Matt Bowcock // mbowcock.com

I ran into an issue last night where I changed the boot options for XP using MSCONFIG (foolishly) to enter safemode.  After doing this the computer would blue screen when booting and then attempt to boot back into safe mode.  I didn’t have a XP disc to enter recovery mode so I ended at google trying to find some sort of boot/recovery disc and found - ERD Commander from Micrsoft (30 day eval) - which has some great tools on it.  I ended up making an ERD boot disc and restored to a restore point to fix the BSOD issue.  After the restore I rebooted and found the computer booted correctly but I couldn’t log into the Admin account.  (This is a company laptop and the admins changed the admin password to something new - so I thought I was screwed.)  I tried booting the different boot options -  ‘Last known good configuration’, ‘Windows XP Normally’, etc. but no luck.

I tried resetting the admin password with the ‘locksmith’ utility in ERD but for whatever reason I couldn’t get it to work.  Back to Google - I tried to find a way to reset the admin password - and found plenty of tools to reset the account but none seemed to work.

At this point the system was booting fine so I didn’t care about getting into safe mode but I since I set the options in MSCONFIG (won’t do that again) I couldn’t get around them.  I tried running MSCONFIG when I booting using the ERD Commander boot disc but it didn’t work - I could get the app to run - but it wouldn’t save the changes.  Next I try running bootcfg from the command line - using this I can remove all options from the boot config except for /SAFEBOOT:MINIMAL - WTF?  So then I figure why not just edit the boot config by hand?  I don’t know why it took me so long to get to that point - I could have done that initially and saved myself a lot of time .  After booting using the ERD Commander CD - I went to the file explorer and navigated to the root (C:\) and changed the properties of boot.ini to writable (uncheck ‘Read-Only’).  I then edited to remove the /SAFEBOOT:MINIMAL switch, saved the file, and rebooted - back to Windows as normal.

All in all this was a pain in the ass (and a little embarrassing but I’m sharing it here so it wasn’t that bad).

I got into programming about a year before Future Crew released Panic in 1992 and absolutely loved it.  I thought it was the most amazing thing - the music was great, loved the mandelbrot set.  Anyway - I was browsing the Interweb and found a couple of sites worth checking out -

pouet.net - online demoscene resource 

pouet.net Future Crew Page

scene.org  

Also worth checking out is this demoscene documentary on youtube.

I’ve been playing with Chrome since I downloaded it yesterday and have a couple of observations -

Its fast - much faster to start than Firefox, Opera, or IE7 - and pages start loading quicker

As far as memory usage is concerned for 1 page (1 tab) Chrome uses less memory.  As you add tabs Chrome utilizes more memory per tab than Firefox, Opera, or IE7.  I assume this is a result of the tabs being contianed in their own process - for 7 tabs I had 10 Chrome processes running.  The overhead to create each process certainly contributes to the greater memory usage.  That said - as I use the other 3 browsers the memory usage creeps up significantly whereas Chrome’s memory usage creeps much more slowly.

Due to each tab running in its own independent process I was able to kill one of the processes without closing the other tabs.  I assume the same works when a process crashes due to a problem with a plugin, or some other error.  When the process does crash you’re tab will remain with the image below -

Chrome Error - Aw Snap!

I’m not sure how well flash is working - I’ve been to a couple of flash heavy sites that load with content missing but other sites have loaded flash content correctly.  I’m not sure if its flash related or something unrelated.  

There are very few plugins available for Chrome - even the Google toolbar isn’t available - but there are some and there does appear to be support for themes.  So far though its a nice piece of software - I’m not sure what it brings for the average user who gets similar or more functionality in IE or Firefox (or Opera).

Google announced it intends to release its own open source web browser called Chrome on Tuesday (Sept. 2).  The announcement came after Google accidently posted a comic book detailing the plans.  You can view the comic book on Google Books.  I wonder how the name came about since Google has been a big supporter of Firefox and Firefox already uses a technology called Chrome?

Theres a link in the comic book to - www.google.com/chrome - that doesn’t appear to work right now but I assume it will on Tuesday.  Looks like the website might actually be - gears.google.com/chrome - although I don’t think it will be available until after a 2PM Eastern webcast from Google.

In searching for a place to download Chrome I stumbled on a post at zwadia.com - Assessing Google Chrome - that I found interesting.

Although the Android hasn’t been released yet Google is working on the details of a marketplace to support 3rd party applications for the platform.  According to a post on the Android Developers Blog - devices will initially have a beta version of the market where users will be able to find free apps.  A future update will allow for paid content/applications.

This post is a work in progress and will be expanded on in the future.

I work with developers, DBAs, etc. all the time who have no practical knowledge of computer networking. I’m going to try to shed a little light on the magic that happens behind the scenes. Initially this will be really basic but will become more technical.

A computer network can be broken up into two distinct pieces - the edge and the core. The network edge is made of things we are all familiar with - client PCs, servers, network attached storage, etc. The network core is what connects the systems on the edge to each other. The core is made up of routers, switches, hubs, etc.

Network Edge

Systems on the edge are sometimes referred to as hosts and hosts can be further broken down into clients and servers. Clients are typically desktop PCs, thin clients, IP enabled phones and servers are typically more powerful systems such as web & database servers. In general software terms - a client is a program running on one edge system that requests a service from a program running on another edge system. So - essentially one computer requests a service from another computer- AKA Client/Server architecture.

[Read more →]

I guess I missed the big news yesterday but many didn’t - Comcast is implementing a 250GB cap on bandwidth per month - I assume for residential customers.  My first response is WTF? I’m already paying $50/month for Internet access and they might charge me more?  Although - realistically I probably come nowhere near 250GB usage per month.  But for the money I would rather the availability be there if I needed it - I guess theres always Fios which is coming to my area soon.  As far as I can tell Verizon doesn’t put any caps on bandwidth usage.

Plus Comcast supports enhanced P2P.

I just got Opera Mini 3 installed on my ocean and wanted try the functionality with Wordpress. The stock browser can’t handle logging into wordpress so I was doubtful but so far so good. I’ll need to experiment some more but I’m impressed so far.

I used Matlab quite a bit in engineering school and got used to having it available not only for math but for its programming ability. After graduating there were times I wished I had access to Matlab but didn’t couldn’t afford the commercial license so I looked for open source/free software with similar capabilities and was really surprised to find some great software.

GNU Octave - Similar functionality and programmability of Matlab. Programs written in Octave can be run in Matlab if they are written with that ability in mind.

FreeMat - Another app similar to Matlab - I personally used this one more than Octave - not for any particular reason I just liked it. The programming language syntax is similar to Matlab.

TechCrunch asks - Microsoft Tafiti is Beautiful, But Will Anyone Use It?  The answer is NO.

I was playing with Tafiti doing random searches, storing stuff to the search “shelf”, playing with the tree view and I decided to show my wife - if only for the wow factor.  She was completely unimpressed.  She didn’t care about the sleek look, or the cool technology behind the scenes, it just seemed to obscure her search results.  I think at this point most users are so used to search results being simple - getting them to use anything new would be difficult.