Vibrams FiveFingers

OK, so I've known about the Vibrams FiveFingers range (well, some of it) for some time and know a few people who have some and quite like them, but it wasn't until I recently posted in Facebook that my physio recommended that I buy some supportive, anti-pronation shoes to help my recently (2011-10-23) badly sprained ankle that I actually considered buying some.  And if it wasn't for a friend suggesting that I look at them, I'd have totally forgotten about them!

So, as Joanne suggested I take a look at these instead of buying "normal" shoes, I did just that.  And I'm glad I did.  The exclusive Australian distributor for Vibrams products is Barefootinc, and right now they are at the end of a sale on some of their line, so now was a perfect time to make the leap.

I decided to buy a pair of Mocs for around the house, mainly in winter when it *does* get just a little chilly here in Brisbane.  They'll also be great when I'm staying in a hotel somewhere.  I also bought a pair of Sprints to walk in as I need to get back into walking a few afternoons a week to help get rid of a few(1) extra kilos and also to start strengthening my ankle now I can walk on it sans crutches and heavy strapping.

I've been wearing the Mocs for most of the past week since they arrived and find them to be quite nice.  They have a soft, kangaroo leather upper which appeals to me - I eat a lot of roo anyway, so walking around in the carcasses of my conquests seems only fair.  (Please note, I buy my roo pre-packaged in plastic.)  As they are designed exclusively for indoor use - they don't have the same soles as the majority of the Vibrams range - I've been wearing them mainly indoors and also out to the car/bin, but not out on the footpath or road.  I can see these being well used as time goes by...

I only received my Sprints on Thursday and wore them last night when a mate and I went to Nandos for some excellent Portugese chicken (much better than that sub-par Oporto stuff).  I wandered around a bit in them and was pretty happy with the way they seemed to alter my standing/walking posture and also they felt good to walk in.

This evening I took the Sprints for a walk around some fairly flat streets (until my ankle's strong enough, I'm keeping clear of the hills I normally encounter on my walks).  I was quite comfortable walking in them and was impressed with how "natural" they felt when walking.  OK, let me just say that unless I'm on a client site I'm generally always barefooted around home and the office and have been for many, many years.  I don't hate shoes, I just prefer to be barefooted.  So wearing the Sprints when walking felt like I wasn't wearing shoes (which I wasn't in the traditional sense) and really did feel good.

I walked for about 50 minutes and probably about 30 - 35 minutes into the walk I decided to walk on the grass beside the footpath and see how my ankle handled the uneven surface, which has been a HUGE issue over the past few weeks.  Well, I can report that in the Vibrams Sprints, my ankle felt fine - both on the footpath and on the grass/uneven surface.  I even considered walking a bit further but the rain was just starting to fall and I decided that I'd prefer to keep my phone dry and head out again tomorrow.

So, with the way I feel my standing/walking posture improve when wearing these VFF Sprints and the fact that they are extremely comfortable to walk in, I'm now considering a pair of black KSOs a size or so larger so I can wear them with Injinji socks (also from Barefootinc) to replace my normal shoes (Adidas runners that actually feel pretty good for regular shoes) most of the time.


(1) Well, OK, a few more than a few(2)
(2) And maybe a few more than that

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

LuminAID - Real Light From The Real Sun

If you were looking for a way to spread the true light this FSMas/holiday season by helping a small business owner trade for a few extra hours a day or to allow a school child to study at night or a family to see without needing to burn fuel that produces toxic gases, then LuminAID may well be the project for you.

Instead of spreading religious mumbo jumbo about some mythically-endowed son, spread something truly useful for people - real, electromagnetic light in a waterproof, inflatable form, powered by the real sun.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

How To Work From Home Without Going Insane

I read this post from Lifehacker Australia this morning and being a veteran of "work from home" myself (since 1989) I thought it only fair to make mention of it - there's some good points in there for anyone starting out or even starting to lose their way...

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

What Goes Up Mars Come Down

On 9th November, 2011 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Russians launched their Phobos-Grunt probe using a Zenit-2 booster rocket.  11 minutes later, just as planned, the probe separated from the booster however neither of the two engine burns which would have set the probe on its way towards Mars' moon "Phobos" were successful.

Plans for the Phobos-Grunt mission started around the mid-1990s and after receiving an initial substantian funding of 40 million rubles in 2007, the project moved from paper to production.  Initially slated to launch in 2009, there were a myriad of setbacks mainly due to insufficient testing and unfinished components and this launch attempt was eventually scrubbed when it became clear that there was no way the mission would be ready for launch in the 2009 window that allowed the probe to reach Mars and Phobos.

Normally when new, as yet untested technology is being used to launch an expensive payload such as this, there will be a series of launch and control tests run (as NASA performed on 9th November, 2011 with its 500 sec test burn of the J-2X rocket engine) before the actual payload is sent off.  A number of these tests were not run and apparently some team members were even questioning the reliability of the control systems just before launch.  So it seems that this mission, even after being delayed for just over 2 years, was still seriously under-planned and under-prepared.

What's now the result of this half-arsed attempt at launching a probe to Phobos is that as NASA launches their "Curiosity" Mars probe/lander on 25 November, 2011 (planned to reach Mars in August, 2012), the Russian Federal Space Agency will be attempting to narrow down the estimated point of its uncontrolled re-entry and touchdown of the parts of Phobos-Grunt that will survive re-entry.  Now, with around 7.5 tonnes of highly toxic nitrogen teroxide and hydrazine propellant and some (mildly) radioactive Cobalt-57 on board, this probe will be one of the largest and most dangerous re-entries of launched material to date.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Now It's Steam's Turn

Valve Software's "Steam" service was hacked recently.  The database that the hackers gained access to contained sensitive information such as usernames, billing addresses, salted password hashes and encrypted credit card details, but it is unknown if this information was taken and/or the encryption compromised.

The next in a long line of breached online/cloud services, I'd strongly recommend Steam users check their credit card statements and make sure they change any passwords they have - preferably using passphrases, which if chosen well are significantly harder to crack.  I'd also strongly suggest regular passphrase changes for any sites that contain sensitive information and using different passphrases on every such site.

I've just checked and I currently have 684 passphrases that I have stored here, the vast (vast) majority of which are unique.  There's no way I could ever remember these, so I use Roboform to store these.  There's also LastPass, KeePass and other password storing applications out there, but I've found RoboForm to be by far the best.  Just make sure you use an appropriately secure passphrase to protect the application you store your passwords in!  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Brisbane IT Training

It is a busy time for IT-based training here in Brisbane!

SMBiT Professionals (Brisbane Chapter) ran an open training session on Group Policy and Remote Desktop Services at The Chalk Hotel on 23rd October.

Robert Crane from CIAOPS is holding an informal "Office 365 for SMB. The tricks, traps and best practices" afternoon on 9th November at The Chalk Hotel from 2:00pm - 5:30pm.

The regular SMBiT Professionals Brisbane Chapter meeting will be held at The Chalk Hotel from 6:30pm - 9:00pm following Robert's Office 365 session on the 9th November.  This meeting we'll have Sophos presenting on their products and their MSP offering and we'll also have Shane Hoey (PowerShell Guru) presenting Part 2 of a PowerShell for SMB session.  The first part of this PowerShell for SMB presentation will be held with the SMBiT Professionals Sydney Chapter at North Ryde on the evening of the 8th November.  SMBiT Professionals members should check the mailing lists for details of these events and the streaming/recording availability.

On Thursday 10th November, again at The Chalk Hotel, Robert Crane will be holding a SharePoint Bootcamp from 8:30am - 5:30pm.  The aim of this hands-on course is to provide you with the technical and business skills to confidently install, support and maintain just about any SharePoint installation

And then we have Infrastructure Saturday on 3rd December from 8:00am until around 5:00pm which will be at the Microsoft Brisbane offices.  Last year's InfraSat was a resounding success and this year's event should follow in those footsteps.



Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Has RIM Finally Fallen In?

If you're a Blackberry user in many parts of the world (including Europe, Middle East, Africa, India and South America) you'll likely find that you can't use Blackberry messaging and browsing and this has been the case for a day or so and will be remedied at some point in the future!

This was all caused by the failure of a single server in the UK which in a domino-like free-fall, resulted in a number of other servers going offline in sympathy.  It does, however, show the insanity in relying on a single company to deliver all of this information world-wide.

Yes, another Cloud service takes down thousands/millions of users in one fell swoop.  Cloud? Stability? Data Access?  Choose the first, or the others!  ;)


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Storms On Their Way

I just clipped this from the BOM site - we's a got some rain a'comin'!  :)



Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Steve Jobs - RIP

I'm not an Apple fan, but I have a lot of respect for what Steve Jobs achieved. So, the news of his death today, whilst not unexpected, is still sad.

RIP Steve - you will definite be missed.

So Zune And Yet So Long

Microsoft has discontinued their Zune hardware platform as of today: http://www.zune.net/en-US/support/zuneplayers/supportzuneplayers.htm

Disturbing News From The Religious Nutter Front

It appears that the Australian National Anthem isn't good enough for some people - a number of "christian" schools are now using an unauthorised 2nd verse that has never been part of our National Anthem nor does it have anything to do with anything other than pretending that Jesus Christ is head of our country (when he was nothing other than a regular human being - like the rest of us).

Have a read of this News.com.au article for some more information on this disgraceful episode.

Now, I have to say that as a proud Australian, I know as many of the words to our National Anthem as the next person does (ie, some of them), but trying to use our National Anthem to push one particular religious fairy tale as being what we all believe in really makes me feel dirty.  If you want the real words to the first two verses, then have a read of them over here.

And while I'm going on about abusing our National Anthem (and I've said this before), I'd really like all Australiand to have a good read of the proper/authorised second verse and especially these particular lines:

For those who’ve come across the seas
We’ve boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To Advance Australia Fair.

Yes, that shows, in our National Anthem, that we're not a country who will let people suffer the fates that many have suffered in trying to reach our shores when escaping from horrific situations overseas.  No, I don't think we should accept "just anyone", but I most definitely do think that we need to have a think about these words and our own humanity when handling illegal immigrants and processing their requests for asylum.


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

LOB Vendors - The Bane...

Why is it that Line Of Business Vendor support (sic) technicians (sic) who barely know even a little bit about how computer networks (especially Windows AD-based networks) operate and should know a lot about how their product functions always insist they know more than the system admin about the network (until they eventually have to agree that they don't understand much at all) and even more annoyingly keep showing that they don't know a great deal about their own product?

Not to mention that if these guys actually administered a network, all firewalls, anti-virus and anti-malware would be disabled permanently and more than likely, all users would have the same password: "password".

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Office 365 - The Sep 8th Outage Explained

According to information released recently, a configuration update on the tool that Microsoft uses to load balance network traffic failed, causing the load balancing to fail, taking out services such as Windows Live, Hotmail, SkyDrive and Office 365.

This was the latest in a long line of service disruptions for Microsoft's online services - especially of BPOS and Office 365 - which leads to the question: Just how stable are Microsoft's hosted solutions, really?

With all the emphasis Microsoft is placing on their online services, wouldn't you think that they'd be testing things like configuration updates to critical infrastructure before deploying it to soon find that it takes out their "we're all in" cloud services moments later?

Now, whilst I agree that online solutions are appropriate in some situations, they are most definitely not a panacea.  Issues like this that result in thousands (or orders of magnitude more) of their clients being taken offline with no access to their data only goes to show that this is a technology in its infancy and running on technology that's still being stress tested.

If you have moved your data to "the cloud", what happens when your cloud hosting provider breaks or closes down?  How do you get access to your critical business data?  Backups are at least as crucial for cloud-based data as they are for on-site based data - and a proper backup/restore/alternate access regime needs to be worked out with any potential hosting partners well before your data is moved from on-site to the cloud.

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Windows 8 Tablet PC Part II

So, after spending a little while using Windows 8 x86 on this Tablet PC (Slate) I have started to restore the Windows 7 image backup I took before installing Windows 8.

The *main* issue I have is the seriously reduced functionality of the "Desktop" in Windows 8 - there's no Start Menu any more and clicking on what appears in place of the Windows 7 Pearl just takes you back to the (currently - this is pre-beta) almost totally non functional Metro UI.  If this is what Microsoft relegates the desktop to, then I can't see anyone except personal (home) users and tablet users looking at Windows 8 - Enterprise and SMB clients will not be able to function in a barely usable desktop environment as I can *guarantee* you that very, very few of the LOB vendors out there will release their apps through the Microsoft Win 8 App Store as full-screen (Metro-style) apps.  And the "just use search, not the Start Menu" response Microsoft gives is a crock - especially on a Slate!

Obviously, as all of the tiles in the Metro UI are place holders except "Explorer", "Desktop" and "Control Panel", it is next to useless right now - however that aside, it *does* seem to be an interesting way to handle a Touch UI and I'm sure when devs start releasing apps that will work, it will become quite nice.  Right now, however, there's nothing useful in it at all.

So, back to Windows 7 I come.  This is disappointing as this is the fastest I have ever returned to a previous OS when starting to beta test the next one.  :(


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

Windows 8 Tablet PC

Well, I just (as in just) booted my no-name Chinese Slate PC into Windows 8 (Developer Preview) x64 and it seems to be basically working - most of the hardware was detected and seems to function.  Of course, the 3DSP BT/WLAN card didn't function and the Windows 7 drivers supplied with the tablet are only x86 drivers, however I found x64 drivers at Syntek Semiconductor site - but they also didn't do the trick.  So... back to x86 I go!  :(

The Slate PC (Tablet) I have can be found here at DinoDirect - however don't bet on it being shipped with a functional 3G device - mine's totally non-functional.  That aside, I'm pretty happy with the rest of it.  Obviously the 3DSP Bluetooth/Wi-Fi card is a bit of a pain and I may well look around and see if I can find a card with functional x64 drivers - though it works fine in x86 (as supplied with the Tablet).

As to Windows 8, well since most of the Metro style buttons are only there for show and as the older Windows 7 interface is pretty much only partially functional, I don't know how long I'll be able to run with this on my Tablet for now, but soon, no doubt, things will be picking up speed with Windows 8!  :)


Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie