I was looking for a way to schedule jobs and yes windows has a task scheduler built in, however I wanted a bit more flexibility and less complexity.

Now that we are dealing with COVID-19, a lot of companies are getting their employees to work remotely. For some this will be great and for other who crave social interaction not so great. For me the key thing is making sure that my team feels like a team still.

Keeping the routine going is pretty important. For yourself and your team. There are lots of great posts about this so I will just list the key points.

This is a dump of me setting up Home Assistant on a Pine64 board I have. I am used to OpenHAB and have created bindings for it so this should be a new challenge and a way to see how well it works. The reason I am heading towards Home Assistant is the components it support fit some of my needs better. Also time to get to know python better :)

To enable all your nodes to communicate we are using a protocol called MQTT, on the pi we are using Mosquitto as the broker to support this.

I’m using my PI as the central hub running OpenHAB, a MQTT broker and other services for home automation. On the Pi I am using a NRF24L01+pa+lna SMA Antenna Wireless Transceiver, this provide more range (1000m) from my main unit. All the nodes in the network will be running on Arduino chips and using a Mesh network so the house should have good coverage. First, wiring in the NRF24L01 to the Pi.Using Female-to-Female dupont cables use the following table to connect the units, the NRF24L01 is ~3-3.6V.

Found the work around here: http://blog.oracle48.nl/internet-explorer-10-continue-to-this-website-option-missing/ To skip all the text on this page to the command one needs to unblock this restriction and for example set the minimum key length to 512; run the following in a elevated command line (cmd.exe ‘run-as-administrator’):

I have followed the same steps with the new build from Windows 8 Consumer Preview with Eee PC T101MT and it is still valid.

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I have a Eee PC T101MT and wanted to run Windows 8 on it. The same steps can be run on the Consumer Preview Time to tweak the graphics! As the resolutions is only 600 not 768 in vertical you need to do the following.

I have a Eee PC T101MT and wanted to run Windows 8 on it. This entry takes you through the steps.

1. Download the Windows 8 Preview from the Windows Dev Center — the original MSDN direct link is no longer available, but Windows 8 ISOs can be found via the Microsoft Software Download page or the Wayback Machine. I downloaded the 32-bit version as it was smaller and I only have 2Gb on the machine. :)
2. To create a bootable USB, the old Microsoft Store USB/DVD Download Tool link is gone. Use Rufus instead — it’s free, actively maintained, and does the same job. You’ll need an 8GB USB key.
3. Once the ISO is downloaded and Rufus is installed, select the Windows 8 ISO as the source and your USB key as the destination, then click Start.
4. Once completed get out the T101MT and plug it into power and put the USB key in one of the ports. When it starts up hit F2 to go into the BIOS and make sure USB is a boot option. Select USB and watch the pretty install.
5. Once that is complete, name your computer, connect to wireless (assuming you have wireless), use express settings (yep, I’m lazy), log in with your live ID (syncing goodness) and wait until it finishes configuring.
6. You now have Windows 8 goodness.
7. Time to tweak the graphics! As the res is only 600 not 768 in vertical you need to do the following.
8. Type regedit, trust me :) you will then be shown a regedit icon — click/press on it.
9. Press Ctrl+F and search for Display1_DownScalingSupported in the registry. This will take a while.
10. Once found, set its value to 1 to enable scaling.
11. Hit F3 a few times to make sure you got all instances.
12. Exit regedit and reboot the laptop.
13. Once restarted click on the desktop tile and right click on the desktop to change the resolution.
14. You should now be able to select 1024 x 768 (Note: This scales the screen and does not add pixels so some text and images may look slightly soft.)

All Done! Enjoy Windows 8 on your netbook.

I know this is not the most secure way to store credentials but it works and is simple to manage. I use this when I need creds stored for accessing web based resources. To use it run the following:

I wanted to use the SqlConnectionStringBuilder object in the SqlClient area but was having issues accessing the properties. The Object itself is just a collection with a key value structure.

(Image no longer available — the original Flickr photo by ichibod has been removed.) Photo by ichibodI finally got me one of those new fangled netbooks with touch! I have been looking for a small form tablet PC for a while. So far it has been working as expected, the IO seems a little slow but I am uninstall a heap o apps and will defrag the poor thing shortly. The touch seems ok so far but I cannot wait to get OneNote 2010 on it to see how it rolls. It seems to come with a bit of bloatware and has office 2007 pre-installed. So farm I have removed:

(Image no longer available — the original Flickr photo by ichibod has been removed.) Photo by ichibodI finally got me one of those new fangled netbooks with touch! I have been looking for a small form tablet PC for a while. So far it has been working as expected, the IO seems a little slow but I am uninstall a heap o apps and will defrag the poor thing shortly. The touch seems ok so far but I cannot wait to get OneNote 2010 on it to see how it rolls. It seems to come with a bit of bloatware and has office 2007 pre-installed. So farm I have removed:

I found this peice of SQL on the web a while ago, I have no idea where it came from but it did come in handy the other day when a client needed to delete a content type but kept on getting the message it was in use. When deleting content types you need to ensure:

When you look at true stored in the .Net framework. While playing with Pex I found out a interesting fact that the bool is a byte in the MSIL. Which means that a bool could be equal to anything on the byte range… Now this would require you to go out of your way and create unsafe code blocks to do this. Why you would do this… No ideas :) Its marked as a no-fix which is not surprising as I would not fix it either because as they say, if you know about this and you use it then you are on your own.

Information can be found on: http://blog.sytone.dev/toodledo-distraction-free/

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Made a few fixes, I am also working on a simple API after dusting off some old work I had. This will allow interaction from the desktop and eventually a cached mode. V 0.20.1005.2301 - Created link in options to edit css styles. - Fixed issue where focus mode would not take window out of topmost mode.

You can get the update here: http://blog.sytone.dev/toodledo-distraction-free/ Changes:

• Added Focus mode which will grey out the background so you just have your toodledo list.
• Updated the hover icons.

Had a great day today, went for a walk up the mountain with the family and gave geocaching a spin. The kids enjoyed it. We did GC14179 and then tried to find GC18JGE but were not able to. Anja was not amused… On the way back down the mountain we found GC2498 and a great view. The kids bugged me to find another one so we did GC13C0A. This was better as I got the geocache app for my HD2 up and working this time. Much easier.

If you are looking at catching up with the VS2010 Beta 2 and Framework 4.0 world there is a free training kit avaiable at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=752CB725-969B-4732-A383-ED5740F02E93&displaylang=en In additiona Channel 9 is also running some courses. http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/vs2010/

I managed to find a old sql backup of my site so the articles are back, still have to upload the code stuff. Bing was a nice help in being able to re-create recent articles using its cached copy. Will hit google later to see if there are any others I want.

They are not responding and the servers are down, I have a continual ping setup in the vain hope the server may come up long enough to backup my files. Very Very Annoying.

One for the kids big and small http://www.ehow.com/how_4460565_make-paper-chatterbox.html

Finally have a nice minimal desktop that is functional. I am using a hacked version of Enigma and HUD Vision for Rainmeter V1 and the background came from here. I also use the RC of Fences by Stardock to keep the desktop clean. The Photo in the top left changes every 15 seconds and the meters to the top right are for iiNet and use the XML output of iiUsage.

With a new PC at home I have re-purposed my old desktop as a home server. For the OS I have used windows Home Server. I have read about it and thought I was time to try it out.

If you are using the Amazing Grace theme for Wordpress the following hack allows you to change the image in the header bar to a flickr feed. Note: I have only tested in IE, if you have firefox and it does not work drop a comment. Modify header.php and place the following in the style tags near the top.