Author: Andrew Huey

oops

Wow, I’m not sure if my domain is still going to be mine tomorrow! I just checked my Yahoo mail account, and saw an e-mail notification that it expires today, 5-11-08. I don’t actually check my Yahoo mail account that often, since it mostly just seems to be a spam attractor. I do use my Yahoo address on my DNS account, since I didn’t want my gmail address out there for everyone to see. E-mail address harvesting from DNS info has become enough of a problem, I guess, that you can usually give your domain registrar a different e-mail address for them to use for billing e-mails, rather than just using the one listed in your DNS contact info. And I think are ways to have your DNS contact info completely private now too. So, I guess I should look into that, so I don’t miss the renewal e-mails I should be getting in May 2010. That’s assuming the two-year renewal I just put in for goes through, and I get to keep my domain name!

XP SP 3 – remote admin changes

Here’s an article that talks about Changes to Remote Administration in Windows Server 2008. It turns out that XP SP 3 moves you to RDC 6.1, so the /console switch to mstsc.exe doesn’t work anymore. You need to use /admin. And the “remote desktops” tool in the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools Pack hasn’t been updated for this. So, the tool I’ve been using to remote into all my servers doesn’t work right anymore! I’ve worked around this by creating individual .rdp files for each of my servers, and putting them in one directory, but that was a bit of a pain. There’s been some talk about this issue here, since it affects the freeware Terminals tool also. I’m just posting about this, as it’s something to watch out for if you’re applying SP3 to a machine.

text editors

There’s a poll on Lifehacker about text editors. Their top six are Notepad++, Emacs, UltraEdit, TextMate, Vim, and TextPad. I do use TextMate on my Mac, so I agree with that call. It’s a nice editor. I *wish* I was proficient with Emacs, just because it would probably come in handy occasionally, and just generally seems like something I should know. I’m amazed that people still use vi/vim. I had to use vi a bit back in college, and never liked it. Under Windows, I have to admit that I’m still using Multi-Edit, which doesn’t seem to be a popular choice these days. I’ve been using Multi-Edit 9, which dates back to 1999. I kept putting off upgrades, since ME 9 did everything I really needed to do. At some point, I realized that I needed an editor with Unicode support, so I installed PSPad. I like PSPad, but not enough to switch over from Multi-Edit, except for those occasional Unicode files.

After poking around on the internet a bit today, I decided to finally upgrade to the most current version of Multi-Edit. It seems like ME is still behind the times a bit. The current version is called “Multi-Edit 2006”, and the most recent revision was posted in October 2007. It mostly works in Vista, but there are a couple of problems, mostly with macro recording, from what I can tell by looking at their support forums. And they’ve got some support for Unicode now, but it doesn’t look like it’s really full support.

I’m not sure if sticking with Multi-Edit is the right choice in the long run. UltraEdit might be a better choice; they seem to have been updating their product a bit more regularly. They appear to have full Unicode support and Vista compatibility.

Only a true geek could spend so much time worrying about text editors!

service packs

I installed XP SP 3 on my home desktop machine today, and Vista SP 1 on my laptop. I needed to do the fix I mentioned in yesterday’s post to get the XP SP 3 install to run, but it was smooth sailing after I did that. The Vista SP 1 install on the laptop went fine, no hitches. Both installs took about an hour. (In both cases, I was running the install off a CD/DVD burned from an ISO aquired via MSDN.)

I don’t expect much from the XP service pack; it’s mostly just a rollup of fixes I probably already had on my machine. I’m hoping that the Vista SP, on the other hand, might improve speed & reliability a bit. I guess we’ll see!

Windows XP SP 3

I downloaded Windows XP SP 3 from MSDN yesterday and installed it on a few machines at work, no problems. I tried installing it on my home desktop machine today, and got an error partway through the install. The SP removed itself cleanly, from what I can tell, so no harm done. Poking around on the internet, I think this article may provide an answer to my problem. I haven’t tried it yet, though. Maybe tomorrow.

Flannery O’Connor

I’ve gotten a good number of books through Bookmooch since I joined up a couple of weeks ago. I just got a Flannery O’Connor short story collection in the mail today. I’ve only read a few of her stories, so I’m looking forward to reading more.

And I also just got approved for a free account on britannica.com, through their WebShare program, so I guess I’m a bona fide “web publisher” now. Either that, or they just rubber-stamped all the applications for this program. Either way, the Flannery O’Connor link above is to a Britannica article. The Britannica site is OK, but some of the bells & whistles they’ve got on it make it a little difficult to actually read the article, at least through Firefox.

Wikipedia has a reasonable article on her too, of course.

weird WSJ news

Some weird Wall Street Journal news this week. First, editor Marcus W. Brauchli is resigning, which looks like it will just speed up the changes that have been going on with the WSJ since Rupert Murdoch took over. Newsweek has a fairly lengthy story this week about Murdoch’s plans for the Journal, which include adding more political and general-interest news, and generally trying to make the paper more of a competitor with the NY Times.

There’s a fun little parody of the WSJ available here. (The Times has an article about it here.) I’ll have to see if I can pick this thing up the next time I’m in New York.

I still find the WSJ to be a useful paper, and I’m not regretting renewing my subscription last year. I largely ignore the editorial pages. Mostly, I just read the business news and some of the oddball stuff they tend to throw in. (For instance, today’s paper has a front-page article about opera prompters.) It sounds a bit like Murdoch might cut down on the quirkier articles, which would really be a shame, but we’ll see what happens there.

Last Lecture

I bought The Last Lecture in Kindle format a few days ago. I’m almost done reading it. It’s a pretty good read. Lots of short chapters, mostly random anecdotes from Randy Pausch’s life. There’s nothing in the book that’s likely to change my life, I think, but just a lot of interesting little insights, and some fun stories.
This is also the first book I’m reading, in its entirety, on the Kindle. It’s been a pretty smooth reading experience. Certainly no worse than reading an old-fashioned paper book, but not necessarily any better. Of course, there are some photos in the book, and they really don’t look at all good on the Kindle, so that’s a concern. In the future, I’ll probably avoid buying any book for the Kindle if I know it’s heavy with photos or other graphics.