Category: Technology

Desktops, Laptops and Tablets…

File this under #NothingNewHere 🙂

Over the last couple of years we’ve been constantly bombarded with the “tablets are the future” message. Today I read this piece about Microsoft.

Being a techie, it’s hard for me to get in the “normal folk” frame of mind when thinking about technology, but it just so happens I had a conversation with a “normal person” last night. He’s a personal trainer at my gym. It turns out his opinion on the desktop/laptop/tablet debate is pretty similar to all the techies I’ve spoken with. He was asking me for some advice (which I’m not qualified to provide), but before I said a word he hit me with a few statements:

  • I need a new desktop for home. The one I’ve got is a bit slow when the kids are using it to play games.
  • I would like a new laptop. This one I’ve got (shows me his laptop) is a few years old and needs to be replaced.
  • I’ve got an iPad. It’s OK, but I really need the laptop if I’m doing any typing.

This is the same stuff us techies have been going on about since the launch of the iPad. I agree that tablet sales will probably increase over the coming years, but in the near future, they will be in addition to regular kit, not a replacement for it.

When I eventually have to replace my iPad (v1) I will probably pick the cheapest device available that has a functioning browser. Unless some amazing new use case comes along, I really won’t need more than that for a device with such limitations.

Enough of stating the obvious…

Cheers

Tim…

Discovering More Work-Related Windows Apps…

I know it’s a little sad, but I’m kinda enjoying discovering new little apps for Windows to do all those things that come out-of-the-box on Linux. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not loving Windows, but enjoying the discovery process itself.

X Server

On a Linux desktop you don’t need to worry about this, as your desktop is already using one. To get GUIs on the remote server to run on the local desktop, you just need connect to the remote server using “ssh -X oracle@myserver.example.com”

On Windows you need some additional software. There are plenty of paid for options, like Exceed, but there are also some free options. Many moons ago I used to use Cygwin. It’s still around and still does the job just fine. Remember to install the Cygwin/X libraries. Once it’s installed, do the following:

  • Start a Cygwin terminal.
  • Type “startx” and return.
  • In the resulting X windows interface, connect to your server of interest using “ssh -Y oracle@myserver.example.com”
  • In some cases I still had to manually run “export DISPLAY=mypc.example.com:0.0” on the remote server.

It works OK, but the process feels a little clumsy.

Whilst Googling for alternatives I came across MobaXterm, which is very neat. It’s a self contained executable, like Putty.exe, and comes with a whole host of connectivity options, including automatically starting a local X Server for all SSH connections. No configuration required. No messing. Just start a GUI in the remote machine via SSH and it appears on your PC screen. Cool. I’ve now replaced Putty.exe (and PuttyCM), Cygwin and the occasional WinSCP with MobaXterm. Give it a try. I think you’ll like it.

A nice side benefit of Cygwin and MobaXterm is they give you access to lots of UNIX/Linux commands on Windows. 🙂

SCP/SFTP

On Linux it’s real easy. You just call it from the command line. See “man scp”.

On Windows, I started to use WinSCP, which is OK, but it feels very clumsy. Since trying MobaXterm I don’t bother with WinSCP anymore, because connections to a machine using SSH automatically start an SFTP panel. Very handy.

Editors

There’s no getting away from vi on Linux, and I’m happy to use it to edit odd files, but I’m not enough of a fan to do anything large with it. Followers of the blog know I’m an UltraEdit fan. As far as free Windows editors go, Notepad++ is a pretty neat editor. Having said that, MobaXterm includes quite a good editor, especially useful for editing large files on remote systems.

PortableApps

I guess a special mention should go out to PortableApps, which helped me through the first few days at work while I was struggling to get stuff installed on my PC. There’s some really cool stuff there.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve bounced between a number of different Windows apps and things are finally starting to settle. I’d still prefer to be using Linux, but at least I’m functional now. 🙂 Any suggestions for cool work-related apps welcome.

Cheers

Tim…

60TB Disk Drives?

I was reading a story where Seagate were talking about 60TB disk drives. That’s all well and good, but how quick can I get data to and from them? If I need a certain number of spindles to get the performance I require, then I’m just going to end up with masses of wasted capacity.

I can picture the scene now. I have a database of “x” terabytes in size and I need “y” number of spindles to get the performance I require, so I end up having to buy disks amounting to “z” petabytes of space to meet my performance needs. Not only is it hard to justify, but you know the “spare” capacity will get used to store stuff that’s got nothing to do with my database.

Just think of those 60TB bad-boys in a RAID5 configuration. Shudder. 🙂

Feel free to insert a, “SSD/Flash will solve the worlds storage problems”, comment of your choice here. 🙂

Cheers

Tim….

UltraEdit 3.1 for Mac and Linux…

I’ve been using the beta versions of UltraEdit 3.1 for Mac and Linux for a while, but I only noticed today the production version has been released. I normally get email  updates, so I figure this one must have got directed to spam by accident. 🙁

Anyway, I’m now rockin’ the latest version on both platforms. Happy days…

Cheers

Tim…

AntiVirus Software and Apple Macs…

After a number of recent press stories, especially this one, I finally decided to install antivirus software on my MacBook Pro. I went for the Mac version of Sophos, which is free for home use.

My MacBook Pro is a couple of years old, has traveled the world and been on countless networks during that time. With that in mind, a virus scan revealed a grant total of zero viruses. I doubt I would be able to say that for a Windows laptop with no AV used in similar circumstances.

Although Macs are still a small percentage of the total PC market, I guess the rise in iDevices and the lack of people running AV software on Macs makes them an attractive target. Time will tell if they become the attack vectors everyone is predicting.

Cheers

Tim…

You don’t need an app for that… (browser stats)…

I’m getting a bit sick of reading about how not having a mobile presence is a big fail. Once again the marketing people take a one-size-fits-all approach and assume that if you are on the net, then people must want to use your services from mobile devices. This is utter nonsense. In reality, the need for a mobile presence depends very much on what services you are offering and who you are offering them to.

For example, look at the OS breakdown for my website over the last month.

So 98.6% of visitors are using non-mobile devices. This is not a surprise since my website focuses on Oracle DBAs and developers, who are unlikely to be working from mobile devices. Would you suggest a real company with this focus and these sort of web stats should invest in a mobile presence?

Just out of interest I checked the browser stats.

Since I last checked in November, Chrome has bitten even more market share from IE and Firefox. We’re fast approaching a 3-way tie. Looks like Microsoft really do need all those IE adverts after all. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Fasthosts : Good Riddance…

It’s been a couple of weeks since I stopped hosting my website with Fasthosts. It’s too early to start singing the praises of the new hosting company, but so far so good.

As a parting shot, when I asked Fasthosts to cancel my hosting account I asked for a refund on the 8 months of outstanding service I had paid for. I got the answer back today and it was a definite no.

I’m not particularly surprised at this, but I thought as a good will gesture to a customer of 11 years they may do the decent thing and give me my money back. It’s not like I wanted to leave. I was forced to by their complete incompetence.

My advice to anyone considering using Fasthosts would be DONT!

Cheers

Tim…