Owner: Jason Slater Weblog URL:http://www.jasonslater.co.uk Join Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:11:39 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: blogging about technology Site statistics:Click here
Abbreviation 2007-04-23 16:13:00 Just a thought ... Why is abbreviation such as long word?
Cally, two to teleport 2007-04-30 17:55:00 It wouldn't be the first time fact followed fiction. Remember the 'beam me up scotty' devices that we now call flip open mobile phones? Well, how about this find from Tokyoflash Japan, link here. Blake's 7 anyone?
Monday Monday 2007-04-30 09:44:00 Anoter Monday
- here we go again - isn't the year flying by!Plans for this week include:Completing a 3000 words report for UniRemote Access Seminar @ Boxing Orange TomorrowGet Exam Paper from Uni tomorrow for other moduleOrganise Sharons presents for her big partyBuild a new terminal services under virtual server that serves just our ERP to remote usersAdd some new disks to our HP MSA30 array - now they've come down in price £299 for 300GB (SCSI)I have a new website design project. It's under wraps at the moment but I have some great ideas of how to put it together using open standards of XHTML and CSS, it's actually encouraged me to get on with the migration of my own website at www.jasonslater.co.uk Read more:Monday Monday
Square Eyes 2007-04-29 22:21:00 Like Monk, I've been staring at the screen all day and I swear I've got square eyes now. Read more:Square
Extending the vocabulary 2007-04-28 21:01:00 I love learning new words, here are a few I've picked up recently with their 'approximate' meanings. You can always look them up on dictionary.com if you need to ;)susurrous - whispering / murmurbrobdingnagian - huge / immensecaptious - fault findingukase - proclamation / edictparvenu - upstart / suddenly gain wealth, position, etcprepotency - predominantLet me know if you have any particularly interesting ones.
Another weekend gone 2007-04-28 20:58:00 I'm just about to pack up and go home for the evening, hopefully the kids may still be up so I can see them. I've been at work all day, not working I hasten to add, but working on my final assignment this year for Uni. I only realised about an hour ago that I had my music collection with me so I fired up Media Player which helped me concentrate. At least I think it did, the strange thing is that I seem to spend more time choosing tracks to play than the tracks last - isn't that strange - however I'm using the star rating systems now instead of playlists so I can just switch the five star list on while I choose something new to listen to.
Earthquake in Kent 2007-04-28 10:32:00 Currently being reported as a 4.7 or 5.0 magnitude on the richter scale, an earthquake has been reported to have occurred near Ashford at around 8:18 am this morning, lasting for around 15 seconds accompanied by a low rumble. Triangulated at the epicentre of Canterbury, Ashford and Kennnington Kent around 6 miles down causing shaking and minor damage, the BBC are covering it here. Read more:Earthquake
Wednesday 2007-05-02 15:55:00 Phew, finally finished last Uni assignment and submitted it to the student registry - and it only cost me 50p to park. That's a saving of £4 compared to what I normally have to pay. It's now time to take a deep breath then get back to re-enginnering the network. Read more:Wednesday
Remote Access Solutions 2007-05-01 17:20:00 I've just got back from a RemoteAccess
Seminar by Boxing Orange, held at Cisco's very nice Manchester offices.There were several interesting products on show.The first one was a product called SafeBoot which is an encryption system for client machines. They demo'd it using a biometric (thumb scanner) usb devices. This, IMHO, was a huge mistake. The poor guy must have swiped his thumb five times to get a reading. They also seemed a bit un-coordinated with their presentation too which got a bit confusing. However, the thing that put me off was the sheer hassle the user has to go through if they need a manual access to the machine. I can understand the security implications necessitate something that complex but, honestly, the way it was put across put me off the idea.Swivel was next up with their tokenless authentication system called Pinsafe which uses SMS and/or a Java midlet on your mobile phone. It's an interesting idea but I'd be a bit concerned about the ongoing SMS charges.T Read more:Remote Access
Remote Shutdown 2007-05-05 07:53:00 Hasn't technology come a long way?The power is going off in our building for an 'unspecified' amount of time this morning, so I've been busy shutting down the critical systems such as the ERP and the Storage Server Drive Arrays. Years ago this would have necessitated a visit onsite but now I can do it via a remote VPN connection from home.Other systems too have been taken offline and shutdown, better safe than sorry I have learned through bitter experience. Shutting down used to be, and remains ever just a bit, leap of faith that the system will start back up again in the state it was before.Mind you, we still haven't found a way to start the system backup again remotely. Time to review those APC PDU's again - they may hold the answer here. Read more:Remote
, Shutdown
XP: There is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. 2007-05-04 15:58:00 I have been working on a users laptop most of the day. One of the problems reported is that their DVD's don't play. The business ethics of this aside, I found the problem quite intriguing, after all the DVD player and Media Player should play the DVD after all - shouldn' it?The first problem was the removable DVD drive
had been slightly dislodged and as such didn't appear as a valid drive, unspringing it and refitting it cured this problem and the DVD now popped up in Media Player. However, it popped up with the following error:"Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video
card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card."Clicking on Web Help, advises checking Microsoft Updates for updates but there were none to be had. Knowing that the DVD used to play ok I ruled out any driver updates for now which left me with a codec issue.Trawling Google I found this post on the Savvy Byte
SME/SMB and the ERP paradigm 2007-05-04 11:14:00 To ERP or not to ERP - is that the question?I was sent a report by AMR Research (2005) looking at ERP in the Small to Medium Business Sector. The 'bottom line' seems to be that we need an effective ERP strategy in order to compete. This is true in our business. Before I begin it may be worth explaining that ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and is usually considered in terms of being a 'system' rather than a 'program'. ERP systems are usually made up from any number of computer programs that work together (are integrated), sharing a common set of data, to perform the electronic aspect of business functions including accounts, manufacturing, sales , and purchasing (and any number of additional functions). For a good background, you can Wiki ERP. Our business has embraced ERP pretty much since our inception (in various guises) . I joined the business in 1994 when the ERP was an 'off the shelf' solution that had only been customised in report terms and I was bought in
Safeboot again 2007-05-03 17:18:00 I was only mentioning Safeboot a few days ago when it appears in the news, here. It seems that HP is to ship Safeboot technology (albeit a customised version) into a range of its laptops extending its reach as it already incorporates the technology into a range of its handheld PDAs.Safeboot is a full disk encryption system that can protect your data (also utilising two factor authentication) in case your mobile device is compromised. The price of a single license with 1 yr maintenance is around £44 at Insight (3rd May 2007).More information on safeboot is here.
Who is on your Network? 2007-05-03 16:23:00 Who is on your LAN? Right now - do you know? How about your WAN? I'll hold my hands up and tell you that I have no idea. The question isn't as straight forward as it should be.There are ways I can 'kinda' find out. For instance, I can check who is connected into terminal services, who is on our aix machine, who has been assigned a DHCP address, what VPN connections we have and who last visited our website. I can even tell you who our firewall rejected a few minutes ago. What I couldn't do however, is pull up a list of all network devices, by say MAC address, and find out exactly what protocols they are using right now, be it HTTP, FTP, TELNET, etc. Yes, I could run Ethereal and capture traffic going into out of the host PC but I couldn't do this LAN (because of segmentation) or WAN wide (because of routing). In fact, most of the information I could find out is after the fact. That is, the network device was on the network and communicating at some point. But, what would be usefu
Remote User Roaming 2007-05-03 13:36:00 One of the most difficult challenges I face is providing consistent physical remote access routes for users, whether it be dial-up modem, broadband, leased line, or wireless . We have a number of remote users and these can be generally categorised as follows:Field SalesHome workersTeleworkersRemote
OfficeTaking the easier ones first, home workers I class as being onsite staff who also access the system from home - mostly in the evenings for email and occassional terminal service access. These are often dial-up or broadband users with their own services although some may have connections provided by us.Teleworkers are those based primarily at home who visit the office infreqeuently. These are pretty much broadband users with larger connections managed by us.Field Sales users work from home, the office, from public locations, or from business partner sites. These can use pretty much any connection that is available.Remote Office staff can be either served by a central fixed VPN (such as Read more:Roaming
Late Night Lament 2007-05-08 00:30:00 I've just been called in to work because 'the system is down' or at least that's how it was explained to me. I actually find the system is up and working just fine except the print server was stuck on the 'boot from which device' screen - waiting for me to select Hard Drive. This apparently renders the whole system 'down' from a user perspective.Ah well. At least everyone is happy bunnies now.As for me, I'm off to bed. Good night. :) Read more:Night
, Lament
, Late Night
Tuesday Tuesday 2007-05-08 19:59:00 I'm packing up for three days holiday. It's been a while since I've had this much time off in one go and what a busy schedule I've got. Tomorrow I have an audition to be on a well known TV quiz show which I'm looking forward to immensely. Sharon and I auditioned a few months ago to be on another show, For The Rest Of Your Life, which is starting soon but we never got on - although we enjoyed the auditions very much and the people there were very friendly.It's also time to spend some effort in the garden, we have a builders skip on its way to take a load of old fencing that has dilapidated and is going to be replaced pretty soon (hopefully). However, we need a clean canvas to start on.Also, I have just installed a piece of software, recommended by PC Mag for SME, called SpiceWorks describing itself as a 'Free IT Desktop'. It looks interesting enough - it's running a scan on the network now - I'll update with how I get on with it. The only thing I don't like so far is the embe Read more:Tuesday
Exchange 2007. Exception message: The user has insufficient access rights. 2007-05-16 18:45:00 This cropped up again!Go into Active Directory, bring up the User and Select Properties, then Advanced. Ensure the "Allow inheritable permissions from the parent to propagate to this object and allchild objects. Include these with entries explicitly defined here" option is ticked and click apply.The problem should now be resolved. Read more:Exchange
The Division of Data 2007-05-16 14:17:00 Something that oft has me thinking is how best to 'serve' up data to the userbase. Sharepoint is still some way off and historically we have worked like this:On the fileserver there are three partitions:profiles - stores windows roaming profilesuserdata - stores user specific datasharedata - subfoldered for collaborationThe profiles folder is mapped at a root level with SYSTEM access and Domain Admin access only. Each user then is assigned a subfolder with the AD username as Owner off of this and this is mapped to in AD.The userdata is subfoldered by AD username and these are shared at userlevel in the form username$ so only the specific user and domain admin can access files. This is mapped using a logon script to the P drive.The sharedata folder is subfoldered by working group - e.g. sales, finance, personnel, etc. All users have access to the root-level, mapped to the S drive via a logon script, but they are specifically denied access to all subfolders. They are then assigned to g Read more:Division
Internet Access revisited 2007-05-16 12:01:00 I'm happy to report I got the MD's support about not putting Internet
access on the shopfloor and warehouse - this is a huge relief, as it's one of those things that can often go either way. Until the Internet or associated tools have matured into something maintainable then the only real solution I have is to disable access to it from all but those who absolutely need it. When we first started up we had an open access policy but it was a nightmare - day and night all manner of things were appearing on servers. As much as you ask users to be careful there is always the small minority that wreak havoc.Don't get me wrong, we have Content Filters and AV stuff but frankly they aren't much use. The Content Filters often get sites mis-categorised so I end up having to remove categories or at the other end some websites use a lot of inlining of other sites which gives the CF and the user a headache as it gets confused. I used to use a web based CF but it took so long to return results th Read more:Access
, Internet Access
Cobol revisited 2007-05-15 22:00:00 I've been working heavily on Cobol in the last week or so. Basically I am converting my manual Purchase Order system into a set of quote and PO programs that everyone can use. We already have a PO system for materials however we don't have one for indirect/non-stock items (whatever you want to call them).The files in our system are still C-ISAM structures but these days I've got it all sorted using copy files. Cobol is really useful in this sense as it allows you to define the physical aspects of a file (where it is, what it is, etc) then you define whats in the file (attributes, fields) and this is followed by some working storage that defines the filename and tags on a company number (our system is multi-company). I guess all that's really left would be copy library routines to open/close the files and perform read/writes/deletes and starts. It is almost a pity that these separate copy files couldn't be bought together into a single 'object' which, I feel, would give much stro
Dream Arcade 2007-05-15 19:19:00 Wandering around the web ... as one does ... I happened upon this ... as you do. See Left.Ok, what's special about that? Well it's XP for starters. So what? Well, it is pre-loaded with over 60 licensed arcade games, 60 atari vcs (2600) games. So what? You can add more games if you wish. Hmmm. It's got a 19" Monitor, trackball, two sets of arcade controls and ... wait for it ... a lighted marqueeGames include classics such as PAC-MAN, Asteroids, Battlezone, and Gauntlet as well as some special ones such as Dragons Lair, Missile Command, and Paperboy.Ok, but ...That's the crunch, at the moment it's only $1799. I just wish I could get one over here and get it passed by the household finance committee (you know what I mean!).You can visit their website here. Read more:Dream
One door closes and another door ... closes... 2007-05-15 18:31:00 I've just emerged, somewhat bedraggled, from a three hour exam on the finer points of database concepts and am sitting here in the Costa Cafe at Uni contemplating another finished Semester. I've got quite a bit of time now until the last Semester in October but no shortage of things to do. I've already had a bunch of emails from the office, one in particular trying to convince me that the warehouse staff now 'require' Internet access to do their job. I have a huge uphill struggle raising the profile of data security in our business and the tools I have to do the job don't help much either. Now, before I go on, do not tell me that a bad workman blames his tools - I am not blaming my tools - I am blaming the lack of them. Let me explain...Often I have this situation crop up.User: I need Internet accessIT: NoUser: Oh go on I need to it do my jobIT: NoUser: I'll speak to my managerIT: OkManager: My staff member needs Internet access to do their jobIT: NoManager: Its desparate we ne
Countdown Numbers Game 2007-05-15 13:30:00 Ok, here is the poser - you must get to: 631 using basic mathematicsUsing the numbers: 75, 25, 7, 6, 5, 2Oh and you've got 30 seconds ... GO...I got to 639 ... what did you get and how? Read more:Countdown
, Numbers
Silicon.com: IT glitches and the user DIY approach 2007-05-15 11:00:00 Expanding (or is that expounding) on a recent Silicon
.com article. IT is constantly evolving and the userbase evolves with it. Most people are mini IT managers in their own homes now, managing infrastructure and services for the kids or spouses (or friends) - don't we all know a 'computer expert' in the family? Our industry (the IT one) has to recognise this evolution which is why I'm all for the DIY approach to the majority of user problems. The caveat is where to draw the line as there is always a grey area - because a little knowledge can be dangerous too.Often I'll get phoned up with a problem and the result is a simple reboot, either of a broadband router, a laptop, PC, Printer or some other device. Problems that need reboots occur and will likely always occur as it's very difficult to diagnose or fix some problems until they arise. I frequently tell users that the first things they must check is a) That everything is plugged in that is supposed to be plugged in b) That eve
Databases 2007-05-15 10:16:00 I have my Database exam at Uni this afternoon, this completes Year 2 of my study and only one Semester left after this :) As usual I have done very little revision which I'll probably be kicking myself over later but it's too late to cram now so I'll just have to face the music and do what I can and try and remember at least a few of Codd's twelve rules. Read more:Databases
Resolution Definitions: DPI, SPI, LPI, and PPI 2007-05-14 17:54:00 We use an in-house process for producing images on laminates so our design studio and print shop have to be in constant communication regarding the actual sizes of images and the dots contained there-in. I am often finding the need to explain the differences in terms used to describe image resolutions including DPI, SPI, LPI and PPI.DPI (Dots Per Inch)When printing to a typical desk printer the dots per inch are exactly that. The number of dots (spurts of ink or other material) that can be applied per horizontal (and often vertically too) inch. On modern printers 300 DPI and 600 DPI is often quoted, whereas Fax machines can use between 150-200 DPI (giving a coarser image). Basically, the higher the DPI the better the image but always remember this is highly dependent on the quality of the paper. Some paper can be highly absorbant so colours might run into each other and others the opposite effect. When working in DPI in a program such as Photoshop, working with a 300 DPI image and a 60 Read more:Resolution
, Definitions
Centrino Pro 2007-05-14 17:04:00 "Santa Rosa" is the codename describing Intels next gen Centrino
technology. IT Week (14th May 2007 Vol10 No19 ) reports that Centrino Pro has finally been released incorporating Intel's AMT (Active Management Technology) that allows Discover (Platform, Software, Hardware inventory) even out of band, Heal (Remote diagnosis and troubleshooting) including alerting and Protect (Compliance Checking) all in one nice bundle. This together with other improvements such as better battery life, pre-n compatibility, and increased performance leads to the Centrino Pro badge (it is also available without AMT as Centrino Duo).
Packeteer iShaper 2007-05-14 16:37:00 WAN optimisation is one of those technologies that you just know is going to be of immense value but that you also know is going to be next to be convince the board of its tangible benefits in order for them to release the finance to purchase it.I have always liked the idea of Packeteer and the new iShaper product, with Microsofts collaboration, is intended to give access boosts and priorities to services that are served over the WAN. There are two factors here that apply to us. Firstly, we only have a 2Mb leased line to our ISP. The advantage of the leased line is 1:1 non-contention and symmetric speeds, the downside is it needs around 7 hops before it breaks out of our ISPs network and our remote workforce are starting to get fast and wide ADSL connections (8Mbit/s contended). Secondly, we make heavy use of terminal services over the WAN so ensuring end-to-end consistent performance is always a challenge, that's before we even consider any level of QoS, fortunately RDP is quite
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