My web wanderings

Windows Media Center Beta

Microsoft has sent out emails to prospective testers of the next version of Windows Media Center XP. Neowin has a copy of the email text with a link to the beta site.

You sign into the site and are given a survey. It’s about 40 questions about how you rate yourself as a computer user, how much tv, video, photos, and music you consume on PCs, and what kind of gear you have at home. Like any beta test, you never know who they are looking to help test, though it’s usually to match some future market segment.

They say the test includes a PC, but doesn’t mention if the new Media Center Extended hardware will be included, but it’d be silly to test just the OS and standard hardware without the new Extended features.

Logs and System Monitoring
Forensic Log Parsing with Microsoft’s LogParser
MRTG for Intrusion Detection with IIS 6
Windows2003 SNMP + ActiveState + MRTG = My Dashboard
Windows 2003 MRTG Discussion

Windows 2003 Server Tips
ABlog Windows 2003

Development Related
MSDE GUI
ASP.Net MSDE Manager
SWAT - A simple Web-based Anomalies Tracker

Exchange 5.5 and 2000 tips and tricks
Lists over 100 Microsoft Exchange Tips for Exchange 5.5 and 2000

Wireless Monitoring and Network packet sniffing
AirSnare
Ethereal

I have always hated not having the ability to ping a range of IP’s from the command line in windows. Stacy created a couple .Net apps that can ping IP ranges, Wildcards, and More. There is also a GUI tool.

So I have been waiting to get my hands on SourceGear 2.0. It looks like a really nice product and look forward to deploying it at the office.

Migration from Windows to Linux saves thousands.

I want to run a honeypot on the corp network and the CoLo. Here is a great article on them.

So I have been looking for a CMS portal to run my websites. I am just to plain lazy to code HTML or PHP right now. Too many things on my plate with work and the wedding. So I think I am going to go with PostNuke and phpWiki combined. This will give me most of the features I want. I will add some additional modules I am interested in shortly.

Ok I found a module I want by the same guy that is pretty sweet. It uses MRTG to track how many users are online at your website. Not sure if I can run it at 1and1 but if not it may still be interesting.

Who needs CuteFTP when you can go Open Source with your FTP client

Here are some links that Jason found the other day in pursuit of our ever evolving need for better security

Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council
FFIEC “Infobase” or KnowledgeBase
FFIEC IT Examination Handbook
Information Security Booklet

Hmmm maybe I can get rid of all the access databases at work and replace them with a couple MySQL databases with web front ends with this tool

For a long time I have used Excel to help me decipher web server logs manually. It is about time I learn to do it programmatically with PHP.

I came across this web site today with a large amount of articles on Exchange.

So I didn’t post much over the holidays. Was busy with family and friends. Ellen and I had a great time at Christmas and got some excellent new things. I want to thank all our friends and family that contributed to our TV fund with Gift Certificates to Best Buy. We are getting a very nice 34″ wide screen HDTV Toshiba TV. We can’t wait to get it and will think of all of you when we are watching TV on our new TV.

Now that 2004 is here I am going to hit the blogging with a regular basis. I have really enjoyed it so far and am looking forward to really putting together the website for 2004.

Thanks again everyone,

Brian and Ellen

UPDATED 1/5/04 2:00PM: Just received the confirmation email from BestBuy we “should” be having our TV Delivered on this coming Saturday morning. WooHoo!!!!!

UPDATED 1/6/04 3:00PM: Well I knew it was too good to be true. The TV will not be here till Jan. 30th. Oh well at least it is on its way. Thanks again everyone!!!

I had a friend IM me today with problems setting up his linux box. Go figure me doing linux support. So anyway I was trying to explain Active vs. Passive FTP and what he needed to do to configure his ftp server. I ran across this excellent website that does one of the best jobs of explaining this concept.