Monthly Archives: May 2009

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the domain of the kat

Last night I helped myself to the Windows 7 Release candidate and I must say I was impressed with the download speed. Within 30 minutes, I’d reached 50% of the download. The only download I think that went faster was an installation of Acrobat Reader. Don’t ask me how long I’ve managed to go without that on my computer, but I needed it, so I downloaded it and was averaging speeds of 250kbps.

That said, this is my first post here on my new domain. Something struck me the other day and I decided that I should have more control over my blog and webpresense etc, so I registered my own domain name and got some hosting! Kudos to Hosting Direct.

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logging accident – kaingaroa

Here’s a report and photos of a car/log truck collision in NZ

Pete/Paul. Incident: 521 – Ford Telstar ran up rear of stems unit.
Driver: 521 Bill G.
Location of accident: Goudies Road , approx 2 Km south from Burn Rd intersection.
What happened: An idiot driving a Telstar TX5 was travelling at what appears to be excessive speed ran up the rear of 521. Two overhanging stems passed through the windscreen and out the rear window, missing the three occupants of the car. The car travelled 7 meters up the logs before hitting the rear bumper of the truck with such force that the car was jammed under the bumper and suspended off the ground by the two logs. The occupants of the car jumped out onto the road. The driver of 521 was unaware of the incident and continued on his journey along Goudies for 2.8 kms and down Pukapuka Road for a further 3.4Kms. 655 RFH stems unit was travelling up Pukapuka empty. 521 slowed to pass. In doing so the dust reduced to the stage where Bill saw a part of the car’s front bumper in his rear vision mirror. He asked Jimmy (on R/T) what was behind him. Jimmy advise a car was hanging off the stems unit. On inspection the found no passengers in the car. Bill left the truck and went with Jimmy to locate the driver etc. They found them on the side of the road near to the scene of the collision on Goudies Rd. (The ambulance and police arrived) Continue reading →

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windows 7 release candidate

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love Windows 7. Today I made the decision that I was going to install Windows 7 release candidate on my laptop seeing as its the worst performing computer in this house.

The release candidate is already available for download for TechNet and MSDN members, and will be available to the general public from the 5th May 2009 (PST) through until the end of July. The excellent thing about this release is that unlike the Beta, which starts expiring on July 1st 2009 and will be really dead by August 1st, the release candidate has a life span to June 2010 as reported by The Guardian recently.

Whats the minimum specifications for running Windows 7, well, a 1ghz processor, 1gb of ram among other things. This acer laptop which performs so poorly under Vista should be a slender athlete under Windows 7.

With all that said, I am planning on increasing the ram in the laptop to 4gb as the 1gb it has, is always at least 80% in use by Vista OS on its own and gets so hot sometimes I’m left with a laptop shaped pink spot on my legs, and it makes an excellent heating device in winter.

So why was I disposing of the linux partition? I couldn’t wait to have a little attempt at Windows 7 on the laptop, so I’m installing the original beta just to get a taste. I have no patience, but I do urge people to have some when the release candidate is available. I’m certain every every man and their dog and their fish will want to download it. But if you want a sneak peak at the asthetics, I suggest you go here.

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getting rid of linux from my life

I tried and failed to shake the shackles of the Bill Gates empire. I had my laptop dual booting Ubuntu and Windows Vista. Today is struck me that I never really use my Ubuntu partition, prefering the flexibility of having all my apps in Vista.

Its not easy to dispose of an unloved linux/ubuntu partition. Simply formating the partition from Vista leads down a nasty path with GRUBB not found, Error 22. I know, I went there. I had to reload Linux onto the 20gb partition and start again.

Once there, I found a nifty little app on the net, EasyBCD. Using that, you can put Vista back in charge of the booting process, eliminating the GRUBB.

easybcd

Using the write MBR and reinstall vista bootloader, I was able to eliminate the GRUBB and put Vista back in charge. This had the effect of that familiar dual boot screen you get when you have two windows partitions sharing a computer, yet you can select Linux as well, with a few additional settings.

Once I put Vista back in charge, a reboot and yes, it was showing me the windows vista and linux partitions. Once in Vista, I deleted the linux partition and remove the linux entries from the EasyBCD, saved settings and rebooted.

Now my system reboots just like a factory vista install.

And whats the reason for all this extended nonsense? See my post tomorrow for more details.