Well I have just butted heads with our domain policy and Microsoft VPC. The summary of the problem is the domain server and your windows PC exchange a secret password, and it’s updated at a random interview (inside a configured window), once the domain server negotiated a new password the old one become invalid. This is fine expect for, when using a virtual PC, where you throw away the changes after each session, which I have been doing as I’m testing my installer, and want it all nice and clean.

There is a registry key option as noted below, but this appears to be required on the server as well as the work station, so the understanding IS guys are not touching it with a barge pole. Which means I’m now rebuilding my VPC image again. Current service pack 2 is been installed, and after that I have ~50 patches for it two install. Yea har!

Anyway, I’ve got a copy of the hard drive image, prior to joining the domain, and I’m going to leave my new image running over the weekends, to hope this is when a new password is exchanged. Otherwise this is the only fly in the virtual machine ointment, which still best the pants of having a ghosted machine.

Here is a VMWare forum discussing the issue (with snapshots) with the registry key been:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\Netlogon\\Parameters\\DisablePasswordChange REG_DWORD 1

I’ve been playing on an ogn.com.au Wolf ET server (203.206.95.20:27960) for the last few weeks, and it’s been a real hoot. The server is a etpub mod, tweaked with some cool things and most importantly XP save on, so the game play is quite fast.

Best features so far:

• In Australia so the ping from NZ is good. In the last week I have noticed my pings go from 100ms to 60ms for most Australia servers, so Telstra must have done something.
• People can do a double jump, which makes them sitting flying ducks. Not that I have learnt how to do it yet Done by hitting the jump key a second time when in the air, but it changes some maps quite dramatically.
• knife attack kill really quick, this is good and bad as you can run past someone, and get killed easily, but also people run at you with a knife and kill you faster than you can with a gun, so it make for different game style. But I’m learning how to use the knife, so it is not so much of a minus.
• They are using a large number of maps, which is good because I was getting bored of the same 5 maps the Orcon had on there server rotation.
• They have an separate HTTP server setup so you can get the missing map, fast, unlike Orcon, that dribble them via the game server at 10KBs

Unbelievable!

via Phil Haack, who didn’t named his source.

Oh my, I was reading Eric Sink’s blog, and he mentioned Larry O’Brien’s blog, who talked about Fabian Gonzalez producing high dynamic range photography.

Fabian’s Flicker HDR Photo set

p.s. LiveWriter works, and is easy to use, Thus I’m more likely to post more often, cos I can…

Just like the rest of the world (well those in my boll roll), I am now trying out live writer. Seems good so far, all I have done is install and run it, so that’s not really a very indicative test, but your have to start with small steps, before you can run. So I will type a few more sentences about using this new tool and then see how the whole publish part of it work. At which point I might even tell you that it works just great. Or I could skip that bit and assume that is will, but what if it doesn’t, and then you wont even know I tried, and failed, and then … oh look I’ve used more sentences than I had expected, so I better test the spelling check and just post…

Oh no, first spelling mistake on the page “LiveWriter” should maybe be “Inverter”. Maybe someone should have added the word to the dictionary…

Wow, I have learnt something cool, from Gladwell’s blog already, (not hard when you have a backlog to read) using the constant ground temperature for heating/cooling.

People just love heat pumps here in New Zealand, but the downfall of heat pumps is performance when it is really cold weather. I knew about the earth constant temperature, having visited an ex-military underground base, and been told it was always 18°C. Putting the two ideas together for heating is just brilliant.

Now if I only had the backyard to lay the piping in.

I was wondering the shelves at the library on Sunday, and spotted Blink. I’d heard good things about it, so grab the book, and started reading while Jacob played on the Playstations.

Well I finished the book Monday evening, and I loved it. I could read books like that forever, just because I find them so fascinating. I’m an “interesting titbits and did you know” kind of guy, and that is what the whole book is.

I was talking it up today with a co-worker, and we did a book swap (I had it with me so I could blog about it), and now I have The Design of Everyday Things to read, another book I have heard fascinating things about.

Did I mention that I think everybody should read Blink? Oh, no, well then do it now.

Woot, Malcolm also has a blog, subscribed…

Following the lead of Alex and his “What I learned today“ or “WILT“ series, based on the principle, that if I didn’t know it, maybe someone else also didn’t.

Windows Explorer mass file rename.

I’ve been refactoring some code, make new files the hold classes of vehicles. So I have files in my vehicles directory

vehicle_dozer.cpp (and)

vehicle_dozer.h

Now to make a new vehicle I select both files, copy and paste to get

Copy of vehicle_dozer.cpp

Copy of vehicle_dozer.h

Now if I select both and rename (F2) them, one is editable, so I change the file name part to vehicle_loader and I get

vehicle_loader.cpp

vehicle_loader (1).h

Now I remove the (1) and they are done.

So ok I still have to edit both files, but I only need to remove the (1) which means I don’t need to select the text to edit, or do any typing.

I was shocked when I discovered did this, because it’s just plan clever that it preserves the extensions, that it auto numbers the files to avoid conflict, oh and that it even works full stop.

One of the background task I’ve been doing now that I’ve started a new job (2 months already, so not really new any more) is update all my MP3’s because the meta data is not stored in the actually MP3’s because I used to use WinAmp, and hated ID3v1 tags. So cleared all the tags out, and just name the files.

So any way, I’ve been editing the Meta data, which sometime is seems to get written to file (via the Advanced Tag Editor), but when I alter the title/artist it doesn’t. This is all in WMP 10.

I did install WMP11 Beta here at work, but then my PC started to crash with RAM error check, so the IS guys rolled the machine back, and removed WMP11 and it’s been sweet since then. But when I was using WMP11beta, I found the Advanced Tag Editor was really bad. If I moved the window (to see the track information from the file name) the window would go go over full screen. It would appear 4-8 times bigger than my display, and refuse to be shrunk, so I could press any buttons that where off the screen.

So anyway, in my editing, I’ve discovered so things I never knew before, and if I didn’t know them, then maybe some else doesn’t.

• After editing fields white-space is trimmed of the ends.
• When editing Ctrl+LeftArrow or Ctrl+RightArrow move you to the next non white space. But even better is Ctrl+Shift+Arrow, as you can then do word based selection.

So a line that looks like:

`05 Tokyo Ghetto Pussy - I Kiss Your Lips`

after getting edit the field into edit mode, only takes:

`Home`, `Ctrl+Shift+RightArrow`, `Delete`, `Ctrl+Shift+RightArrow` x3, `Ctrl+x`, `Tab`, `Ctrl+v`, `RightArrow`, `Delete`

and you have

`"I Kiss Your Lips" "Tokyo Ghetto Pussy"` all nice and clean. The funniest thing is that I got so used to doing this, that I can just look at line and think "select" "trim" "move" "fix" "next" and all the correct buttons are getting pressed. I can usually only handle about <10 track at a time because its so hand intensive, and oh, not what I getting paid to-do. But I usually only do it when I'm listen to a favourite track, and notice it's not "correct".

• I spend most of my time in Library mode, as I like it playing files from random mode, from the complete list, thus in WDP11 where you cannot see a list of all the song (without the sickly summary bar thing that outlook also has, that I hate in both apps). Anyway WMP10 is how I like it, but it often painful to find the track currently playing so you can edit it. See above. Recently I found that if you click the “Now Playing” tab and then back to the “Library” tab, the current song is in the middle of the screen. With 3000+ track, this is much faster than panning the list looking for the highlight bar, which is what I used to-do. *shakes head in shame*

If your making new PC images from scratch, make sure you install the “Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions” off the Actions menu.

This allows you to not have your mouse “grabbed” by the VPC, also allows sharing of your host folders as network mappings in the virtual machine.

The other feature I really like that not on by default is “Undo Disks”. When this is enabled a delta imagine is made, which you can or not merger with your main hard drive image. This is a must for installer testing, as you can close without saving and reboot the machine clean in 10 seconds, and install again. It can be slow when you want to merge, so I turned it on after letting all the update software do there thing.