Sharepoint SP2- Important Information…

…on the Sharepoint Team Blog.

If you have deployed SP2, you must read this….http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/05/21/attention-important-information-on-service-pack-2.aspx

Win7 Fun and Games, BCD and VHDs….

Hands-up, this is a depth of working on Win7 and 2008 R2 which I do not expect to explore. However, I can appreciate how useful this post from James O’Neill is, so I thought it worth linking here.

Booting from VHD (and some gotcha’s) will be a useful feature for all sorts of reasons. If you read that post and think “Oooh, that sound like a bit of a wheeze, I could try that” then YOYO and perhaps you should probably wait for his explanatory video?

A Fishes Greatest Sin….

On a Passing…

Friends, colleagues and family gather.
Memories pooled – in thought if not in voice.
All focussed – for a moment  away from the ordinary,
Onto the special.
We all know the one who has passed,
But there is less sadness here.
There is celebration and appreciation –
Memorial rather than catharsis.
Later, a quiet dignity contrasts with youthful exuberance
As voices can raise and conversation resumes.

New Friend/Old Tosh….

….interesting. Everything is going swimmingly. Oddly, despite being defined in the power plan, the machine will not hibernate when the lid is closed, nor will it power-up when the lid is opened. I’m guessing it’s maybe just a compatibility thing….duh!

Only browsing on the machine so far but with OS, Firefox, and Live Writer running, task manager reports only 444Mb of RAM used (60%) and the cpu is really low – much as you would expect. (Interestingly, IE8 consumes less RAM than FFX.)

Until you hit a site using Flash or Silverlight. Again, not unexpected – cpu usage leaps. Watching a movie from the MSFT BI site comfortably pegs the cpu at 100% (I had hoped for better) – but only when the movie is visible, whether or not the browser window is active. This lends itself to a little fun, gradually covering up the movie with the task manager window and watch the cpu usage reduce (slightly) – that’s how dull the TV is right now.

It’s definitely smarter with power consumption on battery. I’m suffering from a lack of scientific rigour (no pre-Win7 benchmarks) but I know the battery is lasting longer – very good for an old stalwart like this.

The Public Meets Bob, MP…

Bob, The Social Media Specialist…

On Distraction and Focus…

I posted the following as a comment to this blog post by Colin Gilchrist on Creativity, Food and Distractions. I thought it was worth posting here. An extract from his post is…

“….No distractions were an interesting one for me because it’s a real challenge – I am permanently submersed in media from all angles – but hey it’s opened up a whole new world. This is where Westwood and Cleese come in. They advocate the no distraction; sit in peace, sleep on it, and way of living.
John Cleese talks eloquently about Creativity and his time in the Cambridge Footlights making him realise that loosing an entire script, rewriting it the next day – only to discover the original and compare – the second was far superior to first – he’d let it gestate in his mind and form a more rounded story.
Vivienne Westwood famously does not allow music in her studio and does not own a TV she finds that all this constant bombarding of media in every day life is holding back the human disposition for Creativity.
What do you think?…”

My response is – It’s less that they HAVE something but rather that others have lost that thing. It is ability and aptitude to find calmness and focus.

We, especially those involved in new-ish media, so constantly immerse ourselves in and are bombarded-by multiple message streams that we develop a bumble-bee attention span. We dip into and out of content, picking attention-grabbing goodies and moving on.

Even finding a small oasis of calm in a day can be immensely beneficial – not just for the refreshed feeling which immediately follows but also for the enhanced and freed thinking which you subsequently can be capable of.

Only 20 minutes of enhanced relaxation in the middle of the day can yield great benefits for you – and for your employer.

The Sea Bass of Doom….

Welcome, New Friend…

Well, I just upgraded an old Toshiba Satellite A30 to Windows 7 RC. Very painless, straightforward – just what you would expect from Microsoft nowadays.

Several blogs have alluded to the comprehensive support for devices so I had high expectations and was very relaxed in approaching the install. Maybe too relaxed.

All went well and bingo – there was new-Windows. Except that I had no connectivity. Hhrumph…..of course – I had done the install while connected wirelessly – with an old Belkin 54g PCMCIA Notebook wireless card. Had I really expected New-Windows to notice this and to have the insight and preparedness to have the required drivers? Well yes, I had, but not consciously – I just hadn’t thought about it.

Feeling rather foolish, I did dig out the original disk, installed the required magic and hey-tesco, there was the network.

New-windows had also not picked the audio (RealTech AC97 – no default was used or offered) or the video (Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller – some MSFT default was clearly working OK).

So – looking forward to enjoying the new experience – see what’s in the tin, under the hood. I hope there’s something interesting.

Sharepoint 2010 – Be Ready….

…and a timely reminder to keep up the best practices.

Sharepoint 2010 preliminary system requirements on the Sharepoint team blog.

But remember the MOSS 2007 Best Practices – play nice and be a good citizen.

Ooh… and don’t forget, official IE6 support stops next year.

Skwerl Blanc – That’s Wild Life….

 

The Gloves are Off…

…especially now that there is something to really shout about.

James O’Neill sticks it to VMware – not as a direct competition-rubbishing – but more in the way of “If you’re going to try to be smart, you need to be intelligent about it”.

About time too.

But it’s Ixnay on the Win7 RC from Scotty in Engineering…

… a more subtle skunky approach may be required?

RAM Transplant Saves Sanity…

…well my Dell XPS which has been delivering grief by the shed-load over the past few days seems to have been restored to shiny zero-defect status. (holds breath…….OK that’s long enough).

One of the memory modules was borked and SEEMS to have been the source for many apparently app-related red-herring-type problems.

Fortunately a bloke turned up yesterday bearing a most glorious gift, a gleaming gem – or at least a2Gig exchange memory module.

A deft application of a (suspiciously large Philips) screwdriver – not by said bloke as he was clearly banned from approaching within flu-spreading distance of the faulty device – and bingo, the mem diagnostics are no longer red and failing. They are gloriously blue and passing.

We are restored, the XPS and me. The former to fully functioning, laptoppy, dual-coreyness and me to pure saintly-mouthed calm sanity.

Black and White…

…as keys on a piano, or a chessboard or yin and yang. It’s like being taken by the hand, sat down and shown how something incredibly simple works, along with a diagram and the pieces laid out and labelled.

Spence clearly has to use words of (metaphorically) one syllable in (metaphorically) short sentences to help people understand something which – even with my passingly tenuous comprehension – is glaringly obvious.

This like a teacher having to go back over basic stuff, slowly, for the pupil who didn’t get it first time because he was staring out of the window, slack-jawed wondering what sorcery made it possible for aeroplanes to fly.

Any lingering questions about the MCM for Sharepoint are answered in Spence’s Reality Check post.

Read it, slowly if necessary, follow the words with your finger and – if it’ll help, move your lips…

…then MOVE ON.

Crash, Bang, Wallop…

Good Lord. Firefox as well. Trouble brewing me-thinks!!

Great Way to Start the Day…

Guess what – Windows Vista has an official ‘Problem Event Name’ called BlueScreen. I know because it happened – see below. The side effect is, of course, that the junk which Outlook normally mops-up got sent to my Smartphone over the weekend. My joy knows new depths. (Maybe I’ll get lucky and our support guys will let me have the Windows 7 RC?)

Custom Tag Time…

Created from images of Champagne cork metal caps from Whigams – one of my favourite bars – my (blog link) Custom tag.

Yes, it’s a work in progress and rushed but a bit of a wheeze. It reads, just, but shows a bit of potential. Next step, actual size and try to find caps more closely matching the CMY colours – not easy.