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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.