A couple of weeks ago, I posted a
photogear wishlist. This list contained a
Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 ED lens. This lens is nearly 10 years old (introduced in 1999), so Nikon introduced a new version in November 2007. The
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S is the successor of the legendary 'Beast'.
And now, good fortune is knocking on my door (e.g. I won 10 euro's in the new years eve lottery). I'll probably order this new lens this weekend :D . Together with my dad's Nikon D3 it should be a smashing combination.
I evaluated the MDaemon v9.7.2 mailserver, and I must say that it's quite complex to get it to run... my way.
It's quite common to separate the program and the data. So, I tried to put the data on a different disk. This isn't done by using the GUI, but you need to edit the
Mdaemon.ini file in the
App directory (not every directory can be changed by the GUI). After changing the defaults, the MultiPOP feature didn't work. It seems there's another config file for remote mail stuff. This file (
schedule.dat) needs to reference the same location as the
Mdaemon.ini file. Why is that? Why use two config files for one program? And why use a different extension (.dat versus .ini)? Beats me.
For a mailserver that pretends to be a fair, and relatively
simple alternative to the over-powered and over-featured Microsoft Exchange mailserver you need a '
rocket science engineers degree' to get it to work properly.
W00t... KPN is finally starting to
upgrade their network to support
VDSL. This COULD mean a major speed upgrade for me. Currently I only have a 4Mbps ADSL2 line (but with a 1Mbps upload, thanks to
XS4ALL). This is the maximum throughput for me, since I live too far from the distribution hub.
Other interesting news is that KPN won't charge their customers for
MOBILE data connections made from the
21st of December till the 30th of December 2007. So, it's all you can download via GPRS, UMTS :-)
Having a day off from work meant that I had some time to clean-up my server from everything crap. This also meant trying to upgrade Coldfusion MX 7 to
Coldfusion 8. The new version supports some nice
new features, with which I wanted to experiment.
Since none of my production websites run on Coldfusion (currently PHP), I could safely uninstall and install the new developer version. When I pressed 'remove' I had this flash from the past. When I tried to install version 7 I had humongous problems with the installer (services didn't register correctly with IIS, etc.). But this could be just a coincidence...
Installing Coldfusion itself was straight-forward. The fun began when the installer wanted to launch the admin-panel to finalize the installation. No responds from the webserver. Even my blog was not working ("
System cannot find the file specified"). Seemed that there were references to the old Coldfusion parser in the IIS.. After removing those instances, I had my blog back up-and-running.
Next was to finalize the Coldfusion 8 installation. I had to manually add the Coldfusion parameters to IIS (allowed Web Services, document types, ... the works) After screwing around for nearly two hours, I could finish the installation.
Just to make sure that it wasn't me, I installed it also in a virtual machine. And off course it worked flawlessly. Guess I need to reinstall my server in the next couple of weeks. Who knows what else is f*cking up the system.
Oh, another thing; I used to use RDS for development of the websites, so I tried to configure it again.... Well you might guess it... Not working. After yet another hour searching I found that RDS uses a '
virtual file' called '
ide.cfm'. This file is located in
/CFIDE/main/. The actual location (
main/) doesn't exist, so IIS returns a 404 error.
It seems that you need to uncheck '
Verify if file exists' in IIS for the .cfm extension for RDS to work. Or do as I did; create the directory '
main' and create an empty file called
ide.cfm in that directory.
Well, this was an afternoon well spent.... NOT.
Next mission is to upgrade MySQL to version 5. So expect some serious downtime.
UPDATE: MySQL has also been upgraded to v5.something. It went surprisingly easy.
My new
iMac 24" arrived this week. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time in setting it up (business and social obligations), so I had to wait a bit... Very annoying. Anyway, in the mean time it's up and running, and man.... it is fast.
I ordered the basic 24" version (2.4Ghz, 1GB RAM, 320GB HD) with the wired UK keyboard. On it's arrival I immediately bought 2 * 2GB RAM to upgrade the memory to 4GB. I bought it later (and not from Apple) because of the big price difference. The iMac with 4GB pre-configured was hundreds of euros more expensive, and 2 Kingston DDR2 667 (PC2-5300) SODIMM were around 80 euros a piece. That saved me some money. Money I can use to buy me a larger FW800 or NAS unit for backup.
Hooking up the iMac was easy (as you expect from Apple). Downside was that Leopard wasn't installed, so I had to install it myself (original Leopard DVD was included in the package). In the mean time I could setup the other devices around my iMac (audio, 12km of cables, and my
24" Dell TFT). After Leopard was installed I had two 24" displays on my desk.... SWEET :-P .
There is one small problem with the two displays... They don't align (vertically) very well, so I have to raise the Dell 24" about an inch with something :-( .
The purchase of the iMac would also be my first experience with the
new aluminum keyboard and the
Apple Mighty mouse. I choose the wired keyboard, because I can't be bothered with replacing the batteries. They always die on a Sunday evening when there's no way on getting new batteries in time.
The experience with the mouse was kinda disapointing. It just didn't feel right (I tried it for a couple of hours). So I replaced it for my old Logitech MX510. The keyboard however is awesome. It's small, but with all the features you expect from Apple. The keyboard requires a little getting used to (about 5 minutes).
The next thing is migrating data from my old Windows PC to the iMac, and figuring out
Boot Camp. This still allows me to install Windows XP and run some games or Windows specific software on the iMac hardware.
The Holland Oyama Cup was held on November 4th in Zevenbergen. I made a Quick-and-Dirty gallery of the event which can be found
here. I also placed some Black&White versions on Flickr.
Enjoy
I do have a (small) wish list for my hobby. The list (in a random order) consists mostly of high quality glass, and the combined total is a small 5000 euro (yikes!!)..... Anyone got some change to spare?
- Nikon AF-D 85mm F/1.8
- Nikon AF-D 35mm F/2.0
- Nikon AF-S 70-200mm F/2.8 VR ED Black
Nikon AF-S 28-70mm F/2.8 ED Black- Nikon AF-G 10.5mm F/2.8 G ED DX
Now where did I leave my lotterytickets???
UPDATE: w00t, I actually won..... 10 euro's :(
A couple of weeks ago, my Windows PC was starting to crash. Hard disks were going; 'plonk, plonk, rrrrrrr, tac tac, rrrrr '. Most of the times this resulted in system freezes or blue screens. So ever since that weekend, I've been looking into an iMac 24".
Last weekend I ordered my iMac in the online Apple Store. It's the standard 24" with 320GB drive and 1GB of RAM. My current PC also has only 320GB of diskspace, and I'm not even close on filling that up. I will upgrade the 1GB of RAM myself. If I buy the memory at my 'local' computershop it saves me around 600 euro's on 4GB. The Apple prices for memory are just ridiculous.
Another point of frustration is the keyboard layout. Every PC sold in the Netherlands (wel, almost every PC) has a English-US keyboard. Why isn't that layout available as an option. I hate the vertical 'enter', and the small 'left-shift' on the NL, and UK keyboards. Too bad, that you can't order an iMac without keyboard and mouse. So, anyone interested in a new (thin aluminum) Apple keyboard and MightyMouse (both on a wire).
This only leaves me with my Windows server at the moment. It would be nice to replace that one with a Mac Mini.
I totally forgot to mention that we had another photo fieldtrip last week. This time we went to the Flevopolder (
Flevo-Landschap &
Oostvaardersplassen). We had good fun, cold weather, and some
interesting pictures.
As usual, you can see an extract of them on
my Flickr page.
It's been a long night, but I finally installed Leopard. The reason it took so long is that I didn't have a retail DVD of the the OS. I had to screw around with a diskimage. From the moment I successfully burned the DVD it took about half an hour to 40 minutes to upgrade Tiger to Leopard.
Here are my experiences:
- First time booting into the desktop takes forever. I guess that spotlight is to blame for this, but I'm not sure.
- Eventhough I had correctly configured network interfaces, the network assistant thingy popped up, and kept bothering me (even after reboots).
Removing it from the 'login items' stopped it.
- My Mail (all account were configured as IMAP) was unable to retrieve new e-mails from all accounts. After some poking around I deleted all accounts and mail settings. After recreating the accounts everything worked fine. This is the nice thing about IMAP. You can remove your account and settings, and you won't lose your mail, because it remains on the server.
- Adobe Lightroom seems to work, and so do all of my other image manipulation tools.
- PGP v9.6.x crashes. I had to remove it by hand. Too bad that there isn't a documented manual uninstall procedure. Guess I have to wait for an update. Just uninstall the app before upgrading.
Initial impressions:
- Faster than Tiger
- Very backwards compatible. Vista eat you heart out.
- The app improvements on Finder, and the Dock are great. Especially the coverflow view in Finder kicks ass, and runs great on my 'old' MacBook Pro.
- .....
