It's the journey, not the destination

Camera RAW & HDR

2010-04-24T00:25:00.001+01:00

My camera, a Panasonic TZ5 cannot produce RAW format images & that seems to be a loss given all the nice features such as the ability to change exposure (EV) in the raw editors (in my instance Photoshop CS3 Camera Raw). Imagine my surprise to discover that using "Open As" instead of "Open" one can then select "Camera Raw" as the file type & select a JPG or TIF files and get the raw editor on screen.

So, I've been tinkering & have taken a macro shot of a daisy taken as the sun went down yesterday :

and produced firstly this from just the raw tool :
,
unfortunately it seems to lose a lot of brightness during the lossy save / upload process and then using the Raw tools to change the exposure I created 3 files of -4,0 & +4 EV and ran it through Photomatix
:.

I know they're not great pictures but this discovery means a much greater scope for control of a picture and HDR is now possible, I'm even more encouraged having found an article comparing HDR pictures produced using RAW pictures vs images produced using files generated using the camera raw editor.

There's some work to be done - I need to start with a great picture first....

HP ink refills

2010-04-01T06:00:00.000+01:00

I have just had my second try at refilling Hewlett Packard inkjet cartridges. This is something I have tried before with varying degrees of success and more often failure or at the very least success with messy fingers.

Refilling cartridges does appear to make financial sense, I have an HP Photosmart D5460 which produces awesome colour photo output, at present a set of cartridges is around £80 and that is more than 50% of the purchase cost whilst a complete set of inks with the refill tools (the modern ones are good) cost around £23 and I think will do around 4 refills (the box says 5 but with it's hardly an exact science).

Clearly there are downsides to refills (besides messy fingers), chief of which is uncertain print quality and uncertain robustness of the inks - if you are printing photos to display / keep for a long time then sticking to HP manufactured cartridges is essential.

But what if you just want the odd snap to show people and are not concern about longevity? Or you are printing web pages / text for convenience of your work / hobbies (so we print web pages to have a hard copy to refer to when working off screen quite frequently)? Who cares how long the colours stay bright.

I have purchased a set of inks from Inktec. I don't recall any magic claims about longevity of the colours but they are supposed to be consistent colour blah blah and they come from a business specialising in refills - there are plenty of cheaper sources out there, particularly ebay. These come with tools which actually work, the instructions are good but take a couple of goes to figure out.

My experience? Well I have found my HP D5460 cartridges have a little ink window on the bottom that fills with ink, once I realised I monitored how full that was (hold the cartridges the right way up as the ink simply sinks down into the window) and that is the indicator.

The big trick with this HP5460 is the software. HP have been very clever to make sure you keep buying their cartridges, the printer bleats if non originals are used - firstly, refilling the existing cartridge is a disaster as the printer keeps saying the the cartridge needs replacing. So the trick is to have 2 sets of cartridges so refilling the "old" set means the printer just tells you that you've inserted a previously used cartridge and asks you to press ok. Job done.

These refills are great. Just remember to refill over a sink.

Chailey Mill

2010-03-28T20:03:00.001+01:00

I went out for a bike ride this afternoon, grabbing a sunny & warm moment between the rain showers we've had for the last few days & on my way around I spotted a view of Chailey Windmill that I had not previously noticed. I've cycled the same route no end of times and just hadn't noticed the mill on the horizon, nor the church for that matter.
>
I've never visited Chailey Mill and having lived in the vicinity for the last 7 or 8 years I think this might be something worth taking Alex to see in the summer.

Unknown medals

2010-03-21T16:10:00.002Z

Does anyone know what these medals are for please?

From Chris

They are labelled "Queen Charlotte 1761-1818", "Awarded For Service" and I cannot find them on Google (pictures or words) & cannot find them on a number of medal sites I've lookedat.

Thanks

Iomega Iconnect

2010-03-17T20:47:00.000Z

I've spotted a scattering of previews and a single review of the Iomega Iconnect which is now available. What a great idea, a USB device that hosts other usb devices and is accessible via the normal TCP/IP network capabilities (wired or wireless) of your PC.

This looks really handy to me - I can plug in my 1TB backup drive, a USB memory stick and a printer. At £60 it is an almost unique item at a sensible cost.

It is actually available for purchase now (in fact iomega emailled me to tell me so) and the Iomega site has demo of the web interface that you will get in production.

Unfortunately, it has the typical design flaw applied to usb devices designed by someone who hasn't got a clue, firstly, not enough USB ports, so very quickly you would need two of these, good for making money, not so good for sockets and secondly, usb on the front and back so it doesn't matter how the device is positioned messy wires still protrude - for pete's sake designers, spend a little time thinking about who will actually use these things & how, casual USB use will still be via the desktop.

Discouraged, actually no, the device looks so great, it even has remote internet access, admittedly via a pay for service but you'd have to fiddle with port forwarding on your router anyway (well except for those of you who forgot security) so why not just skip the web service and let yourself directly in?

So why haven't I purchased on yet? Well I have an HP D5460 printer with the usual 2 way usb capabilities - it is used on 2 PCs & I've got the usb cable taped to a desk leg for convenience of swapping over so having the printer on the network would be great but I do like the 2 way comms.

More and more devices support modern usb features, does the Iomega Connect? Who knows, the manual does not say but what it does say is "connect a supported printer". Is there a list of supported printers? No.

I've raised a support call with Iomega - they have responded which is good - they even responded same day (now 7 days ago) with "we'll check to see if a supported printer list exists". Why say connect a supported printer if you don't know what is supported.

There, that's off my chest now.

SQL Server Job Rerun Utility

2010-02-24T22:05:00.001Z

Ever had a server with numerous scheduled tasks that suffers numerous failures? It happens, one day your SQL Server is working then the next several jobs fail, you diligently rerun them all which takes you hours. Perhaps you even find the same problem again, maybe a drive is on the way out causing an intermittent problem, maybe some evil techie turned off that tape drive for purposes known only to him. Maybe your jobs are running but never finishing so you have to cancel some to free up resources.

You've got a problem. You need to fix it.

But you also need a way to quickly and easily rerun all of your outstanding jobs because that can take hours. Microsoft provide

[msdb].[dbo].[sp_start_job] 'job name'

to help out but that's only good for one job.

I've written the following code to rerun any jobs that have failed or been cancelled which fit the given name using the standard like syntax, waiting for a specified delay between each.

Syntax is

usp_ReRunJobs 'job name', 'delay'

where 'job name' is literally the textual name of the job ie if all of your full backups are called 'Full Backup Of xxxx' then 'Full Backup %', alternatively, just '%' to do everything, whilst 'delay' is in the format 'hh:mm:ss' ie '00:00:30' means a 30 second delay between each job.

You might have even tried the retries feature of scheduled jobs - that works wonders except where a job is genuinely broken and the retry impacts on the next job and so on, so usp_ReRunJobs could be scheduled to run daily after the usual job complete as a backstop.

Here's the code :

IF OBJECT_ID ( 'usp_ReRunJobs', 'P' ) IS NOT NULL
    DROP PROCEDURE usp_ReRunJobs

go
create procedure usp_ReRunJobs (
      @Name       varchar(255)      = 'Full Backup%',
      @Delay            varchar(8)        = '00:00:60'
)
as
begin

      set nocount on

      IF ISDATE('2000-01-01 ' + @Delay + '.000') = 0
    BEGIN
        SELECT 'Invalid time ' + @Delay + ',hh:mm:ss, submitted.';
    END else begin

            create table #xp_results(
            job_id uniqueidentifier not null,
            last_run_date int not null,
            last_run_time int not null,
            next_run_date int not null,
            next_run_time int not null,
            next_run_schedule_id int not null,
            requested_to_run int not null, -- bool
            request_source int not null,
            request_source_id sysname collate database_default null,
            running int not null, -- bool
            current_step int not null,
            current_retry_attempt int not null,
            job_state int not null )

            declare @JName                varchar(255)
            declare cJobs cursor fast_forward for
                  select      j.name
                  from msdb..sysjobs j
                  join msdb..sysjobhistory j2 on j.job_id = j2.job_id
                  where j.name like @Name
                  and         j.enabled = 1
                  and         j2.instance_id = (
                                                            SELECT            max(h.instance_id)
                                                            FROM       [msdb].[dbo].[sysjobhistory] h
                                                            where       j2.job_id = h.job_id
                              )
                  and         not exists (
                                                      select      x.job_id
                                                      from #xp_results x
                                                      where x.job_id = j.job_id
                                                      and         x.running = 1
                              )
                  and         j2.run_status not in ('1','4')
                  order by j.name

            insert #xp_results exec master.dbo.xp_sqlagent_enum_jobs @is_sysadmin = 1, @job_owner= ''
            open cJobs
            fetch next from cJobs into @JName
            while @@fetch_status = 0
            begin
                  select 'Started '+@JName
                  exec msdb..sp_start_job @Job_Name = @JName
                  waitfor delay @Delay
                  fetch next from cJobs into @JName
            end
            close cJobs
            deallocate cJobs

            drop table #xp_results

      end
end
go

I'm not claiming it's the prettiest code or the most efficient but it gets the job done. The only thing I haven't managed to crack is getting the job start message appearing during the execution of the code so if you want to watch your jobs you'll have to resort to activity monitor, I have tried raiserror nowait but that didn't work either but that is a downside I can live with given on the second day of having this code in place it saved me about an hour of rerunning tasks by hand.

Roses are red, or not

2010-02-23T23:54:00.000Z

Photo taken in macro mode on a Panasonic DMC-TZ5, hand held - this was the only one I took that wasn't distinctly out of focus, hand held clearly being a bad plan for macro at the best of times but I had to take the opportunity as I knew I would never get around to getting the tripod out.

GPEDIT.MSC & backing up on shutdown.

2010-02-18T23:22:00.001Z

A handy tip for making backups - I have discovered another useful feature in gpedit.msc on Windows 7, I presume it probably exists in XP & Vista as well but I cannot confirm having converted wholesale to Windows 7 lately.

If you run gpedit.msc and navigate to Computer Configuration >> Windows Settings >> Scripts you will find a start and shutdown option. Right click on either in the right hand pane and select properties & you will find a list of scripts to run at startup / shutdown.

I've created a short robocopy script to backup the user directories to a different destination on shutdown which gives me a little more security for my important files. Using robocopy makes the process pretty quick as I'm only copying over changes.

Here's a sample of the robocopy script :

robocopy "c:\Users" "d:\UserBackup" /log:"d:\UserBackup.txt" /np /xj /lev:10 /S /XF ntuser*.* *.tmp desktop.ini thumbs.db picasa.ini /xd "c:\Users\each user\AppData" /ZB /R:1 /W:5 /purge

You will note that I exclude the AppData folder for each user - if my machine dies and I have to rebuild I'm only interested in user generated documents not any config details but essentially the exclude directory (/xd) and exclude file (/xf) section can be preety much as long as you like - and mine is in the live version.

Robocopy & UAC

2010-02-17T23:13:00.000Z

One of the most annoying things about Vista & Windows 7 is User Access Control (UAC), all those pop up messages trying to stop me doing what I want to do whilst letting naughty software continue as it pleases. I figure it is worth leaving enabled just in case it helps one day.

However, that leaves me with one major annoyance and that is my ability to just run robocopy.

Well, I've found a fix it seems - I've been looking for a while and there seems to be no single answer that actually works but now I've got something. It's cheating a bit because it's working on the assumption that the user you are running as is an Administrator (you are doing backups so seems reasonable)

Create your robocopy batch file and then create a shortcut to the batch file and goto the properties of the shortcut, select "Advanced" and tick "Run As Administrator".

Now go into gpedit.msc and browse to Computer Configuration -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options, you will find at the end of the list of settings in the right hand pane a number of UAC settings, mine are now :

You'll need to reboot after making any changes to the group policy.

Cats

2010-02-05T08:40:00.001Z

Following the loss of Cylde before Christmas we adopted two big black brothers (oh er) from the Cat's Protection League.

From 2010

They've been with us for 3 weeks now and are fitting in nicely.

They came named Bertie & Bassett and are the better part of 12 years old but very friendly and like a lap to sit on in the evening.

Like all cats they seem to grab opportunities to drink out of the toilet bowl and Bassett likes blackcurrant squash - I caught him with his head in my pint glass slurping away.

Remote access to SSIS or SSRS

2010-02-04T16:07:00.001Z

I've recently encountered an issue with enabling users to remotely access SSRS and SSIS (SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Integration Services).

My problem comes about when the users affected are not in the Local Admins group on the destination server - we want to lockdown rights to the box whilst still allowing SQL services to be accessible via SSMS (SQL Server Management Studio).

The users can still access SSRS remotely because they can go via the web interface but as anyone who uses it frequently will know it is so slow compared to using SSMS.

The fix to enable remote access to SSIS is as follows :
Goto Control Panel -> Administrative Tools on the destination server
1) Add the users (their login accounts, or even better an AD group) to the Distributed Com Users group unders Users & Groups. We found this step necessary but that might vary on different servers, the ordering of these steps doesn't really matter so if you fancy you could try it later. We have also added the users into the other SQL server groups there too (probably just "for good measure").

2) Goto Component services -> Computers -> My Computer, right click and go into Properties, Com Security and add the same users / group with the Remote Access privilege - you shouldn't need to add others because the everyone group should do that for you.

At this point Integration Services should now be accessible via Management Studio but Reporting Services is probably telling you it does not know the machine name you've entered (try it, go on). So to finish off for Report Services :

3) Open Computer Management, browse to Services and Applications -> WMI Control and right click on it then open Properties -> Security and finally add the requried users or group with the Remote Enable privilege. This is rather brute force, if you want more granular control let me know if you find which individual modules need amending.
Job done.

HTPC Update

2010-02-01T07:26:00.004Z

Well the HTPC is running nicely & the album view for Music selection is great - even Alex (4 years old) understands the interface. Still having a few problems using the texting style input (the key with * on it only choose * not the other characters).

I rather like the feature of being able to shuffle all my music (around 20,000 tracks) and play through photos at the same time. Isn't remarkable how many photos I took sideways?

One flaw has been spotted with MCE though and that is that the scheduled time does not automatically adjust when the programme moves - I guess that it's just a simple entry "record at this time & use this text to describe it" as opposed to our Freeview PVR box (Humax 9200) which seems to use the programme name (and then records every repeat on every channel which is annoying but at least not as disasterous as missing the programme entirely).

HTPC in service at long last

2010-01-20T23:36:00.002Z

My HTPC is in and working, the last hiccup was finding that the case was too deep for the cabinet (backs of cabinets are overrated anyway) - I measured width but never gave depth any thought. Windows Media Centre is legible on our CRT (I'm using VGA out & converting to composite using a cheap external converter off of ebay as our TV cannot cope with anything else) and good enough for standard resolution films. Sound is excellent using the SPDIF output. Just need to use it in the real world now and try the wife test.

Snowy pictures

2010-01-10T21:22:00.000Z

I suspect along with plenty of other people around the UK over the last few days I've been taking lots of pictures of snow, children with snow and more snow. Most of them too poor to show but generally passable because modern cameras have a handy "snow" setting to avoid grey snow. However, while editting and updating some of my pictures I came across some inspirtation, nothing new really just a different way of displaying a picture. So I gave it a go....

...all I need to do now is find a decent picture and get the spacing just right and I'm onto a winner. Oh, by the way, the picture is of the start & end (& vice versa) of the Snowdown Horseshoe taken end of November 2008.

Finally....

2009-12-20T15:07:00.000Z

I think the HTPC is ready to go! Finally. It's been a long road, largely because I like fiddling and want everything just right. I've worked my way through Vista, XP and onto Windows 7. Now it all works. It is not perfect (for instance, Media Browser is rather slow to start, I could fix that with a ramdisk but that just adds complexity to the solution hence more things to fail) but it is usable by normal people.

Finally have all my move information up to date, Mediabrowser is a great product and when coupled with Media Center Master to get movie information works well. Incidentally, I installed the latter on a different machine so I can control updates and avoid extra software on the media centre machine.

Happy? No, now I want to put it into a smaller box (disappointingly the dual core atoms are still a little lacking and I would already need to have two 640Gb laptop drives so getting costly and limiting on hardware). I also want a mini wireless keyboard with built in mouse / trackball but don't want to pay £30 for one - I'll test the remote more and see how we get on without.

HTPC

2009-12-17T16:13:00.000Z

Finally, after, shall we say an extended period, I got around to attaching my home theatre pc to the television downstairs. The TV is an old CRT so I didn't hold out much hope but to my amazement I have a picture where the Windows 7 Media Center text is readable (I've connected up using a VGA to RGB / s-video converter off of ebay).

The sound works fine through the TV although a little quiet via the stereo, however, time to try the toslink optical cable. Er, yes, a little louder, I could see the cones moving through the mesh on the speakrs, certainly the loudest they've ever handled. Ouch.

So all in all a resounding success.

Just one more job, putting the HTPC into the TV cabinet.

Oh dear, when I measured the cabinet it was big enough for the HTPC case (a silverstone gd01). I forgot hinges! Doh.

One of those days

2009-12-05T13:27:00.001Z

We went to see Alex at Stagecoach today - every term there is a session where the children how off the things they have learned & how he grinned. I filmed almost all of it on my Panasonic DMC-TZ5 in HD format. The camera did give me a warning that it had to stop recording because the Sd card couldn't keep up. So imagine my disappointment in discovering that the whole card is corrupt!

But some good news. I purchased Photo Rescue (v 2.1) just over 4 years ago & still had a copy on hand. It works perfectly, churned away at the SD card for about 30 minutes, fully automatic, spot on.

More Woes

2009-11-11T20:15:00.001Z

There is plenty on the net talking about how insomniac Windows 7 is - it wakes up for everything. That's generally pretty easy to resolve, open up task scheduler and edit all the tasks (30 mins if you can keep focus on the excitement).

However, one task is missing from the scheduled jobs & that is Windows update. I've had it confirmed by a Microsoft person that automatic updates will wake the PC if it is asleep to download updates. Personally, I find that really annoying & it should be a setting on the automatic updates page, however, we are where we are. I searched high & low throught scheduled tasks to discover, unless it is hiding under a cunningly disguised name, Windows update is not a scheduled task.

But clearly it is scheduled. Aha, it's hiding, right here : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update

I am still trying to find out if it is possible to only do updates if already awake (automatically, I don't need the hassle of having to press a button for myself) but a more important issue raises itself - what other Microsoft (& other less dodgy stuff like trojans & viruses) makes use of "hidden" scheduled tasks?

Big brother probably is watching incidentally did you hear the news that the UK government is going to store all of our web activity soon?. Sitting comfortably?

Windows 7, less impressed

2009-11-08T20:32:00.001Z

Well my Windows 7 installation is completed. Just a bit more tinkering required - primarily I wanted to get My Movies installed but I seem to have fallen foul of some issues & I'm not the only one it seems.

Firstly, it seems at random that the live tv fails - well, that is where I first noticed it but on further testing it seems that live tv, recorded tv and movies all have an occasional problem where they just spend forever trying to load or do load and then stutter or just show a black screen. A reboot seems to clear the problem but I had to start fiddling when the problem happened immediately after boot up for the firs time.

The behaviour is reminiscent of codec problems but I'm using the new Media Foundation, Divx (to handle MKV & DIVX) and PowerDVD. The oddity is that if this really were a codec issue surely it would be everytime? A check with filmerit reveals problems with quicktime files but that clearly isn't the problem because they play fine. A longer check with gspot reveals a problem with PowerDVD (version 8 something) but uninstall only makes more of a mess of the codecs - they are still registered but clearly not accessible. Testing some files reveals that the missing codecs have made no difference whatsoever & gspot confirms the problem exists even with mpeg 1 files created when recording tv. Not sure how to progress this one but there are other problems which this has revealed......

It seems that after a movie has finished playing the system keeps the file locked & hence never allows sleep mode to happen automatically - you can press sleep (menu or remote) and that works and sorts the issue out, it is just the automation dies. While on the sleep subject, I changed the scheduled tasks to stop Windows waking up for every event microsoft could think of (goto scheduled tasks & check / edit each one - you will find most are running far more frequently than you need and if they are set to be stopped if they run for too long, too long is considered to be 3 days so you might want to change that too).

Not sure if this behaviour happens for music because it is at that point that I broke my install and have had to start the reinstall - that's pretty disappointing because I had also found that no matter what I did I could not get windows to acknowledge the 2nd partition with a duplicate copy of the first on it - my XP install had this arrangement so if the first got corrupted I could just copy the second back, as opposed to mirroring where the corruption gets copied too, but Windows 7 just ignores it's own settings. So, I broke the install by flagging both partitions as active - you don't want to do that! At least I now get to rethink my install sequence and make backups as I go along.

I've found a new problem during the reinstall. Windows has some nasty files it hides (bootmgr being the one in my mind now as it caused the reinstall) during install, so when I installed on my 2nd drive and removed the first on reboot, sure enough it seems that nasty files are stored on the first disk.

While the install works itself through, I will mention My Movies, this is a smart product to include decent pictures & movie information into WMC. It works nicely but the user interface is hardly intuitive (the "let's find what movies you've got" isn't the first option or even presented in a Wizard) and it has 3 other huge problems. Ffirstly, it constantly reindexes the files it already has recorded which meant I kept getting messages like "5 new files added" which you have to manually ok. Secondly, series are very messy (they are in Movies too). FInally, the worst issue is that the movies I found information from the online service where I had an ISO file (.ISO image of the original - ie the ones I own) would insist on loading the file exactly as labelled on the original disk - so if you didn't have precisely the same version as the person who uploaded the information in the first place it became worthless & would ask you to put the CD in. I can see why this is but I would have thought the sensible code would allow you to run whatever file it finds in the given directory then users can choose (and rename files to something meaningful in some cases).

Better finish fixing Windows 7 now. Wish me luck and the memory to avoid that Realtek 8139 driver update on Windows update that kills the device.....

Media Center on Vista

2009-11-01T14:33:00.000Z

I'm almost "finished" configuring my shiny new Windows 7 install for HTPC use & this will feature Windows 7's Media Center product. In a fit of enthusiasm I thought I would have a look at MCE on my Vista laptop to see if I could make use of it & hence remove MediaPortal to reduce the amount of installed software.

All started well, the interface, although largely the same is subtly different & I'm left wondering why my videos are hiding under the pictures section rather than TV & Movies. Unfortunately what I've now discovered is the Vista's MCE is pants. For starters the codecs installed on my laptop are solidly ignored so none of my home videos open (not the .avi ones, not the .mov ones & not the .mp4 ones) and what is worse is when I point the library at my movies it causes MCE to crash. Of course, Microsoft have been helpful in that it tries to restart but unsurprisingly, having crashed one, it crashes again, and restarts, and crashes again. No, that is not fair, it crashes just the once and gives up, sometimes I get taken to a Microshaft page which says I should check for updates (done & there aren't any - surely the software could check before offering the option?) and asks me if the information was helpful.

My conclusion on Windows Media Center on Vista? Well, can you imagine how much fun I had repeatedly explaining why the information offered was not helpful, oh yes and then some but I bet no one reads it as the online answers to "I have a Vista problem" now seem to be "why are you still using Vista?".

Windows 7, it's here

2009-10-26T21:43:00.017Z

Well, launch day for Windows 7 was 22 October 2009 & I can see that my copy (yes, I have purchased a legitimate copy of Windows 7 Professional) was posted in time to arrive on the launch day.
Sure enough I arrived home to find the package in my house on the day of launch - I'm pretty impressed that the release was co-ordinated well enough to deliver on the release day. Happy so far.

So, what shall I do with it? Well, first try is an old 80Gb SATA (that's SATA not SATA II) drive in my htpc. Boot off DVD, 20 mins of churning and it's there. Impresed twice now, no having to manually reboot several time, good progress info but nothing on screen saying "your install will complete in 28 minutes" for 2 hours. Nice.

Does it work though. Well, yes. My sound card & wireless card have not been picked up but everything else is functional, even the graphics card gets a driver first time out.

Installing the wireless card proves a trial - largely because I've forgotten a trick - I have a netgear WPN111 and the smartwizard makes light work of installation unless you cancel it the first time, oops, yes I did just that & now it opens & closes and does nothing else. So I have to rely on the built in Windows wireless config - so after half a dozen reboots and having to enter the same information repeatedly the settings finally stick. There must be an easier way of getting wireless config sorted but it's certainly not unique to Windows 7. Luckily the sound card installs no problems.

It's only then that I remember to check for driver updates from the motherboard manufacturer (I'm using a Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H which in theory is a great board but was dropped pretty quickly, probably because Gigabyte got sick of me raising queries about why their BIOS randomly forgets or ignores settings). To my surprise there are some updates so they get loaded on too. No problems so far. Still impressed.

Windows Update is busily doing it's thing & is painless.

Boot times are acceptable especially given that boot times on Vista were measured in geological ages & I've got an old SATA drive in use (which I later discover has a problem and occasionally decides to have a rest) & is certainly on a par with XP Professional which my HTPC install has been using.

Sleep mode is something else. I have no idea why but XP sleep always goes via the BIOS loading screens first whilst Windows 7 sleep goes direct from pressing the power button to the login screen, massive restart saving. I'm happy with that especially having recently discovered that this machine uses 4.1 watts in sleep, 3.8 in standby and 3.8 turned off - that was a surprise that my machine is off but it's using the same level of power as hibernate whilst sleep uses an irrelevant amount more considering the benefit. A bit of research (with my friend google) discovers that the PSU always takes power to enable facilities such as WOL (wake on lan - that nice idea that doesn't work with wireless cards for some reason). I use a UPS so having the machine in sleep mode is pretty safe.

I've changed the config to log me straight into the desktop (security freaks please run screaming around the room now) - much more practical for a HTPC which the wife might try to use that having a password on a box that might not have a keyboard attach. Going straight to desktop is a little weird in Windows 7 because it does a lot of loading of services and whatnot after login to reduce start time so sometimes it does loads of disk churning before showing the desktop when bypassing the password which would ordinarily not show while you peck away at the keyboard.

Why am I installing Windows 7 on my HTPC? I've spent something like a year (or is it two?) trying to get a "perfect" setup or at least something that I can live with. I don't have Media Centre on XP but I do on Vista and it's rubbish, it's can't play HD, it can't do this, it can't do that and it doesn't play this format or that one etc Yuk Yuk Yuk. So I've tested all the freely available media centre products I could lay my hands on and iMedian which came with my Silverstone GD01 (great case, far too big but I have a passive CPU cooler & only using one of the internal fans with the guard removed so pretty quiet). iMedian was probably a student's final year project to demonstrate how to make a difficult to use system. The best product out there is MediaPortal. It has everything and does everything but takes quite a lot of configuration and has endless options. Great product and fully working but just when I'm happy the next version appears with no upgrade path.......and Windows 7 is coming so let's wait and try MediaPortal on Windows 7 for a kicks.

If you are still reading you will be interested to know that I started typing this as soon as I commenced a reinstall on my machine using a Hitatchi 1TB SATA II drive & I've got this far and Windows 7 is sitting at the desktop ready to use with me having only had to configure half a dozen simple steps the hardest of which was rekeying the product key - so install time < 30 minutes. A reinstall already surely not? Yes, I've spent a few hours this weekend and two solid evenings tinkering with Windows 7 and I'm happy that it works, all my questions answered and it's stable. All files formats I need work (I've had to use Divx Converter to convert my MKV files to DIVX but that was no big deal).

Windows 7 is awesome - Microsoft you have got it right, well done, I think I'm going to add this to the list of Microsoft successes (the other two are Visio and SQL Server so it seems to me that this is the first one that Microsoft have actually developed for themselves).

So what's converted me. Well Windows 7 installs easily. Everything I have tried works. Unlike on Vista, file operations happen in the near future - I don't think they are as good as XP was still and certainly pathetic compared to Linux but not painful. Sleep is great and happens when expected, I've had one hiccup on resume but that hasn't repeated since the piles of updates have been downloaded.

Windows Media Centre for Windows 7 is excellent, it picked up my TV card (hauppage wintv-hvr-3000) with no problems, loaded up the satellite channels, gives me a TV guide. Adding My Movies makes movies a pleasure to access and adding Divx resolves the only file format problem I encountered. TV recording within 5 minutes of original install. My iMon remote and front panel work perfectly too which is miles better than I every managed with MediaPortal.

All in all Windows 7 is very impressive and is going into service tonight.

Taking one's life into one's hands

2009-10-20T21:27:00.002+01:00

I have not made much effort to make "social comment" as such but today I thought a gripe was due.

Last night I cycled between Wivelsfield Green and Burgess Hill. It is dark out there, really dark, virtually no street lights, not a whole lot of traffic and just bike lights. To add to the collection my rucksack has reflective strips on the straps.

Clearly, I am not going to be as visible as a car but hardly invisible so why is it that some drivers persist in driving at you with full beam on. Do they thing that whilst it might blind another driver it won't blind a cyclist? Is it just because a cyclist cannot retaliate with his own full beam. Oh no, my suspicion is that both inconsiderate and stupid drivers are out there at night as well as during the day.

Well I feel better for that so if you are one of those drivers, please try thinking about what you are doing.

Abstract Rose

2009-10-16T09:45:00.000+01:00

Here is a second version of my earlier abstract rose picture - this again was taken with a Fuji S602 zoom and is off a rose which was growing in the garden of my last house and was taken using natural light coming in through the patio doors.

Alex's Fourth Birthday

2009-10-14T21:43:00.001+01:00

Alex's 4th birthday has come and gone - we had a party with a horde of 3 to 5 year olds on Sunday where the rampaged around the house in packs creating havoc for a few hours, we didn't need to organise anything, just let them run wild, huge success. The party food is worth a note - Alex had some cocktail sausages, well, Alex had most of the cocktail sausages and nothing else, just a big plate of sausages. Clyde had some tuna sandwiches, shame he can't do the plate thing yet.

Tuesday was the birthday day complete with a trip to the Brighton Sea Life Centre by train. A fantastic time had by all, even feeding the big turtle and having a trip to Nandos on the way home. I took Alex and Ewan on the train home and they did yet more playing and present opening on arrival of grand parents with Ewan staying overnight.

Now I need a rest.

Sunday

2009-10-04T13:20:00.000+01:00

Woken up early by an all too sprightly Alex who wants to play with me - in fact he's built his hot wheels track and to show me attached it to a tape measure and towed the whole lot into the bedroom, obviously only waking me up in the process.

I think he's on something, after breakfast there is lots of bouncing around the lounge and making a car out of my carrymat (why it has become a car I don't know), unfortunately the mind your drink (pineapple juice) warning failed as somehow the car managed to shoot him out of its window (?), off of the settee, across the nest of tables and into a heap on the floor, along with said drink soaking him and everything else in the process. Lovely aroma of pineapple wafting around the lounge now.

Then we went swimming, had to purchase some new goggles because the plastic between the lenses had broken on his original Speedo ones but the new Zoggs ones are all in one moulded plastic and fit much better which has been a boost for what can be done around water, hence, swimming was a huge success with lots of swimming on his own, still with arm bands and mad splashing but followed by lots of jumping in (he now knows that a belly flop hurts) and going down the slide and leaping through the waterfall.