I’ve long been a fan of solarwinds and love using their free tools.

I just wish I could afford to play with some of their paid for tools as they look ultra cool and ultra geeky. That suits me just fine.

The latest free tool to their stable is the “Network Config Generator“.

It looks like it could be a really useful tool to anyone who has a dislike of configuring network devices. There appears to be little restriction on what type of network devices that can be configured by it from firewalls to routers to switches so long as they have a CLI style access.

You can create your own configurations or you can utilise a template. The tool comes with a few templates already built in and more accessible via Thwack (solarwinds forum / resource site) and they are likely wanting to rely on the massed ranks of network engineers to supply more – and I’m certain that will happen.

I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet myself as it requires a live connection to a device and I don’t have any to hand.

Anyway, check it out if you need it and let me know how you get on.

Those of you that have been reading this blog awhile may have noticed that my suggestions tab disappeared.

Two main reasons – it never saw any action and I forgot to re-apply the code when I changed my theme. However, I was reminded today by an email from the founder of Skribit that I’d lost my connection.

But who & what is skribit? Well if like me you tend to hide under a rock and pop up occasionally you may have missed the launch of this some 18 months back. However since then it has effectively been in active development and although their about page still claims this is the case the email also reminded me that they are now ready for ‘showtime’.

In short they’re coming out of their beta phase and are ready for more. Anyway, they are a group of bloggers and internet entrepreneurs who, like me, want to blog more but get stuck for ideas.So along comes a way to utilise your audience to provide insights, ideas, etc for you to blog about.

So skribit, essentially “cures writer’s block by tapping your blog’s readership for post suggestions“.

This is done by clicking on the skribit “Suggestion” tab that appears (hopefully) on every page you visit – so whether you land on my home page or on a sub-page you should be able to click it and add your suggestions. As a suggestee you can even create your own skirbit account to track your suggestions and receive notification when it has been blogged about.

I think it’s a great tool for bloggers like myself who struggle with ideas and getting input from readers is always the aim of any blog. If this is one way for the reader to get an idea blogged about then great. If it encourages folks to read or use the site more, then even better.

However, I feel it’s one major drawback will be the reader themselves. I don’t know why and certainly don’t understand but some blogs just get more commenter’s than others and those that do will find skribit used whereas those that don’t will find that it is likely that their skribit button doesn’t get touched.

C’est la vie I guess – but anyway, it is back and here’s to seeing your ideas and suggestions as to topics you’d like to see covered.

I got this email yesterday:

Over the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about Wi-Fi being provided free (secure and filtered) by churches and Christians. The idea came to me when I noticed a guy outside of my house in the cold, winter weather accessing my wireless with some kind of hand held device. I was thinking that it would be cool if people were able to access a connection for free BUT there would always be one pop-up at the beginning of the access…sort of a “provided by” message along with some other message. like info about a church or group or the gospel message for that matter, or maybe a link with info on donating to specific charities or disaster relief. I would think that would be only a minor inconvenience if one was able to access the internet for free. What are you’re thoughts on that?

I confess my first thought would not have been a charitable one if I’d seen someone outside my house trying to access my wifi. First I’d think best of luck and then I’d instantly change my pre-shared key . Me, paranoid?

But to answer the question the answer I gave was “I love the idea” … (more…)

I love this … “God Mode” in Windows 7.

This tip has appeared in a number of places including here and here. The basic idea being that this gives you access to many (but not all) of Windows 7 tools, utilities, etc in one ‘global’ control panel.

Simply create a new folder anywhere you want, then rename that folder to:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

As soon as you do that you will see the folder icon disappear to be replaced with the following icon:

And that’s it … browse the contents to your hearts desire.

Do the cheesy grins (aka Hollywood Smiles) on Church publicity annoy you? Do you think there’s a place for this type of picture? Well here’s a link to a post I wrote as a guest blogger on ChurchTechMatters.

It touches on usage of stock photos and whether or not we (as ministries) should use them or not. It then goes into a little bit of detail on my personal favourite sites for finding stock photos.

Would love to hear your opinions either as a comment here, to the post itself or on the associated forum – here.

At my church our server’s UPS (uninterruptible power supply) has gone belly up.

After year’s of daily abuse from the poor building power supply it has finally died. The room it is housed in (which I have noted my displeasure to the management many a time) goes from freezing cold to way too hot. Every time a light or a PC is turned on or off on the same ring main, the UPS emits a loud clunk as it kicks in and protects the server.

No more. It is dead. It has shuffled off it’s mortal coil. It has joined the choir invisible… anyway, since technology in this area has moved on apace since it was first bought how does one narrow down what we need at a price we are happy to pay?

(more…)

Welcome to the third edition of my sporadic Windows 7 tips …

This one covers backups and some more stuff to make life simpler.

One of the ways I’ve read over the years that folks should backup their system is by ‘imaging’ it. Why, well in short it allows you to setup your system the way you want and then you can take an exact ‘bit by bit’ replica of it and store elsewhere.

It’s been this store elsewhere that has caused problems over the years. But with Win7 you get a clean and elegant process. As with previous versions the backup icon is in your Control Panel. Once there click the “Create a System Image” in the top left corner and then Windows runs off and identifies where it can backup too (see image).

After selecting your appropriate image destination (I recommend not using a had disk built into your system) simply click next and follow the prompts. Note the hyperlink that takes you to a help page that tells you how to restore your image.

- Talking of images, did you know that Win7 is the first Microsoft O/S that allows you to burn ISO’s direct instead of having to use a third party application? Simply double click the ISO in question, pick the drive with your blank CD / DVD and burn. However, I still by far prefer to use ImgBurn.

-  To round up this set of tips here’s one for any who have ever struggled to work out what key combination works with external screens / projectors. Well fret no more as Win7 provides a ‘standard’ (I hesitate to call it this) way to access them. Simply press “Win+P” and all is revealed. There’s also a command line of “displayswitch.exe” that will do the same job.

I originally posted this some time back and elsewhere as a reminder for myself and as an aid to other parents / students. I present it here, in a slightly edited format but in principle the ethos of the original remains:

I never went through trying to pick a Universitymyself as I had grand plans to join the RAF at 16 as an apprentice electronics technician. I was amply qualified, I sailed through their tests but (as I later found out from a neighbour) I was only offered a job as a truck driver so that they could fulfil their quotas.

Anyway – enough of me. My eldest was in his final year at school and has determined what he wants to do as a degree. However he hadn’t a clue and nobody seemed to be providing that clue as to how one picks a university. After several fruitless attempts to get some help we sat down to surf a bit and found some excellent resources. In fact and as the title suggests there are precisely 3 of them and I share them now so as to help other year 13 (aka upper sixth) students or their parents.

1. Unistats – This was teh “Teaching Quality Initiative originally but it’s morphed into Unistats now. Search by subject, university, compare, etc
2. The Alternative Guide to British Universities – as it says on the cover but from the students perspective. This guide is produced by Virgin and you may need to search for a different year as this one links to 2010.
3. The Guardian University League Tables – as with Unistats – The Guardian have long produced an annual guide to Universities but also make it available online.

There are other resources, including other newpapers such as The Times but I didn’t like the way they laid out their results and this can lead to some confusion. It is also at odds with what other organisations have determined and furthermore it is at odds with those universities I have personally visited with my eldest.

There is a predeliction to keeping Oxford and Cambridge at the top of the rankings but without justifying why. The other guides don’t fall in to such short comings (to my eyes anyway) and note well, this is not educational jealousy as my son was perfectly capable of attending Oxford. To that end we went along to the appropriate Open Day and our feelings on the matter will remain private, but suffice to say it is not the place it pretends to be. Finally, and less personal is the fact that Oxford and Cambridge instruct their students to not reply to these annual surveys and instead the results are based on their own internal surveys – not at all suspicious!

Anyway, I hope these few links help you as they have helped my son and I.