The Biker

Totally No tech Related, and even thou I am without a bike at the moment I will always be a biker at heart and this well I think it says it all about the misconceptions in the world and the dumb ass attitude of a lot (not all) car drivers

I saw you, hug your purse closer to you in the grocery store line.
But, you didn't see me, put an extra $10.00 in the collection plate last Sunday.

I saw you, pull your child closer when we passed each other on the sidewalk.
But, you didn't see me, playing Santa at the local mall.

I saw you, change your mind about going into the restaurant.
But, you didn't see me, attending a meeting to raise more money for the hurricane relief.

I saw you, roll up your window and shake your head when I rode by.
But, you didn't see me, riding behind you when you flicked your cigarette butt out the car window.

I saw you, frown at me when I smiled at your children.
But, you didn't see me, when I took time off from work to run toys to the homeless.

I saw you, stare at my long hair.
But, you didn't see me, and my friends cut ten inches off for Locks of Love.

I saw you, roll your eyes at our leather jackets and gloves.
But, you didn't see me, and my brothers donate our old ones to those that had none.

I saw you, look in fright at my tattoos.
But, you didn't see me, cry as my children were born and have their name written over and in my heart.

I saw you, change lanes while rushing off to go somewhere.
But, you didn't see me, going home to be with my family.

I saw you, complain about how loud and noisy our bikes can be.
But, you didn't see me, when you were changing the CD and drifted into my lane.

I saw you, yelling at your kids in the car.
But, you didn't see me, pat my child's hands, knowing he was safe behind me.

I saw you, reading the newspaper or map as you drove down the road.
But, you didn't see me, squeeze my wife's leg when she told me to take the next turn.

I saw you, race down the road in the rain.
But, you didn't see me, get soaked to the skin so my son could have the car to go on his date.

I saw you, run the yellow light just to save a few minutes of time.
But, you didn't see me, trying to turn right.

I saw you, cut me off because you needed to be in the lane I was in.
But, you didn't see me, leave the road.

I saw you, waiting impatiently for my friends to pass.
But, you didn't see me. I wasn't there.

I saw you, go home to your family.
But, you didn't see me.
Because, I died that day you cut me off.
I was just a biker. A person with friends and a family.
But, you didn't see me.

Re-post this around in hopes that people will understand the biker community.
If you don't re-post this, It sucks to be you. I hope you never loose someone that rides.
EVEN IF YOU DON'T LIKE US, RESPECT OUR RIGHTS TO RIDE WHAT WE CHOOSE AND TAKE A FEW EXTRA SECONDS TO BE SURE WE'RE NOT IN 'YOUR' WAY - LIVE TO RIDE . . . . RIDE TO LIVE

ASP.NET Membership Function

So I have been working on a few projects of late so explain why I haven't been blogging much, I know same old excuess well

well one of the problems I have been having is using the .net login system, but i have found the soution, create the database you want to use for your application database. next run

c:\windows\microsoft .net\framework\2.456\aspnet_sqlreg.exe

select the database server (don't forget if its an express server then you need to put the \SQLExpress after the host name of the machine the database is on unless its the local host then its just a . before the \. select the database you created and follow the wizard. afterward open your web.config and put these lines in the connectionStrings Section and your up and running.

then your up and running, Microsoft don't seem to have documented this hack and it took me a while to find it myself so I hope others find it useful and I will know where to find it when I need it ;)

  <remove name="LocalSqlServer" />
    <add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="Data Source=home-srv04\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog =commerce;Integrated Security=True"
      providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
    <add name="commerceConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=Home-srv04\SQLExpress;Initial Catalog=commerce;Integrated Security=True"
      providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

 

Only In America

So Target are being sued in the US. in relation to there web site, Why is it because they have been doing false advertising Nope, is it because they took money without supply goods nope, they are being sued because their web site is not accessible to blind people. Now I am all for making things accessible to anyone with a disability, but this does seem to take it a tad to far. I suspect the issue is that the pictures don't have the alt tags completed with meaningful description although it doesn't explain how the web site is not compliant. If this is the case then its a matter of something being over looked by the developer. The problem as I see it these days if there is a problem with something people tend not to communicate the problem to the service provider the first action is to sue.  keeps the lawyers happy I am sure but I wonder what damage this is doing to communities as a whole. People soon will only communicate via lawyers just in case they are sued Crazy world in what we live in. I wonder what's next will a musical artist be sued for not making his music accessible to deaf people ?

 

here is the link to the original new item on yahoo Judge allows class action against Target Web site

Software tools discovered

Ok this week I have a mixed bag of offering for you to take a little look at.. The first is a bit of software called Sharpdevelop. This is a open source version of Visual studio aimed specifically at c#  and VB.net users. the look is similar to visual studio but without the visual bit, this is aimed at true coders. Microsoft have there own free solutions called Visual studio Express they are free but have limitation

I discovered Sharpdevelop. via a tip on a message board in a discussion about Version control software, I have recently installed the sourceforge free 15 user Management system what I have to say is an excellent management tool for development projects. This came with a choice of Subversion or CVS. I had been using WinCVS along with CVSNT but found it lacked a lot of features I would like and could be problematic at times. So I decided to take a look at Subversion, Its not perfect but its a lot closer to perfect than CVSNT. I would fully recommend you use TortoiseSVN if your using a windows based environment.  so all these tools together along with my old fav's have come together to make a great development environment for me to work in. if your using the Sourceforge system I would Highly recommend you get a copy of Sourceforge explorer as well as many other great add in's. Now I know last time I said I would try to blog more often but and I still hope to do that just sometimes life get in the way. and maybe I have spent to much time on the IMVU boards. debating Linux disto's and laughing at BSD users who think they are better than Linux users

Centos and Networking

So I have my improved network environment now I have gone for a TP-Link router as my internal Router, and so far I have been very impressed with this bit of kit, this router is my main firewall between my internal network and my DMZ and also have excellent wireless capabilities because one of my Wireless card is quite old I have decided to use WEP to secure my Wireless network and it works like a dream. Then I have my old D-link router with NAT switch off but rule based firewall enabled to protect my DMZ and to make the actual connection to the Internet, I have two Servers in my DMZ and a further two servers on my internal network only. This gives me two SMTP server using one as a backup using the MX records and two HTTP servers, one running Windows 2003 and the other running Centos Linux. Security seems pretty tight in this arrangement. basically I have 2 firewalls between my clients and the Internet and each server in the DMZ has its one firewall enabled so there is two between each server in the DMZ and the Internet. but is this enough, well I am planning a routine of testing this environment from the outside as well as monitoring all the ports.

 

Syshelpman seems to be taking up a lot of my time hence not blogging much of late, I will try to get better, Today's Recommendation thou is one a lot of Linux hacks will know about, Webmin, what a great tool as much as I love the command line and I use it a great deal both in windows and Linux sometimes its nice to have a well laid out admin interface and that's the best way to describe Webmin, when Webmin first came out it was limited to say the least but now days with all the modules written for it its become a one stop shop for all admin needs, if you manage Linux servers take a look at it .

del.icio.us Tags: Webmin, Security, Firewall, Centos, Linux

New Project in progress

So I have been working mostly on one new project but looks like others are in the pipeline. Most of my time is being taken up with a new Application Called System and Helpdesk Management. what is a management system based around the ITIL. This is an open source project at the moment but who knows where it will go. the basic aim is to build a one stop shop for ITIL but is highly customizable by the Administrator of the system. anyway to read more about it go to the System and Helpdesk Management Blog. This will eventually have its on web site but I only have one set of hands.

The other project in hand at the moment is top secret so I am not going to give anything away on that at the moment except to say we are look at new technology to create it. primary using Ruby what leads on to the next item I hope to be changing my system environment to Add a Linux web server to host Ruby based sites. I let you know how this goes but it will consist of a major change to the present network. so there many be some downtime.

other news I am slowly adding more resource to the resource section and I am still looking for Experts for the forum so if you interested in helping others out join the forum let me know you expert area and I will promote you to expert on the system.

Stoned ideas is still looking for new members  don't be put off by the name the idea behind the site is to make friends and have a good laugh.

Final new design for  The Hitchinson Family site is live I have used some of the code scripts that I have talked about on here so why not check it out and see them in action

MP3 and Backup

So in an earlier blog I talked about including mp3 to be selected and played by the user on a web site, I suggested a couple of systems to do this, well now I have opted for a third option its called the webpod but the whole of the Search This Site should be interesting to most web developers, if you want to see what webpod looks like then visit our family web site and have a look at our music page.

Now on to backups ok for people like me I uses an industrial strength backup system to tape. so I Rarely look at backup systems aimed at the home users, it was only the other day when I was visiting my father in law that I took another look into this area. here the basic story, father in law purchased his first home PC when he retired. been a users for quite sometime in the office so can do the basics but has never had to install software or back up anything. its a big learning curve going from a total end users with support on tap to a PC owner, so over the last few months we have been slowly teaching him new stuff. now he purchased his PC from Dell and although I am not a lover of Dell in the corp Environment I think the PC's they make are fine for home uses. First problem came about a month ago when he kept getting out of disk space errors what is a scary thing after just a few months of a new PC so we set up a remote connect and I had a look, I discovered that Dell had create a 10GB partition and had by default configured Vista (yuk yuk yuk) back to backup all pictures all video and just about everything else and its dog to this 10GB partition, the second problem is Vista backup doesn't do incremental backups or overwrite old backups(that I can find) so 10GB went very fast.  So I cleaned out the old backups but within a month the error message was back. So I had a look to see if you could be more selective about what you backup, Simple answer not really, you can say only backup my pictures and Doc but you can't say Ignore this folder as I have the contents on DVD so it was time to go looking for something else and I found this Cobian Backup I have to say I was Impressed no end, not only can you do incremental backups and also select how many full backups you save but you can ask it to backup to a zip file saving more space but still easy to access even if you don't have the backup software installed scheduling is easy, good interface generally a very good all round produce and its open source too. So if your stuck with Vista dump Microsoft so called improved backup and move over to Cobian Backup, 10 out of 10 to the developer   

del.icio.us Tags: Backup, MP3, Web Design, Vista, Microsoft

Firefox Extensions must haves

Ok I said I would tell you about my must have Firefox extensions, normally my first must have would be the Google tool bar but that's pretty much comes as standard, so i leave it as read that you have that one if not get it! So Onward.  The first extension I always install when I put Firefox on a new PC is simply called Web Developers, Its a great toolbar with tools for CSS Forms Images Cookies also some hand tool to resize your browser so you can test your site in different resolutions. a great tool and my number one must have.

The second must have also relates to web design work IWEBtool, This tool is more aimed at promoting your web site rather than the design, there are tools to help with the design but most are aimed at the age old game of increasing you Google page Ranking.

Ok My third selection is the Del.icio.us Bookmarks mainly as i use Del.icio.us as my online book marking tool for general bookmarks along with my own site for technical Resources.

My next tool is called Clipmarks sometimes you only want to save one part of a page or maybe a picture for future reference, this is what clipmarks excels at, you select the section that you want to save with the clipmarks tool and hey presto as if by magic its saved for you future reference. dead handy for blogging or just for while your doing research. 

Now we come to Firebug, what's a great tool for diagnosing problems with pages both HTML and other including asp and JavaScript.

so there we have it my top five

More to come

del.icio.us Tags: bookmarks, Bug Finding, Extentions, CEO, Development, Web Design

Music forum and photos

So I started the task of rebuilding my personal web sites a couple of weeks ago. The issue wasn't so much the content more the design so that always makes life easier. It content that's always the harder bit, finding things that fit together and grouping them in the right way, This site (Techietone) was the first to be rebuilt. I have added some new features, like personal rating on the resources and a contact form but the main difference other than moving over to using blogger is the Forum, I have used a third party bit of software for this because although I could write it myself why reinvent something that's already out there and working really well. the application is pretty easy to configure and I will be producing a How to for MySql soon. The system is ASP based and therefore you need a host that will allow ASP. Anyway if you want to check it out for yourself here is the site http://forum.snitz.com/. they have a great forum themselves for asking question but if you have a question feel free to ask me.

My next two challenges that I had was for the family web site, Nikki (my dear wife) is in charge of content on this one so I mainly worry about the technical side of stuff and trying to meet Nikki's requirements what makes it fun at times, there was two main reasons for changing the Photo Gallery, the first from a technical point of view was that the present one is Perl based and although I love Perl I love standards more  and the web server that the site is running on is primary a ASP server so I wanted to remove all the Perl applications so I could remove Perl. Again I could have written it myself using ASP and MySql but firstly I couldn't be arsed to design it and then write it, secondly I wanted to avoid a database system because we have a lot of photo's and the thought of importing all the URL's or actual pictures sent a shiver down my spine. the second reason behind replacing it is that Nikki hated the way it organized the pictures on a very simple by album name method. So it had to go we are placing it with ASP Online Photo Album, The basics are very easy to set up, some of the graphics used was a little crap but easy to replace, This is generally a good system and easy to create a great looking web site, be aware thou even thou most of it is classic ASP there is one module that uses ASP.NET so you need a host that supports ASP.net (these days if the support ASP they generally support ASP.net).

what bring me on to my last challenge what's far from sorted but I thought I would let you know what I have found so far, Nikki would like an MP3 Player on our web site, she got the idea from Facebook and well as we have a complete section on music it seems like a good idea. The first system I looked at was amazing and I might still implement it for personal uses in a secured environment. its called One Web MP3 Server its still in beta but wow this is a fully functioning MP3 server that allows you to listen to your music from anywhere you have a web connection and a browser. you can create play lists and search you music collection. but great as it was it was so over the top for what we wanted and would have been hard to integrate into the rest of the site. So I kept looking and that's when I found these people codefuse they have 9 different styled Flash Mp3 players that are very simple to use and work using a simple XML file to list the mp3's. this is the system I am working on implementing at the moment, I let you know how it goes. so here are all those links again

http://forum.snitz.com/ for the Forum

ASP Online Photo Album for the photo Album

One Web MP3 Server  for the Mp3 Server

codefuse for the mp3 player

Hopefully you find this stuff handy

del.icio.us Tags: Mp3, Music, Forums, Photo, Gallary, web Design, Code, freeware, Open Source

Geek Alert Geek Alert

So I was thinking yesterday, (I know its a silly thing to do but I can't stop it) I describe myself as a IT geek but I figured there are different types of IT geek's. So I decided to define what I think are the three major type of IT geek's. You have your always on the computer, trying to solve problems and find good solutions to everyday life stuff this I defined as the Techie Geek and I would put myself in this group. Then you have the other end of the spectrum people that spend hours and hours on the computer in virtual world trying to play the virtual guitar better, race the virtual car faster shoot the virtual enemy. these I call Game geek's, They have no real IT skills as such but they can tell you how to connect to a doom server in Japan. And Finals you got the geek's that span both geekness area's when they are not fixing or programming stuff they are killing stuff, I would say the latter two are the most common, I have tried to get into gaming, I own an X box and a PS2 and I play both once in a while but to be honest I get board of them very quickly. give me a good programming problem or a system not working I would pick that over shoot aliens any day. I wouldn't say one type of geek is better than another just different and we probably all need to get out more to be honest although. I would just like to say thou I don't see a geek as someone with no social skills and no dress sense, they are Nerd to me.

so This IT geek is going back to working on his web site and investigating RSS and MP3 players on web sites. GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK !

del.icio.us Tags: Gaming, Techie, Computers, IT

Someone call security

So McAfee has released a rootkit detective today. version 1 Beta, root kits have become a big issue over the last few years, as people have become more aware of Trojans  and Worm virus. Rootkit's hook themselves' into  Kernel and into the registry undermining the anti-virus software and the spyware detectors but rootkit detective is not for the amateur its a tool for pro's as  you need a good understand of how the operating system works and what processes and hooks there should be. go here to read more

Now some news for the home users, Secunia  has released a Utility that checks for updates. Again this is a beta version and is free for home users and private uses, installation is easy enough and it auto start itself after the first install. To be honest I was impressed on how much software it detected and how quickly I could update software even software like Filezilla. It also told me all the software I had that had become end of life and gave me a percentage score for how up to date my machine was. Of course I have only had a small play but I will let you know if there is any major problems with it after I test it some more. if you want to download a copy for you self then go to the Secunia PSI site

To Much Information Running Through my Brain

Yep I know its an old sting song but its got a lot of truth behind it, the point is these days there is so much information its becoming hard to see the wheat for the chaff (to use an old fashion none technical term) now you can get just about anything deliver to you mail box or listed on you RSS Feeds,

I am going though a culling process at the moment, getting rid of the feeds and mailing list that I haven't had any valuable information from. but its a task, its almost easier to write a rule just to delete it but that's using up bandwidth of course one of the most annoying things for me thou is sites like WAYN or Face book that still send you mail even when your logged on.

Today my official membership to WAYN expires and now I got to find a way of stopping them mailing me to death.

 I mean if I sat and read every mail and every RSS Feed I got I would get nothing else done in the day what we need is RSS Feed reader with Filters, oh god just set myself another project by the looks of it.   

of course I have some must reads like Lazy View and slash dot but a lot is just junk and also not relevant to the claimed subject matter. it seems that some think more is better, I prefer quality information myself and that's something that sometimes lacks on the web.

del.icio.us Tags: RSS, Email Groups, Spam

Eight dot three

A conversation with my wife this morning lead me too think about how the IT industry has change since I started working in the industry in the spring of 1989. That's 18 years ! and I can tell you there has been a lot of changes. The conversation all started because our poor old laptop threw a wobble and decided to corrupt the windows installation. as it was only have problem loading the PCI driver I Figured a Chkdsk was worth a go. Why it called Chkdsk and not CheckDisk asked my wife, I explain that in the good old days of DOS file name could be no longer that 8.3 and the three was the file extension so that gave you 8 letters to name all your files. (BTW as it happens I had to do an over the top install what fixed the laptop).

So what else has changed in 18 years, so much and yet in reality so little if you believed what the Sc-fi writers in the 80's was tell us what life would be like in the 2000's Still no flying cars yet thank god.

here is a little list of what has changed Feel free to add more

we have gone from 8bit - 16bit to 32bit and now 64bit processors.

we now have more memory than we uses to have disk space.

Floppy Disk drives are almost dead and only used in Emergency and even that's beginning to come to an end .

Laptop are not portable not luggable's

CD have replace LP's and Singles then became a computer data storage format then was replace by DVD is now being replace by blue  ray or HD-DVD

Invention of USB , USB 2 FireWire, Digital Camera's the list could go on

IBM no longer the top hated company Now the title goes to Microsoft but seems Google could be gaining ground

Mobile phones arrived, then you had Text message, now some phones are replace hand held computers

The Internet the single biggest invention after 1950 has become a world wide resource for everyone

you can now take you music library with you everywhere thanks to the Ipod and other MP3 players

The impact technology has had on life is amazing, oh and the biggest change, Geek's have become cool at long last, (thank some higher begin if there is one and the big question is if he does, does he use a mac or a PC ?)

My Must have tools Part 2

Microsoft Visual Studio Express

Here is a set of tools from Microsoft for single type development, there is a Windows Desktop One a web one and others, if you want the power of Visual Studio but can't afford it (no Surprise there) then this might be a good starting point.

CutePDF

Now we all know the best format for completed documentation is PDF but hey Adobe PDF writing is like 2 arms a legs and the left nipple to buy, so it didn't take long for other to write PDF writers, this one is my favorite it work very well and doesn't even cost a arm hair. works well from just about any application that has the option to print from, basically like all the others it creates a document to PDF printer driver so instead of the document coming out on paper it comes out as a PDF magic huh

Winmerge

Need to compare two files or need to merge two files then you need Winmerge merges all know files dead, oopps got in advert mode there. but seriously (no not the album by Phil Collins) this is a great little tool can be used also anywhere from the file system, from within Dreamweaver or WinCVS. oh and its open source too.

Opera

Figaro figaro figaro oopps sorry not that sort of Opera but in fact yet another web browser and yes once again its open source with loads of widgets once again good for testing not really a lot more to say except Thunder bolt and lightning very very frightening Me Galileo.

Net Tools

A set of network Diagnostic, security and monitoring tool over 150 different tools in one package, from port checkers to time sync and IP Calculator if your dealing with any kind of network Security or monitoring you want this set of tools, all runs in a single window so easy to keep open while you do other thing without taking up all the room on your taskbar.

First Page 2006

This is more than just an application the whole web site is dedicated to web master / designer. The application itself is a good basic WYSIWYG HTML editor but it also comes with loads of JavaScript ready to run so taking a leave out of the book of my friends over at lazy view why reinvent the wheel, someone done all the hard work all I have to do is copy and paste it. the web site also has a lot of online tools worth looking at.

The Sea Monkey

Remember Netscape ? well when I installed Sea Monkey suite. It was a bast from the past, Netscape renamed with all the old tools, again really just another browser but still worth checking your pages with.

Acrobat Reader

well you need to be able to read all those PDF you create, Still the best reader for its money

Developer's Tips & Tricks - Standard version

Great little tool, if you use may different program languages and scripting languages you end up collecting lots of different tips you really want to keep, this is a great little tool for keeping them indexed

There are many great tools out there I haven't even started on Online Resources that I use or browser extensions. I will talk about these in the future and I am sure I will have more tools and Applications to tell you about, I normally look at one or two most days

del.icio.us Tags: Open Source, Web Design, Utilites, Application, PDF, Browsers, Programming, Development

My Must Have Tools Part 1

Here is a list of Tools and Application I use every week at least

Dreamweaver

got to Start with Dreamweaver 8.0.2 yes I know CS3 is out but its buggy as hell and for most people version 8 is stable and easy to use there is not a day that goes by when this tool is not fired up Dreamweaver has some wonderful Extensions that can save lots of hours recoding straight forward stuff, Dreamweaver has some good site management tools

Photoshop CS2

yes again I know CS3 is out but just like Dreamweaver its still buggy as hell one of the best graphic design tools there is. great for editing graphics for web sites as well as modify photos, Comes with some great effects and loads of plug in's

CVSNT

Only really just started to use this open source version control system and to say I was impress would be an understatement, once you understand the basic principles its fairly easy to configure and well there is a lot of support out there on the web for it

WinCVS

one of the best clients around for win32 for CVS on any platform including CVSNT, easy to use interface with a lot of support on the web

FireFox 2

where would we be without dear old FireFox, in a future blog I will talk about my favorite and most useful extensions for FireFox but for now I just say if I didn't have FireFox I would cry I think

Internet Explorer 7

What I hear you say why do I need that if I have FireFox, well simple stuff that works in FireFox doesn't work in IE and stuff that works in IE doesn't work in FireFox so I am afraid that makes IE a must have but you don't have to use it for browsing stick with FireFox for that unless you hit one of those oopps we never tested it with FireFox sites

Notepad++

I love this tool when I can find the bug in Dreamweaver I go to Notepad and 99% of the time spot it right away it a full feature text editor with loads of help for HTML, Perl, PHP, ASP etc etc name a language and its there in the list of file types

CSS Tab Designer 2

ok so I am lazy, I could code all the CSS by hand but when you have great tools like this why bother, if you want a very smart looking Interface very web 2.0 Style then you should have a look at this and its great for beginners too as they can just user the bog standard output and not customize it at all.

MySql Administrator

one of the best MySql managers around also come with the migration tool and query browser nearly everything you need to manage a MySql DB with on windows or Linux from a Win32 workstation.

FileZilla

A very good open source FTP client that I use to move sites from UAT to Live environments they also have a server product that I confess I haven't looked at yet but I will let you know when I do.

Windows Live Mail Desktop

Running a few Sites and also the standard Webmail's like Hotmail and Yahoo means I have quite a lot of Email Accounts in addition to my exchange accounts This is a Great tool for managing difference account and Access RSS Feeds and Newsgroups in one client

Windows Live Family Safety

Anyone that's a parent these days worries about what the child might find on the Internet, things you really don't want them to be exposed too, this free Tool from Microsoft is very good easy to set up and is based around Live Accounts

Picasa2

This is a Graphics Management tool Perfect for managing you Graphics and photo libraries but so much more, as its a Google tool you get all the normal Google goodies like web albums and the ability to add pictures directly to your blog. you can also create a collage also interacts with Google screen saver and Google Earth all this and some good basic Editing tools with effects as well if you use Google tools then your find this very useful.

Web CEO

If your releasing a webiste you will need to think about promoting it and here is a free tool that will help you with a lot of the basic's, there is a paying version with a lot more features but for the basics of working out what keywords to use and monitor your ranking in lots of different search engines

Toad for MySql

Although this covers a lot of the same area's as MySQL Administrator it also provides two extra tools that are very helpful, the first is SQL Modeling tool that gives you a visual tool not dislike access to create views. The second really useful Database management tool is Reports (reverse Engineering) of the database structure, what great for both upgrades and documentation.

VMware Server

Now they have released a free version for download this is the most useful developers and Techie tool of all time, no more destroying PC installation with testing and having 10 PC's around your desk for every version and type of OS now you can have virtual development environments on one machine

Password Safe

If you like me your signed up to about a million different web sites, every web site these days wants you to sign on from Hotmail and Google to MySql Sites they all want a username and password. of course you could use the same username and password for every account you set up but if you do that your crazy some sites are less safe than others and if your one password becomes known someone could get access to everything. so this is a great little tool, from now on you still only need to remember one password that opens your password safe and in there you can store you passwords and usernames as well as information about the sites URL Notes Extra, that's all well and good but now you just got to come up with good passwords but the writer of this software has even thought of that and includes as password Generator that always creates Strong Secure passwords.

More to come in part 2

Technorati Tags: Software, Tools, Application, Open Source, Freeware, Web Design, Graphics, HTML, CSS, Password Management

Now what's the Syntax again

I spend ages trying to work out how to do that, one thing I need to do in Dev and test as well as live environment is copy databases on the same server with the same data to a different name

well after much searching I found this useful page

Duplicating an MySql DB on the same page

but for quick reference here is the Syntax cos I know I will need it again in a few hours

mysqladmin create DB_name -u DB_user --password=DB_pass && mysqldump -u DB_user --password=DB_pass DB_name |mysql -u DB_user --password=DB_pass -h DB_host DB_name

so there you have it renaming a DB made easy

Technorati Tags: Mysql, Duplicating a Database

First Post

Well hello all and welcome to my blog

Mostly this will be a technical Blog, so for those that technical subjects bore you then err sorry try the family blog instead at hitchinson.eu they are more social and a bit more fun

Not saying my post here will not be fun but fun in a geeky way, at the moment my main project that i have been working on is www.stonedideas.co.uk to this end i have been teaching myself Mysql, ASP and learning a lot about CVSNT whats a great open source Version control software tool what i have found invaluable along with WinCVS i would full recommend these products if your doing any sort of development, even if its just you on your own rather than a team its still a very handy tool, next i hope to be looking at bugzilla on Windows and Linux. Hope to be posting Hints and Tips on here when I have time so hopefully some people will find it useful