Posts from 2009

Today’s the Day I Invest in HTC

Richard Green on

Well not technically true because I’ve been using HTC devices for about the last three years, with my HTC Wizard first, my HTC Artemis now, but today my 18 month contract with O2 UK is eligible for upgrade, so I’m trotting down to Carphone Warehouse after work to order my HTC Touch HD.

They don’t keep them in stock in the stores but they deliver to home, so tomorrow when I finish work I shall be in possession of it.

Nicky got hers earlier this week and it’s gorgeous…I can’t wait.

The Future has Landed in Our Kitchen

Richard Green on

Well I said I was going to get a server for my birthday and I wasn’t kidding.

It arrived yesterday with FedEx – My nice new Dell PowerEdge SC1425.
Unfortunately my birthday isn’t until Wednesday next week so I’m not allowed to start playing with it until then say the powers that be although I did fire it up last night to make sure all was well – It’s quiet compared to the 6450 I have currently but we’ll see how that pans out with some load 🙂

My Birthday

Richard Green on

So it’s my birthday on Thursday next week – Not long now.
I’ve been getting pretty pumped over the last couple of weeks about asking people for a new server for our house and I had my heart and mind set on a Dell PowerEdge 2650.

Well I was looking on eBay at the weekend at which one to buy from which seller when I found a beauty. I was hoping for the Dual 2.4GHz Xeons, but this guy has the Dual 3.06GHz Xeons and the seller was a bit silly as his price was about £100 under everyone else selling a 2650. Silly me though….I deliberated for too long and someone else realised his mistake.

Feeling a bit bummed out Nicky looked the sellers other stuff and saw a PowerEdge I’ve never heard of before. It’s a Dell PowerEdge SC1425. It’s 1U with Dual 2.8GHz Xeons. I was sceptical at first as being 1U it only takes 2 hard disks, but wait….it takes SATA disks.

It was bought fairly soon after, so some April 9th, I will be in possession of my new server.

Cisco VPN Client and Windows 7

Richard Green on

So I was searching today for something specific to the Cisco IP Communicator software phone version of the Cisco IP 7941 to see if there is a way to make it work nice with Windows 7, but in the process I found a lot of threads and blog entries about problems with the Cisco VPN client causing BSOD’s with ndis.sys.

I’d just like to say that I’ve got the Cisco VPN client installed on my Windows 7 Build 7000 machine without any issues. I can connect and disconnect as many times as I like without issue.

This is actually better than the experience in Windows Vista where the Cisco Virtual Network Adapter for the tunnel kept failing meaning after every connect/disconnect cycle I would have to reboot to get the adapter going again before being able to connect again.

This hit me worst at home if I roamed between my two Wireless AP’s where the WPA2-PSK authentication takes a little bit of time and the tunnel would drop during the roam.

In a nutshell…..Cisco VPN client just works in Windows 7, just like it should do.

A Few Wedding Snaps

Richard Green on

I know it’s very unlike me to put pictures on Facebook as I like to only put images on our website, but while I wait for the images to come through from my Dad and brother Dan, I thought I would put a few of the snaps from the day on Facebook just to get things rolling.

There’s nothing too exciting up there – It’s just random snaps from throughout the day.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=84259&id=625915317&saved#/album.php?aid=84259&id=625915317

Enjoy x

The Danger of Social Networking: Facebook in this Case

Richard Green on

So I use social networking sites like Facebook, and hell – I spend quite a lot of time lurking around the Microsoft sites and Windows Live sites which is loosely social networking, but this example just goes to prove two things:

– How dangerous Facebook can be without proper thought
– How stupid this person is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/7914415.stm

The article is about a girl who got sacked three weeks after starting a job because she wrote on Facebook about how boring the job is. Now fine the job may have been boring and if you want to tell people on Facebook about it to share your life then great: But if your going to do that make sure first nobody in your friends works for said company or set your permissions properly so that lurkers (like your boss for example) can’t see that message.

If you don’t know how to set your permissions properly this article at AllFacebook will help you: http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/

Zune Software on Windows 7

Richard Green on

So I’ve been using Windows 7 for a little bit now, and I went to sync my Zune with it for the first time and came across a problem:The software wouldn’t detect the Zune even though Windows Devices and Printers could see the Zune and installed the drivers?

I’m using UAC in 7 to try out some of the new levels Microsoft have added to see if it’s worth sticking with, so I tried running the software as Administrator and it picked up the device just fine.

Seems that you need to do this for the first run of the software you need this to initialize the drivers as I can run the software now under limited mode without issues.

I’m sure this will be something that the Zune team will pick-up in Zune 3.2 or whatever the next release will be.

Microsoft My Phone

Richard Green on

So Microsoft announced a new service called My Phone earlier this week at MWC although it had been floating around various tech sites for a few weeks previously. I registered for the service late last week, and look what  I found in my Inbox this morning.

My Phone is basically a cloud based phone backup application that will synchronize all of your contacts, calendar, tasks, text messages, pictures and video from your device up to the cloud. You can also login to the My Phone website and make changes to content directly on the site, like add new calendar events etc.

Whilst My Phone seems kind of an odd product with Live Mesh already in the field, the two don’t actually overlap with My Phone backing up your phone where as Live Mesh is backing up a specified directory. What would be great would be to see these two services integrated together.

All that we need now Microsoft in a new version of Windows Live Messenger for Windows Mobile that supports MPOP and maybe Windows Live Writer for Windows Mobile?