Since then, however, I’m back to XP for work (read more on that). I’ve also been quite busy lately with a wide variety of projects and tasks – lots of remote sessions to Windows and Linux machines, code editing, database management, etc. Often all going on at once.

Earlier this week I decided that getting some virtual desktop action going again would only be helpful to help contain some of my desktop chaos. I get a bit freaked out when I have too many windows all open at once.

A quick look at last year’s article and related sites showed me that only one of the options is still under development: VirtuaWin. So I downloaded and installed it a few nights ago to have another look.

In general I liked it but it just wasn’t “gelling” with me. I couldn’t figure out what exactly I was missing but it didn’t take me long to realize I was still making a big pile of windows/apps on one desktop and not realizing any benefits.

I uninstalled it earlier tonight and started looking for other options.

Fifteen minutes later I reinstalled it – my other options involved using some of the available VirtuaWin add-on modules to address what I was looking for. I forgot to check those first.

Three modules have got me re-hooked:

• SwitchDesk – This one allows me to customize the desktop in each session. This really helps me stay aware of where I’m at and what I should be doing in a given session
• vwPager – a nice light-weight pager module. Not overly fancy, but gives a quick way to see what’s up where and click to switch sessions. It can be a bit quirky to move around though…
• VWDesktopIcons – Customize desktop icon displays per session. For instance, I have one session that I “reserve” for Linux management and on that one I keep the Cygwin and Xming shortcuts. No need to have those showing up on all the sessions.

Will I still be using this in a month? Who knows! But today I’m infatuated.

Oh, did I mention how much I love the “bump switching” option? Just bump the mouse on the screen edge and a short delay later it has toggled over to the neighbor session. That, combined with the “mouse warping” option has me doing most of my sessions swapping with the mouse.

When using virtual desktops, how do you arrange yours? In a line or in a grid? I’ve always done a 2×2 grid, but right now I’m trying 1×4 just to see how that goes… not really sure it makes a difference except with my mouse navigating I have more screen to roll through to get from one end to the other.

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I meant to look at their stuff in the past, but since I’m syncing Google Calendar direct to my Windows Mobile phone I have not yet figured out if there’s a match for me (no desktop Outlook in my equation).

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While I’m comfortable with installing and generally configuring Linux distros, I initially resisted due to my lack of confidence in my abilities to configure a server secure enough to be forward facing on the wild and wooly Internet. To mitigate that concern I’ll be hiring a consultant to give me a security check-up when I’m done configuring things to the best of my abilities/knowledge. That should be educational.

Moving along to the current concern…

As I build these critters I’m wrestling with determining the best way to access and manage them. Once the install is done I don’t really have a convenient way to sit at the console anymore.

At first I was using VNC to remotely access my gnome desktop (yep, I like a GUI when available. I’m old. I like to click things when it makes sense). The CentOS distribution I’m using even offers a “Remote Desktop” option for just such occasions so setting it up on the server was a simple as a couple mouse-clicks, a checkbox and defining an (optional but so wise) password.

To just run some terminals though that gets cumbersome. And, frankly, VNC over some of my VPN connections has always been just a wee bit annoyingly laggy.

Next I moved on to PuTTY. This is a great option when everything I’m doing is going to be from the command line (regardless of my preference of a GUI, it seems that my muscle-memory for vi seems to be destined to be with me forever). Tearing through configuration files, for instance, needs no GUI. I’m loving PuTTY: Fast, secure and light-weight.

If I need to push a bunch of files up to the server WinSCP keeps me content as well.

But I keep coming back to that GUI aspect. Aside from VNC, what are my other options? What else is reasonably lightweight and secure when I want to do some clicking around? Do I want something on my Windows machine that offers an X server?

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One of the big new features is Post Revisions:

With the power of modern computers, it’s silly that we still use save and editing metaphors from the time when the most common method of storage was floppy disks. WordPress has always respected the importance of your writing with auto-save, and now we’re taking that to another level by allowing you to view who made what changes when to any post or page through a super-easy interface, much like Wikipedia or a version control system.

Well, as always it seems that one person’s big feature can be an annoyance or unwanted feature to someone else.

Have no fear, this new feature is easily disabled. Just add the following line to your wp-config.php file:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);

(like any edit to the wp-config file, that line goes somewhere between the opening <?php and closing ?> tags)

My favorite feature of 2.6 so far is the Google Gears stuff. This is an interesting way to use Gears though. It’s not about offline support, but instead Gears is used to cache some of the files used to speed up some of the admin navigation.

Want more? Check out the pretty video:

[Hat tip to Gamerz and his WordPress Support thread]

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Suppose you manage Windows machines and periodically need to remotely access them. There are several great utilities to help streamline this (for instance, I like Royal TS and Terminals) but there’s a new player to add to the mix and it has a great little twist.

ChrisControl (I’m using beta 1.7 found at Chris’s Realm) is a slick little application that will check for RDP or VNC and then establish a session with a machine that you want to control. Neither protocol responding or installed? If your credentials are sufficient, it’ll push the VNC server install to the remote machine, fire up the service and then connect your VNC Client to it.

Slick! And it worked great on a server this week that didn’t have RDP running after a routine reboot.

But wait, it goes one better: When you disconnect the client the default action is to uninstall that VNC Server you just installed.

It was built as a PE Extension but it can also just be ran directly. Only one file in the zip and no install is necessary. In fact, I’m sure it would run just fine on a USB stick or other portable means.

Oh, and it is free, licensed under GNU GPL and source is even available.

This one is a winner and it’s been added to my toolkit as another great method to get to my servers. I love options like this as they tend to save me frantic drives across town to data centers late at night

Security

Since I’m sure it’ll get questioned, here’s the blurb on security from the help file (there’s more in there about necessary access requirements)

ChrisControl does not allow unauthorised access to machines because it requires administrator rights on the target machine. This means that any user who uses ChrisControl to remotely control a machine had numerous other ways of controlling the machine anyway.

ChrisControl uses VNC or RDP for its network remote control. No changes to the security of these programs have been made in compiling ChriControl. Because the program is intended for use on a local network, this is assumed not to be a problem. Authentication is not performed by ChrisControl itself, but by the Windows operating system. If you can access a machine with this program, it is very likely that other applications (in particular windows file sharing) would have been available anyway.

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Today I decided that I’m ready to be done with Mesh for a while. I kept hoping to get the Remote Desktop aspects of it working better but so far no luck. Not for lack of trying and the support folks have been pretty responsive. But, at the end of the day, I still can’t use the built-in remote desktop to control the machine I want to control.

Frankly, the memory usage is a bit steep. Granted, there’s a lot going on, but since I’m not getting all the features in action, I really don’t need so much.

I was going to switch back to box.net for my online storage needs, but I hit their 50MB/file limit right away on some large PDFs.

At that point I was going to sign up for one of the paid plans but I have to be honest and say that I found the pricing just a bit too much for how much I’d use it. I feel cheap and dirty admitting that, but there you go…

Back to Dropbox I went. It just works and the desktop client is quite functional. I’m also happy to see the Linux version is in alpha.

I’m very excited about mesh’s roadmap and definitely can’t wait for the integration with Windows Mobile. When more features come I’ll give it another try.

Oh — I have Dropbox invites if interested. Just leave a comment below.

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Actually, let me clarify: MozyPro worked well for me until the backups got too big. Then it became awful and I switched over to LogMeIn Backup which I’m still quite happy with. But as mentioned above, I still have two servers with relatively small backup sets that I left with Mozy.

Lately I’m seeing a lot of backup failures that are causing me, again, to worry about the reliability of Mozy. For instance, check this history log:

That’s not very impressive – and quite disappointing.

ConnectionError1:

Most likely this is a firewall problem. Temporarily disable your firewall and attempt a backup. If the backup is successful, either contact us or your internal IT person for instructions on how to set up your MozyPro client to work with firewall software.

There are no software firewalls on these machines. Since the backups work sometimes I hesitate to blame the hardware firewall.

Bah.

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