While sorting through some of my old computer stuff, I found something very interesting: a set of 5.25″ floppy disks and a manual for Windows.
That’s right, for Windows. Windows 1.0 to be exact.
Apparently someone in my family bought a Zenith Z-100 or Z-200 computer in 1986 which came bundled with Windows 1. This machine was almost IBM Compatible but not 100%. However, the disks that it came with work fine on an IBM Compatible machine.
According to the manual, I need an 8086 or 8088 with 320K memory, two floppy drives, and a CRT. It also says that I can consult the Software Consultation computer bulletin board by modem at (616) 982-3503 if I need help.
For the heck of it, I dug out my 5.25″ floppy drive and copied the disks into disk images and set it up in VirtualBox. And it’s fast. In fact, it loads so quickly that I don’t even get to see the Windows splash screen. I’m going to have to look for some slightly more authentic hardware to run it on. I think I’ve got an original Pentium 65MHz box somewhere around here. I know I used to have one. It was my first PC.
Some things never change. Notepad hasn’t changed (much) in 25 years:
OMG, I can multitask!
Paint’s changed a lot:
I guess there wasn’t all that much to control back then:
Don’t forget to end your Windows Session:
So, it’s summer, and in theory, since school’s out, I’m supposed to have more time. Actually, I seem to have less. I’ve been so busy lately (with some really neat things and some boring things) that I haven’t had time to blog about them.
So, in the next few days, I’m going to force myself to blog about a couple of things.
1. Terminal Services: Yes, I will actually post that guide to setting up TS and making it work.
2. Network Booting Ghost
3. Doing a network boot when you don’t control the DHCP server.
3. SSL Certs are a PITA and kind of stupid
4. Windows 7 and 2008R2
5. Books
6. TI Nspire CAS stuff
I’ve been using the Windows 7 RC the past few days and I’m generally impressed with how well it runs. For one thing, it runs quite comfortably on only 512MB of RAM. It even runs nicely in a VM, with no real performance issues. It’s highly usable, even when virtualized, which is more than Vista can say. It’s also really pretty. The UI is really nice, in a way, it’s much more like OS X. The taskbar has been totally redesigned, it’s now like the dock in OS X.
Within the next week or so, I’m going to switch my primary PC to Windows 7 and we’ll see how it goes. I’ll write more later.
Last week, I had a user come by the tech office who needed to open and print a document created with OpenOffice.org. While we’re a pretty open environment at Payton, we are somewhat Microsoft, and oddly enough we didn’t have OpenOffice installed anywhere, since the only machines that run Linux are servers and we have Microsoft Office on all the workstations. I downloaded and installed it to my personal machine and converted his documents and he was on his way. However, this got me thinking. There had to be way to open OpenDocument files in Microsoft Office. This is what I came up with: The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office (http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/). It’s free and it works, so it fits the bill for me. My only real complaint is that you need a Sun account to download the plugin (although you probably already have one).
So, in the middle of December, I wrote a posting praising Microsoft for the way TS 2008 turned out. This was based on my theoretical knowledge of the software. However, I’ve actually gotten around to setting it up. My opinion of the service has really been confirmed. It’s great stuff once you manage to get it setup. That’s where there’s a bit of a problem. Getting it setup isn’t hard, it’s just not easy. The main point, on which I was stuck for a while, is that you absolutely must have an SSL Certificate signed by a Microsoft Approved CA (or jump through some hoops, more on that later). It’s not like a regular website where you can just ignore an invalid certificate. RDC requires that the certificate come from a trusted CA. There are hundreds of these; more get added every month or so through Windows Update. You can, however, trust yourself as a CA. Then you can get around having an SSL Certificate, however, that’s cumbersome for IT people and borderline impossible for normal people. (Note: This is a way to check to see if the setup is working before you buy that certificate. Plug to GoDaddy for the $29.99/yr certificate that is MS trusted.)
I’m going to document a complete setup in the coming days.
A few weeks ago, I replaced my Gateway Tablet PC under Best Buy’s extended warranty no-lemon policy. In exchange for that computer, I got one of HP’s newest tablets, the TouchSmart tx2-1025dx. My initial impression is actually really good. I’ve never really liked Vista, but on this PC it just works. Granted, this is a really powerful PC. It’s got 4GB of RAM, 320GB of HD and a decent AMD dual core 64-bit processor. This said, the integration of touch into the operating system is great. This machine has multitouch technology on the display. Basically, it’s like a big iPhone/iPod Touch running Windows Vista. This is all really well integrated into Vista.
This PC has nTrig’s latest capacitive and active digitizer where you can use both your fingers and a electrostatic pen. The pen is quite good. My only complaint about the pen is the lack of an eraser, but I’ve heard that one’s in development. The touch screen is also really good. I find myself using the touch screen pretty often. Heck, I find myself in tablet mode far more often than I did with the old PC.
All in all, I’m really impressed. This could very well become my primary PC, especially, if it becomes my notebook.
Moving a WordPress installation from one server to another or from one host to another is actually quite simple. There are several ways in which to do it.
Way #1:
1) Install WordPress on the new server using its installer.
2) Replace the newly created database with your old one.
3) Edit the wp1_options table to reflect any changes in your hostname.
4) Copy any remaining file elements such as themes (without the proper theme all you’ll get is a blank page) and uploads.
5) Go to yoursite.tld/wp-admin and update the database if necessary.
6) Done!
Way #2:
1) Copy your WordPress directory to your new site.
2) Copy over your database to your new site.
3) Edit the wp-settings.php file to reflect your new database information
4) Edit the wp1_options table in the database to reflect changes in your hostname.
5) Done!
I took way #1 because it was easier for me. I didn’t really have any uploads, and only one theme, so it was easy enough just to copy those and the DB. I also needed to upgrade my version of WordPress, so I killed two birds with one stone anyway.
I’ve known about DreamHost for about 7 years now and have often considered moving my website there. However, I never had any real motivation to do it. This weekend, my motivation came along in the form of a year of hosting for under $10. That far beats me hosting my sites on my own server. (Though, I’m still going to maintain my own server for ease of development; developing locally is simply easier).
In honor of Earth Day and DreamHost’s being carbon neutral, they had a special for new accounts for a whole year of hosting (and free domain, which I have yet to claim) for $9.80. I’ve pulled over this site and my Dad’s site, however, I have a lot to consider with maliszewski.us and maliszewski.net. The DNS for those sites is pretty complicated because it was pretty much happy-go-lucky as I set it up. There have to be at least 50 records for maliszewski.us. I need to rethink the way I set that up. I moved my VPN subzone into its own zone file, so I’m on my way to moving those over to DreamHost. In the mean time, I think I might just setup an A record and hope the IP doesn’t change. (I doubt it will).
All in all, this move has been pretty painless and simple. I had a little bit of a problem moving over the DB for WordPress. I ended up SFTPing it and using the shell to insert it into mysql on their server (their phpmyadmin configuration is a bit messed up). However, shell access is included on all accounts for anyone who wants it.
Generally speaking, I’m quite pleased. We’ll see.
EveryDNS.net was founded by the same person who founded OpenDNS. EveryDNS provides both static and dynamic DNS services for your TLD. I’ve found that’s it’s really hard to find good DNS services for free. My registrar, 1&1 provides free DNS service for any domain you register. However, it’s very limited in nature. You can only have only have a limited number of records such as one A record. 1&1 does not offer dynamic DNS services.
EveryDNS has both static and dynamic DNS services. You can manage up to 25 zones with them and up to 200 records for free. For a small payment of $15, you can have as many zones and records as you want. EveryDNS is very reliable. They’ve been around forever, and they’ve had pretty much 100% uptime. For free, what more could you want.
I’ll also plug 1&1. 1&1 is one of the cheapest registrars. They’re not particularly fast, but once you register the domain and port the DNS to EveryDNS, who cares how fast they are.
I’ve recently been playing around with VMware’s ESX 3i server virtualization system. So far, my feelings are rather mixed. It’s not particularly easy to get running, and beyond that, it’s not particularly easy to use. However, once you get past that, you’ll see the power of a low-level virtualization system.
I have a lot of experience with VMware Server 2.0, which is far easier to install and configure. Just run the executable on your favorite Windows or Linux system. I’d recommend Linux because it has lower base requirements. One of the things I liked about Server is the web based interface for managing the VMs. ESXi makes you download the VMware Infrastructure Client to manage the server and its VMs. Now, that’s not bad, but I like the web interface better. It feels nicer.
I’ve not had any luck getting my VMware Server machines to run on ESXi. For me, that was the killer. I spent some time trying to get it to see those VMs. I copied them to the datastore, tried setting up new machines pointing to the VHD, however that didn’t work because it wouldn’t find the VHD. All in all, it was a painful process. I gave up after a couple of hours.
ESXi seems to be a really powerful engine. That’s one thing it has going for it. It’s also free, that’s another huge thing. It also has a really steep learning curve. That being said, if you want the highest performance for your virtual servers, and you can deal with the learning curve, go for ESXi. If you just want it to work without a lot of trouble, go for Server.