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If you go buy a TV from Comet or Currys (or any out of town retailer), they’ll swear blind you need to pony up upwards of £50 for a Monster HDMI lead, which is 99% oxygen free, and was hewn from the very depths of the poles of one of Jupiter’s moons, and that with anything less, you’ll not be able to see every hair and blemish on Harrison Ford’s face when you watch Bladerunner on Bluray.

Cobblers.

With analogue connections (i.e. SCART), the signal made its way through as a set of subtle waves. The subtlety of those waves could be destroyed if the cable was of a poor quality. It could lead to flat colours, a ‘halo’ effect around people, or shadows in the picture. People would pay ridiculous amounts of cables which did make a difference, albeit subtle. To most folk, it was so subtle that it really didn’t matter. The hard-core home-cinema type would tell you until they were blue in the face that it made a difference, but it mattered not one jot to everyone else. There was such thing as ‘cheap’ or ‘bad’ cables. I’ve had a few, and they were poorly made, and poorly shielded, so they did produce a pretty dire picture.

Along comes HDMI, and it uses a digital connection. It’s all pulses. On-off-on-off-on-off. The digital simplicity of ones and zeros. With HDMI, if the signal gets through, it gets through. It either does, or it doesn’t. What that means, is that the cable either works, or it doesn’t. If the cable is ‘bad’ you’ll know it - big blocks on the screen, or odd sparkly colours, because chunks of the picture information is missing. It’s very similar to how Freeview breaks up when a lorry rumbles past your house.

Basically, you need a ‘decent’ cable. One that makes a good connection at both ends, won’t slip out or wobble, and shields itself from any interference from other cables, like power leads or speaker wires. These stupidly expensive cables are just that - stupidly expensive. I found the cable pictured at the right for £14.99 in Wilkinsons. It’s 1.5 metres, and has gold-plated ends (so they won’t tarnish). I’ve got three of them now, and they work like a charm!

Since buying an HD-ready TV about two years ago, I’ve slowly been replacing bits of my TV/Audio kit, as we gadgety-geeky types are often wont to do. In doing so, I’ve upgraded to Sky+ HD, and have upscaling DVD players and other fun things. As a consequence, all my kit is now connected via the HDMI. I used to have a spaghetti of SCART leads packed down the back of the TV. They were thick and bulky, and always drifting lose (a major issue with SCART).

Using HDMI cables has been good. I’ve actually got more HDMI devices than inputs on my TV, plus I need to send the signal in two directions to the TV and projector, so there’s a switch box in the mix too. All told, there’s about six HDMI leads in there now, including these Wilko cables. I’ve been using them quite happily for some time, and they give me perfectly good picture quality. The Sky+ HD box comes with an HDMI lead which is, to be honest, a bit cheap and nasty when you look at it, but even that works perfectly fine. As I say, a lead either works, or it doesn’t. My ‘best’ cable, is a Belkin lead I bought some time ago which was probably nearer £30, and that is no different to these newer, cheaper leads. Wilko actually sell cheaper leads still, and I think even they would work fine.

The Monster leads Comet and Currys push onto you are sold simply for the profit margins. The wholesale costs on them is closer to £10, but they sell them for about £50. They use it to recoup any losses they might have made price matching, and giving you a better deal.

That’s how they getcha!

The BBC have made a timelapse video of the train journey from London to Glasgow, out of the front of a train. The whole thing lasts 5 minutes

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7784179.stm

I think the real journey is nearer four-and-a-half hours, but it’s still pretty cool all the same.

It’s always nice when you have a mission critical system like - oh I don’t know, say a phone system - to have a development environment to play with and not worry about if you break it catastrophically. It seems Cisco’s favoured method for you to achieve this would be to buy an entirely separate Cisco CallManager (CCM) setup, but that’s a rather costly proposition.

Instead there’s a far simpler solution, and that’s to install CCM into a VMware Virtual machine, and play about with it in there. In theory if you have a spare router capable of doing voice, you could also use that with it too (I’ve yet to try that though).

I’ve performed this installation with VMWare Workstation 6.5 on a dual core Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 with 4Gb RAM under Windows Vista, and had two servers running concurrently quite happily, so it’s actually quite a workable solution on modern hardware. Here’s the process:

1. In VMWare Workstation create a new custom virtual machine.
2. Set the hardware compatibility to Workstation 6.5.
3. Select to install the operating system later.
4. Select the operating system as Linux, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
   
5. Chose a location for your VM to live in.
6. Select a single processor.
7. Set the RAM to AT LEAST 1024Mb.
8. Select a network connection type to use. If it’s going onto an isolated lab network and connect to other devices, you’re probably fine to use bridged, otherwise use Host Only.
9. Use the LSI Logic controller.
10. Create a new SCSI virtual disk, and set it to 40Gb. You don’t need to allocate all space straight away (i.e. make a growable disk). Select a name for the disk to save as.
11. Finish the configuration but don’t power on the virtual machine.
12. Put your CCM installer DVD into your DVD drive, and power on the virtual machine.
13. Install CCM as normal.

When it starts the first time you’ll see a screen like the following:

Fair enough. It is for development and labs, not production anyway.

The thing to be aware of here is the 1Gb of RAM, and setting the hard disk to anything less than 40Gb. When CCM installs it makes multiple copies of the data, and expects to find space to basically install itself twice (into the active and inactive partitions). If it doesn’t have enough room, it’ll fail with a rather vague error.

It’s also possible to change the MAC address of the virtual server. VMWare workstation and VMware Player will both allow arbitrary MAC addresses to be set (providing they’re legal - you can’t have ZZ:YY:XX:WW:VV:UU for example). ESXi won’t allow this, however.

With the virtual machine powered off, use a text editor to open the .VMX file in the virtual server’s directory, and look for the following lines:

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:00:00:00"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"

You won’t necessarily find them together, but they’ll be in there. Deleted the ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset line, and change the other two to look like the following:

ethernet0.Address = "00:00:00:00:00:00"
ethernet0.addressType = "static"

You’ll also need to move the ethernet0.Address line up above the uuid.location line. With that done, you can power on your VM, and the MAC should be changed. Probably best to do this before you install it.

Now you have a development environment. As I said at the beginning, I managed to create two VMs, one with a publisher, the other with a subscriber node, and it all worked quite happily from what I could see. I intend testing it in VirtualBox as well, but I have a feeling it actively looks for particular hardware (basically the Cisco Media servers) or VMware, and just fails to install on anything else. Otherwise, this method represents a good method for having a play with CCM without breaking your live system.

I’ve been using Windows Vista’s User Access Control (UAC) on my computers for some while. When I first started using Vista at home, I turned it off, but then turned it back on just to see how I’d get on with it.

Roll forward two years, and I’m now running Vista Ultimate 64-bit and 32-bit on my home desktop and laptop PCs respectively, plus Vista Business Edition on my work desktop and laptop PCs. I was seeing UAC prompts ALL DAY at work. Opening Active Directory Users and Computers would cause the prompt to appear. Going near any sort of management tool would cause it to appear. I was getting fed up with seeing it!

So I decided I’d had enough and turned it off on both my work PCs. I also switched it off on home laptop. In each case, it quietly went away, and that was that. My home PC wasn’t quite so straight-forward.

Vista has a rather nice new feature whereby it will re-direct any files and folders being dropped into Program Files or the Windows directory to a folder in the current user’s application data folder (C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore - it’s hidden, so you might not see it). This, however, only happens if you have UAC enabled. So having switched it off, I rebooted, and found some of my applications suddenly thought they weren’t registered or setup.

I went into the VirtualStore folder, and found this:

Oddly enough, Dream Aquarium, DMT and Objectdock were all the apps complaining at me about licences and lost configs. The fix was quite simple. I basically copied the contents of those directories into the corresponding directories in C:\Program Files (x86)\ (as it’s vista x64). Restarted the apps, et voila, they suddenly work.

It’s a shame turning off UAC doesn’t give you the option to merge the virtualstore back into Program Files, but then again it could make things even more confusing if you turned UAC back on, as suddenly applications wouldn’t be able to write to those files, so would fail miserably. I’ve had a few things do that randomly in the past.

So if you’re going to turn off UAC, it’s probably best to do it when you first install Windows.

Well, more spammed-by-proxy.

I had an email today which purported to come from a lady called ‘Nicole’ at a company called ‘M80‘. A quick looksee at their website shows that they are actually into ‘Social media marketing and online publicity’. In my case, their person sent me an email using my contact form, telling me all about an upcoming webinar Cisco are hosting this Thursday about Unified Communications, something I mentioned in some other posts.

The email then goes on to give me links to blip.tv to preview the webinar (apparently I have to keep that off the record), plus some excerpted clips from the webinar which are on YouTube. Finally, there’s a link to the actual webinar.

And, here’s the cheek of it:

I hope you'll consider posting the video and link to your site; there's some
great UC info here and it's rare that we have in-depth video on the subject!

Well, make your mind up, dear!

Thing is… this is an unsolicited email. I didn’t ask to be told about Unified Communications, or presence or WebEx. I already know what they do. The email address it goes to is registered with Cisco for some CCNA stuff I did some time ago, but this actually came via my contact form. So this company are obviously paying people to Google for terms, then email or post comments on people’s websites. Truth be told, ‘Nicole’ is probably somebody working in India or China for a pittance, just filling in contact forms all day.

I think the thing that galls me the most about this is that Cisco are doing it - a company who recently invested in Ironport, an ANTI-spam company! They’re also working for companies like Dr Pepper, Ford, and 20th Century Fox. All big, reasonably respectable companies, or at least, as respectable as mega-corporations like those can be.

So looks like we have a new kind of spam to concern ourselves with.

A few years ago, I started studying for a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) qualification. I got up to the third module as I recall, and dropped out. I was studying at my workplace (we happen to also teach it), so my work day basically started at 08:30, I’d finish at 17:00, then go round to the CCNA lab and work in there until 21:00. As it was during term time, it meant I was going to and from work in the dark, and during winter I was having to de-ice the car in the morning, AND evening before I came home.

The long hours were killing me, and the air-conditioning in the classrooms didn’t help; I’d often fall asleep during the lessons. You try reading about EIGRP after a full day of doing other busy work whilst slumped in a chair, without falling asleep. The class was twice a week - doesn’t seem that bad, but it throws the whole week into disarray. Eventually, I gave up, and felt much better for it.

Recently, I’ve been looking after a Cisco Call Manager installation, and all its related paraphernalia. I’ve had great fun doing it, but I’ve certainly discovered holes in my knowledge as I’ve been working through it. I’ve been hitting more complex issues of late, and although I’ve often solved them, it may have taken longer than I’d have liked as I was sometimes fumbling around trying to find the method, before I found the answer.

I decided I had to do something about it, and I think I’m going to start studying for the CCNA again. I’m not going to do it at work, however. I can’t be bothered with the long days and all the other messing about with my evenings. A better option (I think) is for me to self-study at home. I’ve got the CCNA books, and there’s a wealth of information online. After a bit of digging on eBay, I managed to find a self-study lab, which includes four routers, plus two switches, and all the necessary cables to plug it in. All for the princely sum of £302, and that included a £1 donation to Cancer Research I added during checkout.

If I work through an hour or two when I feel like it, I’ll probably get through it pretty quickly. Far better than sitting staring at Facebook, or looking up obscure topics on Wikipedia. Once I finish the CCNA, I can move to the CCNA Voice (mostly an introduction to Call Manager), then onto the CCVP (Cisco Certified Voice Professional), with just a few little upgrades to the routers. Who knows, I could go completely mad and go for the top level Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) qualification.

Just got to do the CCNA first. Oh, and actually finish it this time.

I just saw this on Graph Jam, and it made me think of the number of times I’ve seen people at work go into the toilets, relieve themselves, then just walk straight out without washing their hands at all.

It certainly makes you think twice if you have to touch their computers.

I’ve also seen people emerge from the cubicles - and based on the sounds and smells emanating from within said cubicles, it is pretty obvious what they were doing in there - then just walk straight out of the toilets without even going near the sinks.

Utterly, utterly disgusting.

Obviously, I can only base this on what males do. Maybe some are scared that washing their hands would somehow degrade their masculinity somehow? Who knows.

Such a great song!

At work, I admit I’m probably not the most organised of people. Truth be told, I’m not overly organised, well, anywhere really. If I had things to do, I’d just remember. I’m one of these annoyingly conscientious people (annoying for me) in that I will remember to do things, and they’ll eat at me if I don’t.

I used to only have a few things to do, so they were easy to remember. As I found myself gradually becoming responsible for more and more things, I was having trouble remembering things. I was already organising my diary using Outlook, so it seemed like a good idea to use it for todos and the like. I also bought a Palm TX PDA to organise things more.

Just lately things have been getting busier, and the number of things I’ve had to do has been growing. Not only that, but many of these things are dependent on each-other, and other things happening first. The more I had to think about, the worse it was getting. I’d find myself waking up at 3am thinking about stuff I had to do. I was constantly chewing over things in my mind when I was at home, and quite frankly it was driving me mad.

So I decided to put more of this information into Outlook and notebooks, but it still wasn’t working. It was all so unstructured and messy. It was also long-winded to do these things, and manage the stuff supposedly managing me! It wasn’t working. Then I had a great idea.

I got myself a spiral bound notepad. It’s little, it’s low tech, and it’s simple. Now all I do is if I have something to do, I write it on the list. Doesn’t matter what it is, even if it’s something simple, it goes on the list. When it’s done, I cross it off. When the page fills up (takes a day or two), I re-write a fresh page with the leftover stuff. The more urgent items go to the top, and I fill it up again.

The amazing thing is, this simple method actually works! I’ve been amazed how little I end up thinking about these things. The little notepad sits on my desk all the time, so when I get back to the office I glance down it and see what needs doing. They’re all little one-liners which reference an email, or a voicemail, or something else. It’s enough to point me back to where I need to be and get on with it. The great thing is that I no longer seem to end up obsessing over doing things when I’m not at work.

As a result, my PDA has largely gone ignored lately. I haven’t synced or charged it in ages. I’ve started taking a laptop with me into meetings running OneNote, which in itself is a wonderful, wonderful tool.

Amazing how powerful a small stack of paper worth pennies can be.