There’s not been a whole lot of progress with my Windows Home Server experiments recently. The trial installation would have well and truly expired by now, but it was bought to a crashing halt when I added a third HDD to the machine – suddenly it all stopped booting and this time I couldn’t find a solution.
That wasn’t the main problem though, as a back-up server this would be inconvenient, but not fatal as long as everything else is safely stored elsewhere. What is really still getting me is the 500Gb of data still locked away on the old Ubuntu HDD, and the fact I have decided to run the server with the 1Tb drive currently powering my main desktop PC (in addition to the 500Gb drive and another I already have knocking around.
I decided to go for a couple of Samsung Spinpoint F3 (ordered yesterday to hopefully be delivered tomorrow) drives in the end, putting them in a striped RAID 0 configuration. I was looking at doing a RAID 5 config on 3 drives, but this would use 1Tb for parity data, and I can’t afford a 4 drive RAID 5 array (which interestingly would still only use 1Tb of parity). Besides which, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I don’t even fill 1Tb locally (although I could) so 3Tb would be massive overkill.
I figure RAID 0 with a scheduled backup to WHS should see me OK. If a drive fails it will be a pain, but not the end of the world. Hopefully I’ll get some performance increase in with the newer faster drives and striping as I believe this is what generally holds back my PC, however I'm lead to believe that boot times and application start-up are largely unaffected in RAID 0.
So when these drives arrive, Windows 7 Ultimate will be installed on the new array, I’ll copy off any remaining data from my old drive, then it’s back to getting the WHS box running. I should also have room for a nice collection of VMWare machine images, and I'll have a go attaching some old XP only hardware in XP Mode.
Lets just hope neither of the drives arrive dead, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Drawing to a new conclusion...
As those of you who read my various other web sites (and the earlier incarnation of this blog) may be aware, I started a new job at the end of April this year which resulted in me moving from a Java (and occasionally SQL) developer, on to C# (via Microsoft Visual Studio 2008) and back to (what has become over the years) the nightmare of Delphi 5.
Delphi, specifically version 5 was way ahead of the crowd in it's time, unfortunately that time was 1999. I used to love Delphi, it was so advanced compared to similar offerings such as Visual Basic that anyone who had used it seriously didn't want to go back to other languages unless they were offered a seriously large pay-cheque to do so.
Then a series of events happened which saw Delphi get left behind, the two main (from my perspective) being:
1. Java arrived and offered the opportunity to program in a new object oriented language that allowed code to run across different platforms. Many Delphi developers moved over to Java, and by using JBuilder which also originated at Borland, we felt at home in a familiar IDE too (versions 1 to 3 of JBuilder were written in Delphi, JBuilder 3.5 was the first native Java IDE for JBuilder).
2. Anders Hejlsberg was poached from Borland by Microsoft and as a result the lead architect had gone. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of very talented people at Borland, but despite this there was always the perception (accurate or otherwise) that after Anders jumpred ship, the product was left in disarray.
Delphi was never as popular again.
This is all a long time before the .Net platform, and more importantly for the remaining Delphi developers, C# started shipping. In fact, Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architecht of C# after his J# language, understandably, upset Sun, so morphed into Cool, which was eventually released as C# (at least that's how I remember it).
Despite remaining a solid language, Delphi started to stagnate and fall behind Java and C# in terms of features and the integration of new technologies at that time. Although Delphi version 7 was a particularly good release (as far as I remember, was it version 4 that was always rubbish, even after two service packs?) it just wasn't enough. The job ads for Delphi were starting to decline, and its hey-day was now behind it. As a develper, that raises some concerns, and for me it was time to move on.
Java became my language of choice. Not only was the JDK free, but I'd been playing around with it since late 1996 in the version 1.0 builds. So it was that I moved to a job offering cross training to Java from Delphi, which after some complaining eventually happened.
And so Java started to pay the bills as well, if not better, than Delphi had in previous years. However apart from a few notable times (such as when James Talbot introduced me to the Spring Framework, thanks James) Java development was never as much fun as Delphi in those early days.
Don't get me wrong, I like Java a lot, but it rarely had the comparatively instant gratification moments that Delphi often provided. I think a lot of this can be down to two points: My Java programming involved little Swing (or indeed any visual) work, so whilst it was immensley satisfying to get JSP being constructed from a web server, or process huge amounts of financial data, it didn't grab my imagination in quite the same way. The second problem is that Java does so much I could never hope to be comfortable with it all. It is true that this is the case with Delphi (DCOM required me to grab a book and ISAPI extensions have never been produced by this particular mortal) and also C#, but with Java you always felt like you should know it all, it's not enough to just be aware it exists until you need to use it.
So now I'm spending a proprtion of my work time developing in C#, and to my great delight I find it has some of the same highlights as Delphi used to, only more applicable to the world of now. I don't wish to be unfair to the latest versions of Delphi, which I believe are very good, but the whole community around C# is massive, and it's not the dog of a language that Visual Basic was (is?)
I'm now re-learning how to implement things like threading in yet another language. I don't regret this for a moment though as not only may the approaches to some things have changed over the years, but I also believe that in doing this you always get a little deeper understanding, and hopefully wash away a few of the bad habits you may have picked up over the years.
One of the new areas I'm interested in investigating further is the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF or Avalon to some). This looks similar in many basic ways to Swing in Java, only it feels like a later revision. As a result hopefully I'll be able to take back some of what I learn to future Swing applications.
WPF is still quite new (having been released alongside Windows Vista) and the plan is eventually to make this and Silverlight one and the same thing (or so I believe, at the moment Silverlight uses a subset of WPF).
The down side on this is that a lot of the announcements about Silverlight 4 seem to be moving away from cross platform solutions towards Windows only technologies such as COM. I guess time will tell on that front.
WPF is also a core component of Windows 7, so there's significant opportunity there. Also, I believe, the Windows Mobile 7 UI will be rendered in WPF... that will be awesome if/when it happens. And if they start to add the tools into Visual Studio Express from installation then the uptake of WM7 will only improve in my opinion (you can code Windows Mobile Apps without Visual Studio, but it's a lot more complicated without Visual Studio Professional of above. See my later Windows 7 follow-up post in a few days for more of what I think about this).
There's lots of new things being offered by .Net and C# that I need to look into, if not become an expert in, but just to be aware and not completely ignorant of them. The way I'm approaching this is far more relaxed than Java, so hopefully it will be more fun and I'll achieve even more, then take some of the positives back to Java some time in the future.
At last I am once again excited about the possibilities. I just need to shed some (or all) of this Delphi work to give it more of the time it deserves. Oh well, needs must.
Delphi, specifically version 5 was way ahead of the crowd in it's time, unfortunately that time was 1999. I used to love Delphi, it was so advanced compared to similar offerings such as Visual Basic that anyone who had used it seriously didn't want to go back to other languages unless they were offered a seriously large pay-cheque to do so.
Then a series of events happened which saw Delphi get left behind, the two main (from my perspective) being:
1. Java arrived and offered the opportunity to program in a new object oriented language that allowed code to run across different platforms. Many Delphi developers moved over to Java, and by using JBuilder which also originated at Borland, we felt at home in a familiar IDE too (versions 1 to 3 of JBuilder were written in Delphi, JBuilder 3.5 was the first native Java IDE for JBuilder).
2. Anders Hejlsberg was poached from Borland by Microsoft and as a result the lead architect had gone. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of very talented people at Borland, but despite this there was always the perception (accurate or otherwise) that after Anders jumpred ship, the product was left in disarray.
Delphi was never as popular again.
This is all a long time before the .Net platform, and more importantly for the remaining Delphi developers, C# started shipping. In fact, Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architecht of C# after his J# language, understandably, upset Sun, so morphed into Cool, which was eventually released as C# (at least that's how I remember it).
Despite remaining a solid language, Delphi started to stagnate and fall behind Java and C# in terms of features and the integration of new technologies at that time. Although Delphi version 7 was a particularly good release (as far as I remember, was it version 4 that was always rubbish, even after two service packs?) it just wasn't enough. The job ads for Delphi were starting to decline, and its hey-day was now behind it. As a develper, that raises some concerns, and for me it was time to move on.
Java became my language of choice. Not only was the JDK free, but I'd been playing around with it since late 1996 in the version 1.0 builds. So it was that I moved to a job offering cross training to Java from Delphi, which after some complaining eventually happened.
And so Java started to pay the bills as well, if not better, than Delphi had in previous years. However apart from a few notable times (such as when James Talbot introduced me to the Spring Framework, thanks James) Java development was never as much fun as Delphi in those early days.
Don't get me wrong, I like Java a lot, but it rarely had the comparatively instant gratification moments that Delphi often provided. I think a lot of this can be down to two points: My Java programming involved little Swing (or indeed any visual) work, so whilst it was immensley satisfying to get JSP being constructed from a web server, or process huge amounts of financial data, it didn't grab my imagination in quite the same way. The second problem is that Java does so much I could never hope to be comfortable with it all. It is true that this is the case with Delphi (DCOM required me to grab a book and ISAPI extensions have never been produced by this particular mortal) and also C#, but with Java you always felt like you should know it all, it's not enough to just be aware it exists until you need to use it.
So now I'm spending a proprtion of my work time developing in C#, and to my great delight I find it has some of the same highlights as Delphi used to, only more applicable to the world of now. I don't wish to be unfair to the latest versions of Delphi, which I believe are very good, but the whole community around C# is massive, and it's not the dog of a language that Visual Basic was (is?)
I'm now re-learning how to implement things like threading in yet another language. I don't regret this for a moment though as not only may the approaches to some things have changed over the years, but I also believe that in doing this you always get a little deeper understanding, and hopefully wash away a few of the bad habits you may have picked up over the years.
One of the new areas I'm interested in investigating further is the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF or Avalon to some). This looks similar in many basic ways to Swing in Java, only it feels like a later revision. As a result hopefully I'll be able to take back some of what I learn to future Swing applications.
WPF is still quite new (having been released alongside Windows Vista) and the plan is eventually to make this and Silverlight one and the same thing (or so I believe, at the moment Silverlight uses a subset of WPF).
The down side on this is that a lot of the announcements about Silverlight 4 seem to be moving away from cross platform solutions towards Windows only technologies such as COM. I guess time will tell on that front.
WPF is also a core component of Windows 7, so there's significant opportunity there. Also, I believe, the Windows Mobile 7 UI will be rendered in WPF... that will be awesome if/when it happens. And if they start to add the tools into Visual Studio Express from installation then the uptake of WM7 will only improve in my opinion (you can code Windows Mobile Apps without Visual Studio, but it's a lot more complicated without Visual Studio Professional of above. See my later Windows 7 follow-up post in a few days for more of what I think about this).
There's lots of new things being offered by .Net and C# that I need to look into, if not become an expert in, but just to be aware and not completely ignorant of them. The way I'm approaching this is far more relaxed than Java, so hopefully it will be more fun and I'll achieve even more, then take some of the positives back to Java some time in the future.
At last I am once again excited about the possibilities. I just need to shed some (or all) of this Delphi work to give it more of the time it deserves. Oh well, needs must.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Just a quick one...
This quote from The Register made me laugh:
When Jobs petulantly pouted that Windows stole the Mac's look and feel, Gates countered with "Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and stole the TV doesn't mean that I can't go in later and take the stereo."
I think I may be using that particular quote in future.
Here's a thing, reading a book by an ex-Microsoft employee a few years ago I seem to remember the said employee reminising on development of Windows 1.0. The first (or at least an early) version of scroll-bars in windows had a dynamically sizing thumb area to reflect the proportion of the window visible compared to its overall size. When Gates was shown this he ordered it to be removed, not because he didn't like it, but because it looked too much like the Apple OS, so the fixed size area that some of you may remember was born.
It seems like such a bad choice to make now, but there you go. Interpret that as you will, to me it says Gates didn't want to be seen copying, but knew that a WIMP environment was the way to go. Of course, these day's the whole concept would have probably been patented by Xerox on the drawing board and never implemented. Still, that's progress.
Either way, I know who I'd rather work for...
When Jobs petulantly pouted that Windows stole the Mac's look and feel, Gates countered with "Hey, Steve, just because you broke into Xerox's house before I did and stole the TV doesn't mean that I can't go in later and take the stereo."
I think I may be using that particular quote in future.
Here's a thing, reading a book by an ex-Microsoft employee a few years ago I seem to remember the said employee reminising on development of Windows 1.0. The first (or at least an early) version of scroll-bars in windows had a dynamically sizing thumb area to reflect the proportion of the window visible compared to its overall size. When Gates was shown this he ordered it to be removed, not because he didn't like it, but because it looked too much like the Apple OS, so the fixed size area that some of you may remember was born.
It seems like such a bad choice to make now, but there you go. Interpret that as you will, to me it says Gates didn't want to be seen copying, but knew that a WIMP environment was the way to go. Of course, these day's the whole concept would have probably been patented by Xerox on the drawing board and never implemented. Still, that's progress.
Either way, I know who I'd rather work for...
Monday, 14 December 2009
Is that a virus in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?
Whilst on Facebook last night, Emma visited one of the app pages she'd been to before (some kind of family tree app I believe it was). As the page was loading a pop-up appeared warning her that her PC as infected and offered to scan the machine. Hopefully at least about half of you can guess where this story is headed (if not the exact next course of action).
Despite constantly telling me I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near computers (as I tend to break them and are forever re-installing Windows, but as I try to tell her, that's partly due to the fact that I'm forever tinkering to try and learn more), she called me down from upstairs to advise.
As it happens I recently started running the free Microsoft Security Essentials pack (after a year with Avira Premium, which in all fairness caused me no end of trouble by being over secure), and although thus far I've never seen MSE flag a warning, I was pretty sure that this just looked like a web dialog box, and so told her to click the 'Cancel' button. That was probably the wrong thing to do but all that happened was the same dialog box appeared again. This time I told her to click the Close icon (the [X] button in the top right) and the dialog disappeared to be replaced with what looked like a windows explorer dialog with a scan taking place on the hard drives. This scan reported to find countless instances of malware and trojans.
I'll admit at this point I did a double take, again possibly due to the fact that (as yet) I've not been hit by a nasty while running the Security Essentials suite. That was only for a split-second I'm pleased to say, and a quick look at the icon in the top left of the window showed this was indeed another web page trying to scare us into buying a real trojan. We closed the web page, performed a quick scan via MSE (which took much longer than the full scan from the bogus web page) and sure enough the machine was reported as clean.
I was very impressed with this attack. The crooks had done a decent job and your average user, especially those who don't know about this variety of scam, would have been scared and possibly very tempted to download the 'cure', probably paying for the privilege.
Needless to say Emma has deleted this application from her Facebook list.
So what can we learn from this:
1. Beware of this type of scan.
2. Download security software and keep it up to date. Always go back to this to check if you suspect anything untoward is going on. No virus checker will catch everything, but at least you'll be starting from a point you trust.
3. Your main (day-to-day) user accounts should not be set up at an administrator level. Create an administrator account (or two if you are not the only user) and only use this to install software. For day to day usage use a user-level account, as you would under Unix. On this machine Emma’s user hasn't got Admin rights, so she would have needed to jump through many hoops to get the fake software to install. It's not foolproof, but it's actually one of the best defence approaches out there.
I'd also like to suggest to the suppliers of security suites that they have example dialog screen shots for users to refer to. The only time I paused to consider if this was real or fake was because I've never seen the real warning from Microsoft Security Essentials.
I'll be doing a full scan on the machine later this week, but I think it's 1 - 0 to us this time. Well done Emma for being on the ball too! Many wouldn't have been.
Despite constantly telling me I shouldn't be allowed anywhere near computers (as I tend to break them and are forever re-installing Windows, but as I try to tell her, that's partly due to the fact that I'm forever tinkering to try and learn more), she called me down from upstairs to advise.
As it happens I recently started running the free Microsoft Security Essentials pack (after a year with Avira Premium, which in all fairness caused me no end of trouble by being over secure), and although thus far I've never seen MSE flag a warning, I was pretty sure that this just looked like a web dialog box, and so told her to click the 'Cancel' button. That was probably the wrong thing to do but all that happened was the same dialog box appeared again. This time I told her to click the Close icon (the [X] button in the top right) and the dialog disappeared to be replaced with what looked like a windows explorer dialog with a scan taking place on the hard drives. This scan reported to find countless instances of malware and trojans.
I'll admit at this point I did a double take, again possibly due to the fact that (as yet) I've not been hit by a nasty while running the Security Essentials suite. That was only for a split-second I'm pleased to say, and a quick look at the icon in the top left of the window showed this was indeed another web page trying to scare us into buying a real trojan. We closed the web page, performed a quick scan via MSE (which took much longer than the full scan from the bogus web page) and sure enough the machine was reported as clean.
I was very impressed with this attack. The crooks had done a decent job and your average user, especially those who don't know about this variety of scam, would have been scared and possibly very tempted to download the 'cure', probably paying for the privilege.
Needless to say Emma has deleted this application from her Facebook list.
So what can we learn from this:
1. Beware of this type of scan.
2. Download security software and keep it up to date. Always go back to this to check if you suspect anything untoward is going on. No virus checker will catch everything, but at least you'll be starting from a point you trust.
3. Your main (day-to-day) user accounts should not be set up at an administrator level. Create an administrator account (or two if you are not the only user) and only use this to install software. For day to day usage use a user-level account, as you would under Unix. On this machine Emma’s user hasn't got Admin rights, so she would have needed to jump through many hoops to get the fake software to install. It's not foolproof, but it's actually one of the best defence approaches out there.
I'd also like to suggest to the suppliers of security suites that they have example dialog screen shots for users to refer to. The only time I paused to consider if this was real or fake was because I've never seen the real warning from Microsoft Security Essentials.
I'll be doing a full scan on the machine later this week, but I think it's 1 - 0 to us this time. Well done Emma for being on the ball too! Many wouldn't have been.
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Bloody Linux!
I've just spent all this evening trawling through the Ubuntu community help pages on LaunchPad, and trying various tools in Windows to get my Linux HDD to mount, all with no success.
So in the next couple of days I'll be trying to run from a Ubuntu Live installation to access the drives, after which I'm afraid I'll give up and loose the best part of 400Gb of data.
I'm not happy, there's a lot of work there (not to mention probably a few paid for software apps too).
I imagine won't be coming back to Linux for a long time, not least due to the attitude of some of the community members to people asking for help.
You know what, I don't want to be part of that scene. Goodbye Linux, you served me well right up to the point where you screwed me.
So in the next couple of days I'll be trying to run from a Ubuntu Live installation to access the drives, after which I'm afraid I'll give up and loose the best part of 400Gb of data.
I'm not happy, there's a lot of work there (not to mention probably a few paid for software apps too).
I imagine won't be coming back to Linux for a long time, not least due to the attitude of some of the community members to people asking for help.
You know what, I don't want to be part of that scene. Goodbye Linux, you served me well right up to the point where you screwed me.
Friday, 4 December 2009
PhotoSynth Updated
I see from an old posting on the Channel 9 RSS feed that Photosynth has been updated.
If you are interested in photographing locations or objects you really should take a look at this, it's awesome technology.
In other news you may have seen that Bing Maps is starting to use GeoTagged Photosynth images, so there's another chance to show off your photographic skills. I have images scattered over Google Maps via the postings I've made to Panoramio, so it will be interesting to see if any of my synths make it to Bing.
I should probably check that they're geo-tagged first!
If you are interested in photographing locations or objects you really should take a look at this, it's awesome technology.
In other news you may have seen that Bing Maps is starting to use GeoTagged Photosynth images, so there's another chance to show off your photographic skills. I have images scattered over Google Maps via the postings I've made to Panoramio, so it will be interesting to see if any of my synths make it to Bing.
I should probably check that they're geo-tagged first!
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Windows Home Server – Part IV
Well, I’m down to 10 days before my Windows Home Server trial installation expires, and as promised I’ve had a go at running the box with the graphics card removed. Actually, I also removed the TV tuner card that was still in there from when the box used to perform its Media Center duties.
The box booted, however the HDD was still spinning a few minutes later, then the box rebooted itself. Then the same thing happened again, then on the third (or possibly fourth) reboot everything settled down and now seems to be running normally.
So what’s the power draw with the two cards removed?
Prior to taking the cards out the machine was running at 102 watts (whilst the lower specified Biostar box was running around 90 watts).
The Shuttle box now also runs at about 90 watts, so a decent saving of about 10 watts (or 10%) so I’d get an extra couple of hours a day for free on the electricity bill, or about 3 days a month. Worthwhile.
As a matter of interest, unplugging the power from the DVD re-writer drive drops this to 89 watts, but to be honest the meter I’m using isn’t likely to be that accurate.
The other point to note is that there is only room for 3 HDD inside the box, and this will up the power requirements a little. I’ll investigate this more later, but I reckon that if I install the OS on the 500Gb drive from the Ubuntu machine, then use a 25oGb for the second drive and either another 25oGb or 160Gb drive for the third (depending what I can salvage) then I should be good to go. This also depends somewhat on me getting the stuff off the old Ubuntu installation first. It’s on the to-do list.
Hmmmm, I wonder if I can force another drive in somehow.
(I’ve just had a look and possibly if I mount the drives vertically. Or have one outside the case – risky considering its intended location. We’ll see – perhaps the BIOS won’t allow it….)
Stay tuned.
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