freshfighter.net

Windows 7 Feature #3 – Small Memory Footprint

2009-10-03T05:00:00.000+10:00

Windows Vista was a dog, but it never so obvious until it was compared side by side to Windows 7. Vista was slow and a memory hog. Microsoft has done lot of work on getting Windows 7 right and it was obvious right from the beta.

My scenario is a common case. My main laptop, a ThinkPad T60, Core 2 Duo, 2gb, is fairly a fairly new computer in the Vista lifecycle.

On this computer, a fresh install of Windows Vista would use approx 1.5gb of RAM after booting up.

A fresh install of Windows 7 (beta) would only take 640mb. Huge Improvement, that can be seen in almost all aspects of computer use.

Setup PowerShell/.NET on Server Core

2009-10-02T15:56:00.001+10:00

I had a bit of a whinge when Windows 2008 Server Core was released due to its lack of .NET support. Which also meant a server core couldn’t support ASP.NET or even PowerShell. Espically when you could run TOMCAT on server core.

Fast forward to 2008 (R2) :) and .NET is now supported.

After doing a basic install of Windows Server Core 2008 R2, you are presented with a command prompt, to install ASP.NET you can install using the following

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx2-ServerCore /featurename:NetFx3-ServerCore /featurename:MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell /featurename:IIS-WebServerRole /featurename:IIS-WebServer /featurename:IIS-ASPNET /featurename:IIS-WebServerManagementTools /featurename:IIS-ManagementScriptingTools /featurename:IIS-ManagementService /featurename:IIS-IIS6ManagementCompatibility /featurename:IIS-Metabase /featurename:IIS-WMICompatibility /featurename:IIS-LegacyScripts /featurename:Microsoft-Windows-Web-Services-for-Management-IIS-Extension

To install PowerShell and .NET you need to run the following commands (they are case sensitive)

dism /online /enable-feature:NetFx2-ServerCore dism /online /enable-feature:MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell

If you need 32bit support (because 2008 R2 is 64bit only) you need to add the following features

dism /online /enable-feature:NetFx2-ServerCore-WOW64 dism /online /enable-feature:MicrosoftWindowsPowerShell-WOW64

Don’t forget to install all the wonderful .NET features, such as LINQ and WCF

dism /online /enable-feature:NetFx3-ServerCore

I’ll do another post shortly on how to do remote access to your Server Core shortly, because you don’t really need a monitor connected to a command prompt anymore.

Windows 7 Feature #2 – UI Refresh

2009-10-02T00:00:00.000+10:00

Lets get the easy bits over and done with quick. Windows 7 UI refresh is the most obvious feature users will notice. the

The new Task Bar stacks applications windows, this together cleans things up a lot, especially for me, where I’m know for having over 30 windows open at once. Hovering your mouse over the application icons preview window which is really good for finding *that* Internet Explorer tab you have lost.

Clean System Tray, I think every 2nd app in past 10 years had decided that putting itself in the system tray was a good idea. Printer/Wireless/Aircard status watches, IM client and even my Notepad program has tray icon. Which meant that the system tray usually was almost up to the start menu. Microsoft has cleaned the start menu, given *us* the user, control of the tray back… And it just works. :)

Start Menu, okay this came from Vista, but it doesn’t mean its bad. Searching for anything in the start menu is just awesome. Being able to press the Windows Key and type “Word” Enter. Is so much easier than trying to find Word in the in the XP Start menu.

Themes make customising Windows so easy. This basically brings all the UI customization features of XP/Vista into one nice screen while adding the ability to download or share themes with the social. One cool new feature of themes is the ability to have a slide show as your background, where Windows automatically cycles your background from a collection of images. The best part is that collection can be an RSS feed.

Aero Shake is a cool feature that I should mention, while dragging/moving a window Shake it from side to side to minimize all other windows. It doesn’t meant much until use it for the first time.

Other features in Windows 7 such as Aero Glass, Peek, Switch are nice additions, but they don't mean much to me as i don't really use them.

Windows 7 available this Month…

2009-09-30T23:44:00.001+10:00

So I’ve been told that having a Windows 7 House party just isn’t cool. So to show my excitement for Windows 7 (which comes out in just 22 days) I’m going to blog (until its officially available) on the features that I think make Windows 7 so great. :)

Feature 1… Installation. (from USB)

The install process is so simple, boot, select install, name the pc, create a password, start using.

A clean install of Windows 7 from the DVD, installation takes about 30 mins. However if you boot from USB, it takes about 10 minutes. Okay so making the Windows 7 installation USB took a little longer than 20 minutes, although it’s a required step if your installing on a Netbook. I’ve installed Windows 7 about 5 times since it has been RTM’ed and I've definitely made back the time.

Upgrading from XP is not supported, I think this could possibly be feature #2. I never recommend upgrading your OS and forcing people do a clean (or partial clean) install will just lead to more stable systems (and a better reputation for Windows 7).

Windows Workflow in .NET 3.5

2009-09-28T23:09:00.001+10:00

In .NET 3.0, Microsoft introduced Windows Workflow Foundations (WF); providing a framework for developing and executing workflows in .NET applications. WF consists of workflow designer tools (visual studio & others), predefined activities (tasks), a rules engine, the workflow runtime (workflow engine) and auxiliary services (e.g. transactions, persistence and tracking services).

Types of Workflows

WF provides two types of workflows for different scenarios, Sequential and State Machine.

Sequential workflows are best suited for tasks where this is clear process that can be defined; such as delivering a package to a customer. Sequential workflows have defined path of activities that is followed from top to bottom. Once a sequential workflow has started, the workflow remains in control, moving between itself between the tasks of the workflow.

State machines are best suited for more complex business processes where the process can move randomly between defined states; for example a DVD player, which can be in one of a possible many different states, such as Playing DVD, DVD Menu, Tray Open, No Disc. Unlike sequential workflows, state machine workflows do not have a defined path, rather a set of states and transitions between states. State machines are event driven and rely on external events to transition the workflow between states.

VIDEO: DNR TV Introduction to Workflows (sequential)

Activities

Workflow activities are the building blocks of workflows. These building blocks are put together in the Workflow designer, to create a workflow model. Each workflow activity is a standalone component which, within the scope of the workflow, can perform an action, control the flow (of the workflow), communicate (external of the workflow), check conditions or handle errors.

Microsoft has provided a collection of activities with Windows Foundation. Some of the basic activities you should familiarise yourself with are; CodeActivity, WhileActivity, IfElseActivity, DelayActivity.

MSDN: WF Activities

Custom Activities

Although Microsoft has included a large selection of activities within Windows Workflow, the need will arise where you will need to develop your own custom activities. Anything you can do in custom code can be created presented as a custom workflow activity. A benefit of using custom activities is that the Analyst using the custom activity doesn’t need to understand the internal workings of your activity, just that they drag where they need it and wire up the properties.

Your custom activity will inherit from the either of the following base classes SequenceActivity or Activity from the System.Workflow.ComponentModel namespace. Using a Sequence Activity you can use the drag and drop designer of the Workflow designer using CodeActivities to add custom code. The Activity class requires that you implement your custom code by overriding the ActivityExecutionStatus method.

Activity Properties are used to pass parameters into your custom activity. It is recommended that you use a Dependency Property which allows other activities to bind to your properties. Visual Studio 2008 implements a propdp code snippet to allow easy implementation of Dependency Properties.

Workflow Runtime

The workflow runtime is responsible for executing the workflow models. Like the WCF runtime, the Workflow runtime can be run in any type of host application and runs in a separate thread.

The runtime engine is indifferent to the workflows that it is executing, meaning that same workflow engine will execute many different workflows such as CarOrder or MakeCar workflows.

The following piece of code loads the workflow runtime in a console application. The code also creates an instance of a Workflow and waits for the workflow to complete. As the runtime runs in a different thread to the application, this code uses a waitHandle (AutoResetEvent, lines 5, 6 & 11) to stop the console application closing before the completion of (one) workflow instance.

Parameters can be provided to your workflow when creating the workflow instance. First you must create the parameters as Properties within your workflow class. The CreateWorkflow() method can take a Dictionary object containing the parameters you require.

Communicating with the workflow.

You will notice in the runtime code above, on line 8, the new workflow instance (in this case CarOrder) is created by the Runtime. The workflow instance is created and excuted within the Workflow Runtime, to be able to communicate between the host application and the running workflow, you must use the CallExternalMethod and HandleExternalEvent activities within your workflow.

The activities use a Interface with ExternalDataExchange attributed to communicate through. Any method listed on the interface can be called from CallExternalMethod activities with method parameters being provided via using the properties window of the activity (Illustrated to the right). The HandleExternalEvent activitys will respond to events on an interface that have an Event Argument type derived from ExternalDataEventArgs.

An implementation of your communications Interface is required to provide the gateway between your host application and the Windows Workflow instances. To accomplish this, you assign a ExternalDataExchangeService (part of WF), to the WorkflowRuntime, and then assign your communications implementation as a service to the ExternalDataExchangeService.

MSDN: Generating Communication Activities

Persistence

One of the benefits of WF is the ability to handle long running business processes out of the box. WF provides the ability to persist your workflows to a store using the extendable WorkflowPersistenceService class. An SQL server based implementation of the WorkflowPersistenceService, SqlWorkflowPersistenceService is provided by WF.

Another benefit of adding persistence to the runtime is the ability to scale. If your application is dealing with many workflow instances, the runtime must maintain memory for each instance. By using persistence services, the runtime can unload a data store to free up memory

Where default Settings are not set to scale…

2009-08-13T22:56:00.001+10:00

I was reading about the a new feature in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 4.0 on the following blog. The feature in question is a change to the default throttling settings, where the original WCF settings where set statically, and extremely conservative.

For example, here are the default settings in 3.0:

MaxConcurrentSessions (default: 10)

MaxConcurrentCalls (default: 16)

MaxConcurrentInstances (default: 26)

In my infrastructure role, when I hear about performance issues, it an application owner blaming the hardware. I often hear comments like “We need more CPUs”. “We need more memory”. “We need more servers”. “Virtual Servers are SH#T, I want a physical”.

Only problem (in WCF 3), without changing the above settings, throwing more hardware at the problem won’t improve anything. WCF 4 fixes this issue by making the settings a multipliers of the CPU count (and less conservative).

I’m wondering…

How many other infrastructure components (WCF, TomCat, PHP, IIS, Apache) are built with default conservative settings that don't scale or are conservative?
How well these settings are documented?
How are recommended settings communicated from app developer, implementer and business app owner during life cycle of dependant applications?

Automated IT

2009-08-13T01:05:00.001+10:00

I twitted about going to the HP Software users group the other day, hoping it would be of value. I wasn’t disappointed.

One idea I've been throwing about in my head for ages; is a free (to me because i would write it) IT monitoring system. Similar to Nagios, but running on Windows (because I love .NET). However it would have a powerful workflow engine behind it so when an internet connection goes down, it wouldn't just send me a TXT, but log a call with the ISP, add it to the internal Case management system and close the case when “Telstra” do their magic.. Or similarly automatically build a new VM when a server becomes overloaded, shut them down when they are no longer required.

It would appear that amongst HP’s portfolio of software, they have this stuff already. They integrate into everything, detect a new Windows server on the network, install/configure monitoring agents automatically. When the server throws a low disk alert, automatically connect to the SAN and allocate more disk space and then alert service desk, there was a disk space issue, but I've dealt with it…

Only problem, we’re not using it.. and its not Free.. (also, i didn't write it.. :( )

True Cost of BPOS

2009-08-13T00:42:00.001+10:00

I’ve been playing with Microsoft Online Business Productivity Online Suite for the past 3 months now.. Playing is definitely not the right word; in comparison to Lotus Notes, I've been “Productive”. :) “It just works.”

For those of you who don’t know what BPOS is.. BPOS is a Cloud hosted version of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communication Server (instant messaging) and Live Meeting (MS WebEX competitor).

The next challenge is find out if BPOS was really the right solution.

Microsoft quote on their website that the complete BPOS solution is $15 a user per month. However there are some things you still need to consider.

Internet Bandwidth increase (in Australia, per MB download rates are relatively high) – as the service is in the Cloud, you are not paying just to receive emails from the internet, your bandwidth is used for internal emails as well. (Although this is still very quick)
Level 1 Helpdesk – Microsoft only supply level 2 & 3, web/phone support, so you still nee somebody to do the level 1 monkey work. “Did you turn it off and on again, yet?”, “The power button is the big one in the middle.”
Migration Costs – Microsoft offer some free tools to do the migration, so if you are on a supported platform these may be low. If your not, or if you need to get a partner to help, these costs should be added to a per user calculation. (If you can try and spread these costs out over a larger period say 36 months)
Archiving – If your in a regulated sector, you may be required to have legal archiving. (Microsoft Offer this at an extra cost)
Excess Storage – for when a user goes over their mailbox limit, although this is relatively easy to bill back to the ~~abuses~~ users Business Unit (if your company allows that)

In my calculations these costs added approx another $5 per user.

To understand the finical benefit of BPOS, try and get a baseline of your current email environment determine the monthly cost for the following items (these should be similar for most companies.)

Software
- OS Software
- Email Software
- Gateway Protection (Anti Virus/Spam)
Server Hardware - try to work out a monthly cost over the life time of the hardware – either leased or deprecated
Storage Hardware – (include the continued risk as email capacities increase)
Backup – Hardware / Media / Software / ~~Monkeys..~~ Operators

(The next items are monthly staff costs if you are not outsourced IT shop)

Monthly Mailbox Management cost (per user?)
Monthly Server Management cost (per server?)
Monthly Storage Management cost (per TB?)
Monthly Service Desk cost (people who answer the phone :) )

Add all these costs up and divide by the number of users on the system to get a baseline per user $ figure.

I’m not sure what an industry standard is for a Per Mailbox Per Month fee (if somebody know, please fill me in), but most calculations I’ve done, its been less than $30.

The REAL benefit of BPOS (especially the way the economy is these days) is the ability to scale up or down but keep the same per mailbox per month fee. Consider the following for an in house solution, (where they budget per user).

A company has 1000 employees and it’s fixed costs (servers, storage, gateway, etc) are $15000 per month – which works out the per user cost is $15.
If the company grows to 1200 users, the per user cost goes from $15 to $12.50pm. (should your system be able to scale)
If the company downsizes to just 800 people, the per user cost will increase to $18.75pm

BPOS on the other hand, stays the same no matter the number of users on the system. (its Microsoft’s problem, not yours).

I hope this helps in determining if BPOS is of benefit to you.

Server Core is not Core

2008-03-05T23:52:00.001+11:00

I was at the Microsoft's Heroes Happen {Here} launch today, where I heard a weird comment during one of the early sessions "(Windows) Core server can only run Native code, not managed code". This had my attention during the rest of the day.

Windows Core Server 2008 is designed as a headless, low footprint server for use in resource intensive roles. I first heard about Server Core at the Exchange 2007 launch last year. Finally a server out of the box optimised for performance and without the overhead of the GUI and the Explorer shell. At the launch, the presenters talked about issues such as installation without a GUI. Solution, use the GUI tools to generate an unattend script, simple. Exchange management tasks would all be done with Powershell. These were exciting times.

I though of other solutions, such as web servers. I once ran a load intensive web site on 5 Mac Mini's (still using OSX), with a few modifications I was able to recover between 200-500mb of RAM which Apache could chew up. A similar setup would be easy to achieve with using Server Core. I would assume that this is how all web hosting farms would operate in a Windows 2008 environment. Especially hosting providers that are automated and end users are required configure their sites via an Admin web site.

Back to that comment... No Managed code.... I asked a few questions regarding this, the response was that the .NET framework is not currently supported on Server Core, they removed too much from the base OS that the Framework was not supported. Without a GUI, the System.Windows namespace would be useless. Removal of a key piece of the Framework would splinter .NET even further (DLR, CLR). With no .NET Framework, you no longer have Powershell or ASP.NET. Key pieces of technology required in the above scenarios. So no headless Exchange 2007 or Web server (running ASP.NET). The Microsoft presenters at the Heroes launch suggested that .NET would make it into 2008 R2 (hey there's going be an 2008 R2!!!)

So what is Server Core 2008 going to be good for? At the launch Microsoft were suggesting Branch Office, Web Server (unless you want to run ASP.NET), Hyper-V host. Of all these roles I think the only one that makes any sense is the Hyper-V host, but Hyper-V is at least 6 months away.

I'm still interested in the potential that Server Core can offer, I don't think that it is currently ready. I intend to do some testing to see what can actually install on Server Core. Java VM? Apache? PHP? PHP on IIS!?. Would be really disappointing if you could run a LAMP stack on Server Core, but not the .NET framework. I'll let you know how my tests go.

Employed

2007-11-20T22:31:00.002+11:00

After finishing up with Globe in early November, I took a week off to relax. I won big on the Melbourne Cup, (a whopping $60).

I sorted out a Job and I'm now employed with Pacific Brands, as a Technical Services Lead, in the Infrastructure Department. It's a very different role to the one I had at Globe. Very much hands off technically, with more of a management focus. The entire IT department consists of 80 people, the infrastructure department is between 10 -20 people depending on where you blur the lines.

The environment and people are very cool. Having to "dress up" is a welcome change (for now), as it being able to take public transport (while its not raining...)

Don't have much more to say at this stage, I'll attempt to keep this blog updated (as I promise in every email)... And as I'm employed, I try and keep the blog a little less "Resume"-ish

Exchange 2007 connectors

2007-11-09T16:05:00.001+11:00

Slappa just posted some PowerShell commands to create Exchange 2007 SMTP connectors. This is great, with just one line, you can now create a SMTP connector which used to take about 5 minutes, editing about at least three property pages and not to mention opening the notoriously slow System Manager.

Why SPF wont work.

2007-11-08T10:59:00.000+11:00

I got a SPAM for a music festival I have no idea about. Some how, they have my email address in their mailing list.. According to google it passes SPF... So it was not reported by gmail as spam. :(

I was unable UNSUBSCRIBE using the embedded link because it the site said I was already UnSubscribed (Dangerous I know, but I figured if they have SPF, and they have something real to sell they might be legit)

Received: by 10.35.70.14 with SMTP id x14cs195112pyk;
Wed, 7 Nov 2007 15:22:15 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.82.162.14 with SMTP id k14mr16402319bue.1194477732477;
Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:22:12 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: < mailreturn@durdle.ymlpcom.com>
Received: from durdle.ymlpcom.com (durdle.ymlpcom.com [87.237.13.77 ])
by mx.google.com with SMTP id i8si10027390nfh.2007.11.07.15.22.11;
Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:22:12 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass ( google.com: domain of mailreturn@durdle.ymlpcom.com designates 87.237.13.77 as permitted sender) client-ip= 87.237.13.77;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of mailreturn@durdle.ymlpcom.com designates 87.237.13.77 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=mailreturn@durdle.ymlpcom.com
Received: (qmail 23529 invoked by uid 0); 7 Nov 2007 23:22:10 -0000 Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 00:22:10 +0100
From: Defcon Festival
Subject: DEFCON Music Festival - Last chance to get your tickets!
Message-ID:

This would appear to be a hole in SPF from where I stand, the email address that I received the email from was info@defconfestival.com but the SPF record was for return address mailreturn@durdle.ymlpcom.com

I implemented SPF for the company I previously worked for, it didnt bring much relief to the spam situation and for one supplier (with a bad email setup) failed all our emails due to the SPF records.

That company had a Gateway SMTP Server that didnt check for SPF, then forwarded to an internal Exchange server that checked SPF. The Exchange SPF checking tool (not sure what they used), failed because it their Gateway SMTP server wasnt in our SPF record.

So where do we go from here? SPF appears to have a huge flaw. (okay, I havnt done any research into this statement). Perhaps (in the case of this email) it's Google's SPF validation that has the flaw? Or how company's configure their infrastructure, but it's doesnt appear to be helping very much. (again another unqualified statement, I will follow up with some stats if I can find them)

SAP buys Crystal Reports for €4.8 billion

2007-10-08T12:31:00.001+10:00

SAP the German ERP software has announced a friendly take over of the makers of everybody's favorite reporting software, Crystal Reports. According to press releases, SAP's €4.8 billion acquisition of Business Objects, focus's on the Business Intelligence (BI) products that Business Objects develop.

SAP said that the expertise and solutions from Business Objects would be complimentary to offerings SAP already provides for Business Users – including, for example, category leadership in Governance, Risk and Compliance; business intelligence in the SAP platform; as well as corporate performance management capabilities...

So where does this leave Crystal Reports? Hopefully the relationship with Microsoft doesn't sour again and Crystal Reports continues to be part of Visual Studio.

Microsoft "opening" .NET Framework code

2007-10-04T15:58:00.001+10:00

Microsoft are releasing their .NET framework code under the Microsoft Reference License. This will include code for the Core Library, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, ADO.NET, XML and WPF.

From what I understand of the License, you will only be able to use the code provided to assist with debugging your own applications and you wont be able to modify/compile or fork the code.

Visual Studio 2008 will have the ability for you to dynamically download the symbols and then allow you step through (debug) down into the .NET code.

I'm most interested to see how MS have implemented code for XML and RegEX. :)

Here's some commentary.

Coding4Fun -> .Net is opening up!
ScottGu's Blog -> Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries
Miguel de Icaza's web log (a Mono Developer) -> Microsoft Opens up the .NET Class Libraries Source Code

Java Server Page, Tomcat and ANT configuration.

2007-09-24T18:57:00.001+10:00

I spent the night learning Java Server Pages (JSP). Not actually any of the syntax, but how to configure ANT to deploy your webapp to a Tomcat server.

I wrote up a SwinBrain HowTo this morning, on installing Tomcat and configuring the ANT to create and deploy your web application. The article goes through creating WAR files, deploying them to the Tomcat server using Tomcat's ANT deployment tools.

Have a look and please feel free to provide any feedback. :)

brentOS v0.0000000000000001

2007-09-18T18:36:00.001+10:00

I've been told for a long time that I should write my own operating system to go with my nickname Brentos. So after reading the "Write your own Toy OS", I decided that it was time.

brentOS doesn't actually do much. It boots off a floppy disk and then displays "brentOS" with a cool spinner. :)

The boot file was written in Assembly, which kind of reminds me a little of Basic with the Labels: and GOTO (JMP in Assembly). All the details for writing to the screen are in the Toy OS article.

To slow down the spinner, I found the following bit of Assembly code to perform a sleep. (I'm not 100% sure it's doing a sleep but it has the desired effect.)

mov cx,#0x1
mov dx,#0x86a0
mov ah,#0x86
int #0x15

I wanted the spinner to wait 100000 (in hex = #0x186a0) nanoseconds before moving to the next position. I think that you have to break up the value into two 16bit blocks. This is the first two lines -> CX #0x1 and DX #0x86a0.

Then I think 3rd line, ah is calling function #86, and int #0x15 is a wait. (but i'm not sure, if somebody would like to explain that would be ace)

The article also shows how to write is a simple C program that installs the OS code into the boot sector of the floppy disk.

The hardest (actually most annoying) part in the whole process, was setting up Ubuntu in Virtual PC 2007.

Telstra Cable @ 30mbps

2007-09-18T10:31:00.001+10:00

I got an email from Telstra informing me that they have upgraded my Telstra Cable Extreme plan to 30mbps. All that was required to take advantage of the upgrade was a reboot of my modem.

NOTE: This is a pointless post as I didn't really have a good test of the upgraded speed, as Speedtest.net no longer have a Melbourne server. I'll download something from one of the Fedora mirrors, tonight and let you know how fast it goes.

Telstra Upgrade BigPond Cable to 30mbps

2007-09-13T17:25:00.001+10:00

Yesterday Telstra announced that the BigPond Cable network in Melbourne and Sydney was upgraded to DOCSIS 2.0, and has increased Cable modem speeds to those on the Cable Extreme Plan to 30mbps for downloads and 1mbps for uploads.

This is extremely awesome news and I'm looking forward to going home tonight to see I'm part of the lucky area which has been upgraded.

Windows Vista SP1 - 7-12gb required for install.

2007-08-30T15:08:00.001+10:00

Microsoft have officially announced SP1 for Vista. MS have put up a white paper about the changes. The document seems pretty standard, one thing that caught my eye was the 7-12gb required to install the 1gb service pack.

Installing the service pack will require a large amount of free disk space (7 GB for x86 and 12 GB for x64). However, most of this space will be reclaimed after installation.

Granted the space will be reclaimed, 12gb seems excessive. I guess, that XP required about 300mb free space to install SP2, which seemed huge at the time (when some PC's only had a 5gb HDD :) )

Also, as I said before, the service pack image is going to be 1gb. (1/12 of my BigPond download limit). This is one large service pack, but it does include all languages. Hopefully when it is deployed via Windows Update it will only download required parts, making the download a little more reasonable.

Windows Home Server available.

2007-08-22T11:14:00.001+10:00

I noticed that Windows Home Server OEM is now listed on our reseller's website. It's currently retailing for AUD$229 which includes 10 CALS. Which is pretty good price for a Windows server. Not quite the same price as a Linux box. I'm pretty excited about WHS having played with the beta's, its a very neat product and some people have created some pretty cool add-in's.

Bullet News

2007-08-02T12:33:00.001+10:00

I'm a certified Scuba Diver now.
July I moved to the new St Kilda office full time.
I'm leaving my job @ Globe!
Uni is starting again next week. 2 Subjects and I've finished my Masters!
This semester I'm helping out @ Uni and will be a tutor.
I moved this blog to Blogger.

Freddo's Been Shot

2007-07-25T17:07:00.001+10:00

Opened up my Strawberry Freddo frog to notice he'd been shot through the belly. Check out the picture below.

Qlikview for Digg

2007-07-24T12:19:00.001+10:00

The guys at Qlikview have used their application to analyse Digg. I've always loved what you can do Qlikview, hopefully this gets them some extra sales and not just heap of load!

Moving Home (just the blogs)

2007-07-09T17:26:00.001+10:00

I need to get off the current server that is hosting freshfighter.net. Freshfighter is currently running wordpress.org blogging software. I spent a couple of nights this week looking into the alternatives (suggestions from wikipedia)

I had a play with above services (baring the personal server) and I found that all did things differently. The things that I wanted to I couldn't do exactly the same as I do currently. These "things" weren't defined until I started playing the the different services. After doing the Project Management subject last semester, I should have really had a list of requirements before I started.

Here's a quick list of requirements of the new service, in order of importance.

Cheap.
Import content from old software.
Be able to use Google Analytics. (Visitor reporting tool)
Be able to use Windows Live Writer. (Blogging tool)
Host my Domain name.
Redirect my existing permalinks. (currently YEAR/MONTH/DAY/TITLE)
Customizable.

Instantly I eliminated TypePad, just because they charged. They did offer a free trial where I could have setup a test site, but the ongoing price for a basic service was about US$8 month which over AUD$100 a year. My yearly AdSense wouldn't even cover the first month.

Live Spaces and Yahoo 360 were doing way more than I wanted. Photo's, Friend's, etc, too much going on there, so they were quickly excluded. A cool thing about Spaces was you could add PopFly content directly from PopFly. However, I'm a little over PopFly at the moment...

I've looked at the options of a personal server, I've used a heap of CPanel, Plesk based hosts which worked well enough. Wordpress have a list of hosts that offer instant wordpress installations. They're roughly about US$7 a month. I used to recommend theprimehost.com at about US$30 a year, but it's been a while since I used them. A personal server will be my last resort should I not be able to find something better.

I short listed two options, Blogger and Wordpress.com (with the fallback of a personal host). I've setup temp sites at each and will list my experiences, issues with each. Setting up the accounts couldn't have been easier for either site.

FreshFighter @ Wordpress

Wordpress.com was almost an identical version of the wordpress site I was already used to using. One of the best things of using wordpress.com would be, that I would no longer have to reinstall the code each time at patch is released.

Importing to wordpress.com was extremely simple. An export from my current admin interface (to a file) and import into the wordpress.com admin interface and all my content was online, including comments.

Majority of the functionality I have with my current setup is there at wordpress.com, including Windows Live Writer support and adjusting your permalink format. Widgets and Themes were limited to a small selection.

Adding custom CSS and being able to host my freshfighter.net domain required upgrading. Hosting freshfighter.net would cost approx US$10 a year.

Wordpress.com use Google Analytics to track the state of their entire service. Only one Google Analytics tracking script can be added per page, making Google Analytics impossible to use on wordpress.com.

Another issue I had was posting a YouTube video, the object/scripting code was stripped from the post. For security reasons wordpress.com strip out the relevant code (read: NO JavaScript), you need to follow the workaround's to get embedded YouTube to work correctly.

FreshFighter @ Blogger

Best thing about Blogger is the price. Free! I was able to get Google Analytics and Live Writer working with no problems. Adding an embedded Video (from YouTube) was easy and and didn't require any workaround's.

Layout was similar to wordpress.com however you could easily edit your CSS. Adding widgets was simple, I a Last.FM weekly chart using Cut and Paste. Blogger even has integrated AdWords, which allowed adding Ad's without even doing any Cut and Paste. Would be really good if Google could integrate Google Analytics in the same way.

Blogger didn't offer any method of importing my current content. I did find BlogSync-java which can import wordpress blogs in to Blogger. It worked well. I think the newer version will also do comments, which the version I used didn't.

The main issue with using Blogger is the hard coded permalinks. Blogger uses /YEAR/MONTH/TITLE where as I had been using /YEAR/MONTH/DAY/TITLE. The difference in permalinks means Google searches will get a 404 error. :(

Conclusion

I'm leaning towards using Blogger for the following reasons

I can keep using Google Analytics.
Free. Okay so $10 a year @ wordpress.com for my domain is pretty cheap, its still more than Blogger.
JavaScript enabled.
Can easily be re-imported into Wordpress if I ever wanted.

My only issue is the permalinks, but I have a plan to deal with the issue.

I've reset my permalinks to match Bloggers format.
Installed Dean's Permalink Migration plugin.
Hope to gawd, that Google reindexes my site using the "301 Redirect" of the above plugin, before I have to move off the server.

Lego Millenium Falcon construction

2007-07-05T16:14:00.001+10:00

Best ever Lego construction/stop motion I've ever seen.