understand GUI – not Cisco CLI ….. the learning curve has been brutal to say the least. I have an excellent team to work with and ther’s no shortage of dedication and willingness to spread the knowledge – so I’m working long hours and learning a lot – a good combination – but the long hours don’t make Becs all that happy (until pay-day!)

The reason for this post? Well, I’m in London for a CCNA boot-camp to try and ge me up to speed with what I’m meant to be doing day-to-day…. so I’m planning to post something each night about the experience – we shall see…….

Technorati tags: CCNA, MPLS, MCSE, new house, ADSL, excuses

Getting en-tangler-ed…. or where my life is about to vanish into :-)

slimboyfat — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:24:38 +0000

My new friend dekrazee1 (no link as “commitment” to a blog is a bit too much for her at the moment!) and an old aquaintence Mick have been “good” enough to get me an invite into Tangler and I can feel that it could begin to suck my life away – taking every waking moment – but in a good way

It’s a chat site – but a bit different to IM or IRC – you can subscribe to conversations and topics – create you own, and generally involve a load of people you’ve never met – an interesting way to get feedback on a website / project / new geek toy / anything else you want opinions on….

I have the ability to invite some friends – I don’t know how many – but leave a comment as to why you should be invited to this very interesting beta and an e-mail address and I’ll get in touch!!

Windows Home Server – the story so far…

slimboyfat — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 12:40:40 +0000

As my regular reader will know, I was invited to the WHS Beta last week.

To say I was excited would be a bit of an understatemnt, I’ve been want ing to play with this technology ever since Charlie‘s team announced it at CES! I immediately downloaded the software and documentation, requested my license key and burnt my discs.

The install process has been documented extensively by others who were invited to the party earlier, so I’ll skim over it – suffice to say it was a breeze on an old desktop machine that’s been gathering dust for 18 months – a P4? 1.7Ghz Compaq with ~700Mb RAM and a 120Gb Hard Drive – real bleeding edge stuff 5 years ago!! The only addition was a cheap “e-bay special” Firewire / USB card – no driver issues at all The firewire ports are required to connect my additional drives in their external enclosure….. When WHS goes gold I might step up to the 8 bay version :-))

The process of adding disks was very smooth, I managed to clear a lot of data from one of my disks (removing old backups etc.) and moved the remaining data to other drives temporarily – probably the slowest part of the entire process… then I plugges the array into the server and the “issues” began……….

The server saw all the disks – that’s fine, but it re-labels them – so I couldn’t tell which disk was the “blank one” So, I disconnected the drives again, and pulled the caddies that had “data storing” disks. Then, after a quick re-connect, I could add my blank drive to the shared pool. This done, I reseated the “full” disks one at a time, and moved data around accordingly.

It’s probably worth pointing out at this stage a few little “features” of WHS and adding storage to the pool.
1. Disks must be formatted before they can be added to the pool.

2. Once a disk is added to the pool – drive letters in the conventional sense do not exist – they all form part of a big pot
3. In the console, the individual disks are “visible” (see the screen-shot below) but only for a status readout.

This leads me to the biggest “issue” I’ve found so far (and at time of writing) the 2nd most highly rated piece of feedback on the Connect site (raised by yours truly!!) – the face that I cannot re-label my disks within WHS. e.g. I’d like to be able to number my disks from 1-4 for the external disks – top to bottom in the external array. That way, if a disk goes “bad” – and it’s bound to happen – then I can identify it easily without having to pull the drive one at a time to see when the error goes away.

I see this as a VITAL faeture for the finished product – especially if Microsoft want this to become popular with non-techies – at the moment it’s in danger of falling through the cracks between enthusiasts (by not being feature-rich enough) and the “normal” home-user (because it’s too tricky to do the “easy” stuff). Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE this product, and it’s not going to be disconnected from my home LAN any time in the forseeable future – but it’s a way off being recommended to my parents for them to backup their digital photos etc!!

There’s a very good write-up here from computerworld, and the reviewer seems to be of the same mindset as me when he sums it up with “For my part, now that Home Server is installed on my network, it’s not going to be unplugged”

Technorati tags: Windows Home Server. WHS, Firewire, Connect, Beta, WHS Beta, Windows Home Server Beta

Windows Home Server – first impressions

slimboyfat — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:00:03 +0000

Well, it’s excellent – in a word…..

I have to say it’s a very impressive bit of software – the most stable and functional piece of Beta 2 software I think I’ve ever used. I got my invite 36 hours ago – an overnight download, and an install the following night have got me to this post….

The install was painfully simple – pop the DVD in, boot and about 5 (possible more like 3) clicks later – it’s done…. so simple even my dear old Mum could probably manage it!

The initial user experience is good – it’s a very simple desktop – think stripped down Windows 2003. The console connection is clear and easy to use, and overall it’s a doddle.

My only complaint so far is the keyboard “support” there’s no option to choose what keyboard you have – so it defaults to US…. not a huge issue I hear you say – but it’s a PITA when you use @ or ” in your initial password – they’re reversed on UK / US keyboards – so logging in from a UK laptop later means you think you’ve gone mad for a couple of minutes

There’s also no obvious way to change the administrator password once you’ve set it – so if it’s compromised – you’re SOL as far as I can see at the moment – I’ll do some more testing on this one tonight and post more if I find it.

PC Backups are very cool – you install the connector software, it automagically finds the server, gives you a link to the shares and the console software and you can then setup the backups from the console in a matter of minutes – pick what you want to exclude – rather than what you want to backup – novel idea – and quite nice I think…. means you’re less likely to miss something important (and it automagically removes stuff like your pagefile and temp directories – very clever) The backup then kicks off – and it looks pretty fast – I don’t have an exact time as I got booted off the PC – WAF still counts for something

I’ll post more in the coming days as I try to work out how to migrate my data across (4 drives in a Firewire enclosure) – should be fun

What everyone’s talking about…

slimboyfat — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:10:31 +0000

Well, I’ve been added to the popular gang – I’ve been invited to join the Windows Home Server beta!

I’ve grabbed the software and got my key – I just need to juggle some disks around to get myself some hardware - I’m just short a big disk… so it might be an EBay job – I’ll just have to see if I have enough free space to move data and pull one from my array – if not a 500Giger from EBay sounds tempting

Lots more details and info to follow I’m sure as I start testing and playing around with it.

Windows Home Server – read this grasshoppermind!

slimboyfat — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:43:11 +0000

I was chatting yesterday with my former boss – a nice fellow – he’s now doing ¨consultancy¨ for small businesses and SBS install etc – we were chatting about this and that and I mentioned WHS…. Cue blank look from Rob….. tut tut – working for in the SoHo realm and not knowing about this? Shame on you…… more shame on you for not blogging since August – and I thought I was slack!!

Still the point of this post it to try and get Rob up to speed – so here’s the links to the most important thing Microsoft have done in a long time (I’m biased as my Vista laptop has just died and I’m back on XP – and I think I prefer it to be perfectly honest!)

Beta 2 of WHS is out now – Sign Up here

Forums are here

Team Blog here

Requirements for WHS Beta 2 (and a blog you should read)

Get reading, learning and inwardly digesting….. Enjoy….

Technorati tags: windows home server, whs, beta, grasshoppermind, kindel, cek.log, cek

Now for the things I’m NOT excited about….

slimboyfat — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:02:44 +0000

MacWorld – usually a love-fest for Steve Jobs, and all things IPod…. has proved that apple fan-boys are even more full of shit than I thought they were….. where’s the innovation in this?

Music Player – been done.
Touch Screen – see it before.
E-Mail – yep, got that. Web Browser – yawn…..
Ooooh, hang on – oh…. no it’s EDGE (not a lot of use in the UK) – not 3G / HSDPA – so not worth having for data really in this day and age…..

Where’s the “Breakthrough Internet Device”? All I see is a bunch of things my Ipaq 3970 could do with my bluetooth enabled phone 3-4 years ago – OK so it’s all in one piece of hardware now – but it’s not exactly NEW….. My E61 will do all of the above – and it’s 3G……

As for the AppleTV announcement – can I be any more underwhelmed? It’s not 1080i – just 720i so it’s not Hi-Def enough for my liking…. and it’s all DRM’d up – the usual Apple “Fairplay” bullshit – so I can share the content with 3 TV’s in my house – big fuckin’ deal – I still need to cable them together somehow as far as I can see…. what use is that?

Steve – I’m sorry to say this – but I just don’t give a shit…. I’d LOVE a MacBook Pro - running Vista of course….. but OSX would be nice to play with now and again…. but the whole “I-” thing fails to get my juices flowing…. I like to rip my CD’s to MP3 without DRM and be able to move them around and put them on whateve device I like – I HATE the idea of being tied into a bullshit ecosystem that means that I can’t change to the device that I like….

I want one….. please let me beta test this?

slimboyfat — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 15:03:44 +0000

I’ve NEVER been as excited about a Microsoft announcement as I am about this one.

Charlie, I’d more than like to test this – I’d LOVE to…… I think I’d be a perfect example of what you need to test it – data syncing using a combination of Foldershare and SyncToy and a bunch of batch files / ftp’s etc.

Music / Photo’s / Documents etc. on 3 Laptops and 4 PC’s, Firewire attached disks with loads of storage and multiple copies of all my data – I’ve probably got in the region of half a terabyte of backups dotted around my house (and with my parents for offsite storage) - all being updated (at least) once a day (if not in real-time) and weekly / monthly archives I’ve got for a final worst-case rollback…

Please, please, please can I it? I’ll test any hardware you like – it doesn’t need to be the HP kit – although it’s rather nice and might just have the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) that I’ve been looking for – the heat / noise / power use combo that my current strategy has is something of a problem on the WAF front – it’s not very popular – but probably not a Divorcable Offense like losing all of it!!

The Xbox360 is coming soon to complete the setup – and one of these to go with it would be perfect – it might just justify the 360 – anything that makes it easy to show off the wedding photo’s whilst streaming the music to go with them would be considered a “Good Thing” TM

The ideas that Rick has are excellent and to have voiced them a year ago is visionary, I have to agree with him that they could have done more - but for version 1.0 it’s looking pretty good!

So, if there’s anyone out there from the Windows Home Server team that wants to send me some test kit – I’d be more than happy to give it a trial run?

Money – apparently it makes the world go ’round

slimboyfat — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:22:48 +0000

Silly me – I always thought it was some sort of gravitational phenomenon

Seriously though – whilst I do this “blogging thing” for a bit of a laugh – you can tell how seriously I take it by the frequency of my posts!! – it’s be nice to cover some of my hosting costs (currently a few $ per month with CrystalTech) so I’ve opened an Adsense account with Google – I’ll see how it goes – any comments good or ad gratefully received!! Enough feedback and I may even turn them off – I’m jus intrigued to see what sort of adds they provide and if I get any hits!

Anyway… more posts to come – there things at CES that I REALLY like the sound of…….

Back from oblivion….

slimboyfat — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 15:15:10 +0000

As I hinted at here, I’ve been working on a mail related project…. Well it’s finally over and I’ve got some time to blog again… and it feels nice!

It’s been a busy few months, and December has been double-long (60+ extra hours in the first fortnight!!) but it’s been worth it. The new mail platform for Manx.net is done. I have to pass much thanks on to the team at Mirapoint here in the UK – they have been consummate professionals throughout the project and the positive feedback we’re getting now is proof that it’s been worth the effort.

I was given the project early in the year (within a month of starting) and it was no small project either – webmail and POP3 / IMAP access for ~27000 people all of whom live within 1 hours drive of me! The existing platform was becoming increasingly flaky and customer complaints were growing by the day.

There was no margin for error – the migration had to work and it had to work first time. As I mentioned living as I do, on the Isle of Man – no-one is more than an hour away by car – so the potential for ”feedback” coming and biting me was very real and slightly terrifying.

As it turned out, it all went very well, we had a few issues and I’m sure there’s a couple of our customers who might disagree with me, but all in all it was a very smooth changeover. I’d make a couple of suggestions to anyone who is considering a major platform change like this in future…..

Ensure you make sure your password policies are the same – so if your old platform is not case sensitive – make sure your new one isn’t! This caused a bit of pain…..
Make sure the rest of your infrastructure is ready to handle the increased load. A change like this makes a lot of people “test” the new system out – so make sure your call centre staff have been trained on the basics and that support services such as DNS are fully specced to handle the load.

Over-all it was hard work but extremely rewarding – and not a fortnight I’d like to go through again any time soon

I’d just like to name a few people who deserve extra thanks for making it all go so well…. Tony, Kev, Steve, Dickie, Sarah - you all deserve medals – and the rest of you (you know who you are) – I couldn’t have done it without you!

Finally – there’s one person who deserves thanks more than anyone – my wonderful wife Becs – without your patience and understanding I think I’d have gone mad!

Right – back to normal service now – I’m promising myself that I’m going to blog more in 2007 – it won’t be hard to do more than 2006 – but I’m going to work on it…… ;-)

WordPress 2.0.4 Upgrade

slimboyfat — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:08:28 +0000

Well, I’ve finally done it – I’ve upgraded to the latest build – and I’m doubling my chances of this all going a bit pearshaped by using Windows Live Writer to publish this post – the first time I’ve tried it…. so wish me luck!!

So far, I have to say that the experience has been good – the interface is nice and easy to use, it’s detected my blog settings (I hope) and it seems to allow me to create drafts easily – so I might actually post bits of interest more often – I’ll have to see how things go over the next couple of days…. if the integration with the Live toolbar works like I think it should, I should be able to flag stuff for posting later – save the drafts and write something meaningful about the link when I ahve time!

Anyway I going to try out a couple of the other features – such as images etc and see how it performs….

edit – images don’t work to wordpress – I think I need to do some more digging on that one…. bugger!

I’ve got some music reviews to do in the coming days – I’ve found a couple of great bands / artists that I want to get the word out about – so I’ll be testing the changes more in the coming days – in the meantime check out Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly! and YoYo Hearts - the YoYo’s are supporting GCWGF on the Island next month – can’t wait to see them both live…. There’s other stuff I want to review – but I need to find the links that lead me to them – so I can give “props” to the people who have pointed me in the right direction!

Zooomr – Pro Account?

slimboyfat — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 08:09:36 +0000

Apparently I can get a free Zooomr account by linking to a photo I have hosted there – but I’, not sure how I’m meant to do that….

Possibly like this http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/gmail_slimboyfat/75655

of maybe I need to do so HTML coding and do this:

Dunno….

but I want a pro account! So I’ll see what I can do and let you know how I get on….

Cool Marketing

slimboyfat — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 06:50:50 +0000

The guys over at zapr have a very cool new survey, I strongly recommend having a go at it….. it’s very random – and a bit pointless – but that’s what’s so refreshing about it. Gone are the usual questions about technologies you like to use or your age / sex / favourite blog, and in are requests for poems and your views on Orange (the colour – not the company)

http://zapr.typepad.com/michael/2006/07/important_custo.html

It’s genius and Michael and the rest of the team at Zapr should be congratulated for his originality.

Google discrimination?

slimboyfat — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 22:20:05 +0000

Now, I’ve always found the concept of “US English” & “British English” rather amusing – English is English – and so by definition, it comes from England (or Britain if you like…) So americans spell some stuff wrong…. that’s their perogative I guess….

But Google, the “Do NO Evil” company… how could you discriminate so? I was reading fellow ManxMan Dan Karran’s Blog, and I came across this rather interesting little factiod.

It seems that if you change you regional settings away from US English then the much publicised changes to GoogleTalk are not available to you…. no chat window in your inbox – I just presumed that I was unlucky not to have it yet…. but no, I was daft enough to ammend my local settings to UK English – heaven forbid! I live in the UK (give or take a technicality – it’s strictly a Crown Dependency and part of the British Isles rather than the UK – but who’s splitting hairs?)

More importantly – I was missing the MUCH Hyped Delete button – what’s going on Google? Does delete mean something different in US English? Has your localisation team been too busy to translate?

I’m disappointed to say the least…..

Hardware disasters – aka why I take backups….

slimboyfat — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 10:09:54 +0000

Hardware glitches….. well, shall we start with the dying hard disk? One drive in my external firewire box decided to die last week – of course it’s the one with all my photo’s on, and where all the music is ripped to (490 Albums at last count) so you can imagine my horror when it wouldn’t come back online – it’s been giving me problems for a couple of weeks – just dropping off and requiring a reboot of the PC and the Array to get it back….

Luckily I have some good backup software and I keep two copies of all that sort of data – wasteful in some ways – but disk space is cheap!! I found out how cheap disk space is with a bit of digging around for a replacement drive – I have a spare that was dropped in – but now I need a new spare!! I’ve not decided if I should start a round of upgrades to 250Gb drives from 120′s or just be cheap for the time being and get another 120 as a like for like replacement. I’ll keep you posted of what I find / decide on…

Whilst I was searching I found a Fujitsu 80Gb Laptop drive on E-Bay (brand spanking new, for £88 delivered to my door the following morning) this will allow me to do a load of juggling of disks amonst the laptops here and improve the data redundancy somewhat. At present I have a pair of 30Gb drives in my Laptop (a Compaq Evo N600c) but I have to use the MultiBay slot – so I have no optical drive most of the time…. just a little frustrating I intend to upgrade this to have the 80Gb drive in it and drop the pair of 30′s into Becca’s Armada M700 (along with a RAM upgrade also found on E-Bay) to turn that into a useful machine at long last (there’s minimal chance that she’ll need an optical drive - I hope!!)

Once all this is completed and I get sign-off from Becca, I’ll probably upgrade the PC to run SBS 2003 and have a domain in the house – central storage and offline files, combined with Foldershare for additional redundancy and music / photo syncronisation across multiple machines, we should be on to a winner! I then just need to find somewhere to “hide” the PC as it’s pretty noisy – and I’d like to get it out of the study and into a cupboard (understairs stylee) of some description – run it headless and use remote desktop as required to do admin….. but we shall see…

Latest upgrades….

slimboyfat — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 17:26:47 +0000

Hopefully this post will work… my first attempt failed for no obvious reason – but I suspect it may have something to do with the abomination that is Internet Explorer 7… it’s like IE 4 – but more horrible (remember the active desktop?) the Beta 2 preview release is a crock, and will be coming off tonight…. I’ll have to wait a bit longer for a version that works properly with SpamKarma (the one saving grace of IE7 is that the previews of captured spam work as they should… like they do in Firefox….)

An update from IE6 is badly needed – but please give up with the RSS integration (FeedDemon works just fine thanks), and put the buttons back where they were…. and what’s with the Blue Boobs?

Anyway enough of a rant… WordPress 2.0.1 is now available…so I guess I should upgrade that as well…. at least it’s not BETA!! Why oh why didn’t I wait a day or two more before upgrading??

Upgrades – software and work…

slimboyfat — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 12:20:31 +0000

Well, I’ve done it and finally upgraded to WordPress 2, and I have to say it was stupidly easy!! Apart from some hardware problems (my laptop freezing twice as I was uploading the new files) it was utterly painless. I’ve also upgraded to Spam-Karma 2.1 – to ensure that the junk stays out of my comments….

The new interface is lovely – just a bit cleaner and “nicer” that the previous version, the editing tools are superb as well…. the preview is massively improved from previous versions (create a post and click ‘Save and Continue Editing’ then scroll down to see what I mean…)

I know I promised to post more, and I will – a new role beckons working in telecoms (on the web hosting side of things) so it should start getting interesting…. I’ve got to have a medical and get my references checked… and a “security check” but it’s all OK!!

More updates to follow as things progress……

MSN Live Messenger

slimboyfat — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 01:45:01 +0000

Invites available – i’m looking for MEANINGINGFUL comments – not the usual pleading….. impress me – show me some GOOD new software – show me something funny – give me a reason to give you an invite…..

The oppourtunity is there – PLEASE take it!!

Need that file you left at home?

slimboyfat — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:58:20 +0000

We all know the feeling don’t we….. you’ve typed up that important documentation / cv / proposal over the weekend on you home PC, and got to work for the presentation on the Monday morning – and realised that you’ve not e-mailed it to yourself, or brought it on your pen-drive, or it was too big for your mailserver so it was rejected… but you never saw the NDR. That sinking feeling – that feeling of panic….. well no more!!

Foldershare (recently bought by Microsoft) is a superb piece of software that gives you a number of options for getting hold of your files….

As Reeves Little puts it:

FolderShare is perfect for individuals. FolderShare offers both free and for-pay versions of their service. The free version of the service limits the number of files and sub-folders which can be shared as well as the speed of the file sync. I’ve been able to stick to just using the free service by keeping a sub-folder in my documents folder where I put the items I want to share (typically my current work) and moving them out when I’m done.

…

Yep, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… I’m cheap.

You can syncronize your files (up to 2Gb per file) between machines, in a nice (read quick), secure, encrypted manner – it’s 30 seconds to install and configure it. Install the client, create a username and password and then select the directories you want to sync. Foldershare calls each of these a library – and each library can contain up to 10,000 files! You can then invite other foldershare users to your libraries, or just install the client on other machines – et voila! your files are available to you.

Alternatively, once you have the client installed on a PC – you can sign-in to the website from any web browser, and look at the contents of your PC(s) – any drive or folder – regardless of wether or not it forms part of a library.

So, as you can see – the days of “….. Oh Shit! I left the (very important) document at home!” panic are over….. and the very best bit…..the price:

FREE FREE FREE!!!

try it – you might like it, Omar does!!

I should probably point out that I value Omar’s opinion more than some – as he and his team gave me a Kahuna Invite!! So I’m a little biased

One final little note – the Mac version is available again now I see – so rejoice ye Zealots!!

Flock – all it’s cracked up to be?

slimboyfat — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 11:28:48 +0000

Well, here we are – blogging from Flock to see what it’s all about, and if it’s any good….

I have to say that I like it so far – the Flickr integration and the auto-detection of my blog settings are superb – as for what it’s like as a browser? I dunno yet – I found this feature and had to try it!!

I can drag photo’s into the post from my flickr accout – or anyone elses!! It’s just easy – as it should be….. blogging made simple – no finding links to photo’s, just drag and drop – even my Mum could use this!!

Kahuna – a-go-go!!

slimboyfat — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 09:24:56 +0000

well, it finally happened! I got a mail from Omar last night, my account has been moved over to one of the Kahuna servers!! I’ve only had time for a very brief look – but so far, I’m VERY impressed!

The look and feel is really good – it’s clean and intuative – and the drag and drop functionality gives it the edge over GMail – on the “ease of organisation” side of things anyway…..

I’ll post more and in more detail once I’ve played some more – for now I just need to get some mail to it!!

Kahuna Beta opened up to more users

slimboyfat — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 09:15:13 +0000

According to Omar Shahine (and numerous other sources), the “Mail Beta” or Kahuna (to use its’ codename) is being opened up to more users, and you can sign up here

Best estimates are that 200,000 people will get invites to the new system – so get your name down fast!!

As for my invite, well I heard back from Imran Qureshi today about it:

Unfortunately your account was on one of our old clusters so it will take some time to move it to the new ones that are kahuna enabled.
It should be a couple more weeks.
I’m sorry

So it looks like I might have to wait a bit longer…… bummer

Kahuna Invite!!

slimboyfat — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 07:44:13 +0000

I’ve got one!!

Following my post here a couple of days ago….. Imran Qureshi has kindly picked me for an invite to the new Hotmail Beta – codename Kahuna!! So he’ll be getting a mail in a moment from me (slimboyfat at gmail.com) to confirm what I need to do etc – this is proof of who I am as much as anything!!

I can’t wait – maybe it’ll be the final thing to move me away from GMail – but I might have to wait until GTalk can talk to MSN Messenger

Edit – < note to self > Spell check things before you post!! < /note to self > Cheers Grasshoppermind!!

Edit II – FOR CRYING OUT LOUD PEOPLE – please pay attention to what I’m actually writing…. I DO NOT HAVE ANY INVITES TO GIVE OUT and if I did, I’d be offering them to people I know – or with something worthwhile to offer in return. If you want to try and get an invite read my post here for more info.

GoogOS – Could it be closer than you think?

slimboyfat — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:50:29 +0000

I think I’ve got it sussed – GoogOS could be just around the corner…..

Just put the core pieces together:

Google Secure Access (GSA)

A U3-style Device setup with a bootable image

The huge amounts of “Dark Fiber” that Google is reported to have been buying up.

So, you plug in your Pen Drive anywhere, power up the machine, and away you go – the Image on it boots and connects you to your GoogOS profile using GSA and away you go – search, browse, e-mail (or is that GMail?) throw in a web-based word processor like Writely, Image management through Picasa & Hello, they’ve just launched GoogleTalk for instant messaging and you have what most people need for (at least basic) computing – I know it’d do me for trips away….

Anyone else excited by the possibility?

Hotmail (Kahuna) Beta

slimboyfat — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 07:41:29 +0000

More of a “placeholder” for a trackback than a real post this – I’m trying to wangle an invite to the Beta for the new and improved(?) Hotmail – codename Kahuna from Imran Qureshi

I’m intrigued to see what it looks like – apparently it’s more OWA 2003-like, which sounds superb – I just need convincing that it’s better than GMail now

Fingers crossed…..

Edit – Just read Imran’s post properly and realised that I need to trackback to a different post on his Blog – so I’ve ammended that trackback now – Sorry Imran, I guess I just got carried away in all the excitement!!

Edit II – FOR CRYING OUT LOUD PEOPLE – please pay attention to what I’m actually writing…. I DO NOT HAVE ANY INVITES TO GIVE OUT and if I did, I’d be offering them to people I know – or with something worthwhile to offer in return. If you want to try and get an invite read my post here for more info.

Spam Maps….

slimboyfat — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:02:37 +0000

F-Secure have posted some interesting stuff about a program from Mailinator.

Mailinator is a service that provides throw-away email addresses you can use for web registrations – very handy in this day and age…. but given the “nature of the beast” the system ends up getting lots of spam.

Now, here’s the cool part: they’ve created a realtime map using Google Maps to actually show you where the spam is coming from. Well, actually, it shows the location of the proxy – ie. the Zombie PC that’s been owned as a result of Mydoom, Bagle, Mytob or any of the multitude other viruses that install spam proxies as their payload.

Take a look at the Map

The Sidebar, Gadgets & 5219 PDC Build of Vista

slimboyfat — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 08:34:21 +0000

Apparently, Barb Bowman knows a secret…. but there’s no indication as to what it is

I’m hoping that it’s something cool like MCE functionality from the Sidebar in Vista but who knows? Hopefully all will be revealed shortly – as I hate knowing that I’m in the dark about stuff….

Scoble – what’s he on about now?

slimboyfat — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 11:56:15 +0000

The eternal hype machine that is Robert Scoble, has reached a new level of obscurity with one of his posts today but he’s got my attention….

You know, even inside Microsoft people have no clue as to what’s coming next week. I was just showing some people here the videos of what’s coming next week and they said simply “wow.”

So what’s he planning? Well, I’m presuming that it’s something different so it won’t be:

a VOIP & Chat product they already have one of them – but it’s not as “nice” as GoogleTalk IMHO….

a phone that plays music – Apple and Motorola are making a nice mess of that one….. and my ScoblePhone with a 512Mb Mini-SD card is a far better alternative….

I’m guessing that as it’s to be announced at PDC I’m guessing it’s something to do with Vista. Quite what, I’m not at all sure – WinFS is in Beta, Visual Studio is about to be released, SQL 2005 is almost a go…. so what’s it going to be? Something cool I hope – I sincerely do!!

Some have accused me of overhyping what’s coming next week. Well, I don’t want to ruin this chance to keep expectations low (the industry hasn’t seen such an opportunity to take advantage of such low expectations to perform some shock and awe in years), but damn this is the most excited I’ve been about Microsoft since I joined.

…..

Yes, it’s been a while since we’ve shipped something significant. Yes, we have missed out on several new trends like the iPod and search. Yes, Steve Jobs‘ accusation that we’re just copying his company has looked pretty true.

But now it’s time to change the world. Again.

Go ahead, accuse me of hyperbole. Of FUD. Of mud throwing. Whatever. Let’s get together for beers next week and you look me in the eye and tell me that I overhyped this PDC.

btw – I have to say that if this next quote doesn’t get you fired for blogging – nothing will!!

I think I’ve been underhyping Microsoft. I had lost my belief. I was almost ready to get Steve Ballmer to throw another chair and go work for a cooler or at least smaller company.

I’m listening Robert… amaze me…… PLEASE

My prayers may be answered!!

slimboyfat — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 09:11:48 +0000

It sounds like my earlier rant may have been listened to (although I suspect that I’m not the only one to complain)

Based on this ZDNet Australia article a new technology called “Freeze Dry” will be a part of Windows Vista. Full details are included in the article, but here’s a short quote the whet you appetite:

“some patches require machines to reboot, users who leave documents open and unsaved run the risk of losing that data if the machine is automatically updated. Freeze Dry eliminates that problem by automatically saving application state and documents and then restoring them once the system restarts”

It just sounds way too cool – from a Sys-Admin perspective, it makes WSUS (and it’s successors) far more powerful, and as a home user with Windows Updates switched on it should mean that I’ll never loose another Blog post!!

Thanks to Ed Bott amongst others for the heads-up.

Google IM??

slimboyfat — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:37:29 +0000

Neowin have an interesting story up…. apparently Google have an active Jabber at talk.google.com

Apparently this could be announced properly tomorrow (Wednesday) but I’m in the process of downloading a client now to give it a try

On the other hand – it could be that the jabber server is just a part of the backend to Hello – that’s a minimally publicised Google owned IM client with a photo sharing bent* – it also allows you to post to blogger using your “bloggerbot” (the only friend you have when you first sign in….

*but it mostly seems to be used for swapping porn – I guess some things will always be the same…..

Rant O’Clock….

slimboyfat — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:26:39 +0000

OK, it’s been one of those evenings…… I was in the middle of a post about how cool Microsoft Update is – I logged in to be greeted with a message that there were new updates for my machine – and did I want to install them? Of course, I took a quick look to see what they were before I made a decision – an Outlook Junk Mail filter update was ready – so I started the install – complete bonus having Office updates delivered as well – it just makes life so much simpler….

So half way through typing – a pop-up appears telling me that I need to reboot, yes reboot for an Outlook component!! I mean WTF???????

I chose the option to reboot later (outlook wasn’t running at the time – so what difference would it make?) I wanted to add a little something to the bottom of the post about this – a mini-rant if you like….. so I click on “later” and carry on typing… everyone’s happy and I continue typing…. I go to click on a category for the post, one I’ve spent 20 minutes+ working on with lots of links and praise of Microsoft – next thing I know my machine’s shutting down…..

“What happened?” I hear you ask…..

The f^&*ing pop-up reappeared – and the default option is Reboot – I have my mouse pointer set to snap to default options in dialog boxes – so I’d clicked reboot.

Unhappy customer – all because of a default option… how’s about an “are you sure?” option – or do I just need to make sure I always have another user logged in on my machines when I patch them? :-p

Are you listening Microsoft?

slimboyfat — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 15:16:44 +0000

Joe Wilcox over at Microsoft Monitor makes an exceptiionally good point in his post Make the Music Available to All

He’s pointing out the pain involved in making stuff available to multiple users on Home PC’s / Networks – that stuff being music / photo’s etc.

To quote him:

“Problem: Making music easily available to everyone. The music collection comes from four sources: CDs I ripped, purchased DRM content from MSN Music or Napster and subscription stuff from Yahoo! Music. Authorizing the computer to play DRM downloads or subscription music was easy enough. Making that content available to all three people wasn’t as easy.”
…
What I’d like to see is a common music database or content list easily made available to, at the least, Windows Media Player and, ideally, to other digital media software, too.

Because there is no simple mechanism is place, I had to open Windows Media Player under each user account and search through the 3,300 song library. Better would have been one search that made the list accessible to all three user’s Windows Media Player. I even went so far as to put all the songs in the Shared Music folder.”

It’s an excellent point – and a problem dear to my heart. This is one feature that would really make Vista a worthwhile upgrade for home users – Microsoft need to wake-up and realise that as well as making it secure, they REALLY need to work on “making it work” if it’s tricky for me as an MCSA to share music with my girlfriend on the PC we share at home and to make it available on my laptop as well – then what chance does the average Joe (sorry for the pun) have?

Google go for the Desktop

slimboyfat — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 14:58:20 +0000

Google today released a beta (does anything google ever go production??) of their Desktop Search tool – this one is seriously beefed up from the first iteration, and I have to say I think I like it

It operates as a Sidebar – scans and indexes your GMail only one account unfortunately , files, photo’s (it runs a slideshow – that can include a flickr search!!!) has a “Scratchpad – for jutting down notes / url’s / whatever, it works as a RSS reader – it calls the “Web Clips” – not Web Feeds like IE7 News headlines appear – and it learns what sort of news you’re interested in and gradually shows more of that as time goes on…. a stock-ticker, “what’s hot” the list is endless…. but the one that’s really nice is “Quick View” webpages you’ve typed in recently – and you can keep stuff by “starring” it – very, very nice!!

All in all it’s very cool – I’ll be intrigued to play with it more tomorrow when it’s completed indexing my stuff….. all it needs it a media player and a browser adding in and you new desktop has arrived!!

A test of NewsGator’s posting plug-in

slimboyfat — Sat, 20 Aug 2005 09:13:00 +0000

While looking through NewsGator‘s forums for something completely different (a niggle I have with their synchronisation setup that I may moan about in a later post) I discovered this tool that allows me to post direct from Outlook….. Nice!

I can also post existing items – so if I find something good in my Feeds I can bung it up complete or in edited state – but without all that pesky cut and paste!! I may even use if to transfer the remaining posts from my old blog – as I should have them all downloaded in Outlook somewhere

I’m intrigued to see what the formatting etc looks like!! Also – I’m not sure how I set a category…. I think I feel a post to the forums coming on!!