I’ve not blogged about WordPress patches and updates for a while - I’ve been just that busy.

This weekend another two patches - for 2.2.x and 2.0.x

 So far so good - easy and clean updates.

Worth an upgrade too - looking at the code changes there seems to be a lot of additional checking and url handling safety.

I’ve been demoing ZENworks Configuration Management to partners across Europe for two weeks with no problems at all. Mainly running a live demo from my set of servers at home.

It’s risky - I might have a power outage, WAN outage, local issues - but so far so good.

I’ve also got a fully virtualised demo on my laptop incase things go bad.

Today both failed.

Internet access was via an authenticated proxy - and for some reason I couldn’t connect to my servers at home. Then my virtual demo started to get sick. Firefox kept hanging, Windows went slow, DNS stopped working. It all pointed to a networking conflict of some sort.

Eventually the technical team opened up their firewall so I didn’t need a proxy - and the demo looks great.

Two things I’ve learned again:

1. if something is going to fail - it will do. Big time.
2. always have a plan C (death by powerpoint) and maybe a plan D…

My IMAP patch got included in the latest update to Copfilter.

• fix: fixes from various copfilter forum users (see the bugs section in the forum or
  CHANGELOG for the details), most important ones are mentioned below
• fix: fix in cron.daily (it could hang) - thx DaPinky
• fix: IMAP Buffer increase (it could hang) - thx evilzenscientist
• fix: deleting a huge amount of mails from the spam quarantine is now possible - thx mdages
• fix: proxsmtp/tmp could get filled up without removal of old files - thx Alevizos Dimitrios
• new: ability to sort spam quarantine by columns (ex. by score level) - thx taurus

Nice to see my stuff make it Officially “I don’t write code”

Shel Israel writes:

UK Microsoftie Darren Strange reports that Microsoft now has 4500 bloggers among its 71,000 employees.  Both numbers show significant growth.  As irecall, when Robert and I were writing our first chapter of naked Conversations there were 2500 bloggers among 56,000 employees.  By the time we finished the book in October 2005, the bloggers were topping the 3,000 mark. This would mean that the number of Microsoft bloggers has grown by over 50 percent in about a year and a half.
By percentage, I’m not sure whether Sun Microsystems or Microsoft has more bloggers, but both companies continue to grow and continue to extol the virtues of doing it.
One interesting aspect in Darren’s report is that there is no longer any controversy about it. When Joshua Allen, became Microsoft’s first blogger, the first call to fire him for blogging came just a few hours later, as we reported in Naked Conversations.
Now it is seems to me, blogging is normalizing at Microsoft and that is what should happen.

In contrast I think Novell has a couple of dozen prolific bloggers at most. That is way below par.

From the dev lists:

The target release date for WordPress 2.2 is less than a month away, April 23rd.

Phew. Patch and relax. Update and relax. Patch and relax.

When Matt and the others from Automattic said they’d be stepping up the frequency of updates - I didn’t expect this

It’s good though. Lots of new features promised for 2.2 and especially 2.3/2.4 and beyond.

What does it mean?

For those at BrainShare - take your camera; mail your pictures to me at ezs@novell.com

I am in Hannover for a couple of days; announcing a new product at CeBIT - the worlds largest IT and technology show.

It is my first time here - and the scale is unimaginable. I was warned by colleagues about the traffic, the remote hotels and the expense - but until this morning I was unprepared.

The Novell stand is huge; with product demos; a cinema and a cafe to talk to partners and customers.

Two press meetings down; a press conference and a partner briefing to go.

Written at: Cebit. Hannover, Germany

I need to get some voiceover on this - but this is a live screen cam of the installation of ZENworks Pulsar. It takes about 5 minutes on a fast server.

Tomorrow morning I’m heading off early for a week in Beijing, China. It’s the first time for me; and to be honest the first time I’ve travelled anywhere where I really don’t have any ability to speak some basic local language and read my way around.

I downloaded a Rapid Mandarin course by Earworms from Audible - and I at least know some phrases. (Well - it’s another language I can order beer and coffee in ..)

Hopefully internet won’t be too shoddy during the week - I’ll be there with Laurence so I’ll make sure we post some pics.

I spend a few days catching up on posting video to my family and home blog instead No posts for a week or two.