The doorbell rang at 9:30 am and there on my doorstop stood two Bell Aliant installers ready to switch my Internet and TV to FiberOp. My kids yelled, “Are these guys going to fix the TV from freezing?”, were my five, seven, and nine year old kids more excited than I? It was almost like in 1998 getting Vibe all over again!

I did like Rogers TV but always felt the Rogers Internet was throttled and shaped to the point it limited my Internet usage flexibility (I work from home so I am not a standard home Internet user). I did not like the Rogers “modem” for their Ultimate service, the web interface was clunky and slow. Plus after Rogers locked us geeks out of the advanced tech features of the modem (even if you bought the modem) really ticked me off. The Bell Aliant web interface is simple and fast, maybe a little overly simple for me. The DHCP configuration does not have enough configuration features for my needs (so I run a different one) but for “normal” Internet user it is just fine.

Quick Notes: I found on Rogers if you were doing massive downloads that used many concurrent connections (hmm what would that be?) it would degrade Skype and other services that required a constant bit rate, but on FiberOp that does not happen.

Bottom Line
—————-

Bell Aliant TV, all I can say kids love it because it does not freeze and my wife likes an accurate PVR. I have not had a chance to watch enough TV or give the PVR a test, but I will report on that soon. But I did discover a new channel called Treasure HD, which is a real treat.

Bell Aliant Internet – Rogers fastest upload is 2 MBPS where as Bell Fibre OP is 10+ MBPS, you do the math. I enjoy the faster uploads on FiberOp as my new hobby is photography and sharing home videos, so uploading it important.

BTW: The installers where super nice and I was super nosey, but they put up with me!

Built a new PC targeting video editing as I found the video (even @ 720p) with the Canon Rebel Ti was killing my Q6600 based PC. So I build a new PC around a Nvidia GTX 470 because Adobe Premiere CS5 has a new Mercury Playback Engine that uses Nvidia CUDA technolgy. Basically Adobe Premiere CS5 can harness the Nvidia video card for computational matters. Well Adobe does not support the GTX 470 yet, the next round of drivers they should.

But to get around the issue a fellow at Studio1Productions has a very simple configureation tweak that will get many Nvidia video cards working with CS5 while you wait for Nvidia and Adobe to catch up.

Click here to read Adobe Premiere CS5 and Video Cards

It works great!

A few times in your life you read a book that changes your life, this was not the case with Rework, it validated my life. Rework is a book about the founders of 37Signals (Ruby on Rails and BaseCampHQ fame) and their no nonsense approach to life and business. My new rule is any business partner of mine has to read this book and understand its value or we won’t be partners for long. The chapters in the book are one to two pages long and gets to the point. No MBA drawn out repetitious case studies but real work practical examples.

Chapters include:

·         Interruption is the enemy of productivity

·         Meetings are toxic

·         Your estimates suck

·         ASAP is poison

·         You need less than you think

·         Start a business, not a start-up

·         Press releases are spam

This has been the best business book I have read since Joel and Software. Only take 1-2 hours to read.

Once or twice a year I look at job openings with real companies. They all want degree in X, experience in stifling process in Y, requirements my experience never fits. I need a job posting that reads, “Required candidates need 10+ experience of figuring it out”.

After reading this book I realized there are other people out there that operate like I do, it is nice to have reaffirmation once in awhile. If you are a partner or owner of a small business or the black sheep in a large organization, this book is for you.

Introduction
I store all my photos on a shared network drive. This shared network drive is on Windows Home Server (WHS) because it keeps my all photos automatically on two hard discs. Also I backup WHS onto an external hard drive plus I also have 20 GIGs of space I use on Photoshop.com with to backup my best pictures.

Anyways….

The Problem
I have a folder in my photo folder called “FromWeb”, this is where I put pictures I find on the web I like to keep, mainly pictures of the family from Flickr, Facebook, etc. I wanted Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 to watch this folder so anytime I loaded Photoshop Elements it would tell if there was new pictures the folder that were not in the organizer.

First step was to add the folder “p:/FromWeb/”, which is a permanent mapped drive to a shared folder.  Photoshop Elements told me the path could not be found.

So instead of the mapped drive I used the full share path and entered ” \\TITAN\Photos\FromWeb\ ” and got a new error message saying the Adobe Service had received an accessed denied error.

Hmmm….
Solution
So I opened up my Services in the Control Panel and found a service called “Adobe Active File Monitor V8″. I noticed it was logging in as LocalSystem.

Well LocalSystem has no rights to the share on the network so maybe that is the root of the problem. So I changed the user account of the service to the user account I access the share with (the same account I use to log into my Windows desktop), restarted the service and presto, I could add network shares to my Watch Folders in Adobe Photoshop Elements 8. Now I still can’t add it as a mapped drive (i.e. “P:/”) but can use the full share path name (\\{server}\{sharename}\ i.e. \\TITAN\Photos\FromWeb\).

Summary
So if you use the Watch Folders feature in Photoshop Elements and want to watch a folder on a network share then make sure the Adobe Active File Monitor service has access to the share. You can use the account you use to access the share or some folks (the security guys) might make a separate read only account that only has access to Watch Folders list on the file server for the service.

Introduction

A few weeks ago I wiped my Windows XP 64-bit box and installed Windows Home Server (WHS) on it. I have been running Windows XP 64-bit as my home server for a year but the features in WHS made it a compelling upgrade. In the next few weeks I am going to post a detailed review of WHS Power Pack 3 and how it is the ultimate home server.

One of the best features of WHS is the backup. At home I have over a half a dozen computers keeping and keeping them all backed up can be a pain. I tried Windows OneCare, the built in Windows Backup, and Acronis but none of them never lived up to the “set and forget” I wanted.

Once you install WHS, you then install a tiny agent on each computer and then each day that computer will backup to WHS over the network. If any computer does not backup you get notifications that it did not backup. WHS will even wake up the computer at night and backup the computer then put the computer back to sleep.

The Crisis

So one morning I woke up and my main development computer would not boot. The PNPCLASS.SYS had become corrupt for whatever reason, which meant that the computer would not even boot in safe mode. So after troubleshooting and diagnosing for a bit, I decided to try the restore from WHS, which I had never done before.

The Solution 

On a separate laptop I made a WHS Recovery CD, which resides in the WHS Software folder as an ISO. This CD was used to boot the “dead” computer. When the CD booted the computer, it found the network card (got an IP via DHCP), located the WHS on the network, and determined the name of the “dead” computer. If WHS does not find your network card it gives you the option to load a network card driver. The Recovery software told me the last backup was at 12:47AM, and it was 8:40 AM, so the computer was backed and I would lose nothing if the restore worked. So I hit Restore, it whirled away for a bit, then the computer rebooted.

It actually rebooted and has been working for 2 weeks without a hiccup. What made PNPCLASS.SYS die? I don’t know but WHS made it super easy to get a machine back up and running quickly.

Note: WHS when backing up your computers it only appends the deltas each night, so after the initial backup, each night’s backup is very quick. As I keep all my files on the WHS anyways my machines backup quickly every night.

Stay tuned for more WHS updates.

I was excited to download VS 2010 Beta 2 and start playing with .NET 4.0, which is the real first new CLR since .NET 2.0. I discovered that VS 2010 finally supports dual monitors. It does not support dual monitors but multiple monitors! So like all geeks would do I installed a second ATI card and added a third 24″ monitor.

Now I can have my code edit window in my primary window, my toolbox and some video playing to the left and a design view or debug windows to the left.

If you are going to develop in VS 2010 I would add as many monitors as you can to your development machine budget.

I have been interested in photography for a long time. I got my first Spiderman camera when I was six. I still have the pictures I took being 6 and 7 years old in a photo album. I learned early on that taking pictures was expensive (especially for a youngin’) and I did not have the patience level required for photography, especially because:

1. Cost of film
2. Limited number of pictures per film
3. Cost of developing pictures
4. The wait for picture development
5. The complexity of developing your own pictures
6. The management of all the developed pictures (photo albums, shoe boxes full of pictures)
7. Storage of original film

So my interest in photography was overcome by it complexity and cost.

At the dawn of the consumer digital camera era my interest returned but never had enough cash for a good camera I always had access to a “OK” digital camera. The first one I got to use was a AGFA 2.0 mega pixel (MP) camera. The pictures where not worth crap and the batteries lasted about 10 minutes. Yup, it would go through a 4 set of AA batteries in 10 minutes. Ug. Then I got a free 3.2 MP HP when I bought a color laser printer for work. It was OK, pictures where OK and the battery life was OK, but nothing to inspire the inner photographer, I found the press of the “take picture button” and the 5 second delay until the picture was taken was painful taking pictures, especially when taking pics of the kids. While we had lesser digital cameras Kristy had a decent film camera which was still capturing the “moments” but I never seemed to use it much.

Next up was Kristy’s new 5.0 MP Sony Cybershot. The pictures where good and the battery life was great. Armed with a 512 MB Memory Stick this is what I was waiting for. I starting taking good pictures, but not great pictures. But the one thing I did notice it that I was enjoying carrying the camera and trying to capture the events and taking some interesting shots. This all changed when Sean showed me his pictures and introduced me to DSLR. Wow. His shots where fantastic and the quality of the shots where a cut above mine (pinto vs. ferrari). What I learned is it is not all about the massive MP but also the lenses, image stabilization, and of course good lighting.

So this year one of my 2009 New Year’s Resolutions is to unlock the inner photographer. I picked up a Canon XS Rebel DSLR from the Boxing Day sale of Future Shop (got to love those 6 AM crowds).

One thing about taking all these pictures is about managing them. So I have set out to explore how I can mange these pictures. I am been playing with Microsoft Expression Media 2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and I will blogging about that discovery later. Also there is a collection of Dummies books on the Canon XS Rebel and using Photoshop of digital photographers which I will be reviewing in upcoming months.

Happy New Year everyone.

<rant>
Some days I work hard and realize I did not get anything done. Emails, cell phone, twitter, blogs, IM, door bells, they are all one constant interruption. Our generation has gotten to much in the habit of the of “Now! - and get me someone while I am waiting!”.  I have people email me and if I did not respond in 1 hour they email me again and are “put out” because I did not answer already. Maybe I was taking a walk and decided to leave my iPhone at home to get some peace.

Days I decide to shut off email, IM, and the phone are days code flows from the brain to the fingers and into the computer. Those are the days I don’t have to look up as many examples of code because my brain is working the way it should when writing software. I think I am going to start two days a week only checking all the digital gizmos for request of contact/response once every two hours. This way I can do a “normal” week’s work in two days. Hey, who else is in!?!
</rant>

What prompted my rant was this article I read called “Why You Can’t Pay Attention“. It is worth the read.

A few times in your career you get to be involved in a project that will stay your memory as a special project. The One Million Acts of Green (OMAOG) campaign by CBC (sponsored by Cisco) is one of those projects.

Before OMAOG my favorite project was the CETS project with Microsoft Canada and Toronto Police Services. CyberSecure (an old company of mine) got engaged by Microsoft to secure the infrastructure (which resides in the RCMP data center) that helped police officers track down child exploit offenders.

Now with GreenNexxus being one of the core components of the CBC green website is very exciting, plus getting photos on the set of “The Hour” was pretty cool.