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From time to time it is healthy to reinstall Windows XP. At IBM I have the luxury to use the cloning center or the cloning CD. Boot it, log in and off you go. It installs Windows including the standard IBM applications like VPN, Lotus Notes and some standard internal stuff (It used to install MS Office, but no longer in the 2008 built). So far so good. But we all know that there is an army of little helpers and tweaks that make it your copy of Windows.
To ease my pain installing all of them I keep a directory reinstall on an external medium (DVD, Memory Stick, Harddisk, NAS, make your pick) where I keep all the install files and extra stuff. To automate the process I use two cmd files:
reinstall.cmd
installthis.cmd
All regular installers sit in the root of the install directory. There are a few mandatory sub directories. I have phase2 for installers that depend on software I install in the first round. Techsmith is the directory for the Techsmith SnagIt (highly recommended) tool and AuxiliaryFiles keeps miscelanous stuff. When a new version of an application comes out or I install a new tool, I just add the installer to this directory and in the next full makeover I won't forget it. Let's have a look at the cmd files.

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Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 7:20 PM, Category Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Yeah, Macs don't crash. Macs are easy, you don't need to worry. System updates are reliable. Yesterday my Mac Mini's software update prompted me to install the system upgrade that would add MobileMe support. So routinely I clicked yes. This morning when I booted the Mac I was greeted after login with "The application FileSyncAgent quit unexpectedly." and very ironic below "Mac OS X and other applications are not affected".
Bah humbug! The crashing file sync agent takes down the top menu, so I even can't access the preferences to switch off Sync. Also opening Finder or any application wouldn't work. So basically the Mac is dead. I guess the Mac of SWMBO will not get that upgrade any time soon.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 10:30 AM, Category Mac | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

What happens when a GTD expert and a Domino guru work together?

A Jam about Notes, Domino and GTD. Eric will release eProductivity for Lotus Notes soon and is starting to collect ideas for future versions. (Warning to your inner procrastinator: your days are numbered!). Registration required.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 4:26 AM, Category GTD | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Most legislation today require to keep "accounts and other business records" for many years (typically 3-8) for compliance and discovery. Depending on their content eMails are today considered business records*. When starting to look into eDiscovery there are a number of terms and concepts one needs to become familiar with: Sub Poena, Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II or eDiscovery.
Once you wrapped your head around it you then need to architect a system that avoids massive violations of retention legislation. Having all data stored in a single shared database like MS Exchange will immediately lead to the need to buy add-on products. Domino on the other hand provides a lot of required functionality out-of-the box. Dan Lynch has summarized what you can do. Go read it.

* While an email with an invitation to an after-office beer most probably isn't a business records, however the invitation to lunch to discuss the proposal surly is a record since it documents part of the history how a sale closed.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 5:15 PM, Category Lotus Notes | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Steve Casteldine's blog template which is IBM's official Domino blog since Domino 7.02 got a recent boost in functionality: it now also serves as a WIKI. The Lotus team announced availability about a month ago. The following WIKIs are available:

• Lotus Quickr
• Lotus Sametime
• Lotus Connections
• Lotus Composite Applications
• Lotus Mashups

Nice side effect of choosing Domino: there is a decent Notes client UI for the WIKI and I can take it offline to places where Internet doesn't reach (yet). There is no WIKI for Notes and Domino. Given the rich material available all over the net, that wouldn't make sense (would it?). A link collection maybe, for an aggregation check PlanetLotus.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 5:19 PM, Category Show-N-Tell Thursday | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

My ex-IBM colleague Han Wen Kam is now working for Novell. He is one of Singapore's outstanding Suse Linux experts. You can follow this thoughts on his blog titled Selling free software for a living.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 3:17 PM, Category Linux | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 75% The Flash 65% Spider-Man 60% Robin 55% Superman 45% Iron Man 45% Wonder Woman 40% Supergirl 40% Hulk 30% Catwoman 25% Batman 20%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 11:09 AM, Category After hours | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

You Are a Crocodile

You are incredibly wise and knowledgeable. In fact, your wisdom is so deep that it sometimes consumes you. People are intrigued by you, but you find few people intriguing. You are not a very social creature. You are cunning. You enjoy deceiving people a little. You are able to find balance in your life, and you can survive anything.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 1:16 AM, Category After hours | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

IBM's Shanghai office is in the Pudong district. To get to famous The Bund, the scenic river promenade I took the "The Bund Sight Seeing Tunnel". It turns a four minutes ride under the river into a bath of light and color. Highly recommended. After a stroll along The Bund I turned into Nanjing road. Quite a long part of it is a pedestrian area and feels very European. Except the merchandise in the shops and the fact that every 2.5 meter someone shows you flashcards of designer brands recommending "Cheap, cheap how much do you want to buy". This is funny for the first three or four times and can get pretty annoying after a rather short while.
It turned out that the problem carried the seed of the solution. Two more girls stopped me and after my initial bu yao assured me, that they just want to talk to practice English. Well, didn't sound very convincing to me, but following some recent advise I took the statement at face value. It turned out that this was a lucky move. It looks like that all the peddlers recognize each others and as long as I strolled with the girl I wasn't approached anymore. We had a good chat and I learned a lot about their live, their work and their families, at least as English as it is broken allowed us to communicate. Having European manners I invited them for dinner at a restaurant at Nanjing road, which they happily accepted. The recent slowdown in tourism (getting a China visa is quite difficult now unless you have an Olympic ticket, which would send you to Beijing anyway) and thus their business left them hungry.



Could you imagine, that this girl, without blinking, eats 20 chicken wings, one big bowl of fried rice and three platters of mixed fruits. I haven't seen a more happy face for a long while. Made my day.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 1:03 AM, Category Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

I arrived in Shanghai this afternoon (see also next post). Shanghai's Pudong Airport is quite outside of the city and, depending on traffic condition can take 1-3 hours to get into the city. Unless of course you entrust yourself some German build technology: The Shanghai Maglev, the first permanent duty Transrapid. A Maglev is kind of a plane on rails. While running along rails it doesn't touch them. This allow the train to go damn fast.



You attach wings and it takes off. The trip was even shortened by a nice chat with Dr. Whitla from the Department of Marketing & International Business of the Lingnan University Hong Kong, who happened to wait for the train with me.

Posted by Stephan H Wissel At 12:37 AM, Category Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) |