markwilson.it

Earlier this year, Nationwide, the UK’s largest building society, suffered a massive data theft when a notebook computer was taken from an employee’s home.
At the time, questions were asked about how such things could be allowed to occur but, to be fair to Nationwide, it is common practice for unencrypted data to be stored on [...]

“Hah! How can installing Windows on a Mac be an upgrade?”, I hear you ask – surely that’s tainting all that Apple wholesomeness with a BSOD-inducing, spyware-ridden, unreliable piece of software – at least, that’s the impression that you will get if you listen to Scott Bourne…
Back in the land of all that is operating [...]

Blogging may be a bit sporadic for a while as I’m trying to spend some time with my family (I’ve been far too busy at work over the last few weeks and they have been losing out); however I did find 5 minutes to blog about the new toys that Santa (okay, it was Mrs. [...]

This morning I passed the VMware Certified Professional on VI3 exam.
VMware’s non-disclosure agreement prevents me from saying anything about the exam itself but I can say that it involved a lot of preparation and this was my strategy:

Most importantly, get some experience of working with VMware products (I have been working on a project to [...]

Clicking through from one of Victor Laurie’s sites, I found Ed Bott’s 10 expert tips and tweaks for Windows Vista – it looks as though there are some nice tips there.
I regularly read Paul Thurrott’s writing (as well as listening to his Windows Weekly podcast with Leo Laporte) and I occasionally check out what Stephen [...]

Earlier today, I was looking for a complete list of Windows environment variables and a spot of googling turned up Victor Laurie’s Computer Education website, which describes itself as “an educational site that is intended for the home user of personal computers… teaching some basic points about how they and their Windows operating systems work”. [...]

A week or so ago, I spent two days on a technical leadership course as part of my work. I’m not sure that the course really spent much time teaching me to lead (it’s kind of implicit in my role), but it was an opportunity to take stock of where I am and made [...]

For the last couple of days, I’ve been mystified as to why I could access a SharePoint site from other Windows servers on the same LAN but not from clients (Mac, Linux or Windows) elsewhere on the network (and on the Internet).
Strangely, the server responded to ping requests, but I couldn’t successfully traceroute ipaddress. [...]

I got a call this afternoon from an IT recruiter who had found my profile on the ‘net and was looking for a SQL Server developer to fill a role. I politely told him that he obviously had not read much about me and that I don’t know very much about SQL Server (or [...]

Let’s get one thing straight. Over the last twelve-or-so years I’ve built a reasonably-successful career out of working with Microsoft products. At times, I’ve even been accused of bias towards Microsoft; however, I don’t exclusively use Microsoft products. I’m also aware that I’ve been fairly critical of Microsoft of late – but that’s because I [...]