This weekend I’ve been playing with Windows 7 beta on my desktop machine, and have been using it non stop, including playing games on it. One slight issue I’ve had with it so far is connecting to my windows 2003 server at home. Trying to access a network share it would come up with a “not enough server storage is available to process this command” error. After a quick google, Microsoft have a KB article that goes back to the NT 4 days here with a fix. I set this registry key to 15, reboot and still got the error. The KB article says that the max is 50 for XP, so I changed it to 50, rebooted my server and accessing network shares now works on my Windows 7
“not enough server storage is available to process this command”
April 14th, 2009Blocking iTunes in a work environment
February 12th, 2009As per this Apple support document, just block the host itunes.apple.com in your network firewall
Using the Google AJAX Search API with PHP
January 31st, 2009Ever since Google stopped distributing keys for their SOAP Search API, I’ve been looking for a new way of making google searches in php (specifically for my php irc bot I’m developing). I finally stumbled on this blog post which explains and links to a page in the official Google API documentation here with code snippets for Flash, Java and PHP on how to use a REST API which powers the Google AJAX Search API.
The PHP function json_decode can then be used to extract the JSON encoded response either an object or an associated arrays.
Planetarion - Free!
September 20th, 2008Planetarion, that space based MMORPG game, will become free again!
http://www.planetarion.com/news/news/read/220-end-of-round-28-and-some-info-on-round-29
Keep watching www.planetarion.com for more news and updates!
Tube annoyances
September 1st, 20081) let people off trains - don’t fucking stand in the way as people are getting off. You have plenty of time to get on.
2) don’t stop in the middle of walkways - KEEP MOVING
3) don’t try and read a newspaper whilst standing on a packed train
4) stick to one side of corridors / stairs / esclators to allow flowing traffic
/rant
LowCostDedi
June 1st, 2008Sadly Lowcostdedi is closing its doors - its been a wonderful host for my VPS for the last year and a half (I cannot believe its been that long, time certainly flies). Well done to Berkeley IT for a reasonable, stable service 
Thankfully, sir-millar has come to my rescue and offered me a VPS on his new server, which I am very grateful for - I’ve migrated most of my stuff already onto a nice shiny ubuntu 8.04 server, with little pain. Hopefully I can build on what I did with my old server and run more things on it.
More blog posts to follow!
Update - work
April 6th, 2008mmm, its been a while since I’ve blogged 
Lots of things have changed since I’ve last blogged as well. First of a couple of updates -
Work:
The company I work for has seen a downturn in trade, like other retailers over the last year, as people are trying not to spend too much etc etc. It got so bad at our company that we’d actually stopped paying our suppliers, and it wasn’t looking good. We were very very close of going into administration in January, but luckly we were saved by one of our suppliers. An internal reorganisation was planned, relocating people in the offices. A position in the IT team was created, and I was offered the job of IT support assistant. However, sales were (obviously) still down and 250 shops were too much to handle, so it was decided by the management to downsize to a much more manageable size, done so by putting the company into administration and buying back the good half of the shops. Even the BBC news published a small article on their website! We were told that head office would be moving to where he owns his other businesses in Kentish Town, and so lots of people have left already, unable to commute to London from Watford (most people lived locally). For myself, living very close to the Metropolitan line in Rickmansworth, I decided to give it a go, and I have started commuting to the new head offices in Kentish Town, albeit only once or twice a week to start setting the IT stuff up, as I am now the main IT administrator as our previous one was unable to commute from where he lives, and so handed his notice in, and left the company on Friday. I cannot wait until we do the big move hopefully at the end of the month, as the new offices are *awesome* and are heaven compared to our Watford premises. I am now responsible for the support of 70 desktops, 20 or so laptops and 4 servers \o/
Rant - bloody parents
January 12th, 2008Sigh. I don’t know why I put up with it anymore.
Latest episode;
Today my younger brother James (who is 16 and is supposed to be looking for a job) went off with his friend, and my younger sister to Queen Mary Sailing Club for an annual event called the “Bloody Mary” Pursuit Race, where they sailed in his Laser 5000. My dad took them and the boat there, only to be blocked in by cars because of the shoddy car parking marshals. So, he phoned me up asking for a lift home as he was supposed to come back and do some tidying in our study. I’ve never been there before, so he said, take the m25 to junction 13, and stay in the left hand lane when you get to a big roundabout. Ok, I open up google maps on my desktop and have a quick look. Looks fine, easy enough to get to. How bloody wrong was I. Got on the m25 at junction 17, and came off at junction 13. Took the first left onto a dual carriageway. 5 mins down the road I got to the weird road system he briefly told me about. Looking at the signs, left took you to Colnbrook and the south perimeter road of Heathrow. I decided to carry straight on, as I thought that was the right way. Nope, just going closer to London and no sign of any reservoirs on the right hand side. Turn around at the next roundabout. Eventually (after a good 30 mins) I’d gone down all the roads off this weird roundabout and several phone calls from my dad, asking where was I, and I responded with at least 2 f words in each sentence. I was ready to give and go home as he cleverly had his sat nav with him, when I got out my new mobile phone and went onto the google mobile map website, and downloaded the app. Found where I was, and where I needed to, back down one of the roads that I had tried, but followed the road ahead at the roundabout. Only signs for the club were practically outside the club, and not on any of the approach roads. Fantastic road planning!
Because I knew that my dad won’t listen and act when I talk to him when I’m in a fucking bad mood, I drove home with the radio on, ignoring what my dad was saying / asking me.
Two hours after I’d left home, I’m back home, my morning wasted driving 50 miles.
Then I had to take my dad back to the sailing club, so he could help my brother and sister de-rig their boats and put them on the trailer.
My dad was wondering wtf is wrong as usual. Well if he’d noticed, I’ve had to drive him around. He hasn’t even offered me some petrol money, just says thanks several times which doesn’t make up for spending part of my day driving just over a hundred miles.
I am fed up of my parents not harassing my brother to get a job, as he wants to work for one of the big sailing holiday companies (Sunsail, etc) as a sailing dinghy instructor, but they aren’t getting him to register with local recruitment agencies so he can do some temp work and get some money coming in before the summer like they got me to when I was looking for work. They are letting him get away with fucking murder :s They are quite happy to let him spend money (as he added the laser 5000 to his collection of boats, which now stands at 3), do events and go into town to meet friends. I can’t do anything, as they’ll say, oh yea he will get a job, but they don’t actually do anything or say no to him when he wants to go to events.
</rant>
EVE-Online
December 29th, 2007I downloaded the EVE-Online client this morning to try out the game, and to see what all the fuss is about. Its a pretty good game, I’ve played freelancer before (just in single player) so I’m no stranger to this genre of game. I picked things up pretty quick via the starting tutorial, and now I’m half way through my second set of missions so far. One tiny little thing that I miss, is better control of your ship whilst you are out in space. In Freelancer, you had much much more control of its direction and speed so you could maneuver your vessel to avoid enemies quickly. In EVE, its a point and click interface, that, if I continue to play past my trial period and start paying for the game, I might just get used to and like it.
*tries not to get addicted*
Someone pass me a stiff drink and plenty of it
December 25th, 2007So, as a small surprise present from my parents, I get this this wonderful* alarm clock with fm radio (no surprises there, I have trouble waking up of a morning, my parents have to wake me up as I often sleep through my phone and watch alarms), great, I’ve set the alarm time, but how the bloody hell do you set the time on it? The operation manual included is a small sheet of paper tells you how to change the modes from clock to fm radio, and how to set the alarm time, but no bloody way on setting the actual time on it. FM radio on it only picks up a handful of radio stations, all ones that I don’t listen to. Great!
* a small cheap & cheerful one from a Superdrug store.
I shall be adding an ipod speaker w/ alarm clock onto my shopping list for use with my ipod touch