Month: March 2009

Creating a bootable USB drive for Windows

Dave has an excellent post on how to create a bootable USB drive for installing Vista or maybe Win 7. You could also use WinRAR to extract your ISO directly on to the flash drive (after formatting it as NTFS of course). A couple of points to remember though:

  • Make sure you use a “flash” drive (or USB stick) and not a USB HDD drive as some of those have issues with this.
  • Check different USB ports – all of them may not allow to boot up.

WHS now on MSDN

Windows Home Server (the amazing little box), is finally available on MSDN. I had bought an OEM license soon after it had come out and have been using it for some time at home. This can only be good and allow a wider set of adoption. If you have not used it – I would highly recommend that you do. Here is the screenshot from MSDN:

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Win 7 and loading ISO’s

If you are on Win 7 (any build) you will find quickly that Daemon tools don’t work on that. Even if it was working, I would in any case recommend ditching Daemon tools and recommend using Virtual Clone Drive which not only is free but also works like a champ. I use it on Vista as well.

A homage to Farts

A fart it is a pleasant thing,
It gives the belly ease,
It warms the bed in winter,
And suffocates the fleas.

A fart can be quiet,
A fart can be loud,
And some often leave
A powerful, poisonous cloud.

A fart can be short,
Or a fart can be long,
Some farts have been known
To sound like a song….

A fart can create
A  curious medley,
A fart can be harmless,
Or silent , and deadly.

A fart might not smell,
While others are vile,
A fart may pass quickly,
Or linger a while……

A fart can occur
In a number of places,
And leave everyone there,
With strange looks on their faces.

From wide-open prairie,
To small elevators,
A fart will find all of us
Sooner or later.

That farts are all bad,
Is simply not true-
We must never forget….
Sweet old farts like you!

Poetry @ its finest. Big Smile

Disable Auto-tuning on Windows

Receive Window Auto-Tuning is a feature in this version of Windows that improves networking performance when you are using newer networking hardware, but the feature might cause problems with older networking hardware. Sometimes, disabling Auto-Tuning might solve your problem.

To disable Auto-Tuning:

  1. Click the Start button , and then, in the Search box, type cmd.
  2. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER to run the program as an administrator. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
  3. At the command prompt, type netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable, and then press Enter.
  4. When the process has finished, restart your computer. If this procedure does not solve the problem, you can turn Auto-Tuning back on by repeating steps a and b of this procedure, typing netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal, and then pressing Enter.

MIT’s Wearable 6th Sense

MIT’s Media Lab has a prototype of a wearable 6th sense – pretty damn cool – initially seems to get you thinking “what is the point?”; but sit it out and it will all make sense! Of course the whole “6th sense” is glamorizing it a bit, it is more JIT info.

I wonder what happens if your phone is not in a 3G/HSDPA coverage and what the battery drain on the phone is with the data connection always on and how big is your phone bill (most people don’t have unlimited data options on their mobile).

What Blogging Engine (other than CS)?

I am using Community Server 2007 for my blog. I originally started in .Text (which some of you ‘old timers’ might remember as being open source) and had modified the code a fair amount to something I wanted. Over the years stuck with that and then CS 1.0, 2.0, etc as .Text was ‘morphed’ into Community Server (CS) from Telligent.

While overall I have been happy with CS 2007 off late I have been quite put off with it due to a few reasons:

  • I liked the open source elements and CS now is just too commercialized for my taste.
  • Even though I have configured comments and feedback – all of that is broken and I just can’t seem to fix it (part of the reason is not having too much time to dig into a lot of details).
  • Upgrade to CS 2008 fails – miserably – many moons ago I spend a whole day trying to get this upgraded and it just did not work. No one on Telligent’s forum could successfully point to what is wrong. I rolled back to CS 2007.
  • Upgrades other than not working – generally are quite painful.

I am ready to move to something else – but there are a few things that need to be supported:

  • I host my own domain (stating the obvious if you are reading this), etc so need this running in something I control – or in other words hosted blogs (e.g. MSN, Google’s, etc.) are out. I already have IIS and SQL Server database.
  • Need to be able to move my existing posts from CS 2007 to whatever I move to.
  • Preferably: Support multiple blogs – though right now it’s only one, but some off the family members might want one later.
  • Need to support XML-RPC (a.k.a MetaWeblog API)
  • Ability to post code and script snippets – am ignoring the XRC issues obviously. Smile

I have looked at BlogEngine.NET and that does look quite promising. Has anyone used that? What about the other things out there such as WordPress and Movable Type (don’t know much about them)? There are quite a few listed here but I am not sure which one is fit for my needs..

U2 and BCC

The BCC hosted a “secret” and surprise gig for U2 where they played on the roof of the BBC Broadcasting House on Regents Street in London. I heard about it in the news and then watched it via the Red Button. It was only a few songs but it was awesome. Of course, you can catch it again on iPlayer (for those of you in the UK). Those who cannot get to iPlayer can watch the whole thing on YouTube. Smile