Well, it's been quite a year for AuTechHeads. You probably noticed it quietening down around here this month, especially as we approach Festivus. That's not too surprising as we take our respective breaks, wind down from a busy and hectic year, and spend time with our respective friends and family - away from the geek toys at work, and in hopes of getting more geek toys for home in some cases.

This year, AuTechHeads grew from an idea and concept into a solid reality - starting from its humble Twitter beginnings in 2009, and firming to a true online and offline presence. We've had our successes, and the odd minor failure, but overall we've gone from strength to strength. I personally never thought I'd devote as much time to a website again, but here it is and here I am.

For myself, I think the proudest achievement for AuTechHeads would be the 1st Anniversary Party we held on the Gold Coast, during Microsoft's Tech.Ed conference. 200 geeks celebrated something pretty amazing, at no cost ...

I tend to stay away from blogging about the NBN normally.

Frankly if I were to blog on it, I'd generally want to have the deepest possible understanding of what's proposed and planned. I don't have the time or inclination, so I generally don't get into it.  Today, of course, it's intruded into my consciousness with media coverage and regular mentions in my Twitter feed. The buzz has been on the NBN business plan and the rollout timeframe, which will take quite some years.

It occurs to me that this ideal of a rigid 'roll-out' for availability is flawed. You have to wait till fibre is rolled out, or wireless is made available, or satellite? Hmm. But we have existing copper and fibre infrastructure that could be leveraged, now, in the interim.

Hypothetically, say Telstra Wholesale was subsumed into the NBN now. Prices are set low to enable the barriers to access to fall considerably. ISPs can take advantage of the infrastructure throughout Australia, and broadband uptake can ...

I have really been trying to get my thoughts together to review Fable III. Or, you know, actually play it to completion.

I'm failing at it. See, I'd like to focus on at least some positives in my review, even if I dislike the game.  I've found one that I can clearly identify, and here it is:

You can sometimes finish off enemies in a cool way.

That's it. What it means, is for example, you might have a Hobbe swallow your arm up to the shoulder while holding a gun. So you pull the trigger. I have to admit to liking that quite a bit, but it doesn't go far enough to quash my frustration at this heap of steaming crap.

This is Fable. The game that's meant to be engaging, not too serious, but engrossing and with a sense of humour. I love Fable The Lost Chapters. I was thrilled at the way Fable II somehow managed to draw you in even further. The secret of the game's success, in my opinion, was that they put some effort into emotionally connecting you to the char ...

Ever since its release, I'd been excited about the new model Xbox 360 S - the S standing for Slim or Small, although @themolk likes to call it the Stealthbox. I really wanted one, primarily to take advantage of the quieter running in our lounge room, but also to make use of the larger 250Gb drive and the 802.11n wireless. There's still nothing wrong with my original launch-day Xbox 360 - still works perfectly, and the 100Gb upgrade I gave it a while back has helped in extending its lifetime, especially with the ability to copy games to the HDD.

Although I was keen to get hold of a 360 S, money has been tight, so I had resorted to trying to trade an unused drive for it. Through the generosity of a few AuTechHeads members, though, I was lucky enough to get an offer of a steeply discounted brand-new 360 S - part of a Kinect bundle, where the owner already had a 360 S and didn't want a 2nd one - and the cash to pay for it! It's sometimes overwhelming to see how generous people can be - thank you, you h ...

I’ve been in IT for some 20 plus years directly and indirectly.  I’ve been in the job market for a little longer, not much thou.  From school, I had a full time job as a Commercial Pilot flying right hand seat on Small executive jets and a selection of twins and Gas turbines and single engine aircraft, I have accumulated some 3700hrs flight time both in command and as First officer.

I however took a break from flying and moved into help my family’s business install a computer system back when screens where just going green and amber was the main PC monitor colour.  RAM was measured in Kb and Hard Drives in Meg.  To keep my flight enthusiasm going at the time I bought the first version of MS flight Sim, Hell I was cool and was handed a pre release copy of something called Windows from this nerd called Bill who was trying to flog off his new operating system.  At the time I was using DOS, Unix and SCO Xenix OS’s. 

Over the years and a var ...

Leading up to today I was hoping to post some good news and outcomes after taking my complaint to the Office of the CEO at Telstra.  But todays events have pissed me off even more and ponder the value and ability of the Telstra CEO to have any significant or beneficial impact in changing Telstra’s ways.  Far be it for me to expect customer service from the telco giant.

It starts with my blog post “Telstra, shitty Service and questionable data plan charges” http://www.autechheads.com/blogs/entryid/279/telstra-shitty-service-and-questionable-data-plan-charges

Last week I had received a response to my letter to the Office of the CEO and the outcome was having a case number a person that gave a commitment to address the issues and take ownership of my complaint and furnishing me with a daily update on the progress and outcomes.  One of the commitments and outcomes was that the account was being placed on hold, which means that no disconnection a ...

Background

I have a test network at work which I use to 'mess around with', learning new technologies, programs, and systems. There isn't anything operational on the network, but if I lost anything it would be annoying.

The centre of the network is a Dell server that is currently excess to requirements, part of an EMC Avamar pilot a couple of years ago that is no longer required (the server, certainly not Avamar).

Server Specification

Dell PowerEdge 2950

About 12 months ago, I installed VMWare ESXi 4 on the server, and it has been running flawlessly since then. It's not taxed very much, usually having only 2 VMs running on it - a Server 2008 R2 A ...

Day after day, at the moment, we see examples of information leakage. I refer, of course, to the diplomatic cables being released by Wikileaks which is the target of so much media attention.

I wonder that no-one considers the ramifications of these revelations to ICT and to IT Managers, with all this information existing in digital form. I know that I certainly do, but many in both private and public enterprises simply do not. There is a legal and ethical minefield to consider though, both for the IT Manager and their staff, and for the broader organisation.

I must admit to falling on the side of information wanting to be free. I struggle with the notion of classifying information as secret and confidential, except where it directly relates to personal information or information that could put someone at risk.

That said, as an IT Manager, it is my job to look after information. It would be unethical - and potentially criminal - to release information under my custodianship ...

My Mozart experience has been surprising. Windows Phone 7 as an OS is by far nowhere near as bad as the memories of Windows Mobile x.x - but it's no iOS. That's likely an unfair comparison though, as Apple have had 4 years to get their OS to this stage and this is Microsoft's first iteration of WP7. Sure, there are some rough edges, but over the past two weeks it grew on me.

I couldn't abide the onscreen keyboard. My fat thumbs struggled to type on it accurately, and while the autocorrect built into WP7 is very slick... re-editing a tweet or e-mail afterwards is not what I want to have to do. I prefer it to be right first time 99% of the time. A friend suggested I should just type fast and it will catch up - and it did, mostly. I still found it hard to be looking at the keyboard and having letters next to the letter I want show up in words when I didn't want them to. Oh, teh lulz.

The gaming component of this WP7 device was pretty cool. Lots of great games, lots of cool gamer points to coll ...

Hello again,

Today I thought it would be worth having a look at this utility!

For starters, here's where you can download it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/bb219517

Why download it? What does it do?

The IEAK is used for settings in Internet Explorer 8, and can either be as part of the IE8 deployment, or after initial deployment. If you're on Windows 7 then you'd really need to use it after since it's built into the OS already. There are some painful ways to do a lot of this with importing registry keys etc, so this is a much neater and nicer way. There are 100's of settings in Group Policy and Group Policy preferences for IE8, but IEAK is better for the newer features. Here's what IEAK does (shamelessly stolen from Microsoft here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/cc889351.aspx).:

Accelerators. You can include custom defaults for Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8.
Web Slices. You can add Web Slices to your custo ...

I had opportunity a while back to look at a large CCTV network that had been allowed to grow 'organically', comprising wired and wireless IP camera links, bridged site-to-site wireless, and disparate camera technologies that relied on a mix of unicast and multicast traffic.

In short, a nightmare. It had been put together by electricians, cable monkeys, and so-called CCTV experts, without reference to any underlying network infrastructure design. The mix of technologies had arisen as a result of their own experiences in putting together much smaller CCTV networks that had significantly lower requirements. And heaven forbid that IT should be consulted until way, way too late.

The entire network - as constructed by the contractors over time - completely ignored the existence of dedicated IP WAN links for multi-site comms. Instead, it relied on a bridged wireless link between buildings, using the IP WAN only to communicate with another site that was outside the line of sight ...

I have been battling with Telstra regarding some outrageous recent bills particularly in relation to Mobile Data Billing.

My bills all of a sudden jumped from around $250/mth to over $750/mth.  On review the data charges seem to be completely inconsistent, additionally I’m getting charged for data usage for periods that the phone is off or on WIFI.  The volume of Data too is questionable  in recent months I have mindfully used the internet and applications drastically less than in the past 12mths, I have next to no apps on my phone that i use away from home and while on my WIFI Network.  This leaves Email, on review of email there is nothing outlandish in what is being sent and certainly does not reflect the data and session times on the bill.

I had started my line of contact via phone.  This opens up my first long term issues with dealing with Telstra. For a telephone and communications company, your phone system and queuing systems sux.  You tend to sit in qu ...

The debate surrounding the proposed R18+ classification has been a very intense, personal, and at times spiteful affair. Through all the debate, false information and slander, we may be coming to an end, with the federal government effectively green-lighting an R18+ category, despite suggesting that games previously RC'd will not be re-rated. This move is likely to please gamers and adults, while possibly incense those opposing the new classification scheme.

The push for an R18+ category came from mature gamers from all walks of life. The average age of a person who plays games is 30, however the classification system treats 'mature' gamers as 15 and above. This, obviously, does not reflect the realities of our society, but rather a broken classification system that allows children access to violent, suggestive adult games. Due to the somewhat unregulated nature of the game retail industry, and the lack of communication as to what the classifications are, it is remarkably easy for children to ...

The Marketplace implementation on Windows Phone 7 is actually pretty good – the apps are categorised in the first instance and also listed by in other formats (new, top, etc). The background changes to promote specific apps from visit to visit too, with the same ‘peek’ navigation style as employed with other WP7 natively designed apps. And there are some cracking apps too.

I’ve download a few apps, and a bunch of games(!). While I’ve had my share of hassles in downloading them – either through the app not wanting to download at all or not being able to purchase the app – that’s seemingly been atmospheric. Wait a few minutes and start again. Similar to the AAS (Apple App Store) the Marketplace will not allow you to download a massive app when you’re not on WiFi, with the aim being to minimise your telco data usage. This is necessary as some games are decidedly sizable and you could easily eat up your monthly data allowance by downloading a c ...