Mindpsill - Technology

Needless to say while editing I found half a million wrong things with the actual video. I forgave myself for the first parts since I was too much of a newbie but I must now learn from mistakes. These are some tips I came up with after my first experience:-

1. Do not zoom at anything and everything. If you want to zoom on something also take a wide angle shot of the subject so you can decide which is best at editing stage. Although subjects may seem small in the view finder they get bigger on TV. I have too much zoomed footage.
2. Keep high zooms (x10+) very very low. Camera shake at this range is incredible.
3. Keep a consistent turning motion, don't turn too fast or too slow.
4. Get to use the tripod more often. Train how to turn the camera on the tripod without jittering the scene. It is also important to align the tripod well before shooting.
5. Dare! Record loads of footage even when you’d think it’s no good record just the same. At the caves in Mulu I though that the actual video was going to result in crap however it was good footage. Because I didn't continue shooting I lost the rest of the caves.
6. While editing sound and removing stupid clips is easy, editing poor lighting was a bit too complex for a start. Pay careful attention to light because it will finally make or break your footage.
7. It’s a good idea to video guides talking so that at least you can capture the sound and explanation even if the guide is not presentable.
8. When recording somebody talking pay attention to record close enough to the person to capture the audio correctly. Some good clips had to be discarded because the volume of the person talking was too low.
9. A week before the holiday spend some time video taking to remember the importance of these points and avoid trashing 90% of the first 3 days of footage.

Phase 1 – Project Initiation
Phase 2 – Wild Enthusiasm
Phase 3 – Disillusionment
Phase 4 – Chaos
Phase 5 – Search for the guilty
Phase 6 – Punishment of the innocent
Phase 7 – Promotion of non-participants
Phase 8 – Definition of requirements

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to get philosophical at work. We’re in the last stages of purchasing a very important and revolutionary system for the company, which will change most of the way we do business, and I’m part of the team responsible for the purchase.

The team is divided into 3, a super user and eventually the system administrator (not IT related), his boss and the IT department (where I come in). We evaluated three systems in total, one of which is by far the best but too expensive to consider.

From the remaining two systems one is basic and lacks most of the advanced functionality while the other one is more powerful, complex and expensive. From a personal perspective I would defiantly go for the second option since I was too unimpressed by the first, but the super user is much more in favour of the more basic system. His boss is undecided because he likes the better system yet at the same time he thinks that our company is so small and inexperienced that we should start with a basic product then upgrade in the future. I don’t agree with this approach and reasoning, because I’m sure that a basic system will bring along basic work practices which will not result in anything significant enough to warrant the purchase in the first place.

In this context who has the right to choose the software; the super user representing the final user, the boss who is supposed to know which product will return the best benefit or the IT man who knows which is the best technical system?

Today on the last day of the course, at last the training got interesting mainly because it became more applicable to day to day use. The lessons were about disk management and data storage. These are some general important principles:-

• Always use NTFS file system for OS's that support it. NTFS has got security, compression and several other desirable features (ex. remembering previously flagged bad sector locations after a format) that are not present on FAT and FAT32.
• You can ALWAYS use quick format when formatting disk. Full format is only 'required' when you want to delete sensitive data from disk and even then most probably data can still be retrievable. For super sensitive data deletion you have to do a low level disk format.

In line with what I was thinking a month ago, there are millions of features in software packages that nobody knows they exist, which in some cases might be excellent time and effort savers. Windows itself is full of these unadvertised components. If for nothing else, this course highlighted the importance of MMC console; a tool which encompasses all administration requirements of a windows system, both server and desktop machine.

The MMC console can be used for almost all management tasks both within a local machine and also on remote computers. This tool makes remote administration really easy just by simply selecting the machine name you require to administer once you select the appropriate snap-in.

Using MMC console

1. To use the MMC console you just click select run from the start menu [windows key + R] and type MMC (on computers with multiple privileges you might have to use the runas command).
2. You can now add several components to the MMC console depending on the task you want to do. Go to file -> add remove snap/in -> add.
3. Try adding the computer management snap in which is a collection of other snap ins to allows you to do pretty much everything to manage your computer. The disk management facility allows formatting new disks (there is no need for partition magic), changing drive letters and work with dynamic disks to span and strip disks. Other options include monitor event logs, services, disk defragmentation, user and group management etc.
4. Also add the group policy snap in. This allows you to implement a computer policy based on how you want groups of users to use the computer. You can restrict access to most resources by creating policies. For example you can remove items like my computer and recycle bin from desktop, standardise desktop images, hide the control panel, etc.

The last part of the lesson was about disaster recovery management which is a fancy word for backup and restoring. Like all backup classes the golden rule in backup is: Your backup is only as good as your restore procedure.

Now, have you ever wondered what the following items mean in windows?

achieve file attribute

This file attribute is used by windows backup software to indicate that a file requires backup (if the attribute is set).

load last known good configuration

You're likely to see this option after a crash. This option loads the registry settings as of the last log on, so if you logged on installed a new driver and the computer crashed then the last known good configuration loads the registry before the driver got installed. If on the other hand you manage to log in the system after you install the driver than the computer malfunctions this option becomes pretty useless because the cocked up registry is saved.

Creating a startup disk in windows XP / 2000 / 2003

1. Select the show hidden files and folders and uncheck the hide protected operating system files, from the folder options under tools in my computer.
2. Copy
   • boot.ini
   • ntdetect.com
   • ntldr
   • if they exist copy bootsect.dos or ntbootdd.sys
3. From command line type attrib -h -s -r a:*.*

For more details check out the microsoft support site

Today is my third training day of "Managing and Maintaining a windows 2003 server". As usual at work we end up attending things completely unrelated to our work and leave things directly related to us hanging in the closet. Java Pro, Crisis Management Conference bye bye! To ease the pain, we've got full Internet access available at least during the practicals.

At these lectures I try my best to listen, then let my mind wonder around. Yesterday I found some food for thought when discussing Print Sharing. The tutor highlighted that having a cheap separate ink jet for each employee will turn out much more costly than buying an industrial scale printer serving many users. When you think about it, it makes sense because the running cost of each individual ink jet printer is huge comparatively, approx 2c per paper for the inkjet and 0.2c per paper for the large printer.

I realised that the same principle applies very much to software development. Most of the time before writing a new piece of software I am asked how much time will it take. Naturally I calculate design and development time but in fact I must take into consideration maintenance (and application support) which is probably more time consuming than the actual application development. This argument answered a recent thought of mine; why in the last year I wrote only one application while in the previous year I wrote about five.

At the moment I am in the process of absorbing information so that's the reason why my posting are infrequent. I'm struggling to juggle between different books on various subjects ranging from Java to Entomology with Malaysia research in between.

This weekend was marked by two things; a puncture and a quest to free a friend's computer from spyware. My first attempt was installing Adware 6.0, which managed to find and fix hundreds of nasties but it was only after the fifth scan that Adware was satisfied that the laptop was ok. Unfortunately it was wrong. A browser hijacking program was resetting Internet Explorer startup page each time IE was started and each time it closed. I tried to scour through processes running in memory and disabling some IE components but it did not work. I really would like how they do these tricks. After trying a multitude of things and installing Spybot S&D my brother decided to install the latest version of Adware. It was only than that the malware was found corrected and restored peace.

Why am I working at work instead of writing my blog? Why am I searching work at home instead of dedicating more time to my blog? Why did I go to work yesterday on my birthday? Am I'm programming?

Dry Links:-

Portland Pattern Repository

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