after the jump : win 7 here we are

Status Update: Windows 7 upgrade has been particularly painless.

The restore of the old Vista install to a new disk was 1.5 hours of waiting. The actual upgrade to windows 7 was around 40 minutes total I spose. A few updates to download and voila.

I didn’t know whether I had to format the new drive before restoring the Vista insall so I did. That took several hours   The Windows Home Server recovery disk is naturally pretty bare so it wasn’t clear to me if I had to format or not. It all worked like a treat in the end.

First thing to do was get VirtualBox up and running so I could do some work. No problem, just added back the virtual disk on the E: drive and the virtual machine came up no problem.

Windows Home Server is giving a bit of grief still though. I can’t connect or map drives. I have my WHS set as Guest access open for everyone on the network. For some reason the new Win7 machine keeps asking for passwords and there isn’t one.

Doesn’t seem to be related to the new “homegroup” feature as that is win7-win7 only. Will have to solve this one later.

oooh my desktop background just changed. sweet. another aussie image, rainforest I guess.

Will do the biggies like Office, LightRoom later.

 

Heading towards Windows 7 Upgrade

Decided that I ought to upgrade my main desktop machine to Windows 7. I have been running happily on Vista for 2.5 years. The machine is a Athlon X2 with 4Gb of RAM and a vanilla video card. The main reason for upgrading is to start with a new install. The Vista install is running smoothly, but after a couple of years of installing and uninstalling software you do accumulate guff in the registry and in program files etc.

I have an upgrade copy of Win7 to get me from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium.

At the same time I plan to run the new windows on a new 1TB drive.

Currently Vista runs on a 160Gb drive with another 250Gb drive as the E: drive.

So this presents problem first up. An upgrade should ideally use the same disk or partition. Luckily I have a Windows Home Server to help me.

The plan is to restore the backup of Vista from the C: drive to a newly formatted larger C: drive. After activating the new 1TB Vista install (which is trivial), I’ll run the upgrade (forcing a fresh install) of Windows 7.

Hopefully then the old E: drive can hang of Win7 and I can re-install apps and move my documents back to the main drive.

That’s the plan anyway. I’ll let you know if my plans are pure folly.

So far the 100Gb of data is restoring back over the network. Around 1.5 hours it reckons.

 

Photo Walk at Kings Park

Decided on the spur of the moment to take advantage of overcast skies and headed up to King’s Park to check out the wildflower season. Elliot came with me so I had to keep the session to about an hour.

There is plenty more to photograph up there, so I hope I can get to return at some stage.

Click on the thumbnail for a larger view.

All shots were with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens. I imagine that a macro lens and more time would produce better results, but was happy with these as snaps of what I saw.

 

Bird trapped in our bedroom

This little fellow got trapped in our bedroom. One butterfly net and some flapping later and he was free again.

 

Injured Mudlark in our garden

  

This little fellow got hit by a car outside our place. Took him to the vet. Wing looked bad.

 

TdF riders on twitter, via @lancearmstrong

TdF riders on Twitter. @levileipheimer, @bradwiggins, @dzabriskie, @christianvdv, @thedpate, @cadelofficial, @wegelius, @andy_schleck, @kaarvesen, @carlos_sastre, @mickrogers, @ghincapie, @markrenshaw1, @bdlancaster, @laurenstendam, @stevendejongh, @koendekort, @fumybeppu

source http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong/status/2494539488 and http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong/status/2494554789

 

Those clever spammers

Am seeing a new class of spammers on the Rosacea Support Community forum. They are obviously real human spammers, not the `robots auto registering’ sort that we have seen of late.

This new breed know how to use the rich text of the composer to hide web links in forum posts. Normal visitors won’t see the links – perhaps only be confused by the strange text from someone who isn’t really there for the usual reasons.

Web search engines will see the link though and give the destination site some `link juice’ from the forum site. This seems like a good ploy as some sites have been around for a long time and have become authority sites in the eyes of the likes of google.

Can I give a big free hint to you @#$@#$!^% spammers; google is clever enough to know what a hidden link looks like and will ignore it.

The annoying downside for site owners is that a forum needs to be baby sat. More and more onerous requirements on new members for eg. stopping them posting new links for the first 20 posts, just makes it more annoying for genuine members to freely use the site.

Whack-a-mole round #42 continues … as long as there are economies with cheap labour and industries who want to advertise the spammers will be with us.

seemingly innocent post

perhaps a bit clearer view of what they are doing

what they actually typed.

 

Book Review: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel by David Wroblewski

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Well I finally persevered and got to the end. I wanted to read this book to see what sort of work would get the only 2008 Oprah book club recommendation. If it was a truly great piece of writing I wanted to know why.

I’m not much for huge thick works of fiction, but I really did try to `get this one’.

I had read Marlie and Me and hated it. It should have been called "About a Dog". Dogs are not that great, puhlease. I feared that this book would unfold to be a huge hardcover version of About a Dog. It rose above that, but not enough so.

The author writes beautiful words and I did enjoy that images that he evoked of an innocent time and life in the country.

Too many details about dogs, dog care, dog training, dog relationships, dog obedience, dog personalities, dog breeding etc. etc. etc. though.

I deliberately didn’t read the jacket as I had heard that it gave too much of the plot away – and indeed it does. A built in spoiler

So I was hoping for an ending that would satisfy. Alas it left me disappointed. The ending is tragic and unsatisfying. So much so that I feel a bit ripped off and having invested all that time to get to the end.

I want to read a modern classic and love it, but this won’t be it.

View all my reviews.

 

Book Review: Forgiving the Dead Man Walking

Forgiving the Dead Man Walking: Only One Woman Can Tell the Entire Story by Debbie Morris

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a true story that everyone should read. Written simply and clearly Debbie Morris details her horrible trauma at the hands of a pair of rapists and killers.

The book describes her path since the abduction, leading to being able to forgive her captors. It was a long and difficult path, but one that I think we can all learn from. It was only after she was able to come to the position of being able to forgive that she could recover and move on from the ordeal. The refusal to forgive and desire to hang on to the hate will only eat you up.

I like that her forgiveness didn’t make her seem weak and glib. What she endured was awful but not unforgivable. Not unforgettable or un-punishable, but possible to forgive.

The main perpetrator was executed and wasn’t believed to ever show any remorse, so the act of forgiveness was for herself, for her own recovery and sanity.

Well done for sharing with us the journey I say !

This book will be an encouragement for anyone struggling with unforgiveness.

View all my reviews.

 

Book Review: Electric Universe

Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World by David Bodanis

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Quite enjoyed the way that the author showed how we stumbled across all of the principles that we take for granted today. It took many years for things like telegraph, electricity, radio, radar to be discovered and mass produced. There was lots of dead end research and lucky breaks along the way to piece together how electrons and magnets rule our modern world. It certainly wasn’t clear to me from my university physics classes that the early researchers had so little idea of what they were dealing with. Just what were those electrons, how can you measure them, how can you harness them for good (and evil too) ?? Just why do we call them volts, amps and watts ? A bit of interesting `dark’ background to Samuel Morse and Alan Turing too.

This is no mere physics book. It links together the luminaries of the field in a way that makes for a book almost like a novel.

I’m really getting into these sorts of factoid type entertaining reads. So many trivium to fill my wee head !

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