This has got to be the coolest ham shack I’ve ever seen. It belongs to George E Ulm (W9EVT).

Enjoy!
~TheNerd

I have recently been given the opportunity to review a book called Magento: Beginners Guide by William Rice. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Magento ecommerce software suite, it is a comprehensive ecommerce solutions for web based shops.

I was approached by the publishing company Packt Publishing, a Birmingham UK firm which  specializes in IT related material, who  asked me if I would be willing to read and review their book. I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn something about Magento, so I agreed to the review and was provided with a review copy.

If you think you might be interested in such a book, Packt provides a free PDF download of Chapter 3: Categories and Attributes on their website.

As soon as I get a chance to read the book and digest the contents I will write up the review and post it for your reading pleasure.

Cheers!
TheNerd

Before you say anything… Yes I know I am late and I am ashamed. Given the fact that I am involved in the Haiku Project (I mainly contribute to the Haiku Web team and answer general inquiries from the contact form on the site) I should have posted this back on September 14.

Regardless, Haiku R1/Alpha 1 is here. It is the first official release from the Haiku Project after years of continuous development. Unlike a lot of alpha releases from other projects I feel that this Alpha is of superior quality and stability (yes… I am biased). If you are interested in open source operating systems this is a great one to give a try.  Hop on over to the Haiku website and download the ISO, virtual machine or raw disk image to test it out!

I have recently been contacted by Henrik Erlandsson (founder of VisualCron) asking me if I would take a closer look at his program and report back with my thoughts. I thought why not, I always like taking a look a new software. Here is my review of VisualCron 5.

VisualCron is described as the following on their website – “VisualCron is an advanced Task Scheduler/automation tool for Windows.” It goes on to say the following – “VisualCron provides advanced file/script execution, file transfer (FTP/FTPS/SFTP/SSH/HTTP), email, archiving (ZIP/TAR/GZIP), XML handling, Active directory tasks, encryption (PGP), desktop macro recording, send/receive emails, system control (Hibernate,Standby,Restart,Logoff), SQL execution and monitoring are standard functions of VisualCron. Above all, the interface of VisualCron is very easy to use. No programming skills are needed. “ and comes in a 45 day, fully functional, demo.

I installed VisualCron on my Windows 7 RC (build 7100) virtual machine. It was a standard type of install that had 7 steps. The total time of the install was about three minutes so it’s very painless.

During the installation you have the choice to install Client and Server or Client only. This allows you to use one central computer as a server to control tasks on clients that connect to it. This would be great in a corporate environment where it’s always easier to manager things centrally rather than have to go to each PC and configure everything.

Once you have VisualCron installed you will see an icon in the System Tray that allows you to manage both the client and server (as I have both installed on my test machine).

There are so many things that you can do with this application. You can create simple file deletion jobs to clear out temporary files to complex backups and restore of remote servers. One of the simple tests that I set up was to check the desktop for a folder called “New Folder” and then delete it. It was configured to run every five minutes. This job only took me a few minutes to set up and was very straight forward and easy. This is a big plus given the complexity and granularity of the options available.

If you are a programmer and would like to create your own applications that interface with VisualCron, you can do so with their custom API. They even include a PDF with their API documentation and it is accessible through the Help menu.

When I write reviews of applications that are tailored for specific groups such as the more technical savvy and even system administrator types, I often have a hard time deciding if I should comment about the look and feel of the application. In a case like this, I think that the functionality is what will make or break the application’s usefulness but the user interface is quite nice none the less. VisualCron has the “new” windows application look (ribbon interface) which I feel makes it easier to use. Unfortunately I have not used older versions so I am unable to compare the two but from my experience with other applications it is most likely the case.

There are a couple quirks I think are worth noting. I was getting an error message that I was unable to write to the configuration file in the C:\Program Files\VisualCron. This was solved by adding Modify permissions (for the Users group) to that folder. This can also be accomplished by turning off UAC (User Account Control) in Windows but I don’t recommend that as it could be considered a security risk. I also noticed that the Pop-Up feature (a configurable part of a job) required me to click View the message on an Interactive Services Detection dialogue box. Upon further investigation Windows Help provided me with the following explanation: “Some devices and programs that are not fully compatible with Windows do not display their messages on your desktop, but might need your permission or other information to complete a task.”.

All in all, I think this application is very useful. Home users could use this program to create automated backups of web sites or important personal files. Because of the Windows Active Directory integration I could see this making the life of a Windows administrator much easier by helping keep Active Directory pruned . There are probably a thousand other ways that it could benefit anyone who manages Windows based systems. It is a great and very versatile program, I only wish I had the time and resources to test it more thoroughly in a corporate style environment as I think that is where it would excel!

VisualCron Website

I know it’s been a while since my last post but I recently purchased my first home and have been pre-occupied with everything surround that process. It’s pretty stressful and very time consuming but worth every minute of it. The wife and I are very pleased. Anyway on to the post…

I’ve been using Windows 7 as my main operating system for 2 months and 5 days (66 days) and I am still very impressed. Not only does it run smoothly but I’ve yet to encounter the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death”. Windows is notoriously bad for requiring reboots all the time for just about everything but this has not been the case for me. I only occasionally have to reboot when there are security and/or feature updates from Windows Update that require it.

I’ve also been testing the beta version of Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows XP Mode. Both of which run fantastically well on my system. Unfortunately, at least for testing purposes, all of  applications I use work fine on 7 so I don’t have much use for XP mode. Although, I must say, the application integration in XP Mode works quite well even for apps that do work in Windows 7. Even my work doesn’t have a whole lot of legacy software that would require such a feature but I am sure some organizations do.

I also have 7 running on my work laptop so I can test in an Active Directory Domain environment. I am able to get most of my drive mappings, applications, and printers (with proper drivers) to work. There are, however, two minor issues I have encountered. One of these issues is not Windows 7`s fault but rather that of Cisco. We use a Cisco VPN concentrator for remote connections to the office and the Cisco VPN client does not support 64bit versions (of any Windows ) and requires a bit of trickery to get working on Windows 7 32bit. The second issue is the login screen. Once you have joined a domain, 7 automatically defaults to the login for that domain. Unlike XP, where you could choose the domain or computer from a drop down box on the login screen, you have to type in computer-name\username then your password to log in locally. I`ve yet to figure out how (or even if) this can be changed back to the old style.

All in all, my feeling is still very positive towards Windows 7 and I suspect this will finally be the next version for businesses and corporations looking to upgrade. Home users who were not happy with Vista should also be pretty satisfied with Windows 7 as long as the final version is as stable as the release candidate.

Cheers!
TheNerd

Windows XP Mode is a new virtualization feature to be available to Windows 7 users running the Ultimate, Professional or Enterprise versions of the operating system. This is basically a revamped version of Microsoft Virtual PC and a pre-configure Windows XP virtual machine.

The beauty of this set up is that you can have your XP applications run just as if they were installed in Windows 7. There is a folder created in your start menu that allows you to launch these applications with a single click without having to load the XP virtual machine manually each time. In effect, the XP virtual machine will be running in the background when these applications are being used but it’s transparent to the user.

As of the present time, XP Mode is still in beta and requires you to download and install Windows Virtual PC. Both are freely available as beta versions from the Microsoft website. The requirements to run XP Mode are as follows:

1. Windows 7 (Ultimate, Professional or Enterprise)
2. Hard disk: 2GB for installing Windows XP Mode. Addtional 15GB of hard disk space for the virtual Windows environment.
3. A processor capable of hardware virtualization, with AMD-V™ or Intel® VT (use this handy little application to find out if you have this capability)

If all these conditions are met you can download XP Mode, Windows Virtual PC and install them. I’ve been using this set up for a few days now and it’s very handy to run some older applications that do not work well under Vista or 7. You can also use Windows Virtual PC to create new virtual machines or run existing ones that were created with older versions (it even runs my eComStation 2.0 RC5 vm).

Cheers!
~TheNerd

I’ve been running Windows 7 RC (Build 7100) for a few weeks now and I must say that I am quite impressed. I had more problems with Vista (RTM) in the first two days after installation that I’ve had in the whole three weeks I’ve had 7 installed.

I’m running it on my desktop computer which is made up of the following components:

• ASUS M2N-E Motherboard
• AMD Athlon X2 4200+ CPU (Dual Core 2.2GHz)
• 4GB DDR 2 RAM
• ~1.5TB of disk space (2x 500GB, 1x 250GB, 1x 160GB)
• Sapphire RADEON X1650 PRO Video
• DVD Drive
• 2x 19″ LCD Monitors

The hardware worked right off the bat and I did not need to install any drivers to get going. Once I had set things up and looked for some Windows updates there was an updated driver for the video card which I installed but reall didn’t notice a difference.

As far as software is concerned, everthing appears to be working more or less as expected. The only software that has caused me problem was Call of Duty: World At War, which tried to get me to install Direct X 9 which failed and then wouldn’t load. There might be a way to get this running but I haven’t looked into it at this time.

Lastly, I am very impressed with the stability and robustness of this OS. It’s not once given me a blue screen or crashed in any way. The only time I’ve had to reboot was after some Windows updates.

All in all it looks like Windows 7 will be the OS to go with, at least for home users. I’ve yet to test it in a business capacity but I suspect that it will fair pretty well running enterprise software in a corporate networked environment. It’s much improved compared to Vista and can even run on some hardware that Vista had trouble with. Hopefully Microsoft will continue along this path and continue to create operating systems of this quality (hopefully the RTM version will be as good).

Cheers!
~TheNerd

So you have a mobile phone but don’t want to pay for a texting (SMS) package or can’t afford the ~ $0.15 per message the carries are charging? There’s a really simple way around it. Most wireless carriers provide an online web form where you can send messages to any of their customers, free of charge (to send but watch out in case the recipient gets charged for incoming messages).

Here are the links:

• Rogers (apparently works for Fido customers too)
• Telus Mobility
• Bell Mobility
• Koodo
• Solo

I only have experience using the Telus service because my wife is a Telus Mobility subscriber so I can’t guarantee any of the others work. I guess one can’t complain too much because it’s free.

This is for all the Stargate fans out there! A teaser from the upcoming Stargate Universe series.

I’ve never been one to worry about where my items are located on the taskbar and my philosophy has always been: “If there are too many times on your taskbar and you can’t find stuff you should probably close some applications.” But, since I’ve started working at my new job I’ve realized how this is not always an option for some people.

The users at my workplace require many applications open at the same time to work with various systems related to customer support, sales, and service. Most of these applications are actually web based so they have numerous browser windows open at the same time (we use both IE and Firefox). Because of the workflow of the various aspects of their job it’s good to be able to place items in the taskbar in a logical order where they can find things more easily.

This is where Taskbar Shuffle comes in to play. It’s a small application that runs in the system tray and uses only about 4mb of memory at any given time. It’s also very easy to configure. In fact, most of the time the default installation will provide you with all the settings needed to get you going.

Here is a screenshot of the settings screen with the default settings from a fresh installation:

This little utility is great for those people, like the ones at my workplace, who like to customize their work space. Our users don’t even have admin access to their computers but they can at least use this for some control.

Overall this is a very neat and functional utility and I recommend it for anyone who has the need (or want) to customize their taskbar items. The best part is that it’s completely free! For more information and to get the latest version visit the Taskbar Shuffle website.