It boils down to following the instructions on extremeTech.com. The most difficult thing was finding a Torq 6 screwdriver - one of my mates had one, after striking out in the local hardware stores. Took about 45 minutes, and a little bit of wrestling with the keyboard/lid. Now I've got a 200gb instead of 160gb, and more importantly a 7200 rpm and 16m cache drive instead of a 4800/8mb. Its a bit snappier, for sure. Eclipse and Notes 8 especially.

After doing hard disk swaps on PC's, I was expecting a world of pain in terms of imaging the disk. Nope. SuperDuper! did a fantastic job of initialising, imaging and making the disk bootable.

Its true you know, its just easier on a Mac.

Posted by Bill Buchan At 11:14:53 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category MacBook Bookmark :              

And using Adobe Flex 3 to build a Rich Internet Application. Specifically, a very very nice web front end for FirM to replace the very old Web 1.0 one we have in there. And so far, I do like flex. Some real strange issues. One in particular is that its web service consumer can only deal with Web Services that have a single root element (and not half-a-dozen as I had). Took a while to get through it. More on this later.

And hey - we're biking to Skye this weekend! Way-hey!

Posted by Bill Buchan At 23:16:01 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category Adobe Flex 3 Bookmark :              

Roy through me a curve-ball yesterday whilst doing some FirM testing. He tried to create a user with a completely Unicode-string name. Not a single character could be represented using ASCII. Surprisingly, most of it worked, but AdminP barfed on the filename.

Which isnt surprising, lets face it. The internet address would have been fun to type too:

So. How does one cope in Domino when faced with localised names such as this ? Well, Domino has coped with this for many years - just use the 'Alternate' name (and certifier) support. Just dont put non-ASCII style names into Notes as 'name' information, as it'll be extraordinarily hard to find those later..

Posted by Bill Buchan At 13:06:02 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category Lotus Domino AdminP Administration Process FirM HADSL Bookmark :              

I was challenged by Paul Mooney at the Lotus Developer/Admin 2008 to publish a wee server add-in task that I built called Delay. It allows you to build server 'batch files' which can be automatically started on server startup, but allows you to insert delays to allow other server add-in tasks to be loaded. It can be downloaded (along with source code) here.

Posted by Bill Buchan At 08:46:22 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category Lotus Domino Bookmark :              

Some five months since the Wii was smuggled back from Barcelona, I played on it for the first time. And I found this cartoon (from the excellent xkcd) which sums the experience up..

Posted by Bill Buchan At 10:57:25 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category Wii Bookmark :              

I live in a wee (< 90 houses) village in the middle of rural Aberdeenshire. Beautiful place, all rivers and hills and full of interesting folk. Last night. SWMBO's mate texted SWMBO and told her to meet them in our local pub - some 35 yards from our front door. Given my previous evenings escapades there with David Clark, I wasnt too sure. A quiet, peaceful night in the pub it isnt - far too many interesting people to talk to, and one of the lads (Mr Happy's) 21st Birthday. So kilts, sporrans and lovely ladies in low cut dresses. One of the best nights out I've had in a while..

However, SWMBO, her friend, and her friends son's girlfriend started on the tequila slammers, sambuka.. Well. SWMBO doesnt do hangovers. She hides in bed, and has just now - at 3pm - surfaced.

Course, I had to point out that it was hard work having that much fun, and it required a rigourous training regime..

Kudos to Gus for being handcuffed and thrown in the back of a Police car just before the event. He still turned up, full highland dress, and insisted on showing the handcuff marks to one and all. Why was he treated thus ? He was towing a trailer with an incorrect registration, and since he has a dodgy knee, cant easily get in or out of the back of a car. Of course, the cops in question decided he was being 'threatening', and threw him in there anywise. Moral of the tale is to just bend over and take one for the team anytime one of our uniformed officers start on their power trips.

Posted by Bill Buchan At 14:57:59 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category None Bookmark :              

Being a geek, I've always wanted home automation. You know - house says 'hello', lights go on and off, etc. However, this has always required running a shonky windows-based PC, and the obvious disaster when it crashes. So I was pleasantly surprised to see Indigo for the mac.. Mmm.. I think a nice summer project based on this might happen..

Posted by Bill Buchan At 09:25:29 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category None Bookmark :              

Many thanks to those folks who attended my Object Orientated sessions at Developer 2008 in Boston. However, a delegate has approached me and pointed out that the database copy on the CD is actually locally encrypted. Much as I'd love to give you all my ID file in order to open this database, my co-directors would probably kill me, so instead here's a new copy of the database to download from here...

Posted by Bill Buchan At 11:48:16 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category Developer 2008 Boston Lotus Notes Bookmark :              

Ballmer has pulled back from buying Yahoo. What does this say?

• Ballmer is an idiot
• Microsoft as a whole are idiots
• Yahoo are idiots
• All of the above.

Honestly. MS have zero credibility right now and still failing badly. Want to stake your career on them?

Posted by Bill Buchan At 22:01:34 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category None Bookmark :              

Phew. Finally recovering, catching up on sleep and frantically packing my room. The View Developer 2008 as always was both hard work and fun - lots of new folks, lots of interesting content. Last night, Roy and I were just too tired to go barhopping in Boston, and just sat in the hotel bar, chatting. Should you think this is wasted time, important HADSL stuff got resolved and computing infrastructure was sorted out. Okay, so we did a *little* bit of work, whilst sipping beer and watching the folks head to the MIT graduation ball in the hotel. Scary. Sort of 'Nerd Herd' in Tuxedos.

A very nice thing happened last night. Some of you may be familiar with 'The Jacket' - this is a very old, very battered thin leather jacket that I wear whilst on adventures. Its been around the world with me, and sometimes gets bored of my tasteless banter and heads off to do stuff by itself. When I met The Turtle in Vegas, for instance, it went backstage for a behind the scenes look at the Mirage casino. When I interviewed for Standard Life, it had a wee stay in the Apex hotel in Edinburgh. And on Friday, when we went to the Cactus club, it absconded again. (Confusion reigned, as I lent 'The Jacket' to Susan to keep her warm, and forgot about it in my 'tired and emotional' state).

Enquiries lasted all day Saturday, but no - I couldnt find it in the normal places. Hotel lost propery, the bar, down the side of the road between the Cactus club and the Sheraton. In any of my presentation rooms. I was resigned to it finally leaving me forever. Sigh.

But no, another attendee for The View conference bumped into me last night and filled me in on some of the stuff that I was up to on Friday night, and (after apologising to the poor lady), I established that my jacket had actually been lost in the Hotel Bar! One phone call later (and a bizarre Russian security guard and his russian/irish girlfriend story - god, can I pick em!), Jacket and I were reunited. Awww. A nice happy ending.. And even better (after checking the pockets), nothing nasty or illegal in there.

Bouyed by my Homing Jacket success, I went to the room and selected an in-room movie. No, dear reader - nothing seedy. But the rather blacker-than-black comedy - 'In Bruges'. Hilarious. The younger of two irish gangsters (Colin Farrel - left) somewhat resembled Mr Mooney (On the right), and the older one somewhat resembled me in a few years time. And the accents all resembled Father Ted. One line:

"This is what its came to - two Manky Whores and a Racist Dwarf. I'll be off!"

will stay with me for some time..

And finally. You all expected it, I expected it - so here it is. Was I able to use the KLM internet check-in today ? Ah. No.

• After much scambling around, I managed to point an Internet Expoder 7 on XP client at the KLM website. I'm still stung that Neil thinks that anything other than XP and Internet Exploder deserves to fail.
• Rummaged around, got my flight information, plugged it in... And..
• A new check-in screen! 'Please go to partner site'.. Okay.. Encouraging..
• A Northwest check-in screen appears, PRE-POPULATED with my CORRECT information!. My Expectations, like the national debt, is rising..
• Clicked on the 'Check-in' button and........
• Like a exploding zepplin, my hope and dreams lay scattered across the hotel room floor (rather like my underwear). No. 'Reservation Cannot be found'.

Posted by Bill Buchan At 13:59:24 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category None Bookmark :              

Ive now done six hours of presentatons, with only (!!) another three today. And thanks to my new '10 hours sleep a night' rule, feeling relatively human (even if I dont look it!). The undoubted hit of the show has been Zoe - Matt and Jess Strattons angelic 8-month old baby. I can just *see* everyone getting 'broody' around about her.

On the stand with the Old Git yesterday inbetween torturing delegates with bad jokes - lots of fun. We somehow got a stand next to a bar - dunno how that happened - and our stand giveaways - Fazermints and whisky - seems to be unusual enough to draw a crowd. So lots of fun.

Jamie and the guys ran their annual room party last night - half of the conference were jammed into a suite drinking beer and smearing food into the carpet. Goood party, and I'm sorry about the 'silence of the lambs' gag.

Paul Mooney flies back tomorrow night, so I suspect tonight might be 'party night' which is quite terrifying. However, I do have a secret weapon - the name and location of a decent, old fashioned 'dive' bar around the corner from the hotel..

Oh. And as an incentive to get presentations in on time (I failed miserably in this regard), the speaker who got all his presentations finished first got the presidential suite. Awesome. I mean, one of the beds was big enough to accomodate half a dozen speakers bouncing on it. And Julian - I'm sorry if your alarm went off at 6.30am this morning.. Or your rooms were heated to ninety degrees..

Appestore news. The new 'Green Monster' applestore is on the street beside the hotel, taunting me. The construction staff mentioned (*cough*) in passing that its opening on the 16th of May. Pity, as I'll be back in rural scotland by then.. Sigh..

Posted by Bill Buchan At 12:21:46 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category Boston Lotus Notes Bookmark :              

Phew. Did a 3 hour jumpstart on LotusScript - and overran by 40 minutes.. Sorry folks..

Posted by Bill Buchan At 13:13:05 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category None Bookmark :              

Someone asked why I was so chirpy. So I explained that i was of to present at a computer conference, etc. "Oh, what in", they said, trying to sound interested.

"Enterprise collaboative application development best practices" I said. Avoiding the use of the phrase "Lotus Notes".

Am I a bad person for this ?

Posted by Bill Buchan At 08:06:56 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category None Bookmark :              

A friend of SWMBO's took round her parents ancient eMac - a single monitor mac from the early 90's. They'd tried to install Leopard on it (even though it was not supported) and borked it. So, my services were 'offered'.

The nice thing about Macs is that you can hold down the 'T' key when it starts up, and it'll act as an exernal firewire disk. A really handy way of getting user data off the machine should the O/S be screwed (as this one was). So once that's been copied onto a memory stick, its a case of seeing if I can recover the machine (but they're not that fussed, they're buying a new macbook in any case)..

One invaluable resource is the Mac bootup key reference here

Posted by Bill Buchan At 20:04:00 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category Mac Option keys Boot Bookmark :              

Off to Boston on Monday, to do four 90 minute and one afternoon long presentation at Lotus Developer 2008, at the Sheraton Boston in Dalton Street. Sweet.

This involves divuling my itinerary to the US authorities via the KLM internet check-in process. So far, so very boring and predictable. But - KLM to the rescue. Unaware that internet checkin facilities are now ten-a-penny with other carriers, offering such boring facilites as say reliability - KLM snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by:

• Offering a site that just doesnt work in Safari. Harumph.
• That fails in Firefox. What are these bozo's testing on, given that IE doesnt actually have any testing tools?
• That fails in Internet Exploder v6- which as MS love to remind us, still represents the bulk of the internet users out there, certainly in corporate-land.
• It fails in Opera, but Opera is the only browser to actually provoke an error message. Clearly, something is amiss at one of the THREE KLM data centers, and it being a Sunday, no-one has noticed.

(I have to say that I had the opportunity to fly via BA/BAA's flagship new terminal - Terminal 5 at Heathrow, but since I dont share the same travel karma as Francie (who's hitting it four times in the next six weeks!), I would only be sadly disappointed as the baggage handlers loot my luggage (as they did last year at LGW). So I'm going via Schipol in Amsterdam, on the grounds that its clean, efficient, and has the more than evens probability of delivering me and my baggage to the place I want to go. )

Airline travel sucks. I think I'll do the US by Boat next time.

Update: The KLM telephone number in the UK for check in is 02 0736 50752. Much faster than the web site.

Posted by Bill Buchan At 12:10:34 Location Marykirk | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)    | Category KLM Bookmark :