Uncle Travelling Matt .com — the personal site of Matt Gifford

Well that proves it, voting can actually make a difference. Ok quit your laughing, true the government usually does what it wants, however this time I’m quite pleased I voted in the last elections. In fact it was the first time I’d voted in 10 years, and the Labour government won by a narrow margin due to people like myself, lol. However it has worked out well for me, interest free student loans and more importantly they deregulated the Telecommunications industry, effective 1 April 2007 (the start of the 2007-08 financial year here). Not only has this improved the DSL and landline offerings around the country, dereg also means we can have Skypein numbers here too!

UPDATE: I now have an Auckland Skypein number, and it works perfectly! I can also have it redirect to my cell phone if my computer isn’t on I’ve tested that as well, however the call just comes up as Private Number on the phone, so it’s a bit hard to tell if it’s a skype call, but it’s still pretty cool either way.

Originally posted on the Virtual PC Guy’s WebLog. Since my networking seems to break all the time I’m posting it here so I can find it again.

1. The Virtual Machine Network Services driver is installed but not enabled.

On a Windows XP system you’ll need to:

1. Open the Start menu and click on Control Panel.
2. Click on Network and Internet Connections and then Network Connections.
3. If you are using classic mode you just need to double click on Network Connections.
4. Locate your network adapter, right click on it and select Properties.
5. Check the Virtual Machine Network Services entry and click OK.

On a Windows Vista system you’ll need to:

1. Open the Start menu and click on Control Panel.
2. Click on the Network and Internet and then Network and Sharing Center.
3. If you are using classic mode you just need to double click on Network and Sharing Center.
4. Click on Manage network connections, in the task list on the left side of the window.
5. Locate your network adapter, right click on it and select Properties.
6. You’ll need to approve this action.
7. Check the Virtual Machine Network Services entry and click OK.

2. The Virtual Machine Network Services driver is installed and enabled, but does not seem to be working.

1. Follow the steps for the first solution to get to the properties display for your network adapter.
2. Select the Virtual Machine Network Services entry, and click Uninstall.
3. Reboot the physical computer (this step is critical)
4. Return to the properties display for your network adapter.
5. Click Install…
6. Select Service and click Add…
7. Select the Virtual Machine Network Services entry and click OK.

After several weeks of difficultly getting Internet access here in Italy, I’ve ended up at the other other extreme. 3.6 Megabit Broadband that works anywhere in Italia, on the train, at the beach and also on the [pictured] Patio over looking the Mediterranean! Oh, and I forgot to mention it’s also free, all thanks to Vodafone Italia’s HSDPA network and their 1 month free promo. After that it’s €30 per month for 100 hours, but only when you use it as the SIM is prepaid. If you don’t have enough credit, the Internet access is suspended until you do, which means it’ll be good to go next time I’m in Italia.

Initially I did have some problems with the account not being setup correctly. It had defaulted to €4,50 per hour, and of course I ran out of credit really quickly. However, I went into the Vodafone store and managed to explain the problem and get the whole thing sorted out in Italian, and I even got a €10 credit in addition to free Internet for rest of my trip!

I’m posting this here mainly for my own reference, but also in case others have this problem as well. I’ve recently installed a UPS on my server, which is working great. The only problem is during a test power outage (I disconnected the plug from the wall), the UPS software shutdown the server correctly but when power is restored the server doesn’t start up again.

The problem is the server is running a ACPI HAL, which means the OS gets control of the power management and windows is powering off the machine on shutdown. Unfortunately the server doesn’t have any power management settings in the BIOS, it just defaults to last state—if it was on when the power was disconnected, it’ll turn back on when it is reconnected. Therefore, it needs to left on, displaying the “It’s now safe to turn off your computer” screen after shutdown.

After some hunting on the Internet I found the setting to configure this, (you’ll need SP1 or higher for either OS installed for this work):

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type gpedit.msc.
2. Under Local Computer Policy, expand Computer Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, and then expand System.
3. Double-click Do not turn off system power after a Windows system shutdown has occurred.
4. Click the Setting tab, click Enabled, and then click OK.

But, this is one utility I have added to my otherwise clean Windows install. Taskbar Shuffle is a small application that lets you reorder the buttons on your Windows taskbar like you can with Firefox’s tabs. It also supports close on middle click. Total computing bliss!

Probably the most used and least understood application in the world is Microsoft Word. Like many people my knowledge of Word was limited to the bare minimum required to get the job done. Since I never did anything extensive with it there was little motivation for me to learn how to use it properly, until now…

I’ve been working a Polices and Procedures training manual for my company that was becoming a rather large document and Word has been slowly driving me to distraction, formatting that wouldn’t go away and headings that wouldn’t revert. The final straw was the word “Error!” appearing in a grey box in the middle of document all by itself—document corruption was the last thing I needed… So I decided enough was enough, I was going to tame this beast and make it work properly for me.

(more…)

If you’re like me and still using an older version of Photoshop (in my case v7), because the new versions are just fluff or for some other reason, you might come across this: “Could not open ‘filename-goes-here.psd’ because it’s not a valid Photoshop document”.

Turns out that the problem is there’s some random characters, about 128 of them, before the 8BPS token that identifies the file as a valid Photoshop document. If you delete these extra characters in either a Hex Editor, or a text editor that supports binary files (e.g. EditPlus) so the first four characters are 8BPS, the document will open fine.

I finally kicked Slingshot to the curb on thursday—damn pay in advance lock in. I was on their dial-up service, since i travel often and need to connect to the Internet from various locations (and Vodafone’s flatrate service is still a little too expensive here). It would appear that they were slowing down their dial-up connections to force people over to DSL. My 56k dial up plan felt more like 28.8k, but now with TelstraClear I’m getting actual 56k speed, thank god for that.

I’m sooo getting me one of these! It has actual 2600 hardware on the inside! Rockin’

They mark Audio CD’s that have copy protection with “[COPY PROTECTED CD]” in title, so you don’t waste your money on a CD’s you can’t put on your iPod.