The first port of call in this article, is pulling down the latest edition of WordPress.   For this article, I’m going to use default folders for simplicity’s sake.   Using an SSH client (my preference is PuTTY), connect to your ClearOS system and enter the following commands to pull down and extract WordPress.

cd /var/www/html
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz

WordPress will now have been extracted to the default ./wordpress/ folder.   If you navigate to your WordPress site in a browser, you will be greeted with the following:

Wordpress Requires PHP 5.2 or Higher

As you can see, we need to upgrade the PHP version. Uninstall the current version of PHP with the following command:

yum remove php-common

This will remove PHP 5.1 and all its dependencies. Now let’s install PHP 5.3 using the following:

yum install php53 php53-cli horde-imp php53-mysql php53-ldap php53-mbstring app-horde php53-pdo php53-common

I have left out the php53-imap package from the above as it has a dependency issue that I can’t seem to resolve, however this is not a package that we will be requiring for WordPress.   I stand to be corrected, but it does not seem to affect Horde either if you are using the Webmail portion of ClearOS.   Once you have installed PHP 5.3, you need to restart Apache and MySQL (otherwise phpMyAdmin will not work).   You can do that with the following commands:

/etc/init.d/httpd restart
/etc/init.d/mysqld restart

If you refresh your browser, you will now get the WordPress first run wizard (as per below):

Looking good so far

When you complete all the settings however, you will get an error that the files could not be written as per the screenshot below.   You could go and edit the file manually, but you will still get problems down the line when trying to write any files such as themes etc.

Could not write to wp-config

The problem here is that the Apache hosting folders, by default, are assigned to another user id.   Changing this is very easy with either WinSCP or in the command line with PuTTY.   If you want to go the GUI route and use WinSCP, your first step is to see which uid Apache is using and which group it is part of.   At this point, I feel it is important for me to say that the below is more a “for interest’s sake” considering you are already in the command line, so WinSCP is really the long way round.   To get the uid and gid, run the commands below:

awk -F”:” ‘{ print “username: ” $1 “\t\tuid:” $3 “\t\tgid:” $4 }’ /etc/passwd

This will return a list of users and their corresponding ID’s, you will be looking for the Apache user and group.

Username, user ID and group ID

WinSCP Permissions

Alternatively, there is a much quicker command you can run from the command line, which is as follows:

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/wordpress

Now, if you go back in your browser and re-submit the details, you should be good to go! (Told you WinSCP was the long way…)

Success!

And that, is how you get WordPress installed on ClearOS 5.2! Happy publishing!

The Hardware

Perhaps I went about this the wrong way round, but I already had the seemingly ideal piece of hardware lying around from a previous failed experiment, so I figured I would use it. There are a few Atom based hardware appliances available on the market for really small and elegant solutions, however I wanted something with more flexibility (and a DVD drive).

The PC

For these kinds of things, a great place to start for hardware is IT rental companies. Many of them sell off the old hardware that they have previously rented out for bargain prices. For the previous experiment, a router/firewall thingy, I picked up a Dell Optiplex GX620 USFF (Ultra Small Form Factor) machine for roughly R420 (around $50 at the time of writing). I call the last experiment a failure due to the fact that I wanted an SFF, considering I needed two network interfaces which is something the USFF is not capable of out of the box. This brings me to another point on buying rentals, you get what you get, first come first serve, no warranties, so make sure you do as thorough a check as you can regarding the hardware before buying.

The Wifi

In addition to the above’s capabilities, I wanted the box to have some sort of wireless networking. Initially, the box was going to be running BSD, so compatibility with USB wifi adapters was sparse (for the most part Atheros and Ralink chipsets). Something I read, as well as found to be true, was that some manufacturers chop and change their chips with each release of an adapter. A company that does seem to be pretty constant is TP-Link, with their WN-7200ND adapter using a Ralink chipset. I managed to pick one up from Uniterm Direct (www.dbg.co.za) for R189.

The Display

I’m including this as a section due to the versatility of this kind of box. You can hook it up to a wide array of devices, be it your current television, a computer monitor, or a projector (or a combination of them). We have a pretty small sitting area where we want the media player, and we don’t own a TV, so we opted for a 20″ monitor with a decent resolution, the LG E2060T (roughly R900). Now you may say that this is quite a small monitor for media, which I tend to agree with, however this is our ‘interim display’. After a fair amount of research, we will eventually hook up a projector to the box, but the projector with the specs we desire is obscenely expensive, and as such will come later with an accompanying post detailing the research…

The Drive

This again, is up to your preference. The USFF can only take a single drive (although you can add as many as you want as externals on USB), so I opted for a 1.5TB from the last experiment for it. Friends who have similar setups have gone for the opposite, leaving a small drive in the media player but using a huge drive in another PC and accessing it over the network. Again, this is all up to you.

Media Centre Assembled - Samsung Monitor For Testing, PC On Left

The Software

Of course, the biggest part of this is the software to run the media centre. I spent quite a considerable amount of time and eventually settled on, as the title suggests, XBMC. This was not for lack of trying on other software packages. XBMC was originally released as X-Box Media Centre, which as the name suggests allowed you to setup your X-Box as a media centre. It has since come a long way and is available on a multitude of platforms. Below is a list of all the candidates and the results.

Windows Media Centre

Just to give this an honourable mention, I was first exposed to Windows Media Centre at the Windows 7 South African launch. It was impressive to say the least, and is what I based my media centre expectations on. From seeing the demo of it, I must admit that it was on a 16 core machine with 24GB of RAM, hardly my USFF which is a dual core Celeron with 2GB RAM. This would have been my first choice of Media Centre after the demo I witnessed, however the licensing implications and the hardware requirements unfortunately set WMC straight out of the running.

Boxee

After considering WMC, I looked at something called Boxee, which although free, requires registration, which immediately put me off. I do intend on one day looking into Boxee due to their mobile support, but at this point I’m not entirely sure when that day will be.

GeeXbox

My initial exposure to XBMC came through GeeXbox, a live distribution customised to run XBMC. This was a great exposure, and ran off USB quite happily. Again, I’m sure you can see how convenient USB boot would be, but I was looking for something to run directly off the machine (and save customised settings).

Pinguy Linux with XBMC

A friend of mine, Thomas, suggested Pinguy OS a while back as “an interesting Linux to check out”. Sure enough, it was interesting, and I think if I was to run Linux as my desktop OS I would definitely use it. It is pretty, very functional, and completely works out of the box as they claim (even more painless than a modern Windows installation). To my surprise and joy after installing this OS, XBMC was already included as one of the native packages. This was to be shortlived however, as Pinguy is just simply too hungry for the little Celeron, with XBMC giving me a framerate of around 20-30fps just for menu navigation. So while Pinguy is an awesome desktop OS, it too was out of the running for this installation.

Windows XP with XBMC

A great thing about XBMC is its ability to run on practically any platform. I decided that I will load XP on to the machine and test it out. Unfortunately this was cut short by not a single driver being recognised by the older OS for any of the attached (and internal) media playback devices, pretty much immediately kicking it out of the running due to the complexity.

XBMCbuntu

After all of the above, I went back to the drawing board. I went back to the XBMC site for some inspiration or perhaps some tips from the community. Lo and behold, the new version had been released, along with its own packaged installation called XBMCbuntu (which can also be run as a live CD as per GeeXbox above). With great enthusiasm I downloaded this, installed it with complete ease, and booted up into an incredibly lightweight, responsive and pretty OS, with the main front-end being XBMC. We have a winner!

Really, installation couldn’t be easier, with the system working beautifully out of the box. Another great thing about XBMC is how extendible it is, with a myriad of plugins available, from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube to various other streaming content providers. You can even control it over the web from a browser on another machine.

The Remote

So, the only thing really left to complete the box was the remote. I was slightly disappointed at not using Boxee, as they have quite decent support for mobile devices, but on the back of that I figured that XBMC must have something at least similar. After a single search on the iTunes App store, I found a myriad of remote control apps for the iPad. The first one I settled on was XBmoteC, which although a bit clunky to set up, was lightweight and worked pretty well. A friend of mine suggested Constellation, which is an incredibly powerful remote that works like a dream, I’d highly recommend it.

Constellation Remote (Advertising Removed)

In addition to the iPad apps available, there are also plugins to extend the web interface to be touch friendly, making remote control a breeze from any device connected to the network.

XBMC Web Remote

The Conclusion

While I’m still waiting for my projector, this little box is already getting some air play. The only snag I’ve found is in trying to watch full HD, the little Celeron just doesn’t cut it for the trailers I was testing with; the longer the trailer, the more jumpy the video. 800×600 did seem to have a positive effect on this, so when moving over to the projector it should be fine (aside from the obvious loss of HD).

I trust this inspires some of you to set up your own media player, it really is simple with the packages and hardware described above and well worth the effort. As far as the “Or is it?” comment in the introduction goes, I have seen that you can extend the player even further to hosting NES/SNES games with a USB gamepad (among other things), so I’m dead keen to see if I can get that running successfully (and if I do, there will be another post on it).

If you would like any more information, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!

1. Make a checklist of your programs

This may sound silly at first, but make yourself a checklist. The easiest way to start this list, is by opening your Start menu and moving from top to bottom. I will use my machine as an example. Go through your start menu and list everything you need and everything you want on a reinstall. Leave out anything you don’t want or need. Below is my list.

• Adobe Reader
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Mozilla Firefox
• Windows Live Mail
• 7-Zip
• Air Video Server
• BlackBerry Device Manager
• Dropbox
• Evernote
• FileZilla FTP Client
• GIMP
• Google Chrome
• Google Talk
• Handbrake
• iTunes
• K-Lite Codec Pack
• MediaMonkey
• Microsoft Headset
• Microsoft Mouse
• Microsoft Office 2007
• Microsoft Rich Tools
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express
• MySQL Workbench
• Notepad++
• OpenTTD
• Picasa 3
• PuTTY
• QuickTime
• Skype
• Speccy
• Sun VirtualBox
• Torchlight
• WebEx Recorder and Player
• Windows Virtual PC
• WinSCP
• X-Lite

So that’s quite a list, however this covers me in all aspects of the software I use.

2. Break your checklist down

This is starting to sound like work, isn’t it? You will thank me later… Following this process and getting to know what you want on your PC will allow you to reinstall in a fraction of the time it would have taken, the best part is you can keep the list and use it again at a later stage.

So following on, we need to break the list down. I break my software list into three aspects;

• Downloadable and free software
• Software that contains my data
• Proprietary software

Downloadable and free software

For the downloadable software, in general this is free software or software I have bought a license for etc. Going from the list above, the downloadable list would be as follows;

• Adobe Reader
• Microsoft Security Essentials
• Mozilla Firefox
• Windows Live Mail
• 7-Zip
• Air Video Server
• BlackBerry Device Manager
• Dropbox
• Evernote
• FileZilla FTP Client
• GIMP
• Google Chrome
• Google Talk
• Handbrake
• iTunes
• K-Lite Codec Pack
• MediaMonkey
• Microsoft Headset
• Microsoft Mouse
• MySQL Workbench
• Notepad++
• OpenTTD
• Picasa 3
• PuTTY
• QuickTime
• Skype
• Speccy
• Sun VirtualBox
• WebEx Recorder and Player
• WinSCP
• X-Lite

Please excuse the fact that it is almost an identical list, most of the things I use are all readily downloadable. From this point, the idea is to go to each piece of software’s website and to download the latest version of the software, saved on a flash disk or DVD. This will ensure that you do as little automatic updating as possible post-install.

Tip: For software that uses a downloader to install, generally there will be an “Administrator”, “Network” or “Business” edition available as well. Download this instead of the installer. This allows you to have a copy on hand, as well as the fact that these editions generally leave out all the free toolbars and other vacuous crap that come with the sponsored download. Skype is a prime example of having a business edition available (Skype thankfully is not an example of bundling software with the downloader, they get it right).

Software that contains my data

Go through your list and see what you do with each piece of software. If it is a viewer of some kind, like Adobe Reader, leave it out, however if is is something that contains your own data, for example my photos in Picasa, put it on this list (you can leave out anything that stores files online or in a cloud, Dropbox and Evernote for example). From the list above, I use the following software for the following reasons;

• Mozilla Firefox – Browsing and saving bookmarks
• Windows Live Mail – Email
• FileZilla FTP Client – FTP Logins
• Google Chrome – Browsing and saving bookmarks
• iTunes – Purchased iPad applications
• Microsoft Office 2007 – Documents
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express – Databases
• OpenTTD – Saved games
• Picasa 3 – My photos
• Sun VirtualBox – My VM’s
• Torchlight – Saved games
• Windows Virtual PC – My VM’s

From the reasons next to the software, I can easily work out what data of mine I need to back up, often the programs themselves allow you to do so. Basically I can see from the above that the following needs to be backed up from how I use my computer.

• My Bookmarks
• My Emails
• My FTP Credentials
• My iTunes applications
• My Documents
• My Databases
• My Photos
• My Virtual Machines
• My Saved games

If you noticed a pattern in the above, then that is a good thing. In Windows, it’s very easy to backup most of your stuff by simply backing up anything with a “My” in front of it. All of the above can be easily backed up either from the corresponding “My” folders on the hard drive, or through the application itself (Chrome and Firefox are prime examples). Email outside of Microsoft Outlook can get kind of tricky to transfer, but that’s another topic for another time.

Proprietary software

This is software that you generally would own, and would most likely be on its own media. All that you need to do here is ensure that you have the CD’s/DVD’s on hand and off you go.

• Microsoft Office 2007
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express

Tip: To save on your time spent updating, hop online and download the latest service packs for each piece of software, particularly those from the Microsoft stable.

Note: Some proprietary software comes pre-installed on your machine. If you do not have your media from purchasing your machine, contact the reseller and/or manufacturer to discuss the way forward for your format.

3. Back up all folders starting with a “My”

Following on from the second section, go into the users’ folder (either Document & Settings or Users, depending on which version of Windows you are running), and copy any “My” folders that have not been backed up already. A prime example of this from this article so far, is that nowhere have I mentioned “My Music”.   Once you have backed this up you are pretty much good to go.

4. Format the PC and re-install

Pop your Windows disc in and follow the instructions.   When you are done, insert any driver discs that you require loading, these would have come with your PC.   In the case of Windows 7, drivers have been greatly simplified and should download automatically just after installation.

5. Reload downloaded software

Grab the initial list you have and start moving through one by one, installing each one of the packages you have already downloaded.   Note how quick the installation is going now.

6. Reload proprietary software

Pop in the discs for your proprietary software and follow their installation procedures, once they have finished, install any service packs you may have downloaded earlier.

7. Restore your data

All the items you backed up from the “My” section can now be restored, as well as anything else garnered from the “My” exercise above.

8. Get to use your PC two hours after hitting the format button

No need for an explanation here, point 8 says it all…

So that about covers a relatively efficient methodology for re-formatting a PC, perhaps it becomes a mainstream standard, or perhaps one little store adopts it, either way I hope it helped someone.

Best part is, if something goes wrong shortly after the re-install, you already have relatively recent copies of all the software and can reload quickly.   A much better method would be to create an image directly after, however this, as with backing up mail, is another topic for another time.

Enjoy your format!

Enter Evernote, the most fantastic little synchronized note taking system I’ve seen so far (special thanks to @jacogr for the recommendation)! I have recently acquired an iPad for the purpose of taking notes, which now means I am using yet another device to fulfill that purpose. Just to give you an idea on how my current note taking takes place, I have included a short description on a per device basis.

My PC – note taking on my PC consists of me launching Notepad++ and typing in whatever random text needs to be recorded. Whether I save or not depends on the importance of the note, and where I save the note depends on the direction of the wind and alignment of the planets. The end result of this method is a wide array of .txt files sprawled over my drive with no apparent pattern, in particular the pattern does not spell “efficient retrieval later”.

My Blackberry – my BB at least has a notes section, which synchronizes with my Exchange account at the office, and displays accordingly within Outlook on my Notebook. This is slightly more efficient than the PC…

My Notebook – as this is my work machine, I have Outlook installed and linked to an Exchange server, which allows for great little post-it notes throughout the machine. The great trouble with this is that each note takes the name of whatever the first line is. The next inconvenience is that Outlook archives my notes along with my emails on a bi-weekly basis. Now I know that this can be changed, but in all honesty I can’t be bothered to fiddle around on something as simple as my notes.

My iPad – the new addition to the gadget family which I am still learning. By default it comes with a note taking app installed, which while it looks really pretty, isn’t terribly functional and the only means I have bothered to find at the moment for getting this synchronized to the rest of my stuff is to send a plaintext email from it containing the note. While this is searchable via my mail, I know that in time I’m going to forget that I typed the note on here and will inevitably misplace the notes in the vortex that is my inbox.

Enter Evernote. This is a great little app that is available for all of my devices (and more) that uses a single account to synchronize everything. Any note that I type on my iPad is just about instantly readable on my notebook, PC and BB. I say “just about” as the note only syncs after saving, and is then subject to whatever Internet connection you have. As you can see from the below picture, I have the app installed on all three devices at home, all with their own intuitive interfaces native to the device, not just some generic badly displayed grid view resized for whatever device I’m on.

The downside that I’ve found so far is that notes that I have typed and viewed previously do not seem to be cached on the devices, so in order to view a note that you haven’t viewed in a while you are required to be connected. In all honesty though, this really isn’t a biggie in my world, considering that I’m pretty much always connected everywhere, and that this limitation is removed when you upgrade to the premium version for $44.99 a year (roughly R300).

Your notes can be viewed in various ways, from lists to thumbnails to previews. There are various ways to organise your notes as well, by specific notebook (you can have many), by date, by tags, by city and so on. With the free registration, you are entitled to 60MB of notes per month, according to the app this is around 30,000 notes per month. This may seem like a helluva lot of space to have available to you, but then you also need to consider that you have the ability to attach files to whatever note you are taking.

All in all, this app has become an integral part of my day within a week of using it. I would highly recommend it to anyone who regularly takes notes or has to write things down to remember them. 10 out of 10 on the usefulness scale! You can download Evernote from Evernote.com.

• First, run msconfig (hit the start button and type it in)
• Next, select boot.
• Then select ‘Advanced Options’
• Up the number of processors to the number of cores you have in your system, in my case this is 4.
• Hit OK
• Hit OK again on the System Configuration window.
• Reboot and see how quickly you boot!

And that’s it.   Told you it would be short and sweet!

Post Situation Analysis: Bye bye snapshots, bye bye VM configs. In other words quite bleak.

Rushed Solution: Mount the original VHD, create a blank snapshot, rename the snapshot files, and launch!

Rushed Solution == Bad Idea

If you have one base VHD with no snapshot, great! Mount it and off you go. If you have snapshots, you could be in for a rocky ride (you are already 25% stuffed transferring an RC hosted VM to RTM). True, it may work when mounting the last image as described in the rushed solution. What I found was that I got a BSOD on login, but after booting into safe mode and then rebooting again it was ok. The problem I encountered on VM’s with many snapshots (5+) was that at the point of booting up normally and logging in, the registry corrupted. Windows restored the registry, however this left the networking components and drivers for Windows in a completely unusable state (even legacy adapters), and the VM’s needed to be reloaded from scratch after copying data to new VHD’s, and mounting those in new VM’s.

Snapshots use a hierarchical structure (Each VHD/AVHD is basically appended onto the previous one) to keep track of changes without duplicating entire drives. The following info won’t get you to a state where you can flip between snapshots (it’s a sacrifice), but it will give you a working machine at the point that you needed it for data recovery purposes, with all data from all snapshot points.

This will merge the latest snapshot into the previous one. Repeat steps 2-7 for each snapshot level. Once you have merged all the snapshots and the parent disk is listed as the original VHD, you have everything ready to to complete the wizard for the last time. You now have the original VHD containing the complete snapshot tree. Finally set up a new machine with the VHD, and recover your data from the VM.

Note: Only Hyper-V in R2 recognises AVHD files in the Edit Disk wizard, if you are using 2008 R1, rename the AVHD extension to VHD.

Note #2: Thank you to all the various Hyper-V related sites that I trawled through to get to this information, unfortunately I cannot remember you all, by far the most informative in content and comments was on “Hyper-V notes from the field“, thanks Robert! Please visit this site too, as he has outlined a couple more ways in getting the VHD’s merged, I simply covered what I find to be the easiest method in my own terms for my own situation.

We arrived at the Bombardier depot off Allandale road just after 10am, and were led into the main depot by the friendly staff from the project. Coffee and snacks were served, and much mingling (and pokening) was done by all! After a while, we were addressed by the CEO of the Gautrain Management Agency, Jack van der Merwe and Bombela marketing manager, Errol Braithwaite, who took everyone’s questions regarding the train, safety, technology and various other aspects of it. After Errol’s speech, he introduced Sandy, who ‘owned and washed’ the Gautrains. We were then told (to our wide eyes) that if we scream “Ag please Sandy” really loud, we’d get to actually go on the train. Well, 200 people clearly made enough noise, and we were allowed our ride!

We started from the Allandale depot, heading out towards what we thought was the test track. What we didn’t realise, was that we were actually being taken to the Marlboro station. There was absolute shock when we realised that in what seemed like 3 odd minutes, we’d made it from Allandale to Marlboro, a trip that during peak hour would easily take 45 minutes. To be certain, we timed it on the way back, and sure enough from Marlboro to Allandale depot took 2:52.

The train itself is very neatly done up, with all upholstery in the train matching and branded to the Gautrain. The airconditioning keeps you nice and cool, and the air suspension and lack of bolted rails makes for a smooth glide along the tracks. Reaching 160km/h was also astonishingly fast, and felt like we were going only around 60km/h. The Gautrain uses 25,000 volts on running and accelerating, and so in the interest of the environment (and as someone put it, the “bunnyhuggers”), the trains are all equipped with a regenerative braking system which feeds power back into the circuit when the brakes are applied on the trains.

All in all this was an awesome experience, be sure to check out the Gautrain Facebook page and the Tweet Up On Rails topic for more feedback, pictures and information!

Why, in this day and age, do people want to make money / popularity / whatever by REQUIRING you to register? I have so many logins to remember as it stands… Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In (thank you TweetDeck, you ROCK!), Think Bike, MyADSL, and and and and and…. I don’t know about you, but I have ended up with quite a few passwords that I use in almost a rotation basis. Out of all of these, I have gained my “favourites”;

Think Bike, a niche forum, of which I’m involved in various subsections of it, including traffic marshalling and support services.
Facebook, is well, Facebook. Its the 21st century ID number and you pretty much have to have one. If you don’t, enjoy being left behind, particularly with recent patent awards…
Twitter, my little one-liner rant/share/cool/funky/link/share page which is nothing without Tweetdeck or Echofon…
Linked-In, something I’ve started getting into, the best spot to mingle with like-minded business people.
MyADSL, if you’re a South African and battle with your internet, this is your first stop.

I’ve digressed… I wanted to post and was required to register. Why? There is so much content being served on the Interwebz, why on earth would you want to capitalise on something, even if it is just gaining registrants, by restricting it! The best example of this and my thoughts towards it, would be something written by David Thorne (if you browse stuff or receive emails you should know the name) titled Simon’s pie charts…

Signing up for things is old, outdated and unnecessary. Getting back to the SSO side of things, I have recently (at work) been working on an SSO project relating to sign-ins. I wasn’t really aware of any of this SSO stuff before , but realised I myself was using it with Google’s various applications. It’s amazing how it sneaks up on you! Did you know that you are using the same login for the following things:

• GMail
• GTalk
• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Blogger.com
• Google Docs
• YouTube

Yeah so I guess the Google prefix gives them away, apart from YouTube and Blogger.   This blog uses the MyScoop aggregator, which uses something fantastic, the ability to sign in with another account of yours via rpxnow.com!   This is a good idea, and as far as I’m aware from a newbie standpoint, a perfect example of SSO.   This allows you to sign in with your Google, Twitter, Facebook, Blogger (part of Google), Yahoo! or OpenID account instead of creating a new login (with new password, new spam and new username to remember).   There is the option to create a new username, which is a great option too, for whoever hasn’t got ANY of the other accounts…   This opens the door to any site without a ‘G’ in their prefix to use a single login!

The concept of SSO is just brilliant, imagine how much time you would save by not having to remember all your logins for all your sites?   Hmmm, come to think of it, when does one IM take over everything?   What are your thoughts on a unified login for everything?

1. Passing Trucks

This one is something that can catch you by surprise, always think ahead! If you are passing a truck, either on the left or the right, bear in mind that there is probably someone in front of the truck who cannot see you due to the width of the truck, or there is a gap in front of the truck as it moves slower than the rest of the traffic. Should there be someone who cannot see you, they are probably not going to hesitate to get out of the trucks way (I know I prefer not to be in front of a few tons of metal) and may well cut you off or worse, knock you off. The opposite applies to when there is a gap in front of the truck, invariably someone from the adjacent lane would like to take that gap, and then the same applies. GO WITH CAUTION!

2. Splitting Around Bends

During my commute, there are two gradual bends which I take with great care. One inside the Buccleugh interchange, and the other just past the Woodmead on and off ramps. That said, when you are splitting through a gradual bend, always bear in mind that the angle of people’s mirrors are completely different to what they would be should they be moving in a straight line. If you take a left bend as an example, the people in the lane to your left will most likely be looking at the doors of the vehicles on the right, and the vehicles on the right, are most likely looking at the left headlight of the vehicle behind them. It is for this reason that you should be extra careful, or alternatively wait in the traffic for the duration of the bend.

3. Showing Courtesy

This goes both ways, showing courtesy to cars and trucks, as well as showing courtesy to fellow riders. If a vehicle moves out of your way, give them a gesture of thanks, be it a wave with your clutch hand, a flash of your hazards (if your bike is so equipped) or my personal choice, a tilt of the head. Be careful the first time you tilt your head, it may be the most convenient, but target fixation can occur (you follow the lines of your eyes and if you are tilting your head, you may in fact turn the bike slightly)! Do not extend a foot out on either side, a. this looks aggressive to motorists, and b. this is often used in pack riding to indicate a road hazard on either side! When you are nice to motorists, they will be nice to you, and often someone who has been thanked for moving over will feel a warm fuzzy feeling and be willing to do it again. On the other side of the coin, be aware of your mirrors and of riders wishing to pass you. If you see a motorcyclist behind you, acknowledge him/her in some way, should there be no gaps, and when there is a gap, slow down accordingly and let him/her past. Do not move immediately back into the lane, as often there will be multiple riders behind the one who just passed you! Keep a look out, and move back into the lane when it is safe to do so.

4. Avoid Temptation

Following on from point 3, when someone passes you, resist the temptation to match their speed and stay behind them. For one, this will irritate the rider ahead of you, and two, this is probably removing you from your comfort zone. If you are no longer in your comfort zone, you will no longer be able to pull emergency maneuvers as quickly or as well rehearsed as you would when riding at YOUR comfortable speed. Should the rider ahead of you have to brake suddenly, there is a good chance you will go directly into the back of him/her, which is a situation that I can guarantee neither of you would like.

5. Avoid The “Suicide Lane”

This is referred to (on a 3-lane road) as the piece of road between the slow and middle lane. People generally split between the middle and fast lane, and as such, that is where motorists are expecting you to be. Often a motorist in the middle lane will see you coming and move out of your way in the only direction he can go, left. If you are splitting on the left of that vehicle, you can imagine what could happen next. The converse applies to this as well, if you are splitting in the “suicide lane”, you may well be endangering any riders on the other side for the exact same reasons. Bear in mind, that should a motorist knock a biker down, this could be an end to their life as they know it as well. Which leads me to my next point;

6. Not All Cagers are Evil

If I take my daily commute, between Grayston and Marlboro there is normally very slow moving traffic, often just above standstill. I have counted (don’t try this at home) and have found that in the space of 1km I will pass roughly 72 slow moving vehicles in the fast lane (so more for standstill traffic). I can then multiply this by 2, for the middle lane, giving me 144 vehicles that I have passed in the space of 1km. Multiply that by the 26km’s of highway that I travel (taking into account the same amount of standstill traffic as moving traffic) and you have 3,744 vehicles that I pass on average. That’s a lot of vehicles, and I hardly ever have a problem in a week, so make that 18,720 vehicles per week that do not give me a problem. Should I have one issue a week, that would be 0.005% if the vehicles on that road. Think about it (yes its flawed, but you get my drift).

7. Take Note Of The Sun

This one is very simple to explain, but not often thought of. Be very very careful should the rising or setting sun be directly behind you and the flow of traffic (this is a major problem on the N12 / R24)! If the sun is behind you, you will not be looking in your mirrors as chances are they are blinding you, so bear in mind that this applies to every other vehicle moving in the same direction as you!

8. Splitting At Night

This is a bad idea. A bad bad idea. A very very bad idea. Yes, there are lens covers for your headlight to make you more visible, but in a lot of cases, the same “sun” rules apply. If you are coming up through traffic where all the headlights are on, you WILL NOT BE VISIBLE. In standstill or slow moving traffic, ALL vehicles have only one headlight in a rearview mirror, and you WILL look like every other four wheeled vehicle on that road.

9. Don’t Look Down

Ok, look down a little, but do not fixate on the bike in front of you, and do not look directly at the road in front of you. Look ahead, and look up as well. It is not uncommon for vehicles to have something strapped to the roof rack that is leaning over the side or sticking out the back. Most people have seen the picture of the two gentlemen impaled on a steel pole, if not, you now have an idea of it. Keep looking, often people do not carry red flags or reflective triangles, and figure that they won’t get pulled over in peak hour traffic. The same naive people, probably also don’t figure that another vehicle will be passing between them and the adjacent lane. Arm yourself with forethought when looking ahead. If you see a vehicle towing a caravan, they may well have an extended mirror on the side of the vehicle, avoid these, aside from damage to property, these leave a nice mark in the morning.

10. Chill Out / Don’t Panic

Like attracts like, if you are riding rigid and panicky, chances are you are going to bump into something. The best advice I can give for lanesplitting is to start out slow over short stretches, and don’t get onto the highway until you are absolutely comfortable with splitting. There are plenty of double-lane roads where you can practice by making your way up to a red light when all the traffic comes to a stop. Take things as they come, should you bump someone’s vehicle, it happens. Stop, apologise to the driver, and 90% of the time they will be OK with it (provided you weren’t tearing down the road like a bat out of hell), the other 10% of the time, something can be done about it. If you do get cut off, don’t get even by breaking off the mirror of the vehicle or kicking the door in, as tempting as it may be. Practice as I do in the morning, and try to memorise at least one numberplate a day. This will train your memory so that when something does happen, you can head down to the nearest police station and lay a charge of reckless driving against the owner of the plate number that you have in your head. This may not have an immediate effect, but should something happen down the line and their record is pulled, you will have the upper hand, and not an assault/property damage charge.

There are plenty more points that I could go through, and I’m sure I will add more in another post one day. Please leave your wisdoms and comments on this post below, as I would love this to benefit fellow riders.

If you would like more info on rider safety etc, there is plenty of info over at Think Bike.

So yes, today we bought some more Microsoft hardware to add to the collection. I also seem, for the most part hopefully, to have converted Bonita to the quality of the products (hence the ‘we’ in the previous sentence). As it stands, between the two of us we currently have the following:

• LifeCam VX-500
• LifeChat LX-3000
• Wireless Mouse 5000
• Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 (at the office)
• Another Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 (now at home)
• Wireless Keyboard 3000 v2.0 (part of Wireless Desktop 3000)
• Wireless Mouse 5000 (part of Wireless Desktop 3000)

LifeCam VX-500

It all started with me wanting a decent webcam, that isn’t going to cause XP to hang on startup (yes, they do this), isn’t going to require additional software (normally something out of the ark, written in a language from the creation), and isn’t going to cause a BSOD and kill my PC.   I figured I was running a MS operating system, so MS hardware is pretty guaranteed to work, and when I found the LifeCam with incorrect pricing on it I figured what the heck (sorry unnamed store!).   I opened up the box, sure enough no driver CD, but none was necessary, AND there was a basic Microsoft headset supplied.   The term headset is used loosely, it was an earphone with a mic attached lower down the cable, but better than nothing, and a great easter-egg if you are just getting started!

LifeChat LX-3000

A while after the webcam, I happened to step on my Altec Lansing headset, rendering it pretty useless; not even insulation tape could save it.   I decided that I would go for a Logitech, as that is what I have at the office, and it ROCKS.   Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the Altec, it is a killer headset, but I figured that after 4 years, it had given decent service and I needed to try something in the USB line instead of 35mm jack.   Upon seeing the price of the Logitech, I realised it was a tiny bit out of budget, so when I saw the LifeChat at CNA for a tiny bit less but still out of budget, I reckoned I’d just slap it on the Edgars account and pay it off.   I have never looked back, this headset is the best thing of its kind.   It fits around your ears, instead of on them, so you can wear it for hour after hour; it also seals completely, so even at full tilt no one around you can hear it.   It comes with inline controls, as well as a Microsoft LiveChat button to launch MSN.   One thing that would be nice would be to be able to program this button to launch any service of your choice, but hey, for this kind of audio quality vs the price I paid for these, I’m really not complaining.

Wireless Mouse 5000

I used to have another brand of wireless mouse, which will go unmentioned here.   Suffice to say I had issues with it from about 2 months in, and eventually after putting up with it for 3 years it found itself on the wrong side of the bedroom, against the wall, with a fair deal of acceleration behind it (I was sick, and pretty grumpy).   Needing to purchase another mouse, and wireless at that, I was (and still am) of the opinion that if you want a wireless input device, you buy Microsoft or Logitech.   End of story.   So I trundled off to Centurion mall, and eventually found a Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000.   What a killer little device!   It wasn’t the shape I was originally looking for, but it was nice and chunky (I like a chunky mouse).   It can easily be used in a left or right hand, and as with every other Microsoft device, it just works.   I have been using it now for probably around 6 months, and I have yet to replace the included batteries.   The 5 programmable buttons work like a charm as well!   The only thing that takes some getting used to, is that the 5-way scroll wheel does not have any sort of tactile response, it just rolls, but that is something that I absolutely love now!   It was due to this mouse that I recommended Bonita go for the Wireless Desktop 3000 as it was included in the package along with a great looking keyboard.

Comfort Curve 2000

At the office, I have been using a Comfort Curve 2000 keyboard on the off chance that it was lying around spare and my hand-me-down had shuffled off its mortal coil.   The curve took a good while to get used to, but yet again this is now something I cannot do without.   I despise typing on my laptop now as there is no curve, and I hit all sorts of random keys by mistake.   So, after getting fed up and finding the same keyboard at Game this morning, I bought it.   It has now inspired me to write this post, as I can’t stop raving about all the Microsoft hardware that is now sprawled out in front of me.   The Comfort Curve is Microsoft’s entry level keyboard, but still costs a fair packet more than its competitors for entry level, but you won’t get the, *ahem*, comfort with said competitors, nor will you get the programmable buttons at the top of the keyboard (you do need to download Intellitype Pro for reprogramming these, at around 15MB its worth it, and as mentioned before it won’t wipe out your machine).

Wireless Keyboard 3000 v2.0 (Wireless Desktop 3000)

The only piece of hardware at home now that I haven’t tried, is the Wireless Keyboard 3000 v2.0.   I think the main reason I haven’t tried it yet, is because Bonita is loving it so much and going on and on about it so much that I don’t think she would let me…   What I can say though, is that if Bonita raves about a keyboard, it MUST be good!   Again, all batteries were included!

So there you have it, our current arsenal of Microsoft products.   People complain that they have to pay exorbitant prices for the hardware, however it really is not that exorbitant.   Sure, their entry level stuff is more expensive than others, but you won’t find the build quality or support for the other stuff you can get, and their expensive stuff is leagues below the competition price wise.   People also complain regarding licenses, and I used to do so as well, however after using Windows 7 (and 2008 R2), I will gladly change my tune, however that is another post for another time…   If you have any Microsoft hardware, drop me a comment and let me know what you think of it.