Monthly Archives: July 2010

Firefox Page Setup and A4

Posted by on July 23, 2010 2 comments | 2,591 views

Firefox is a great web browser, but it is also insanely frustrating to work with sometimes. For instance will the Page Setup default to US Letter, possibly the two most annoying words you can come across in the world of printers and printing. How many times haven’t you seen some office printer stuck on “Please insert Letter” holding the entire print-queue back? Why the fuck the Americans can’t adapt to international standards however is another rant altogether.

Firefox Print DialogueAnyway, the issue in Firefox is that when you try to print a webpage to file, at least under Ubuntu (haven’t tested it elsewhere), the Page Setup tab is greyed out. You actually have to go to the Page Setup menu option to change this. The Page Setup menu option has no shortcut, so if you’re unlucky enough to have a window that is menu-less like in my internet bank when looking at a receipt after paying a bill, you’re basically screwed. There is no way you can change the paper format. Changing it in the main window doesn’t affect the other one, nor does it care about default settings when the print dialogue is called from JavaScript or Ctrl-P.

The solution to this is to change the default printing option in the config because you can’t change it under preferences either. Type about:config into the address bar, and change the setting named print.postscript.paper_size from “letter” to “a4″. That fixes this annoying issue once and for all. Of course this should be detected from the OS regional options, but as user friendly as Firefox is, it isn’t that user friendly.

System Center Essentials 2010

Posted by on July 22, 2010 No comments | 3,272 views

System Center Essentials 2010 LogoThis summer I have been working for my old employer for nearly 5 weeks. The local council offices at my hometown. In the server room 3 new HP ProLiant rack servers were in boxes. I have set up a new domain controller for a subdomain, a new Exchange 2010 and DC server to replace the old Exchange/DC, and last but not least, a System Center Essentials 2010 server to monitor license usage and to push updates (which WSUS does for free anyway).

First step in the process was installing Windows 2008R2 server on the box. Plain sailing with HP’s SmartStart CD which gives you the option to easily configure the disk arrays and then push the OS installation onto the disks with drivers and everything going along with it. I set up 2 disk arrays, 2 146 GB Raid 1 mirror sets. One for the OS and one for the System Center Essentials (SCE) installation.

System Center Essentials 2010 is a stripped down version of the large and more expensive System Center tool. SCE is for smaller organizations up to 500 clients and 50 servers. We have about 20 servers and 200 clients, not counting school student computers. SCE is quite affordable, especially on our Volume License. The SCE software package itself is about a 5 GB download which I grabbed at our MS Volume License account. There is a good set of guides at Microsofts Technet website here. There isn’t much to say about the installation process itself as it went rather smoothly. Except that it took quite a while to complete. SCE can run on Windows 2003 servers, but to get the virtualization bit to work properly, Windows 2008 is needed. SCE uses a MSSQL server as storage, but it is bundled with a MSSQl server that can be used instead if you don’t have a full MSSQL server in your organization. We have 3, but I decided to leave them alone and installed the bundled MSSQL locally.

When everything got up an running, I got to have a look through the management interface. I pushed out the client installation to the primary domain, which during the summer only has about 20-30 computers up and running. A nice test environment. I also set up the WSUS service to push updates via group Policy, and now after a few days, it seems to run smoothly. I have not yet enforced installation deadlines on the clients but that is an option as I seem to remember it is in the WSUS tool as well.

SCE ScreenshotWhat I liked the most about SCE is the ability to monitor resource status on computers. It checks hardware, manufacturer/model, disk usage and capacity, RAM, CPU and generally all you otherwise would manually punch into a asset database or those good old spreadsheets we used when I first started in IT in 1999. SCE also scans all installed software and versions thereof. Giving you a highly detailed and somewhat messy output. However the summary screen gives you a nice overview of operating systems in the organization. Today we run a tool I coded many years ago in VB6.0 which runs an inventory of resources (disk and RAM) and versions of a specified list of software. This is imported into a MySQL database and cross referenced with the computer inventory table. This works quite well actually, but is regularly in need of updates as things change in Windows and applications.

The virtualization part of SCE I have not tested yet, it is the main new feature of this release though. We do have a few VmWare servers running, so I might get around to it soon. SCE also has a nifty report generation tool that will generate reports from a long list of predefined reports. SCE also have a software  package deployment tool which is next on my list to test out. I hope I can set it up to push out software like Firefox and other non-MS tools we use, as well as Office 2007/2010.

Sigma 18-250mm

Posted by on July 21, 2010 No comments | 1,413 views

Sigma 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 DC OS HSMSo I decided to buy a proper lens for my Canon EOS400 digital camera. I have been using the original lens since I bought the camera back in 2007 (I think). I was a bit sceptical at first since it goes from 18mm all the way to 250mm. But reading a few reviews, like this one for example, eased my mind. Sure, a lens with that wide a range has to have a few limitations. Sigma produced a 18-200mm one before this one, which wasn’t all that good according to reviews. Somehow they’ve managed to improve whatever the hell it is they do inside those, and this one is much better. The lens is not that expensive, and suits my budget fine. I paid in the order of €500 for it. You generally get what you pay for, and a professional lens cost at least twice that an up. It is the prefect all-round lens to replace the original lens on these cameras. It is kindof heavy, but not troublesome to carry around.

My main interest in photography is nature photography. Especially in the summer when I am back in my hometown where the woods are just outside the door and there is wildlife around the house. I have not yet managed to get the much wanted snapshot of the buck that’s been grassing on the other side of the road all summer as it has been hiding in the heavy rain. I hope I’ll get a chance to get it before I leave. Instead I made a few test snapshots and close-ups of flowers in my parents garden. I’ll post a couple here. Click on them to get the large version.

Flowers Flowers Close-up Garden Ornaments

Woken Furies

Posted by on July 21, 2010 No comments | 1,701 views

Woken Furies Book CoverWoken Furies is the third book in the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by the British science fiction author Richard Morgan. I reviewed the first book, Altered Carbon, in September 2009 (here). The second book I never reviewed on its own. It’s called Broken Angels in any case. Each of the books stand on their own, and there is little dependency on the previous one to read the next. Actually I don’t think it matter much which order you read them in at all.

In the first book, Altered Carbon, Kovacs is on earth, some time in the future, when we have colonized the nearby solar systems. He is investigating a murder, and you have your classical private detective story in a curious futuristic and pretty bleak setting. Added to this is Richard Morgan’s rough touch. His characters and settings are pretty hardcore. Violence and sex is frequent, yet suits the story very well.

In the second book, Broken Angels, Kovacs is investigating an alien planet where a corporation is trying to secure an alien portal in the middle of a war zone. The aliens, the Martians as they’re referred to, is an alien race that once inhabited Mars and a number of other planets about a million years ago. They left technology and ruins, and a lot of mysteries. The interest of this portal causes violent fights between corporations, and our “hero” is in the middle of it.

In this third and last book, Woken Furies, we meet Kovacs back on the planet where he once were born. In this version of our future, the human consciousness is stored in a chip implanted in your spine, so you are able to change body if you should die or just want an upgrade. Also, as a means of punishment, you may be put in storage for decades or even centuries. Kovacs reappear after being in storage for a long time, finding a planet not much like the one he grew up on. This book is about politics and is centred around a revolutionary character from the early days of the settlement of the planet. Old revolutionaries which have spent the better part of the last couple of centuries in a small surfer town, is called to arms and the revolution is back on. This is yet another fascinating and imaginative book that keeps you interested from page one. Maybe the best one of the three in my opinion. Yet I wouldn’t want to miss any of them.

Caprica

Posted by on July 21, 2010 No comments | 1,834 views

Caprica PosterSciFi’s new Science Fiction show, Caprica, which started in January this year (although the pilot aired in April 2009) is a follow up show, or actually a prequel, to Battlestar Galactica (the new version). It takes place on Caprica and covers the backstory of how the Cylons first came to be. We see Bill Adama as a young boy, and we follow his family and the Graystone family through the first half season of the series.

There are much similar between Battlestar Galactica and Caprica. They are both Sci-Fi/Drama, but Caprica is less about politics and religion although these are of course in the background. Caprica is more of a family drama, and it works well in this futuristic and slightly alien setting without becoming to remote from the world we live in. Much is familiar, the main difference is a few levels up in technology, though this is not overplayed as they do in more traditional Sci-Fi like Star Trek. A lot like Battlestar Galactica really, except Caprica takes place on the ground and not in space. The Cylon side of the story greatly reminds me of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which also was an excellent show I might add.

Caprica is a show well worth watching if you like Sci-Fi and Drama alike. Especially if you enjoyed Battlestar Galactica in its first seasons. I’ll be looking forward to the second half of season one which unfortunately isn’t scheduled to start until January 2011.