Archive for June, 2009

Twitterfying Pixsoul

Posted by Ken Thompson in Journal on June 28, 2009

I’ve just added a Twitter widget which displays my latest posts here on the site, as I tend to post quite a lot on that and not enough here. Also hooked up a plug-in which should automatically post a link on Twitter; this is the first test…

Meanwhile I am collating some old design pieces to add the design page as a mini portfolio. After that I will start putting up my photography…this is way overdue!

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Windows Live Writer LIBXML2 Problem Solved

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, Journal on June 22, 2009

So, Brandon from the Windows Live Writer team got back to me super quick, thanks Brandon! He let me know that the problem I am encountering is actually because of the LIBXML2 XML parsing library stripping the opening “<” off code it parses. You can fix it by upgrading LIBXML2 on your server or install a plugin:

You can upgrade your libxml2 (on your server if you have control) as well Wordpress, or you can install this plugin by one of the Wordpress team members.
http://josephscott.org/code/wordpress/plugin-libxml2-fix/
Then you should be back in business!

And sure enough, the plugin works a treat! Thanks Brandon (and Joseph for making it!)!

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Windows 7 Teething Issues

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, Journal, The PCs That Kevin Built, Work on June 21, 2009

Well now I have really jumped in the deep end with Windows 7, I’m starting to run into some stumbling blocks. Nothing major, but some teething issues none-the-less. So far I only have 2 issues that are bothering me enough to remember:

(Something to note it is that I am now using 7137 x64 or x86 on all of the PCs)

  1. VPN Connections not saving passwords: When I create a VPN connection to dial in to work, it will never remember the user name or password, even when the box is checked to remember it. I just can’t work it out and it is definitely a bug which I have reported with feedback. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass having to put it in every time (randomly generated password), but it’s doable. It remembers all the other settings, including security parameters though, so not all lost.
  2. Issues accessing domain resources on Windows 2003 Domains: I haven’t looked at this issue too much yet, but now that my work laptop is setup with Windows 7 it is becoming a more prevalent issue. Both at work and home, the domains are setup with roaming profiles and redirected folders (my documents). There seems to be an issue with Windows 7 accessing these resources in a timely manner, there is quite a delay and I am not sure what the issue is, with the Windows XP PCs it works just fine. With my home network, the problem even crashes my server; with lots of traffic from bit torrents etc. I’m suspecting some kind of DNS related problem at the moment, but still investigating.

If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears!

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Puzzling Publishing Problems – Windows Live Writer

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters on June 21, 2009

I have been having the most bizarre problem with Windows Live Writer and WordPress recently that has stopped me from blogging at all. It seems I WLW has pampered me too much with all its bells and whistles which made blogging so easy, now that I am without it, it is more like a chore. It’s basically screwing up the formatting in posts ever since a few weeks back when an update was applied to WLW I believe, it does this:

I publish:

Title: test’s
Content: This is an example post with problem’s i am having with WLW.

It spits out:

Title: testrsquo;s
Content: pThis is an example post with problem’s i am having with WLW./p

Here is a link to the sample post: http://www.pixsoul.com.au/?p=287

I have tried re-installing WLW, WP, older versions of WP, different version OS’s with WLW, different blogs, themes etc…it seems to me to boil down to WLW. I’ve shot them off an email and hopefully they can remedy the problem shortly, or tell me if I am being a nOOb! I’ll post up progress when I receive it though.

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Exchange Certified & Jumping In The Deep End of the Win 7 Pool

Posted by Ken Thompson in Brain Busters, I.T. Certification, Journal on June 8, 2009

Windows 7 Mania

Well it has been a while in between posts as I have been trying to work out why the hell posts using Windows Live Writer are now putting in weird formatting. Starting to think it’s something going on with the site rather than Windows 7 now as have tested on numourous Win 7 PCs (could be a Live Writer specific problem also though). Going to hang out until WordPress 2.8 is released this week and do a fresh install of the website and see if that knocks it on the head.

Well I successfully passed my 70-284 exam last week, Implementing and Managing Exchange Server 2003. From memory I got 843/1000, so happy with the result, even if it did take me 2 goes. But it has sparked a new motivation to get my next certification as I released that I only need 1 more (70-291) and I will be a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA). So getting back on the books in a big way as I am very keen to acquire that title on my way to MCSE and other certifications in the later half of the year.

This week I jumped in the deep end of the Windows 7 pool and installed it on both my netbook and my work laptop. I did it via USB and it was super simple (I’ll post a how to this week sometime, I promise!). I’m having some issues on my work laptop connecting to the Windows 2003 domain at work, the same symptom I had at home with slow folder redirection for My Docs etc to a Windows 2003 server. At home I ended up just turning folder redirection off for the moment, but definitely need to get on top of it at work soon as it won’t be too long until we are getting new PC’s shipping with Windows 7. I’m looking forward to the potential problems ahead though so that after using it so much on a variety of systems I will really get a handle on it for successful implementation at work.

Daemon Tools have released a Win 7 compatible version of their program also which I am wrapped about as PowerISO which I have been using slowly decides that one virtual drive will never work again; you create another which works; same thing happens eventually and so on!

Anyway, back to basking in the glory of 3 Windows 7 PC’s and behaving like a Octupus multitasking on all of them!

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