Real World Computing

Once again, LotusSphere comes to you is happening in Sydney on Thursday 6th March 2008, so head to the Agenda and Registration. If you're in a different state, you can find out when it is on for you by checking the Other IBM Events in Australia . This event is an absolute MUST for anyone using Lotus products in Australia.

I've just added a link to view this blog on a mobile phone. It's in the top section. This feature will work on all blogger blogs, and probably on other brand blogs too. For full instructions on how to do this on your blog, see this article . I wanted to be sure it would work on Notes/Domino blogs as well, so I used Ed Brill's to test (I hope you don't mind Ed). The RSS Feed for Ed's site is http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/blog.rss So, the URL for Mobile viewing via Google Reader would be http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/ http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/blog.rss

I posted this a few days ago on Network World but haven't anything new to add to this blog at the moment so I figured I'd post a link to it. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/24314 Basically, it's a bit of a rant about what Microsoft did around LotusSphere time (again) this year. I try to keep rants off this blog, hence I posted it elsewhere.

This post is probably not strictly on topic (being less serious than usual) however I have just prepared a whole heap of links for someone else and figured why not share them. There are two things that I want to cover today; Obtaining the remakes of old games for free (full game Remakes). Running old games under newer systems (Engine only Remakes). I have a preference for adventure games so while will be covering action games as well, I might be a bit biased. Remakes of old Games A lot of the open source project's have been recreating the old DOS games for free. You can usually find these by typeing the name of the game and the word "remake" into google. I'm going to provide some direct links to save a bit of searching - the links may move over time so if this post is old by the time you read it, try searching. King's Quest 1 and King's Quest 2 http://www.agdinteractive.com/ King's Quest 3 http://www.infamous-adventures.com/index.php?page=kq3vga The Hitch...

Why the Gimp? I've used the Gimp because it's freely available and works on a number of different systems. It's not my favourite graphics program but it will do the job. Where can I get the GIMP? Download it from; http://www.gimp.org/ I'm not going to cover installation since it's mostly a matter of clicking Next a few times then finish. Avatar Size Restrictions Most forums place restrictions on the dimensions of Avatars. You should check your particular board for their rules otherwise you could make an image too small to be clear or too large to be used. For the purposes of this exercise, I'm going to make the following assumptions; Maximum width = 130 pixels Maximum width = 160 pixels Maximum file size = no more than 15.77 Kb. File Formats = JPG or GIF Procedure 1. Start the GIMP 2. On the GIMP window that has a menu, select File, then Open and choose your image. The image should display in a different window (with it's own menu). 3. Now, Back on the mai...

Floppies are so "last week", a lot of computers these days don't even come with floppy drives. I've got a great collection of Boot Disks for various network cards which I use when Ghosting machines across the network. I also had some boot disks which were optimized for various games. So, in anticipation of needing to use one of these on a PC with no floppy drive, I'm posting the instructions for using Nero to convert bootable floppy disks to CDs. I know you can do this with USB drives but if you want a collection of boot disks that work on most computers, CD is the way to go. The Procedure Insert the Floppy Disk into Drive A: Put a Blank CD-ROM into Drive D: (or whatever you CD-RW drive is called). Start Nero In the New Compilation screen, choose CD then CD-ROM (Boot) and click New At the next screen,drag all the files from A: to the new compilation. (this makes your bootable CD the same as the Floppy). You're no longer bound by Floppy size limits. so you can...

Why would you do this? This technique is very useful for archiving users mail files when the user has left the company. It enables you to have a look at the mail file without having to copy it off the CD and back on to the Domino server. I have also used this technique when somebody's mail file got too big to be really useful when traveling. They were able to take their old mail on CD with them while accessing new mail from a fresh database. Regardless of your reasons for choosing this method, make sure that you comply with your local corporate records retention regulations before deleting any databases from your server. Before you begin These instructions are designed for use with the standard Lotus Notes mail template. If you have additions such as archiving or document management facilities built-in, you will probably need to use the load convert command to convert the database back to a standard Lotus Notes mail database before this procedure can be successful. Procedure Lo...