Live Essentials Wave 4 Beta Testing…

So I have now installed Live Essentials 4 beta..and I am now checking it out..

Pre-installation

One thing that did make me pause was the uninstallation of Live Mesh client. I have been using the Live Mesh to synchronise my OneNote Folders as well as the Pictures Directory on my Mobile Phone. Now I guess I have to work out how I am going to progress.

Obviously I can’t stay the same way because, by all accounts Live Mesh is on the way out. Live Sync can sync between PC’s and use a 2Gb space on SkyDrive. Combine this with OneNote Web and we should have a winner…

Besides, It is high time I overhauled my OneNote so as to match what I am trying to achieve with my GTD implementation. Once I can put my Notes into the cloud so it can be accessed from anywhere and any client, then I am once step closer to achieving GTD Nirvana…

Live Writer

well, Live Writer has been pretty simple so far… Not a great deal has changed when first looking at it bar the addition of the Ribbon.  I few Emoticons and  I downloaded some Plugins and away I went.. This was already a very good programs so I expected just a few finetuning changes.

Live Photo Gallery

Well, this certainly has changed… Lots of changes here, Ribbon, Ttagging options including GeoTagging, uploading to Flickr,Facebook, and YouTube built in instead of the previous downloadable add-ins (which are still picked up BTW) even hints of Metro UI.

Given the large amounts of photos and Videos on my Laptop (and even larger store on my PC at Home awaiting upload to my WHS) this will take some time to get my head around. I am definitely looking forward to the Batch People tag and seeing how that goes…

Live Messenger

I’m not so sure on Live messenger, a bi-i-ig new window for the full view, that’ll get reduced quick smart. A chocie of using the Windows Social or the NineMSN page when starting messenger was interesting, I keep away from NineMSN as much as I can. I’m not a big Messenger user so the Tabbed conversations , while very good, won’t get that much of a hammering by me… I certainly won’t be

Again, more implementation of the Metro UI concepts, in particular the menu options. I like this style and I am glad to see it gain more ground…

Live Sync

The Live Sync clients starts up nad gives you three option in the first window

1. Add Folder
2. Internet Explorer – Turn on Syncing
3. Microsoft Office – Turn on Syncing

The Internet Explorer Version syncs your Favourites and the Office option syncs you Signatures and stuff. I don’t know that I will be using these ones too much… I like the separation of Home and Work a little too much for that.

Live Family Safety, Live Mail, Live Movie Maker

I won’t be using these products on this laptop so we’ll have to wait until I get on my Home machines for that..

GTD MK III – The final piece….

The final piece of my Stationery fix for my GTD arrived yesterday… The Rhodia Meeting Book..

Now I can use this for both meetings and concept planning. I got in in A4 so that I wouldn’t be cramped for room. I love the Action column on the right side of the page so I can separate the Action items from the rest of the notes. While I had though of keeping my note-taking electronic and using my laptop or Netbook, I realised that my typing is not anywhere near fast enough or is it even close to being accurate enough….

So now I have everything set…. Diary, Notepads and the Meeting Book.  My Pen is still just a Bic e.3 – a combo Pen, Pencil (using 2B) and Stylus. I don’t see any real need to move away from that at this stage… cheap, reliable and it fits well in my hand.

Now comes the two hardest bits… the clean-out… My Pack-rat habits have been formed over a looong time and have unfortunately been reinforced by saving my butt a couple of times. time to get critical in my review on what needs to be tossed and what needs to be filed…

the other difficult one is maintaining the process. A bit like my attempts to move from look-typing to touch-typing… It needs dedication to the process and the ease and speed will come. I just hope it is a lot more successful than my typing transition.

GTD Mk II – new diary

So as part of my re-organisation of my processes to a more GTD-friendly setup, I have already got my diary for next year …

This year, I went for a quality diary rather than something newsagent special. last year, I didn’t go with a diary, looking to keep it all electronic. however, the theory was much better than the practical. While everything was synchronising well, too much was still popping up where I couldn’t get Internet access or didn’t have the right device with me… Sure I could have bought one but a $36 diary is a better than a $1200 phone (in this case anyway…). The electronic Vs paper Diary battle may continue all next year anyway…

I ordered the Rhodia 2010 Diary from Ink2pen and it arrived just 2 business days later. It has fantastic 90gsm pages and a Week to a View with the 5×5 graph on the facing page….

 

This allows me to throw in the weeks appointments as well as jot down any relevant thoughts and ideas on the facing page and link the two so that info isn’t lost or forgotten ( a frequent problem of mine). Not only that, it has perforated corners that can be torn out for each week so you can always open to the right week.

The cover is vinyl and the Standard Orange with an embossed logo and an orange elastic for holding it closed. Surprisingly, it isn’t a standard A5 size. When I put it next to my No. 16 Pad, you can clearly see the size difference.

 

I can definitely recommend this Diary for the aficionados of fine stationery looking for a new diary for 2010. You can get it from Here

 

My GTD Setup slo-o-owly taking form….

I am slowly getting it together with implementing a GTD system that works for me…. The increased amount of inputs during our Infrastructure Virtualisation Project as well as an Office 2010 upgrade that rendered my previous email inbox management next to useless has finally ushered in the inevitable. Having an expert GTDer start working with us certainly helps (although his palm slaps to the forehead  while willing us forward won’t be helping).

My desk is (relatively) tidy from what it was and now I have my latest wepaons in the battle against overload – My Rhodia NotePads.

I purchased numbers 11, 13 and 16. That is an A5, A6 and A7 for the un-initiated. I had planned to order them online at NoteMaker or even had fancied the possibility of ordering them Yoda-Style. Last night I was idly wandering through Borders in Chermside Shopping Centre and sure enough, a brief flash of Orange grabs the corner of my eye.

Sure enough, just the very notepads I was looking for… and for a very competitive price. I was surprised, I didn’t realise that Borders Australia was a supplier so I’m sure glad they are. The only other one that I had considered was the A5 meeting pad. I can just rule some lines in my Number 16 so that one will do…

So now I have the 16 for my meetings and to have on my desk, my Number 13 to have in my bag and my Number 11 to carry around with me..

Next up in my GTD plans is to re-do my Mailbox and then adapt Office 2010 views to facilitate my Inbox processing. Whether or not I can get to Inx Zero remains to be seen..

Windows Virtual PC and XP Mode RTM available for TechNet & MSDN Subscribers

Of course if you are a serious IT Pro or Developer, you’ll have one of these subscriptions, right?… Right?? If not, I’d advise you do so quick-smart…

Now that the RTM versions of Windows Virtual PC and Windows XP Mode are here, it is time to uninstall the RC versions and install the RTM versions.

To uninstall the XP Mode, it is simple.

• Click Start | Control Panel | Programs | uninstall a program
• choose Windows XP mode and it will uninstall

To uninstall Windows Virtual PC, it is slightly different.

• If you still have Control Panel open, click on View Installed Updates (otherwise repeat step 1 from the previous uninstall)
• Select Windows Virtual PC and it will uninstall…
• Reboot

and you are ready to install the RTM version that you have already downloaded… Virtual PC first, then XP mode after that…

Busy.. Halo 3 ODST

http://videomedia.ign.com/ev/ev.swf

More Videos at IGN.com

I had a couple of good post ideas for this week… but Halo 3 ODST is now out so I am busy… Not only that, the girls will be away this weekend at the in-laws so I am on my own with the Dog, my console and footy finals for companions…

In the meantime, here are some video tips from ign.com for Firefight … and yes, like my Halo 3 multiplayer, I suck at this…

Brisbane’s Dust Storm

As everyone is probably now well aware, Sydney and Brisbane got hit with a Dust storm today. Sydney had a Martian-style red dawn (without the commies) and Brisbane copped it around lunchtime. What people may not realise is that these two cities are about 1000 kilometres (or 621 miles) apart and it was the same storm…

 

By now it should be somewhere over New Zealand. This storm has been dumping up to 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour into the Tasman Sea. 

 

 

These photos show how it came across Brisbane which as you can see,the dust gets more red..

 

 

 

 

 

This shot was around 12:30pm and it has fully closed in. I hope the lads on the Gateway construction took the day off…

Tales of Windows 2003 Network Load Balancing

Network Load Balancing – NLB – also known as Windows Load Balancing – WLB – has always been a little like living on the edge.  It does the job but you are always wondering when and where the next issue is going to come from and what will you need to do to fix it pronto. We have had that issue a number of times in the last 6 months from a variety of causes, some even seeming unrelated changes messing everything up.

Our existing pool of TS Servers has 8 machines in it, using Multicast with IGMP to stay converged. This means loads of traffic everywhere and isn’t the most-recommended solution. So as part of the pre-testing for the Virtualisation, we have P2V’ed the Terminal Servers into a Virtual Sandbox and then created 2 NICs for the VMs and changed them to Unicast mode.

Boom… the WLBS query command showed them as Converged but the GUI management tool wasn’t able to add them. Considering we need the GUI for some of our lesser-skilled staff, we were racking our brains to work it out.. eventually, the light-Bulb went on.

Turns out in creating the VM’s, the automatic DNS registration was left on and the NIC designated as the NLB NIC (as opposed to the Management NIC) was being added to DNS. With the NLB IP being used by DNS, the TS Servers cannot communicate amongst themselves (hence the management NIC) and could not load the NLB GUI Tool.

All I had to do was uncheck the Register this connection’s Addresses in DNS checkbox (as shown on the left – taken from the production pool, not the test one) and then do an ipconfig /flushdns on the TS boxes and it was all good.

Now that this works, we are ready to go live on our Virtual TS pool for all. A simple problem but one that wasn’t readily obvious to us as we were all focusing on the NLB hosts and the Unicast/Multicast.

After I fixed it, I did a search on all the instructions and fault-finding stuff that I usually check and not one mentioned it as a potential “gotcha”. Either we were really unlucky or it is something that is just presumed…

So, if you you come across the same issue, those of you that are still using Windows 2003 NLB, check the DNS of your Terminal Servers.

Successful Weekend of Final Footy

What a night! Fist my Broncos get up in a thriller at the Gold Coast Stadium and then Collingwood, behind by 29 points at one stage, triumph with a shot on goal with 15 seconds left in the game… Both my teams advance on through the finals, Collingwood are one game away from the grand Final. Come on Pies and Broncos!

TechEd Australia 2009 – Day 3

Last day of the conference, got up all stiff and store… Been some time since I was able to drink a bunch of beers and run around like a kid shooting things in the dark. Back into it though, once more into the breach.

Sessions:

• Direct Access – Heavy going for first session after the big party. However, it was a great session, lots of tech detail on what is required for Direct Access. Lot of talk about IPv6 and the IPSec requirements. It’ll be a hard sell but i think the incremental approach will be best. Definitely more reading required for this one…
• OCS R2 Conferencing – A good session for going into details about using OCS to replace the use of ACP for in-dial conferencing. Some interesting figures on costs, especially if you have already deployed. Case studies showed a 308% return in 7 months for 500 user deployments
• Windows 7 After Hours – I knew this one was gonna be good because I know Dugie’s passion for all things Media Center and all things Windows 7, I was surprised, yet not so surprised at how little Windows 7 and Windows Home Server had, even in a room full of geeks. Excellent display of Play To, Homegroups, Media Center, Xbox Extender and most importantly, the Arcade Machine. Awesome session
• Mobility Smackdown! – What can you say about the Smackdown. It is a one-of-a-kind session. Cool demos using phones, demos that somethimes even work. Hi-energy stuff with contests for phones, Xbox, headsets and all manner of stuff. Not only that, there was tons of swag being thrown about every which way… They are a great way to finish off the sessions.
• LockNote – Featured a presentation and demo from Microsoft Research. Talking at a million miles an hour, he touched on many things about MS research and some of the things they are looking at. The future vision videos were shown and then we saw some of the MS Surface development path that moved froma bloke that was sick of carrying around chess pieces (which is where it all started from) all the way to doing stuff on the Surface as well as display a secondary projection on a cylindrical block place on the top. This is just the start of some of the concepts in those videos that I posted about back here. Very interesting stuff. Nick Hodge made a brief appearance to talk about all the Netbooks and to let us know where the Netbooks that were returned are going. They will be going to charity to be re-distributed to those in need, like the Victorian Bushfire victims.

and that was it…. We’d already checked out and the girls happened to be nearby so I was gone pretty quick afterwards. Funnily enough, my Phone stayed connected to the TechEd Wireless well into Carrara as we left. We were almost to the Pacific Highway before it dropped away. I guess the boys did a great job on that.

Next TechEd will be on the Gold Coast again, 24 – 27 August 2010. I’d expect that there will be more Exchange 2010, Office 2010 and plenty more to see. Make sure you plan ahead to get there… You can pre-register here to be notified about the event.

Thanks to all who made this event run so smoothly and to the people that made it such a great time…