I was lucky enough to attend the London launch party that the Mozilla crew organised (thanks Dees “Mr Firefox” for the heads up!). It was a pretty awesome night, and I recorded some video footage of it. The first part is a thumb wars contest… with everyone in the room. The whole thing got whittled down to a handful of people; thumb wars can be quite violent.

Afterwards, everyone headed down to the pub for some drinks… with one of the guys dressed up as a Firefox. We got some jibes in the street on the way “Bah Firefox, I use Chrome!” but that will not deter us from going to get our pints. Our mascot even did a little dance for us…




I use the browser across so many different platforms, and it works pretty nicely on all of them. It was also great to see demos of HTML5 and CSS3; I can tell you now that having everything rendered in the browser itself is a massive step and it looks very very cool.




Here is said video of the thumb wars and Firefox jive ^_^

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Now that I’ve used it thoroughly, I can take time out from gaming to do a review. It isn’t the cheapest peripheral in the world, but my god does it look awesome. I got this a few months ago for my birthday, which also includes the mousepad. If you are going to buy this, then please do get the pad as well. It has a special coating on the surface which does the blue light trails from the mouse when you move it. You also get Tron sound effects from it when your PC boots up (your mouse can derez!) and of course there are blue lights across it, paying homeage to the light cycle from the film.

So it looks the business, but what is it like to use?

Custom DPI

As with most Razer rodents, you can adjust the DPI on the fly after you install the software. This is very useful if you play games from different genres. I never adjust the mouse setting in the game anymore, and instead I use the side buttons to up or reduce the DPI to my liking. As a rough guide, in Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament and other FPS games I have it set to 4,000 to 5,000 DPI. You can do lightning reflex turns with ease, something I always found lacking on a normal Microsoft mouse. If you are doing RTS games such as StarCraft 2 or Shogun 2 (my favourites at the moment), then 2,000 to 3,000 DPI is fine. You can change the increment of each step, and I generally don’t go below 2,000 DPI for general tasks.

The software bundled with the mouse has a very Tron-esque GUI which I love, I should also mention the packaging. They have put a lot of work into the presentation and I like the braided mouse cord for durability. At 7 feet, it is long enough to not have to worry about where your PC is.

Handling

At first, it seemed too square for it to work. It is styled with Tron in mind, and sharp defining lines has always been a theme in the film. This is replicated in the design of the mouse; there are no rounded corners or curves at all. It may seem strange to hold at first but after a couple of weeks it fits in my hand quite nicely. A thing to note is that it may be too small for some; it has a lower profile than some of the other models I have seen.

The first game I tried with it was Team Fortress 2. I was amazed at how smoothly it glides across the mousepad. There is no friction at all, which is perfect for first person shooters. Using a normal mouse on an average pad seems so slow and horrible to use, I have now spoiled myself in that regard. The pad is big enough for all your movements; well to be frank, at 5,000 DPI you are not going to need that much pad space. It is so fast on that setting, that I managed to jump to avoid a grenade and then spin round to gib somebody in the face within a 2 second timeframe.

Overall…

I like it, I really do. Being a bit of a Tron fanatic this satisfies the fandom and at the same time it is practical. However, would I drop 100 notes on it myself? At a push yes; the cost really is extortionate but you are paying for the Tron branding and style. I used to own a Razer Copperhead for 3 years before it died, so this is a worthy replacement.


If you want to see the light trails in action, I made a video clip of it a while ago for your enjoyment.

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However much I appreciate the smooth lines and the unibody aluminium chassis, the Snow Leopard operating system leaves a lot to be desired. Mainly my inability to play all the games I partake in and I prefer Linux.

Enter, my triple-boot operating system configuration: OSX Snow Leopard, Windows 7 x64 and Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. In a way, this is Inception for operating systems with 3 layers.

OSX Boot Camp for Windows 7

First we will dual-boot our MacBook with Windows 7, using a utility called Boot Camp. Most people will be familiar with this, so I will not go into much detail. It is a very easy tool to use; click through all the options, decide how big you want your partition to be and install with the Windows 7 disc. There is a known bug, that you may be prompted to download Windows Support software and then failing to do so. You can ignore this and continue, all the software you need is on the Snow Leopard CD.

I chose a partition size of about 170GB; Windows will have the biggest partition size out of the three as I will be installing games which takes up considerable space. When partitioning, Boot Camp will take a slice from your OSX partition to give to Windows. Bear this in mind, as you will need to leave some space for the Kubuntu slice.

Once the install is complete, you will be able to boot into Windows 7. During the bootup chime, press and hold the Option key to give you the option to boot into Windows. Once Windows 7 loads, insert the Snow Leopard CD and run the Boot Camp software installer. This will install all the drivers you need for things such as the sound card and hardware buttons (volume control etc.). You may also want to go to the NVidia website to download the latest graphics card drivers. You have now successfully completed your dual-boot installation.

Kubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat. Triple-boot and GRUB loader

This part is slightly more tricky. You cannot use Boot Camp to do this, as it has already been used for your Windows 7 install and it does not support other operating systems to boot with. So, we shall do a little preparation.

First, you will need to prepare a partition size for Kubuntu. Boot back into OSX to prepare your partition and load up Terminal to use diskutil. To find the disk identifier for your OSX partition, type:

diskutil list

This will give you a list of all the partitions you have. Once done you need to use the following syntax command to resize your OSX partition to give to Kubuntu:

sudo diskutil resizeVolume [disk identifier] [disk size] [partition type] ["Partition label"] [partition size] [partition type] ["Partition label"] [partition size]

So an example of how I did it would be: sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 12G “MS-DOS FAT32″ “Kubuntu Linux”

You may wonder why I have chosen FAT32 as my partition type; it doesn’t matter what it is. In the guide here, under “Boot Camp & Partitioning”, it indicates “Linux” as a partition type. I could not get this to work so I used FAT32 instead. When you install Kubuntu, it formats it to EXT3 to give it the correct partition type. I gave Kubuntu 12GB which is plenty for the operating system and the swap partition.

Now you are ready to install Kubuntu. I am using the latest release, version 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. I prefer KDE instead of Gnome, so I am using Kubuntu in this instance. You can, of course, use Ubuntu if you prefer or any other Linux distribution of your choice. Boot off the Maverick CD and go through the installation, taking care to set your own partition preferences and choosing the partition you just created to install the OS. If you decide you want a swap partition, you can take a small chunk from that during setup.

Once installed, the GRUB boot loader will setup everything for you for multiple operating system boot choices. A thing to note, is that initially the GRUB loader will not properly boot into OSX at the time of writing. I believe extra additional packages need to be installed for this to work, however I did not worry too much as I can still use the Option key to choose OSX at start up.

Now you have successfully completed your triple-boot system!

Additional support for MacBook Pro functionality in Kubuntu

For full functionality, you will want all the hardware to work. It is fairly straight forward, as there are instructions on how to get the hardware buttons to work and the backlit keyboard.

To summarise, you will need the Mactel PPA support tools:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support && sudo apt-get update

And pommed:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-bl-dkms pommed

And that is pretty much it, I now have Mac OSX to boot into if required, Windows 7 for gaming and Kubuntu which I use for productivity tasks. I actually use Kubuntu the most, and it is very pretty. If you want to know how to enable the Desktop Cube in Kubuntu for said pretty, head on over to Girlygeekdom where I will explain more!

Desktop Cube. Oh Kubuntu, I love you so much <3

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Back up your files and database!
Before commencing any work, make a back up of the following as a minimum requirement:

1. Load up your favourite FTP client and make a copy of these files and folders from your existing site.

• /wp-content/plugins
• /wp-content/themes
• /wp-content/uploads
• .htaccess file (this is a hidden file by default, view all hidden files within your client to see it listed)

If you can make an entire copy of all folders within your site, then please feel free.

2. Make a copy of the WordPress SQL database by exporting it into a .sql file. Most hosters have SQL tools available, such as phpMyAdmin within cPanel to do an export.

cPanel - phpMyAdmin tool

phpMyAdmin - Export tool along top toolbar

When doing the database export, make sure all tables are selected. It may also be an idea to backup each table into individual files, I’ll tell you why in a moment…

Install WordPress
Now do a new install of WordPress on your new webspace and create a new SQL database. During the install process, make sure the table prefix matches exactly as your existing database. This is defined in the wp-config.php file:

WordPress table prefix

Just to add, I use EditPlus as my PHP editor which works really well.

Once WordPress is installed, delete all the tables in the newly created database using phpMyAdmin etc.

Import and upload
Now to put all your content back in. Import the .sql database file you backed up earlier and import it into the currently tableless database. You should now see all the populated tables, which contains all your blog settings and posts.

Upload the plugins, themes and uploads folders from your backup via FTP to your new WordPress install. Bear in mind to upload them to the same folder structure, replacing any existing folders. If you are using the same domain name as before and just changed website host, then you are pretty much done. You may need to put your old .htaccess file back in, if you cannot get permalinks to work as intended. If you bought a new domain name then you still got some work to do…

Replacing old domain name references with new. Welcome to SQL!
This is where the fun begins, you will now learn a few SQL commands which will come in very handy in this instance. Making SQL changes directly to the database instead of looking through WordPress settings via the GUI is my preferred method. Also some of these changes can only be made via SQL. Go back to trusty phpMyAdmin again, and load up the SQL tool:

phpMyAdmin - Executing SQL commands

• Changing the HomeURL and SiteURL – The HomeURL and SiteURL is an absolute path to your site. Since your site location has changed, we need to update this too or else your blog won’t load.
  • UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

• Changing the URL for Content – WordPress loves absolute paths instead of relative, so again another change is required to make sure the URL for content in each post record is updated to the new.
  • UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE (post_content, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com');

• Changing the GUID – This is a very important change. The GUID houses the absolute location of where your posts are. Visitors to your site won’t be able to get to your articles as it will still be pointing to the old address.
  • UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE (guid, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com');
• Changing GUID for attachments/images – You may not need to do this, but if you find images and galleries are broken then you may need to update the GUID for the location of images. The best way is to check the current GUID location for images before making changes:
  

  phpMyAdmin - GUID for attachments

  • UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE (guid, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com') WHERE post_type = 'attachment';

Pitfalls and user awareness

SQL Oops
Not everything went to plan, it was 2am and I think I mistyped one of the SQL commands. Lo and behold the entire GUID column was blank in the wp_posts table. GASP! Remember earlier I mentioned backing up each table into individual .sql files? Well this is where my life was saved. I made several changes to other tables in the database and the last thing I wanted was to restore all the tables and start again. When you do a SQL database backup at the top level, all tables are backed up into a single file. But since I also did seperate table backups, I did a quick restore for wp_posts only and voila! I executed the correct find and replace command again and everything was good to go.

Permalinks and .htaccess
Another issue I came across were permalinks, I like them to look pretty. For some reason, all my permalinks were now coming up with /index.php/2009-01-nameofpost. What was index.php doing there in the URL? It definitely wasn’t there on the old site. I changed the setting within WordPress to try to prevent that from being appended, but it didn’t work. It looked like the .htaccess file was not updating correctly, WordPress normally updates this automatically to set the use of permalinks. If your web host uses Apache, then it will most likely be utilising the mod_rewrite module for this to work. I restored .htaccess from backup which fixed it, but here’s what mine looks like if you need a point of reference:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

And that’s it, job done! It’s actually less painless than it looks, as long as you make backups of your old site then you can always restore back if things don’t go to plan. Good luck!

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Corporations all over the world have been warned to stay away from Internet Explorer version 6, including our very own government. The figures published from another Guardian article outlines just how badly organisations in the public sector need to update their software. I am particularly fond of this:

“More than 750,000 workstations in the NHS and 500,000 in the Department of Work and Pensions use exactly that combination… The DWP installation of IE6/XP in 2002/3 took a total of three years…”

The private sector is not any better. From my own personal experience, businesses still use Internet Explorer 6. It’s almost like a safety blanket that is difficult to let go of. Version 6 has been a browser staple for many years and investing time and effort to roll out new versions is sometimes considered not a priority. Using other browsers is difficult, as Internet Explorer is the main product for domain integration such as the use of group policies.

For many, this is a lesson learned but perhaps a little too late. Details of  the MS10-002 security bulletin issued by Microsoft can be found here.

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My victim gadget of choice is the HTC Shift. As many are aware, Vista runs below par on the Shift. If you have too many applications open, you feel that it is begging for more coal to be shovelled. I wanted to replace the operating system for a long time, I thought about Kubuntu and maybe installing Jaunty Jackalope. However, I think there’s more challenge in trying out Microsoft’s new operating system. Everyone knows how efficient a Linux distribution is; the HTC Shift has low specifications being a UMPC and I wondered if Windows 7 was resource hungry.

The Install

You will need the following items to follow my procedure:

• External USB DVD-ROM drive (I used my XBox HD DVD drive)
• External USB hard drive
• Hard drive partitioning software tool
• Bart PE CD with Norton Ghost software tool

1. Plug in your external USB DVD-ROM drive and reboot so that the BIOS sees it as a bootable device.
2. Backup your existing hard drive using a Bart PE bootable CD, make a Ghost image of the existing partition and saving it onto your external USB hard drive. You can plug in two USB devices using the provided USB hub that came with your Shift. You can skip this if you wish, but I tend to lean towards caution.
3. Partition the hard drive so that you can dual boot between Vista and Windows 7. If the Windows 7 install goes pear shaped, you have something to fall back on. I gave about 10gb to Windows 7, in hindsight 15gb would have been more comfortable to give room for app installs but I managed. I used a bootable CD that has Acronis Partition Expert to split the drive.
4. Reboot and install Windows 7 RC. It will take a while to extract all the files it needs and then it should reboot itself to finish the install.
5. Once Windows 7 is installed and you boot into it, there’s a handy guide that takes you through most of what you need to do next. However there are some things that aren’t documented, yes I ran into some teething problems…

The Problems

• Intel Graphics Drivers: Stick with the drivers that came with Windows 7 as they seem to work fine. When I tried the Intel drivers from the HTC website it caused a blue screen crash. The graphics card detected automatically and works out of the box.
• Shagctrl Control Center: This does work fine but there are some caveats. You need this installed to use the 3G connection from the WinMo side as you did with Vista. Make sure the modem is turned on when in Vista and BEFORE you install Windows 7. That includes the wireless and Bluetooth, this is to ensure it is detected and drivers are automatically installed. I found without the Shagctrl, the drivers required for the Generic RNDIS (the 3G internet pass-through functionality) refuses to install. Secondly, before installing Shagctrl, ensure Aero effects are disabled. I will talk about why next.
• Screen resolution: After you install Shagctrl and reboot, the resolution will be forced into 1024 x 600. This is all very well, except coupled with Aero effects in Windows 7 you will get a blue screen crash. It’s not the end of the world though, as you can turn off Aero via the registry, using something like a Bart PE CD to edit it outside of the OS (the Vista method works in Windows 7 as well). The easiest way of course is to turn off Aero before the Shagctrl install, as mentioned above. You can set the resolution back to whatever you wish afterwards. The resolution button works perfectly; you can flip between 800/1024 at will as before. I left it at 800 because I like Aero.

The Conclusion

After using it for a while, Windows 7 has given my Shift a new lease of life. It runs much more smoothly than Vista and the on-screen keyboard is a definite improvement. I hardly use the real keyboard anymore now, unless I am typing up a document. Overall, I am very pleased with the results and all functionality is intact. I was apprehensive about whether the 3G connectivity would still work or not, but I was pleasantly surprised. I would advise any HTC Shift owner to ditch Vista and use this, you won’t be disappointed.

HTC Shift - Windows 7 logon screen

HTC Shift - Windows 7 desktop

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Of course, you still have your vMotion and Hypervisor features, which we know and love. The new addition I am mostly interested in is vNetwork, using standard and distributed switches. This new technology appears in vSphere, developed in conjunction with Cisco. From this collaboration, you can now have proper virtual Cisco switched in your environment. With full IOS capabilities, or shall we say virtual IOS. This is pretty cool in my book.

If you are new to virtualisation, then let me tell you this. As a company, you would be foolhardy to dismiss the idea of virtualising your I.T infrastructure. Not only do you save rack space, but also you can potentially reduce your carbon footprint by 40% or more. Overall, the level of cost-saving is too great to ignore. Of course, not every physical box can be P2V (physical to virtual) but almost all can be. This week, I completed my virtualisation project at work. I now have a fully functional Exchange cluster that is also running Veritas Volume Manager. These two factors alone caused me much headache over several months. This was mainly because the physical clustering ran on an EMC SAN using fibre channel connections, and trying to mimic that using thick disks in ESX AND for Volume Manager to recognise said disks was not an easy task to perform. Not to mention the numerous cluster problems with Exchange, I have a nice collection of knowledgebase articles on my desk.

In the end, I decided to build it from scratch within ESX. It took much longer than anticipated, but it is fully functional and barring the physical hardware differences, it is a 100% replica of the physical boxes in the server room. The cluster was the last hurdle in the entire environment, a heavy burden finally lifted. Yes as you can tell, I am extremely relieved that it is now accomplished and I can have my life back.

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