Category — Tech

It had to happen I guess, I’ve had my 16Gb iPhone less than 6 months and there’s every indication that some time next month the next version will be hitting shelves.

Rumors are coming from all directions, starting with O2 UK discounting the 8Gb unit by £100 and subsequently running out of stock to AT&T telling their staff they can’t take leave in a 4 week window from mid-june and execs from several firms giving “off the record” hints of a 3G device.

As June also brings the big 2.0 software update it makes sense that there would be some 2.0 hardware - I’m guessing the features between v1 and v2 will only really differ when it comes to UMTS/HSDPA so I’m not entirely fussed, but I have a few friends who are already working out if they can bear the cost of cutting their existing contracts short…

My commute is pretty easy so the data connectivity side of things isn’t of particular interest, EDGE is fine for reading the odd blog as I travel - in fact the only positive for me is that all the 2.5G haters will hopefully suck it up and buy one and hopefully increase the draw/demand to create decent stuff for the app store

Not sure how I missed this one but CTP2 of Powershell version 2 is available for download.

Remoting is working (requiring a separate download of WinRM 2.0 (also a CTP).

From the official blog:

 

This release adds a plethora of new features. PowerShell remoting now allows a one-to-one interactive experience. Thought about partitioning and organizing PowerShell scripts? Use modules to create self-contained and reusable units. This release introduces transactions support in PowerShell engine and APIs along with an update to the Registry provider to support them. We introduced eventing support in Powershell engine for listening, forwarding and acting on management and system events. Support for multiple parameter sets in script cmdlets bring them to par with C# cmdlets. For the adventurous folks…. application developers can host PowerShell in IIS to support multiple remote PowerShell sessions in a single process. These are just a few of the new features we have packaged in this CTP2 release. Additionally this CTP2 includes some simple updates… like new parameters to several existing cmdlets. More feature descriptions and details are in the Release Notes and in the “about” topics included with the installation.

 

As with the previous release I’ve got to stress that this code isn’t even at beta stage yet and shouldn’t go ANYWHERE near a production system. Everything *should* be backwards compatible but V1 and V2 can’t coexist so this could really break things if you’re unlucky.

Download Powershell V2 CTP2

Download WinRM 2.0 CTP (needed for remoting)

Link: Official Blog

After the news of kernel-parity between Server 2008 and the first service pack for Vista it was no surprise to hear that they would both be available prior to next months launch. What is surprising however is that I’ve just received news that they’ve RTM’d within 20 minutes of each another.

From the WindowsServer blog:

As I write this, I’m in the room where it all happens; in building 26, better known as the ship room. Ten minutes ago Windows Server 2008 officially RTM’d. Also in here with me are my colleagues who have been working on Windows Vista SP1; also RTM’ing today. We’ve all been working towards this day for the past 3 years and over 5,000 people have contributed to this release.

A separate post on Vista SP1 RTM’ing is available at the Vista Team blog here.

Technorati Tags: Powershell, Windows Server, Windows Server 2008, Vista, Vista SP1

Following the failure of my AppleTV last night I visited the retailer where I picked up my unit and was told that they couldn’t simply swap it, instead insisting it had to go to their repair center for diagnosis, I’m not sure what that would do to the manufacturer warranty but I gave up discussing it with the counter staff and instead opted to call Apple this evening.

Within 15 minutes one of their support people had diagnosed the machine as dead and arranged a replacement to come out to me. All they needed was a delivery address and VISA details (in case I run off with the dead one, obviously) - I should be back up and running before the end of the week. Hurrah!

I’ve no doubt cursed it and the courier will lose/drop/throw/eat my replacement unit, but what the heck, I feel like being optimistic

Technorati Tags: Apple TV, Apple

The one year anniversary meeting of GET-PSUGUK (UK Powershell User Group) will be held in Reading on Tuesday 15th January 2008.

The meeting will consist of a talk from Jeffrey Snover on version 2 and Richard on PowerShell thus far, looking forward to Windows Server 2008.

A LiveMeeting stream will be available - email powershell-uk [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk for more information of the meeting location or LiveMeeting URL.

Technorati Tags: powershell, get-psuguk

Whilst test-driving my new Razer Lachesis I’ve been digging through my old periphery and uncovered my Logitech G15 keyboard. I stopped using the G15 after an unfortunate drink spillage incident and consigned it to the keyboard graveyard along with my diNovo and a couple of microsoft keyboards.

Today I’ve finally decided to engage in a little belated spring cleaning and before binning the G15 plugged it in to remind myself what wasn’t working after the unhappy incident.

Miraculously the G15 now works fine (well, almost), 8 months of drying out appears to have done the trick, with one exception… Hitting the tab key correctly tabs out of a text field but before leaving the field inserts a ‘9′ - any ideas?

I wasn’t particularly bothered by its loss originally as the screen function wasn’t supported in the games that I play, but today I stumbled on an add-on to provide in-game stats for Battlefield 2142, which would be really handy to work out how badly I’m doing

Technorati Tags: Logitech G15, Battlefield 2142

I’m posting this mostly due to sheer laziness.

Wordpress 2.3 was recently patched due to a nasty security vuln, but people are still getting caught out and haven’t moved to 2.3.1

So I thought I’d show you how easy it is.

Provided you can SSH to your provider, this is practically all you need to do:

(remember to cd in to the root of your wordpress installation before attempting the below)

• wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
• tar xfz latest.tar.gz
• rm -rf ./wp-includes/
• rm -rf ./wp-admin/
• cd wordpress/
• cp -rpf * ../ (note, some distributions will require “cp -rpf –reply=yes * ../” - mine doesn’t)
• cd ..
• rm -rf ./wordpress/
• rm -f latest.tar.gz

And there you go, a shiny new and upgraded wordpress. This won’t alter your themes or plugins, the usual caveats apply with compatibility of your themes, plugins and haxxies.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not to blame if you break your wordpress with the above, especially if you don’t bother to back up. The above works for me, I’m so confident of it in fact that it’s just a flat script that I run, so even simpler from my perspective… YMMV etc.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, ssh

So either Wordpress 2.3 is horribly broken for Safari 3 users, or the WYSIWYG editor is b0rken in general and will (hopefully) soon be bugfixed. Either way I need a new way to post to my blog so have been dabbling with MarsEdit, Ecto (I bought this a while back…) and a Firefox plugin called ScribeFire.

Because of the changes with categories and keywords posts I fired up Ecto and edited some old blog posts. Big mistake… Where originally I had preview text with an expanded post on clickthrough I now only have the preview. Thankfully my intial blogging wasn’t too extensive (or for that matter interesting) so I’m just forging ahead with finding something that plays a little nicer with 2.3 for the time being. One down, two to go.

MarsEdit seems to be a similar deal to Ecto, it’s a standalone Mac app, it edits the posts in markup (so I cheat and write blocks of text then use the Humane Text service to convert my posts to XHTML…. But it feels a little more limited than Ecto and is going to cost me to use until they fix Ecto for 2.3, so I’m shelving it for the time being at least.

As to ScribeFire, well I’m writing this post with it, I guess I’ll see what happens when I click ‘Publish’. Hold me, I’m scared

Edit: So I did some tests with FF and Safari, looks like it IS a Safari bug. Ack. Oh and ScribeFire works, so no more excuses from me…

Technorati Tags: ecto, marsedit, wordpress, scribefire, firefox

My new Thinkpad X61 arrived last week and came preloaded with Vista Business x64

Thanks to the lack of optical drive I’m being forced to think before I blast it flat and start over… So wanted to ask - has anyone else bought a new system lately that arrived with an x64 OS?

This chassis only has 2Gb RAM so it was more likely for the added security features Lenovo have taken the machines up to 64-bit - doubt I’ll be fitting the max supported RAM for Vista Business @ 128GB

Thus far it’s all running quite nicely, although I’m having to work around rather a lot of issues with 32-bit apps being relocated to a ‘Program Files (x86)’ folder - any thoughts?

I’m trying to be more productive, and I’ve found the perfect way to do it, spend time faffing with productivity software!

Technorati Tags: gtd, mac, software, igtd

Since moving to a mac several friends have done likewise and while it’s great to see the effect exposure to OSX can have on frustrated Windows veterans, I’m getting a tad bored of the constant comments that I forgot to tell X about application Y…

So I’ve resolved to list my “essential apps” every couple of months and just refer people to my blog…

That list, in no particular order:

• RSS Reader: Newsfire, Vienna
• Text Editor: TextMate, Text Wrangler
• OS Enhancement: Quicksilver, Growl
• Finder Replacement: Path Finder
• System Optimisation: Tech Tool Pro, Cocktail
• Browser: Webkit (+Nightshift) plus the essential Inquisitor 3 add-in.
• Security: Little Snitch
• IM: Adium
• Newsreader: Unison
• P2P: Xtorrent / Zudeo
• IRC: Colloquy
• CSS Editor: CSS Edit 2
• CD/DVD Authoring: DiscoOther: Delicious Library, Pzizz
• RDP Client: CoRD
• Transcoding: iSquint (to iPod video)
• iTunes/iPod: Senuti, Clutter
• Video Playback: VLC
• FTP: Transmit

What, you still use the plain-Jane iTunes interface? [Read more →]

My fun and games with the new pre-n router from Apple. [Read more →]