A place for Sharepoint and rantings
Archive for January, 2008
Conway Case
Jan 29th
This morning on radio 4 I heard more about the Conway case. I don’t have a problem with him employing relatives, its the only sensible thing to do in situations like this.
I’m not really writing about him what has annoyed me more is the remarks made by Roger Gale MP. Complaining about justice and being guilty until proven innocent.
Well for a start, Conway stood up in the House of Commons and apologised, sure sign of innocence there.
But mainly Gale seems to have no idea about so-called British Justice.
Conway has not been arrested. He has not been questioned by the Police (yet anyway), he has not been led away in handcuffs. An investigating body discovered some possible impropriety and gave him a slap on the wrist. Gale is ranting on about a witch-hunt and this poor sod being labeled guilty.
I’ve seen British Justice in action. I saw my brother led off in handcuffs due to an untrue accusation which later came out and he was eventually released. He was innocent yet led off in handcuffs by the police and treated pretty poorly, well like an absolute git is a better statement. Where was justice for him? no wasting police time More >
Learning Powershell
Jan 23rd
Its time I dipped my feet into learning Powershell, I know its going to figure a lot more in my new role, well my old role I’m going back to.
So fire up Powershell and here we go,
ll – that works
cat – that work
mv/cp – that works too
grep – Hmm no
sed – nope
awk – nope
Ok, Ok its not UNIX, might need some help here. Lots of examples lets paste them in and see what happens. First I need an editor
vi – damn done it again
Really don’t fancy editing in a separate window.
I did find a pretty little Powershell tool though “PowerGui“. The main tool I find pretty pointless, when you have gone to the lengths of creating a script language why stick the output in a GUI again, It’s not my cup of tea but others might like it. What I do like is the Script editor that comes with it.
Now this is a good tool. Its a script editor, you can just cut and paste your examples for leaning then press play (or step, built in debugger!) and the output appears in a little output window. Much more Vis Studio and more of what I’ve been used to.
So in More >
Xbox 360 came back
Jan 23rd
Well yesterday I got the xbox back. Two weeks and one day since they received the parcel, total turnaround from leaving my hands was 18 days. Under the 3 weeks but only just. Internal processing took two weeks examining the UPS info, there must be a lot of repairs going on.
In my comments of a previous post it was suggested that I might get the new version with hdmi ports and better fans, well no such luck. This is now my fourth xbox 360 and two Christmas holidays curtailed, I could be a drama queen and say ruined but it is only a console, but my son was not chuffed by a long shot, to him it was pretty dire. Taking that into consideration it would be the least that they could do.
Apparently not the least they could do is repair it, (new mother board, new dvd drive) and give me a months subscription to Xbox live gold. Big Whoop! I already have a gold subscription to live.
The design of the 360 is at fault, instead of fixing it and doing right by customers an endless stream of recycling repairs seems to be going on as its probably cheaper More >
[X]Ubuntu – more installation problems
Jan 22nd
It would appear that I am suffering from a similar problem that many others have encountered. Some more digging and exact wording in google has found my particular problem.
The documentation is lying.
Xubuntu requires a 192mb to install. I have 192mb. It’s just that some of it is running linux. Its because of this I get the system install hanging at 15%.
Apparently the installer for [X]Ubuntu, ubiquity, disables the swap files to install, a sensible precaution if you are about to rebuild the whole disk, however in my situation in a manual partitioning case, the swap could have been left alone, in fact some clever so and so edited the perl scripts to stop it disabling a swap he created on a USB key, I could not find those scripts as they had been relocated in the new version else I’d have give it a go.
Unfortunately the text-installation is not included in the primary ISO’s and the alternate CD is required. This is good news for me and other with even less ram as the Alternate CD only requires 64mb to install. Just what it will install I am curious about. I’m hoping that a text only version of linux More >
Regex
Jan 21st
Well I’ve tried to avoid them as long as possible. But I have finally come round to using regex’s.
Considering that I came from a Unix background to Windows world you’d think that it would be second nature to me, but no. If ever there was a “sed” script that needed writing, I’d do it in awk, giving me power and less reliance on the old regex element of things.
I can’t avoid it any longer. I would dabble now and again, I had Chris Sell’s Regex tool installed to help out now and again, and of course Stuart to ask and say “Hey how do I do this in this damn regex nonsense again ?”.
But now there is truly a tool that is helpful. Expresso, from ultrapico, is just great at creating regexes. Now there are many good tools out there but they have to fit the brain of the user and this one fits mine. It was down to this tool I finally got it, it introduced names groups and replacement section or whatever they are called enabling me to do complex search and replaces that I wanted but couldn’t figure out.
So if your still a ludite after More >
Why is Linux so hard ?
Jan 18th
Considering great advancements have been made in linux installs, why is it so hard when it goes wrong.
My ubuntu attempt failed miserably, I admit I’m trying to install it on an old old machine, but if it boots into ubuntu, which is full blown linux from CD why does it fail miserably to install.
Were I not familiar with windows and linux and partitions I would have a dead machine by now, had I been a normal user trying this I would be stuck. Having tried googling problems all I find are forums filled with fanboys slaggin off each others distro. The level of support I have found in the community for linux is abysmal compared to windows. At least MS has support.microsoft, ubuntu’s equiv was pitiful.
Now after clearing down the disks and doing a Suse install, which went great until reboot time, I find myself in the same old situation.
I’m confronted with a white screen. Completely blank. The forums are of no use whatsoever, again. If I were a normal user then again I have a dead box with nowhere to turn because I didn’t buy this thing. The linux boys would have you believe that linux is a great More >
Experiencing Ubuntu – Installation
Jan 17th
Apparently Ubuntu – Just Works.
Well I thought I’d find out. I have an Old Laptop its a Sony Vaio PCG-F403, basically it is 450Mhz and has 192mb of memory. Its old and slow.
So I start with the ISO, downloaded it eventually from a mirror and burned away.
Here goes. It opened with a pretty Ubuntu logo did some linuxy things, more linux things, then a sample from the Lion King before opening into, Linux.
That was a surprise, no horrible stand-alone installer, straight into Ubuntu Linux and you can use it there and then. This looked promising. So I started the Installer, an icon on the desktop saying Install with an icon of a drive and an arrow going into it, fairly self explanatory.
The installer starts and I pick my country etc then get to the Partitioning, the bit that always went wrong before, the bit I end up having to go into dos, delete partitions, then back in use something called disk druid to manually partition things. Only this time no disk druid, just three radio buttons. Guided – resize, Guided – whole disk and manual. So I selected Guided whole disk. Enter some login details and away it More >
WPF, Minority Report style interaction
Jan 14th
Found this on the interweb.
http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/rickbarraza?entry=connecting_to_the_wii_control
It’s a video of some chap whose created a Minority Report interface using
WPF
.NET
WiiMote
Fancy Custom pair of gloves (with leds in the fingers I reckon)
A piece of string
It’s quite impressive, It uses Brian Peeks .Net library for interaction with the WiiMote.(Other Article in case your websense blocks it).
Then using the custom hardware (gloves) can control the items on screen. The Wiimote can track up to four infra-red LED items at a time, the rest is all software.
This should be possible in Silverlight 2.0 as well.,
**UPDATE** : reading the forums its unlikely this is the case. Silverlight reacts to the keys and the mouse specifically, people are saying the sway silverlight is built, is that is is not possible.
Technorati tags: Silverlight, WPF, Wiimote
View From My Window
Jan 9th
Considering just how bad the view is, there are some high spots. Like today a lovely pair of bullfinches decided to sit outside the window in the woodland beyond.
Despite living near countryside I had not seen bullfinches or Goldfinches until I started working here.
Lovely ain’t they.
Flickr tags: bullfinches, goldfinches
Did we land on the moon ?
Jan 8th
Last night I was tired and wanted to watch T.V. but nowt was on. Undeterred and rather than do something constructive I plundered the depths of Sky.
I found “Conspiracy Theory – Did we land on the moon”. Now normally I don’t go in for nonsense like this, I like evidence based Science programs. The evidence came from the conspiracy side and the nasa guy was just stating that it was bad science but not explaining why ?
This was down to the nature of the program, much of what was said in this program is refuted. A good source, one I think is trustworthy is here.
But can someone explain why a telescope can get great photo’s of distant galaxies but not see the surface of the moon in detail ? Not understanding telescope optics would love to hear a scientific reason as to why. Would be good to just point it at an abandoned lander and go, see there it is.
Edit – And here it is, even hubble is not powerful enough only showing things of 20-30 metres big.
Technorati tags: moon landing conspiracy