http://www.evilzenscientist.com nothing of any quincyquonce Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:21:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en What a pain. Lots of photo printing sites use the Snapfish uploader – the only problem is there seem to be multiple versions out there – and they don’t co-exist at all. Here’s an example – the UK Truprint site clashes with the legacy Costco printing – so Rachael ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/09/05/snapfish-firefox-plugin/ http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/09/02/muh-huh-huh/ Live at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/worldwide-sites.aspx I’ll be testing this side-by-side against Firefox 3. http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/08/28/internet-explorer-8-beta-2/ Planned upgrades this weekend SLES 10 SP1 –> SP2 for both x86 and x64   How-to: http://www.novell.com/support/viewContent.do?externalId=7000387 Local update: http://www.novell.com/support/documentLink.do?externalID=3065146 Release notes: http://www.novell.com/documentation/sles10/release-notes_sp2/release-notes_sp2.html http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/08/22/change-control-sles-10-updates/ Updated apache to 2.2.9 (apache2-2.2.9, apache2-utils-2.2.9, apache2-prefork-2.2.9) and the Apache Portable Runtime (libapr1-1.3.2, libapr-util1-1.3.2) Updates from the openSUSE build system. Thanks guys. http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/08/18/change-control-apache-229-libapr1/ Another regular round of patching this week. My Active Directory DC and primary Kerberos box needed updating from Windows 2003 SP1 to Windows 2003 SP2. The update had been on the list for a while, but because of the importance of it for authentication for all workstations and ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/08/13/patching-updates-and-change-control/ It was five years ago this week that Novell acquired Ximian. http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2003/08/pr03051.html I clearly remember heading to the Ximian offices at the back of Fenway Park in Boston a few weeks after the acquisition; my task was to meet with the Red Carpet Enterprise team and work on integration plans with ZENworks. I ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/08/05/ximian-five-years-ago/ Big grins this morning. I got an email overnight from Brisbane – the results are in. I passed the ITIL v3 Managers Bridge – it was an 80% pass score and I got 95% I’m just waiting for the certificate to arrive in the post – but this ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/25/itil-v3-managers-bridge-2/ One of the last things I did before the move was to move some of the retired servers from physical to virtual. The hosts were all SLES 10 – so I did the move to VMware server; the idea being that if I needed anything off the server could find ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/24/server-retirement/ http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/23/free-as-in-beer/ Oh joy. I’ve been digging into the mapping between ITIL v3 and the new Microsoft Operations Framework v4. There are a lot of white papers from Microsoft: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc506049.aspx There is also a good MOF v4 overview from Rob van den Burg here. http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/16/microsoft-operations-framework/ WordPress 2.6 is live; I just updated from 2.6 RC1 to 2.6 live here. Download from http://wordpress.org/download/ Main highlights: post differencing support for Google Gears There's an offical blog post about it here: http://wordpress.org/development/2008/07/wordpress-26-tyner/ - with a great video overview. http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/14/wordpress-26/ Hopefully these notes will be useful for others; based on my experience of last weeks Bridging course and exam from The Art of Service in Brisbane. The Curriculum the curriculum is available from APM Group here I didn't see any surprises in the exam - i.e. everything in the exam was described in ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/13/taking-the-itil-v3-managers-bridge-some-notes/ Firefox 3.0.1 is in beta. Looks like the main changes are security fixes – but it’s all working ok so far. http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/11/firefox-301-beta/ Two weeks or so – then I’ll have the results. Now I’ve got an evening to relax in Brisbane; the guys from The Art of Service have given me some pointers. It’s the middle of the Queensland winter – so it’s about 18'C right now; the patio ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/11/phew-the-exam-is-done/ Five books, six volumes of notes, one pack of homework and exam-style questions, 122 pages of mind maps. http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/10/revision/ I looked around for a training provider for my ITIL v3 Managers Bridge – it was difficult – especially considering the training and exam have only been live since March 2008. I called several providers who were claiming to offer training; when I probed on the name of the ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/09/training-with-the-art-of-service/ One day left- then the exam. I must say – the workload and effort for this course is a lot more than for the ITIL v2 Managers cert; there is a lot more reading, homework, mock-exam question taking and general research needed. Also piling on is the ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/09/itil-managers-bridge-update/ I’m in Brisbane – at the end of day one of my ITIL v3 Managers bridge course. Phew. I’m tired. Just like the training for the v2 Managers Certificate last year (here, the exam here and results just before new year.) The training and exam are for the ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/07/itil-v3-managers-bridge/ I travelled wearing my black Ximian staff shirt; then I got stopped in the airport by a Gnome fanboy who told me that the Ximian Desktop rocked! http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/05/strange-world/ I got on my plane in San Francisco on Friday night – watching the last of the fireworks. It’s now Sunday morning and I’m sitting in the domestic terminal in Sydney waiting for my flight to Brisbane. That’s the worst part of the travel west and crossing the ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/07/05/where-did-saturday-go/ Testing WordPress 2.6 beta 1 on the this blog. Upgrade worked well; no major issues so far. One point to note – publishing via XML-RPC (i.e using a blogging client such as Windows Live Writer) is disabled by default. You have to turn it on. ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/24/wordpress-dogfooding/ I’m taking the Connector bus again to work. An earlier start to set up for todays meetings; but it’s still a lot easier than the commute. On another green note – composting starts today in my building. All of the cups, plates etc are moving to compostable paper from ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/24/on-the-bus-again/ Urg. I’m getting pestered with recruiters leaving me voicemail spam. http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/23/recruiters/ I’ve just started using Topo Explorer – and to be honest it’s one of the most bug-ridden pieces of code I’ve seen in a long time. It looks evident that a ‘date for ship’ was set; product out of the door regardless of quality, feature completeness or usability. ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/16/software-releases/ More blogs on TechNet – mainly around the new Configuration Manager Service Pack 1 and the start of my introductions to the System Center Alliance. I’m in the same position now as when blogging at Novell – which blog gets the updates… I’m probably going to post work ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/16/blogging-on-technet/ Last weekend it was really wet and windy – urg. We had quite a few inches of rain over a few days, the garden was very wet. The wind was blowing the trees around the house a lot; the neighbours continue to be worried about the risk of a ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/16/ups-tests/ Finally I got that difficult first post out of the way on my Microsoft blog. I had to choose between MSDN or TechNet for the hosting; as my focus isn’t the developer audience (Phew!) I chose TechNet, which is targeting the IT Professional. I’m still using Windows Live ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/04/blogging-at-microsoft-2/ My posts were finally removed from Novell Cool Blogs. Sad – they could have been kept for reference rather than being swept down the memory hole. I also noticed that several of the other ex-Novell Cool Bloggers – Reverend Ted for example – have also been purged. Most ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/03/novell-cool-blogs-2/ Two APC Smart-UPS 1400XL mounted in the bottom of the rack. I lost 6U but I gained clean, clean power and over 17 minutes of on-battery power. Next step – install the power monitoring software, set up power outage alerts (3 AM SMS  telling me the power cycled..) and ... http://www.evilzenscientist.com/blog/2008/06/02/ups/