I've been doing a computer course at work for the past month, as part of the training for a possible task next year. Technically, I have always been a telecommunications technician - fixing radios, receivers, transmitters, radio net bandwidth management hardware and settings, modems, fibre-optics, satellite connections, DLOS links, etc... but in reality, I've always been the bright software specialist. Finally, my work have realised that my talents lie in computers, and are now 'training' me for that role.

Unfortunately, my workplace is both beurocratic and slow in realizing what century it is. So, in their wisdom, all Information Systems personell must have ECDL.

Yes, ECDL. The computer qualification designed for the long-term unemployed and immigrants who aren't so hot with anything computery. So, basically, I skived for a week, sat the 7 modules one afternoon and pretended I'd been working hard all week. What a farce... me, doing ECDL??? My seniors all thought it ridiculous that after years as a computer professional, programmer, server maintainer, etc... I was doing a course that involved tasks like "Here are 4 pictures. Click on the two which you think are input devices". Well done!

Thankfully the course moved on... we've done weeks of genuinely good stuff, like N+, A+ (which I already had), MCSA and MCSE courses, etc. There's even talk of putting some people on CCNA, later (another one I already have, but that was 5 stagnant years ago). We've all been given half a shelf of expensive MS 2003 server books; it's a shame many of the others on the course don't appreciate their 5-year worth.

For me, this course is mostly revision, but there are various MS features that I haven't used before (although working it out would be a diddle), such as Compatability modes, volume shadowing, folder and file encryption, etc. And lots which I'm familiar with; IIS, disk management, Active Directory, server software, NTFS kung-fu, and lots besides. I'm the "cone-head" of the course.

They all consider me an expert, although I have so many intelligent friends that I think its truer to say that I'm more like the one-eyed man amongst the blind.

Tags: computers, ecdl, geekery, geeky, microsoft, servers, windows, work
Current Location: Mönchengladbach
Listening To: "The line to the dead" by Combichrist

Doing some VBA stuff; I want a link to open two windows, in two specific locations on the screen. Firstly, a explorer.exe window, to open in the left half of the screen, and an FTP window to open in the second half.

Getting the two windows to open is easy (Shell explorer.exe), but, I can't find a way of controlling their position and size.

Know any methods?

Tags: geeky, programming, vba
Current Location: Tower of London, UK

I am looking for a harddrive I can plug into a router. With http://www.mediacase.co.uk/ you buy a 3.5" drive case which networks a drive for you. This is kind-of ideal... except... I want one or two more features!

* A Networked drive (to plug into a router)

* But with at least 2 disks, for RAID backup purposes

* and / or... a CD-writer, where you put in a CD and it then automatically writes a backup.

Anyone know of anything useful?

Tags: backups, computers, geeky, hard drives, networking
Listening To: "Dead Set (7am)" by Glis

I want to introduce everyone to Ziggy. Ziggy is a MS Access/VBA application that I write and improve, which manages my websites, academic notes on books, lists and manages book quotations and reviews, and writes the Bibliography portion of my HTML file. It is highly searchable, meaning it takes second for me to search for where I've used a particular quote, and seconds to (for example) list all the books I've quoted from on a particular page.

It can list all the "unused" notes I've made on books, so, I can see where I've made notes on something or quoted from the book, but I haven't implemented the quote in any text of my own yet. It has a "random quote" function that shows me a random unused quote from a book... so when I'm not inspired, I click "random quote" and have a look to see if it's anything I feel like writing about.

It also manages Notes... organised into topics, so, I have a series of notes pages on politics. It means I don't have to remember where I've left any .txt files around my computer when I'm trying to remember where I left an essay plan!

Oh, it writes http://www22.brinkster.com/vexen/site_index.html whenever I press on the "Sites... Make Index" button. And then opens it for me to preview.

Last few days I've programmed it to understand some FTP, so after doing an update I can tell it to open the local folder and remote FTP folder for the site I just tweeked. Handy.

When I'm inserting links into comments, I can tap "Sites... Search mine" and type in a quick keyword like "zombies" and it will list all my relevant pages, I can click on one and it places a "biblio" link into the clipboard ready for me to insert into the discussion. Example: "The Biology and Neurology of Zombies" by Vexen Crabtree (2006)

Ziggy will, over time, actually become self-aware. It will become knowledgeable enough to carry on writing my webpages, even once I'm dead. I just need to carry on and program it with everything I know, and press "Go". Ergo, world domination. Via HTML.

Tags: books, geeky, programming, vba, vexen, ziggy
Current Location: Salisbury, UK

I need a small app to parse PHP on my Win2000 laptop. It is an old laptop with next-to-no disc space, little memory and a slow processor. But, as I am offline most the time I have to do most my HTML stuff offline... nearly everything I can find ATM is way too complicated, anyone know an already-compiled install?



(I just wrote a few test apps, PHP seems like a nice language to write in, but don't have enough on-line time to learn db-manipulation whilst online, so need to do it offline!)



2. Simple question... can mySQL be used to access normal .mdb databases? (No macros, just queries and tables). I can't be bothered to write a script to create the database structure from scratch. Does mySQL struggle with any database elements I might have used (such as large text fields?).

Tags: geeky
Listening To: Beethoven's 3rd

A network virus on the Roshan network (Afghanistan civilian net) has hit all the computers connected to it; the laptop I'm using will remain offline for a week or so until I scan it and fix it, and get new antivirus for it, and stuff.

So I won't be on Yahoo for a bit, and hey, I miss you guys already!

In other news, I will soon be back in Germany for ten days soon. Which is timely, I've got loads of stuff to do! Not least of all, spending nights-in with my wife!

Tags: afghanistan, computer viruses, geeky, germany, relationships

In 1992, my English teacher, Mrs. Gilliam Tomlinson, said on my report:

"[Vexen] is quiet in class, but is an industrious worker. His imagination is easily fired and he writes with real flair, using good vocabulary to express himself. He writes at length and presents his work well. Obviously he thinks about things and has an individual mind. His weakness is spelling. I want [Vexen] to use the dictionary, to check spellings and to check his final draft after completion"

This weekend I've been editting and reformatting some old pages written in 1998 and 1999 that I haven't looked at for many years... and keep finding spelling mistakes. These have been on my website for a good six or seven years.

Why do I do it to myself? And more importantly, does anyone (any programmer...) know if I can use Microsoft Word's spellchecker in my own applications? Basically, call a MSWord_Spellcheck.dll and pass it the reference for a textbox, and have it do all the business?

Failing that, anyone know a dictionary library I can download and #include to add a spellcheck to (my version of) notepad?

Tags: geeky, ms word, spellcheck
Listening To: "Unicorn" by Apoptygma Berzerk

Been doing a series of Cisco final exams... getting 90-something % in all of them, I thought I'd be getting less on account of rushing through it now.

I'm still rushing, and have 2 more final exams, a practical exam and a written case study to complete. Will I complete it by Friday??? It's very close!

Here is an absolutely HILLARIOUS multiple-choice question that from the final - sometimes it throws these clanger-questions in, just to keep the exams entertaining, I think!:

36. What is an advantage of layering in the OSI reference model?

• It breaks network communications into larger parts.
• It increases complexity.
  
• It prevents changes in one layer from affecting other layers.
  
• It requires the use of single-vendor equipment for hardware and software communications.

Please tell me none of you, despite never having studied Cisco, are unsure as to what the right answer is!!

Tags: cisco, communications, geeky

This stuff is utterly beyond all levels of boring I've previously encountered.

"
ISDN utilizes a suite of ITU-T standards spanning the physical, data link, and network layers of the OSI reference model:

• The physical layer - The ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI) physical layer specification is defined in ITU-T I.430. The ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI) physical layer specification is defined in ITU-T I.431.
• The data link layer - The ISDN data link layer specification is based on LAPD and is formally specified in ITU-T Q.920, ITU-T Q.921, ITU-T Q.922 and ITU-T Q.923.
• The ISDN network layer - The ISDN network layer is defined in ITU-T Q.930 (also known as I.450) and ITU-T Q.931 (also known as I.451). Together these two standards specify user-to-user, circuit-switched, and packet-switched connections

I don't know how to remember stuff that is sooooo anally uninteresting (AU)! I've done well so far, but ISDN seem to be a study of Terminology Without Reason (TRW), according to Vexen standard 2002 (Circa 2004, beta release known as 2003ra). TRWb (Also known as TRW-AU1) was adopted by LJ on 2002 Oct 29 RFC, however Cisco delayed release until 2005 due to a lack of TLAs, which led to the widespread adoption of No-one's TRWB-232 standard, except in Southern UK where it is known as ISTR-Nothing v29.

Tags: cisco, communications, computers, geeky

I got the point of VLANs today :-)

They:

• Provide secure control of where network broadcasts and traffic goes. You can't add devices to the network that can spy on traffic, because the new device is by default only member of a crappy low-service VLAN, and needs to be added to specific VLANs to see specific traffic. It's not that the traffic is unreadable, but that it isn't even sent to the new devices by the routers/switches in the first place.
  
• Provide segmentation of broadcast domains. Broadcasts are strictly limited to correct VLANs, which potentially frees up a lot of bandwidth (I would guess 20/30%) that was otherwise merely being ignored by most machines anyway. If you want broadcasts from a particular VLAN, you have to be a member of that VLAN.

Their biggest disadvantage appears to be that switches and extra complexity adds to latency, and that routers/switches have to configure ports to let VLAN traffic through - meaning some extra administration to do, and, of course, more things to go wrong. But when done in an organized way, VLANs are dead useful and efficient.

Tags: computers, geeky, vlans

(Context: Medium/Large routed/switched computer networks)

I just feel deep down that VLANs could be done much better! Maybe I don't understand the whys of it all! I still think that subnetting could be done better too!

Tags: computers, geeky, vlans

Am attending another Interview today... wish me luck again!

Yesterday's went excellently, it was very promising and natural and good interview. So I have another one with a more technical minded person today, who will quiz me on technical stuff including a HTML test, I don't really know what this test will entail but if I, Vexen, who talks and thinks in HTML [1], can't pass it, then no-one can!

[1] Although probably non-standards compliant HTML, and biased towards IE... hopefully the company/techie is practically orientated rather than theory orientated because I'd be weaker at the latter.

After interview yesterday I hung around Camden reading a collection of essays by Max Weber, who is very rapidly becoming someone I'm falling for. Then attended a Sluts meet, which was excellent because I love the company, and we met in a pub that sold Thai food, and got to see my adorable sister felishumanus.

Ah... Thai food... or something... after finally getting to bed last night at beyond midnight, I was woken a few hours later with stomach pains that my body told me were food poisoning or a lower stomach bug. It appears to have gone for now, so maybe it was the former. No other symptoms than waking up in pain and a tiny bit of sweating.

Today, am going to Interview then will sit around Camden reading a book all day (if anyone is around, text me on 07812 048684 and come keep me company from 1pm onwards!) until about 7/8pm where I will meet some friends in Starbucks. I will definately need the coffee because I only slept five hours last night, and four (restless) hours this nite!

Um... I need to write an updated CV and print it out for the 2nd Interview. I don't have a printer so I'm going to take a floppy with files on (and upload a version in case the floppy breaks), and if I happen to pass an Internet cafe or somesuchplace, then will pop in and print out file for whatever they charge.

Tags: camden, felis, geeky, html, max weber
Current Mood: busy