User group meeting (Windows Server User Group)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few weeks ago, I blogged about Microsoft’s UK TechDays and mentioned that the Windows Server User Group was planning to run an evening event that week.

Now we’re ready to announce the details: whilst he was at the MVP Summit last month, Mark Parris managed to persuade Joey Snow to come along and speak to us on the evening of 12 April 2010 at Microsoft’s Offices in London (map and directions).  Joey is a technical evangelist for the Worldwide Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft focusing on Windows Server, IIS and SQL Server and he’ll be presenting on Windows Server 2008 R2’s new BranchCache functionality in as well as migrating server roles to Windows Server 2008 R2.

Check out the event registration site for more details.

Distributing camera raw files along with their development history from Adobe Lightroom

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I’ve written previously about how Adobe’s photo management applications such as Bridge and Lightroom use Sidecar (.XMP) files to store details of raw file edits without affecting the original image (and how that doesn’t quite work for JPEG or TIFF images).  On my system though, I found that there were no .XMP files because I had been storing the history inside my Lightroom catalog (I’ve since adjusted the catalog settings to automatically write changes into XMP) but it’s easy enough to generate an extensible metadata platform (.XMP) file for an image by either, exporting the image and selecting Original as the format in the file settings (this will save the .XMP file alongside the raw image), or, by selecting Save Metadata to File from the Metadata menu.  Either way, the resulting .XMP will be available for use in other applications (e.g. Bridge) and can be distributed with the raw image file if further processing is to be carried out on another computer.

Useful Links February 2010

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A list of items I’ve come across recently that I found potentially useful, interesting, or just plain funny:

Cleaning my DSLR’s sensor… the quick (and inexpensive) way

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Right now, I’m attending photography workshop in North Wales, learning a bit more about digital photographic imaging. It’s been a good experience so far but, yesterday afternoon, I experienced a small disaster as not only dust but a tiny hair had appeared on all of the images I took, indicating that I had some sort of debris on my sensor (actually, it’s on the anti-aliasing filter, not the sensor but that’s being pedantic…).

Being in the middle of the Snowdonia National Park (albeit in overcast/wet weather) and on a course where I would take a lot of photos, this was not exactly welcome and I feared I’d need a costly professional sensor clean (after a weekend of creating images with hair on them). No-one in the class had any sensor cleaning swabs (not that I’ve ever used them, and I would have been a little nervous too on my still-in-warranty Nikon D700) but, luckily, one of the guys passed me an air blower and said “try this – but make sure you hold the camera body face down as you use it!”.

With the mirror locked up, I puffed some air around inside the body (it’s important not to use compressed air for this) and took a reference image – thankfully the debris was gone (and, because the front of the camera was facing down, it should have fallen out, not gone further back into the camera).

I breathed a big sigh of relief and thanked my fellow classmate. In just over a week its the Focus on Imaging exhibition – hopefully I’ll get along to it and one of the items on my shopping list will be a Giottos Rocket Air Blower…

Backing up and restoring Adobe Lightroom 2.x on a Mac

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Over the last few days, I’ve been rebuilding the MacBook that I use for all my digital photography (which is a pretty risky thing to do immediately before heading off on a photography workshop) and one of the things I was pretty concerned about was backing up and restoring my Adobe Lightroom settings as these are at the heart of my workflow.

I store my images in two places (Lightroom backs them up to one of my Netgear ReadyNAS devices on import) and, on this occasion I’d also made two extra backups (I really should organise one in the cloud too, although syncing 130GB of images could take some time…).

I also backup the Lightroom catalog each time Lightroom runs (unfortunately the only option is to do this at startup, not shutdown), so that handles all of my keywords, develop settings, etc. What I needed to know was how to backup my preferences and presets – and how to restore everything.

It’s actually quite straightforward – this is how it worked for me – of course, I take no responsibility for anyone else’s backups and, as they say, your mileage may vary.  Also, PC users will find the process similar, but the file locations change:

I also made sure that the backups and restores were done at the same release (v2.3) but, once I was sure everything was working, I updated to the latest version (v2.6).

Checking if a computer supports Intel vPro/Active Management Technology (AMT)

Posted on By Mark Wilson

One of my many activities over the last few days has been taking a look at whether my work notebook PC supports the Intel vPro/Active Management Technology (AMT) functionality (it doesn’t seem to).

Intel vPro/AMT adds out of band management capabilities to PC hardware, integrated into the CPU, chipset and network card (this animation shows more details) and is also a pre-requisite for Citrix XenClient which, at least until Microsoft gets itself in order with a decent client-side virtualisation solution, I was hoping to use as a solution for running multiple desktops on a single PC.  Sadly I don’t seem to have the necessary hardware.

Anyway, thanks to a very useful forum post by Amit Kulkarni, I found that there is a tool to check for the presence of AMT – in the AMT software development kit (SDK) is a discovery tool (discovery.exe), which can be used to scan the network for AMT devices.

Unfortunately, vPro/AMT only seems to be in the high-spec models for most OEMs right now… until then I’m stuck with hosted virtualisation solutions.

Removing crapware from my Mac

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been rebuilding my MacBook after an increasing number of “spinning beachballs of death” (the Mac equivalent of a Windows hourglass/doughnut/halo…).  Unfortunately, its not just PCs that come supplied with “crapware” – it may only be a couple of items but my OS X 10.5 installation also includes the Office for Mac 2004 Test Drive and iWork ’08 Trial.  As it happens, I do have a copy of Office for Mac 2008 but I don’t need it on this PC – indeed the whole reason for wiping clean and starting again was to have a lean, clean system for my photography, with the minimum of unnecessary clutter.

“What’s the problem?”, I hear you say, “isn’t uninstalling an application on a Mac as simple as dragging it to the trash?”  Well, in a word: no. Some apps for OS X are that simple to remove but many leave behind application support and preference files.  Some OS X apps have installers, just as on Windows PCs.

I ran the Remove Office application to remove the Office for Mac Test Drive and, after searching for installed copies of Office, it decided there were none, leaving Remove Office log.txt file on the desktop with the details of its search:

***************************
Found these items:
OFC2004_TD_FOLDERS: /Applications/Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive

It seems that, if you’ve not attempted to run any of the Test Drive apps (e.g. by opening an Office document), they are not actually installed.  Diane Ross has more details on her blog post on the subject but, basically, it’s safe to drag the Test Drive files and folders to the trash.

With Office for Mac out of the way, I turned my attention to the iWork ’08 Trial.  This does not have an uninstaller – the application files and folders for Keynote, Numbers and Pages can be dragged to the trash but there is another consideration – there are some iWork ’08 application support files in /Library/Application Support/ that may be removed too.

These resources might not be taking much space on my disk, but I don’t like the idea of remnants of an application hanging around – a clean system is a reliable system.  At least, that’s my experience on Windows and it shouldn’t be any different on a Mac.

Reading EXIF data to find out the number of shutter activations on a Nikon DSLR

Posted on By Mark Wilson

A few years ago, I wrote about some digital photography utilities that I use on my Mac.  These days most of my post-processing is handled by Adobe Lightroom (which includes Adobe Camera Raw), with a bit of Photoshop CS4 (using plugins like Noise Ninja) for the high-end stuff but these tools still come in useful from time to time.  Unfortunately, Simple EXIF Viewer doesn’t work with Nikon raw images (.NEF files) and so it’s less useful to me than it once was.

Recently, I bought my wife a DSLR and, as I’m a Nikon user (I have a D700), it made sense that her body should fit my lenses so I picked up a Nikon refurbished D40 kit from London Camera Exchange.  Whilst the body looked new, I wanted to know how many times the shutter had been activated (DSLR shutter mechanisms have a limited life – about 50,000 for the D40) and the D40’s firmware won’t display this information – although it is captured in the EXIF data for each image.

After some googling, I found a link to Phil Harvey’s ExifTool, a platform independent library with a command line interface for accessing EXIF data in a variety of image formats. A few seconds later and I had run the exiftool -nikon dsc_0001.nef command (exiftool --? gives help) on a test image and it told me a perfectly respectable shutter count of 67.  For reference, I tried a similar command on some images from my late Father’s Canon EOS 1000D but shutter count was not one of the available metrics – even so the ExifTool provides a wealth of information from a variety of image formats.

Did you miss TechEd? Here come the UK TechDays

Posted on By Mark Wilson

UK Tech Days is a week-long series of free events run by Microsoft and technical communities to celebrate and inspire developers, IT professionals and IT Managers to get more from Microsoft technology.  Over 5 days (12th to 16th April 2010), Microsoft is running 10 all-day events covering the latest technology releases with topics including Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010, virtualisation, Silverlight, Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, Windows deployment and an IT Manager day.  In addition to the main events, held in West London Cinema locations, various user groups will be organising fringe events (Mark Parris is working hard on something for the Windows Server User Group… more details to follow).

Full event details (and registration links) are available on the UK TechDays site but here’s a brief rundown of the main attractions.

Developer Days at Fulham Vue Cinema:

  • Monday, 12 April 2010: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 launch - a path to big ideas. This launch event is aimed at development managers, heads of development and software architects who want to hear how Visual Studio 2010 can help build better applications whilst taking advantage of great integration with other key technologies.  (Day 2 will cover the technical in-depth sessions aimed at developers.)
  • Tuesday, 13 April 2010: Getting started with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Microsoft and industry experts will share their perspectives on the top new and useful features with core programming languages and in the framework and tooling, such as — ASP.NET MVC, parallel programming, Entity Framework 4, and the offerings around rich client and web development experiences.
  • Wednesday, 14 April 2010: The essential MIX – exploring the art and science of creating great user experiences. Learn about the next generation ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms.
  • Thursday, 15 April 2010: Best of breed client applications on Microsoft Windows 7. Windows 7 adoption is moving at a startling pace. In this demo-driven day, Microsoft will look at the developer landscape around Windows 7 – the operating system for applications running on through the new decade.
  • Friday, 16 April 2010: Windows Phone day. A practical day of detailed Windows Phone 7 Series development sessions covering the new Windows Phone specification, application standards and services.

IT Professional and IT Manager Days at Shepherds Bush Vue Cinema:

  • Monday, 12 April 2010: Virtualisation summit – From the desktop to the datacentre. Designed to provide an understanding of the key products and technologies enabling seamless physical and virtual management, interoperable tools, cost-savings and value.
  • Tuesday, 13 April 2010: Office 2010 – Experience the next wave in business productivity. The event will cover how the improvements to Office, SharePoint, Exchange, Project and Visio will provide a practical platform that will allow IT professionals to not only solve problems and deliver business value, but also demonstrate this value to IT stakeholders.
  • Wednesday, 14 April 2010: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 – deployment made easy. This event will provide an understanding of key tools including the new Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, Windows Deployment services and the Application Compatibility Toolkit along with considerations for deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 and migrating server roles.
  • Thursday, 15 April 2010: SQL Server 2008 R2 – The information platform. Highlighting the new capabilities of the latest SQL Server release, as well as diving into specific topics, such as consolidating SQL Server databases, tips and techniques for performance monitoring and tuning as well, and a look at the newly released cloud platform (SQL Azure).
  • Friday, 16 April 2010 (IT Managers): Looking ahead, keeping the boss happy and raising the profile of IT.  IT Managers have more and more responsibilities to drive and support the direction of the business. Explore the various trends and technologies that can bring IT to the top table, from score-carding to data governance and cloud computing.

I’ve been waiting for this announcement for a few weeks now, and places are (very) limited, so,  if these topics are of interest to you, I suggest registering quickly!

A quick introduction to Dell PowerEdge server naming

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last year I wrote a short blog post looking at HP ProLiant servers and how the model line-up looks.  I haven’t looked at IBM System x for a few years but last week I got the chance to sit down and have a look at the current Dell PowerEdge portfolio.

Just as for HP, there is some logic behind Dell’s server names, although this scheme is fairly new and some older servers (e.g. the PowerEdge 2950) do not fit this:

  • The first character is a letter indicating the chassis type: T for tower; R for rack; M for modular (blade).
  • The next digit indicates the market segment for which the server is destined: 1, 2 and 3 are single-socket servers for value, medium and high-end markets respectively; 4 and 5 are 2 socket value servers with 6 for medium and 7 for high-end; 8 indicates a special server (for example one which can be configured as a 2 or a 4-socket machine); 9 indicates a 4 socket server (Dell does not currently complete in the 8-way marketplace).
  • The next digit indicates the generation number (0 for 10th, 1 for 11th, 2 for 12th generation). With a new generation every couple of years or so, resetting the clock to zero should give Dell around 20 years before they need to revisit this decision!
  • Finally, Intel servers end with 0 whilst AMD servers end with 5.

There is another complication though – those massive cloud datacentres operated by Microsoft, Amazon, et al use custom servers – and some of them come from Dell.  In that scenario, the custom servers don’t need to be resilient (the cloud provides the resilience) but Dell has now brought similar servers to market for those who want specialist, high-volume servers, albeit with a slightly lower MTBF than standard PowerEdge boxes.  So, for example: the C1100 is a 2-way, 1U server that can take up to 18 DIMMs for memory-intensive applications; the C2100 is a 2-way, 2U server with room for 12 disks (and 18DIMMs); whilst the C6100 crams four 2-way blades into 2U enclosure, with room for 12 DIMMs and up to 24 2.5″ disks!