Delboy’s Blog

Well it was semi final night tonight and I think that we will be looking at an all male final next week.

Syesha has been good over the season but tonight I just don’t think she was be able to compete with the guys, her first song was good but the other two were poor.

The two guys, well for me its was Davids Cook’s night he was by far the best on the night. David Archuleta had a bad night for me not his usual self at all, I wounder if something is missing there.

I know everyone thinks that David Archuleta will be the next American Idol but for me David Cook is by far the better signer so far.

Should be a good final next week but lets wait and see who gets there first, for me its the two David’s.

Last episode of the season from the special one

I spoke to early, earlier this week when I thought all was well with Windows XP SP3. Today I sat down to watch my podcast’s shows when everything kept crashing. After I rebuilt my Apple TV reinstalled iTunes all was still not well.

The problem I was having was that the Apple TV kept loosing a connection with my iTunes and as such disappeared from the device list in my iTunes.  The only way to get the Apple TV back in the iTunes list was to close and reopen iTunes or power off the Apple TV. When I did get it back in the list as soon as I started to watch a show it would drop the connection.

Finally I decided that it most be SP3 and yes i was correct. What I can say is that the uninstall for for Service Pack 3 works very well, apparently better that the install and now that I am back to SP2 all is working well with my Apple TV.

In conclusion if you are using Apple TV I would avoid installing Microsoft Windows XP SP3.

For the last few years I have been using Skype to keep in touch with all of my family and friends back in the UK, this became a very important tool when Christopher was born. Video calling just makes the world a much smaller place.

However since the start of this year I have been having lots of problems with video calling with Skype back to the UK, it worked fine in the USA but every time I tried back to the UK they would not see my video. I then had to go and find the windows laptop to use MSN (Not good quality).

Now I have found ooVoo I have been tested ooVoo this week and it works just the same as Skype. Download the client on each PC and away you go. The good news is that I found the Video and Sound quality to be as good if not better than Skype. My parents were much happier they could just see Christopher with out me hunting down the other laptop.

I will still be using Skype for all my voice calling as that works great but for video calling I will be using ooVoo for the time being.

You can download oovoo at http://www.oovoo.com/

***** Update *****

AT&T has now removed this from there web site.

Just what are AT&T doing with this? 1st they give free access, then take it away. Then they say they are giving free access then they don’t. Come on AT&T make up your mind.

*******************

OK this has been rumored for some time now but its now official, iPhone users in the US will get free access to all of AT&T’s Wi-Fi hotspots.

This has now been included on AT&T’s web site under the iPhone plane section

“access to AT&T’s more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including Starbucks* all for use in the U.S.
*Wi-Fi available at U.S. company operated Starbucks locations equipped with a hotspot.”

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iPhoneCenter.html

Things just keep getting better for the iPhone.

Another great show from the special one

Its Fantastic!!!

Well I managed to install Windows XP SP3 on a number of my Windows PC today.

I can say that the download and install takes about an hour but it did install well and so far I have not had any problems with any of my machines.

Here is a list of the software that I am running and all is working well

• Norton AV
• iTunes
• AppleTV working well After more testing I found out that this had problems read this more recent Blog.
• Skype
• NTRConnect (Remote control software)
• Mozy Backup
• Microsoft Office
• File & Print Sharing is working well

So I can say that this time Microsoft seemed to have released a good service Pack. Fingers crossed all will be well over the next couple of days.

****** DO NOT UP DATE TO THIS VERSION ******

Today I upgraded my VMware Fusion to the new Beta 2.0 version. Here are a few things that might be help full if you are thinking of upgrading. I am currently doing my testing on a MacBook Pro with a 2.2Gbz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor with 4Gb of RAM

Problems I had with the upgrade

• This is not an quick and easy upgrade. Yes the software itself upgrades easily but the problems start when you need to upgrade your VM’s
• Make sure that you shut down all your VM’s before you do the upgrade, I found that once I upgraded and resumed my old VM’s I had problems shutting down to do the upgrade.
• Do not install VMware Tools with out upgrading the VM first (Virtual Machine - Upgrade Virtual Machine)
• I found that the upgrade, that included installing VMTools, took a very long time on some of my VM’s. For some of my VM’s this took over an Hour.
• Installing VMTools asks for the Microsoft I386 file, this was a problem because of the ISO/CD issue below
• VMTools would not install on one of my VM’s

Other Problems I have had

• I have not been able to get my VM’s to see my printers that are installed on my Macbook Pro
• There seams to be a problem when changing an ISO file for the virtual CD-ROM. Even when I disconnected and reconnected with a new ISO my VM would only see the old ISO. I had to connect the physical CD-ROM to fix this problem however this did not work on all my VM’s. Sometimes i had to reboot the VM to fix this problem.
• My VM’s are taking a lot longer to resume now
• Switching between Full Screen and Sigle Screen take a lot longer
• Shared Folder’s no longer works. When trying to get this to work my VM even crashed the first time on a Fusion product
• It takes a lot longer to establish a network connection when resuming a VM

What I Like about the New Version

• Multiple monitor support
• The ability to add more than 1 Hard Drive to a VM is very nice, especially if I need more space inside a VM
• The new Virtual Machine Library is much better
• The new setting menu is much easier to use

Over all after testing for the afternoon I would advise people to give this beta a miss I believe that there is still a bit of work needed here before the full release. The fact that my VM’s seem a lot slower and the CD/ISO problem is a real turn off for me. Now the big question do I go back or stick with the beta? This I am still not sure on maybe I will continue to use the Beta for a few days before I make up my mind.

***** UPDATE*****

As I have been working with this I have found the following problems with some not all of my VM’s

• Unable to run Windows Update. (I was able to install SP3 on some of my VM’s but Windows update just would not run all all of my VM’s).
• Microsoft Office Documents get corrupted when trying to download or open from Lotus Notes, again this worked on some of my VM’s but not all

Looks like I will be reverting back to the old version of fusion later today and waiting for the full release. I will post an update as to how the roll back goes. Wish me luck

***** Reverting back to VMware Fusion 1.1.2 *****

OK so I have decided to move back to Fusion 1.1.2 as the beta product is defiantly just that a beta product. Although the move was straightforward it wasn’t completely painless.
Here is what I did and the problems I had in reverting back to 1.1.2

• Powered down all my VM’s
• Downgraded all the VM’s (Virtual Machine – Downgrade Virtual Machine)
• Uninstalled Fusion 2 beta, using the uninstall script
• Installed Fusion 1.1.2
• Powered on the VM’s 1 by 1

This is where the problems started. All of the VM’s powered on OK but they were having problems with 1 of 2 windows devices. Some of the VM’s now can not install the “Base System Device” These VM’s are working fine and all is good apart from this device. My other VM’s had a problem with device “VMware VMCI Bus Device” the VM’s that had this problem also had problems accessing shared folder.

To fix this problem I did

• Uninstalled VMTools
• Rebooted
• Installed VMTools
• Rebooted

After this I got the same “Base System Device” problem, but shared folders now works fine as does the rest of the VM.

On the good side the Windows Update is now working (SP3 installed) as is launching and saving office files from lotus notes.
On the bad side Copy and Paste between VM and Host no longer works (I can live with this).

Needless to say I will be waiting for the full release of VMware Fusion 2.0 before I upgrade again. At that point I hope all works better.

***** Update*****

Just found out that I am now having problems with my VM’s that have a Bridged network connections. NAT connections are working just fine.

So the English FA have today set out the goals for English football. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/7386163.stm

So am I missing something or are we just going back in time? England has some of the best player’s in the world or so we are lead to believe. After the embarrassment of Steve McClaren the FA has gone out and got what they are saying as the best manager in the world, I am sure they are paying him a hell of a lot of money as well to do the job.

So what is the target for the next 4 years a Semi Final, are they having a laugh or what. Surely if you are bringing in the best and you have some of the best talent in the world you would maybe want to win a trophy or at least make it to a final.

Is this not the same target that we herd Sven say he would achieve? Is that what England has become just a semi final team at best? So if in 4 years Fabio walks away from England having taken them to a semi final he will feel job done, I know I wont think that as an England supporter. I would like to see my team in a final and maybe winning a trophy. Its only 2 years since the last world cup were England were one of the favorites and now they are a semi final team at best.

I believe on this report it is time for changes at the top. I think we need a winning mentality at the top of English football not just people who will be happy with a semi final. The only time England won a World Cup Sir Alf Ramsey said before the competition we are going to win, not we will make the semi finals.

What sort of message is this sending to the plays and the manager. Its time we told them we expect a Trophy in the next 4 years and then maybe they we start performing for England.