Something I wrote back in January 2004, it still holds up fairly well.

Cheap CD’s and laptops…
The Development Lab have found that the Compaq E500 laptop has problems reading "cheap" CD’s.

Because of this, the Development Lab now use a known quality brand.  At the moment, we’re using "Verbatim DataLifePlus" CDs.

So if you copy the CD’s we send you, and you have CD errors, please check the quality of CD that you are using.

CD-R read quality seems based on dye type and manufacturer.

Dye colour.
Different brand CD-R’s may use different dye colours.

Cyanine
Cyanine was the first dye used with CD-R’s, and was the dye used in the "Orange Book" standard.

As it was the first dye used, CD-R burners are most comfortable with it.  "Cyanine discs use a Long Write Strategy"

Note that while the Verbatim DataLifePlus disk is a AZO based disk, it’s ATIP track reports it as a Cyanine disk.

Phthalocyanine
Phthalocyanine disks are less sensitive to ordinary light, we is a bonus as far as durable / storage goes. (not affected as much by UV light)

The downside is that the tolerance for a CD burn laser is a lot tighter with Phthalocyanine, than Cyanine based disks.

Because of these tighter tolerances, it is thought that Cyanine is more compatible with CD readers.  "Phthalocyanine discs use a Short Write Strategy".  RadioShack CD-R Data 700MB CD is a Phthalocyanine based disk.
(There are more than two dyes, but these are the most common).

Manufacturers.
Who makes the disk seems as important as the type of dye used.
(eg. a good brand of Phthalocyanine based disk, will work as well as a Cyanine type disk).

It seems that some manufacturers produce a consistently better CD than others.
In general, the following are "good" brands:

• Imation
• Kodak
• Verbatim

Conclusion
For production releases of SOE and Agency Software Bundles, we should stick with good quality disks, preferably with an Cyanine / AZO dye, as the Compaq E500 laptop DVD drive seems to have problems reading cheap / Phthalocyanine disks.

References:
CD Dye (CD Media World)
The Rest of the Rest of the Story: Shedding Some Coherent Light on CD-R, by Dana J. Parker
Media Science, Inc.
DVD Identifier – Your DVD, HD DVD & Blu-ray Companion

… or BlackBerry Bold + Post-It note = secure BlackBerry battery.

The BlackBerry Bold can randomly reset when it is knocked.  The reset is caused by the battery being slightly loose.

Solution?  Folded Post-It note on the inside of the Bold back cover.

The customer was skeptical, but I’ve seen this used as a fix twice before.

The Palm Treo 650 SIM card used to shake about, causing a “No SIM” error.  Wedging a small piece of business card behind the SIM card fixed that.

And BlackBerry have used the same trick themselves with the 8310 Curve.  If you look carefully at the picture left, you’ll see the foam RIM have attached to the cover.

SQL Server 2008 Backup Compression
- by Varun Dhawan, over at MSDN blogs.

It’s a useful option for saving space with backing up to disk, but I would disagree with the guy over tape backup savings.

Some tape units have built-in hardware compression which already compresses the data being stored on tape.
Which means there is no advantage in compressing data if you are going to be writing it straight to tape.

As I found when testing compressing large ISAM databases back in the 90’s.  The data was already compressed so the tape drive couldn’t compress any further.

So the answer is:
Yes, if backing up to disk.
No, if backing up straight to tape.

Details on tape compression from an old Sony FAQ:

Q: What is the tape capacity of the SDT- 5000/5200 tape drive?

A: With the SDT-5000, tape capacity will vary depending on the length of the tape and whether hardware compression is enabled as follows:

NOTE: The SDT-5200 supports native capacity only.
The typical performance of the compression IC in the SDT-5000 drive is shown in the following table:

As the table indicates, the more random the data is, the less compression is possible. This is due to the fact that data compression operates on the principle of reducing the redundancy in the date string and random data has very little redundancy.

Travelling to the United States of America after 11th January 2009?
Then you need to fill in an electronic Visa Waiver application here
Reference: STA Authorization Required for All Visa Waiver Program Countries Beginning January 12

The Day I Shot Myself Down
From the Ejection Site, the story of the F-14 pilot who shot himself down with a AIM-7 Sparrow missile.

mind.Depositor Index Card Template
Getting Things Done paper templates

Booko
“Booko is a site with a very simple goal – to find the cheapest place to buy books in Australia. This site started out as a personal itch and has slowly grown into a very handy site, slowly adding more shops for comparison and more features to make it easier to use. You can read more about Booko at the Blogo.”

Shopping trolley on board
”What’s the difference between a non-executive director and a shopping trolley? You can fill them both full of grog and shove them around but you can never make a shopping trolley go where you want.”

The Box O’ Truth
Question :”If we engage a bad guy (BG), we will shoot him until he STOPS what ever he is doing that threatens our life.  If he continues to threaten us after being shot, what do we do?
Answer: Shoot him some more.”
The Box O’ Truth is a firearms education site.

iStockphoto.com- royalty free stock photography

List of IT things I’ve seen over the last week* that I like:

Working with Office 2007 from the Command Line
(via Another day in the Office)

Tracking down a bug in VB6 that only shows in the compiled EXE and not from inside the IDE – Use OutputDebugString
(via Goto 100 – Development with Visual Basic)

Green IT and adding up the numbers
(via James O’Neill’s blog)

2 real case studies for lower power consumption
(via Little Miss Enviro Geek)

 Cool Trick- Making Miniature Calendars
(via Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog)

Shimming Applications on Windows Vista 64-Bit
(via Chris Jackson’s Semantic Consonance)

Setting up Verbose Logging in Windows Mobile and Parsing Logs
(via Is that Windows Mobile in your pocket?)

Protecting Documents with Word 2007
(via JohnR’s TechNet Blog)
… or how to restrict document protection down to document paragraphs.

Filling up Active Directory (AD) with some test data
(via Keith Combs’ Blahg)

* a week in this case might be a bit more flexible, I’ve been clearing out my blogging folder

One day, while a woodcutter was cutting a branch of a tree above river, his axe fell into the river. When he cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, “Why are you crying?”

The  woodcutter replied that his axe has fallen into water.

The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden axe. “Is this your axe?” the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied, “No.”

The Lord again went down and came up with a silver axe.
“Is this your axe?” the Lord asked.

Again, the woodcutter  replied, “No.”

The Lord went down again and came up with an iron axe. “Is this your axe?” the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied,  “Yes.”

The Lord was pleased with the man’s honesty and gave him all three axes to keep, and the woodcutter went home happily.

A few days later while he was walking with his wife along the riverbank, the woodcutter’s wife fell into the river. When he cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked him, “Why are you crying?”

“Oh Lord, my wife has fallen into the water!”

The Lord went down into the water and came up with Jennifer Lopez. “Is this your  wife?” the Lord asked. “Yes,” cried the woodcutter.

The Lord was furious. “You cheat! That is an untruth!”

The woodcutter replied, “Oh, forgive me, my Lord. It is a misunderstanding. You see, if I said ‘no’ to Jennifer Lopez, You will come up with Catherine Zeta-Jones. Then if I also say ‘no’ to her, You will thirdly come up with my wife, and I will say ‘yes,’ and then all three will be given to me. But Lord, I am a poor man and I will not be able to take  care of all three wives, so that’s why I said yes this time.”

The moral of the story is whenever a man lies it is for an  honourable and useful reason.

I hate shopping and loath factory outlets, can’t stand crowds.

“Do you want to go with me to the factory outlets in Fitzroy?”

A No, would see me in the doghouse.

‘Of course dear’

So we visited True-Blue Shoes in Fitzroy, and Gloweave in Smith St. Fitzroy.  Glo-weave was disappointing, no french-cuffs on offer.

‘Let’s repair to the cafe’, say I.

Cafe Entity do a roaring trade, as they are cheap and cheerful.  A cheese and spinach pida* was $7, and an ICE-COLD ice coffee, $5.50.  The ice-coffee was so good, I had two!

* a pastry, also known as a Spanish Crescent.

"Halt! Who goes there?" the sentry’s call
Rose on the midnight air
Above the noises of the camp,
The roll of wheels, the horses’ tramp.
The challenge echoed over all —
"Halt! Who goes there?"
A quaint old figure clothed in white,
He bore a staff of pine,
And ivy-wreath was on his head.
"Advance, O friend," the sentry said,
"Advance, for this is Christmas Night,
And give the countersign."

"No sign or countersign have I.
Through many lands I roam
The whole world over far and wide.
To exiles all at Christmastide
From those who love them tenderly
I bring a thought of home.

"From English brook and Scottish burn,
From cold Canadian snows,
From those far lands ye hold most dear
I bring you all a greeting here,
A frond of a New Zealand fern,
A bloom of English rose.

"From faithful wife and loving lass
I bring a wish divine,
For Christmas blessings on your head."
"I wish you well," the sentry said,
"But here, alas! you may not pass
Without the countersign."

He vanished — and the sentry’s tramp
Re-echoed down the line.
It was not till the morning light
The soldiers knew that in the night
Old Santa Claus had come to camp
Without the countersign.

The train cafeteria at Spencer Street Station used to have this wonderful mural, painted by Harold Freedman, called the Cavalcade of Transport.  Cheap food and drinks at the cafeteria as well.  The cafeteria catered for the departing and arriving country train passengers.

It was popular, as you wouldn’t want to buy food on the actual train, because the VicRail folks used the pricing principle called “cost + 100%”.  So the smart punter would fill themselves up at the train cafeteria.

The mural has been restored and can be found at the far end of DFO Southern Cross.  The photo was taken from the viewing platform.

About the mural:

• was painted in five sub-sections, at the East Camberwell substation.
• measures 100 x 22 feet.
• unveiled 30 January 1978
• removed in 2004, to allow for the Spencer Street station redevelopment
• unveiled to the public again on the 16 April 2007.

As a humble blog reader, you’ve not have noticed many changes, but as a blog writer, the upgrade WordPress v2.7 makes things a bit easier.  It was Ed Bott who indectly tipped me off to the v2.7 goodness.

There are plenty of WordPress v2.7 blog posts going around, so I’ll just mention my favorite feature, Quick Edit.

This is a really handy feature, as I can reschedule a post without editing the whole post.  This is good, as the WordPress visual editor “fixes” what *it thinks* are errors in html.  Errors such as indented lists.  The OPERATION ORDER 12-08 (Visit of LTG Claus, Santa) is one example.  Every time I edited it with the visual editor, it broke the post.