Mobile roaming in Europe

I’ve recently been fortunate enough to enjoy an extended family trip through Europe (UK, France, Germany, Italy and Greece). This gave me the chance to test out one of the new international eSIMs that have flooded the market over the past few years, which allows you to have mobile data roaming across multiple countries for a fraction of the cost of doing so with an NZ provider.

Use Case

My family (2 adults and 2 teenagers) were all keen to stay connected throughout the trip, primarily on our smartphones, with the occasional hotspot/tethering use to allow my wife and I to stay connected to work on our laptops. We didn’t need calls (but see the note at the end….) so it was unlimited mobile data we were interested in. We were travelling across multiple countries so we were looking for something easy to use and didn’t want the hassle of buying SIM cards in each country.

Selection

I compared a few providers from an internet search and Holafly seemed to have the simplest options, and was well reviewed. They weren’t as cheap as some of the others but their options were really well laid out and their mobile app was good. We paid around 100 euros (around $200nzd) for each eSIM that provided us 41 days of unlimited mobile data throughout Europe. When you sign up you choose the number of days and the cost is calculated then. You can add more days if needed once the plan has been activated. To some this might seem expensive but keep in mind these eSIMs provide unlimited mobile data. Compare this to something like Spark which offers just 2Gb for $35!

Setup

This was fairly straightforward and can be done in a few different ways. Once I created a Holafly account and ordered the eSIMs the instructions were really clear and the only thing we learned was that it’s important not to activate the Holafly eSIM until you travel, as the allocated days start counting down as soon as you do. 

Of course, you need a phone that is capable of handling an eSIM, and to avoid roaming charges on your NZ SIM you should disable that before you leave NZ.

Usage

When we arrived at our first destination, it was a simple matter of enabling the eSIMs that we had each setup earlier on our phones. None of us had any issues connecting and the Holafly eSIM just connected to whatever network they obviously have partner agreements with. This was the case all across Europe in fact and I was really impressed with the ease of use. Connectivity and speed was generally good, apart from in really rural areas, which of course you would expect anyway. Moving from country to country was seamless, with only the occasional need to disable and re-enable the eSIM to get it to connect to the local network on arrival. Overall it worked really well for all of us and allowed us to be connected without worrying about racking up mobile roaming costs or finding wifi networks all the time.

Issues

We had problems with hotspotting in Greece. Everywhere else we were able to tether our laptops to our phones and had good enough mobile data to perform typical work tasks and even join a few Teams meetings. As I understand, the mobile networks in Greece are fairly poor anyway, and whatever network Holafly uses did not seem to support hotspotting. I tried several different things to get it to work but whilst the tethering itself worked fine, the laptops were unable to connect to the internet regardless. As I say, this was only a problem in Greece.

The only other issue that we had was something we hadn’t considered, and this was the lack of a mobile number whilst using the travel eSIM. Holafly and (from what I can tell) most of the other eSIM providers don’t provide you with a mobile number for calls or texts on their multi-country plans. This makes sense from a technical perspective as you are hopping from one mobile network to another, but what we hadn’t taken into account was the number of occasions that we needed to make or receive phone calls, or more importantly receive text messages. Everything from signing up to taxi services, booking hotels, paying for parking all rely on text verification and of course you can’t do this if you can’t receive texts! This was even more of an issue for the occasional time we needed to use our ANZ credit card which is setup for text validation for unknown transactions and unfortunately resulted in us having to enable roaming and buy roaming packs for our NZ mobile plans just so we could receive these verifications.

I’m not sure how to get around this as it seems in Europe that mobile verification is the default and preferred method for lots of things. To my knowledge ANZ (and other NZ banks?) also default to verification by text. Perhaps there are travel eSIM providers that do provide a mobile number as well as data?

Whilst this did reduce the value of the travel eSIM somewhat, and added a layer of complexity that I was hoping to avoid, I’m very confident that it was still significantly cheaper and easier than using roaming from an NZ provider, and something I would highly recommend if you are overseas for more than a few weeks and need lots of mobile data.

My experience of buying a Tesla in NZ

This is a rough description of my recent (2024) experience of buying a Dual Motor, Long Range, Tesla Model 3 in New Zealand. I write this only as it might be interesting to others considering a similar entry into the wonderful world of Tesla.

I’ll preface things with some relevant context. First, I live in a city in the far South of NZ. Whilst it’s a city, it’s a long way from the main urban centres of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Second, because of the type of driving I do, from the outset I wanted the Dual Motor Long Range M3, which I’m very sure contributed to the ‘interesting’ experience of purchasing and receiving my fantastic new car. Third, and finally, I’m a ‘Tech’ guy at work and at home and I live and breathe the world of tech and buying stuff online, so purchasing a car through an app, whilst new to me, wasn’t that unfamiliar or daunting. I was more than happy to eschew the traditional model of salesmen and car yards.

Ordering

I ordered a 2024 Model 3, Long Range, Dual motor in black, at the beginning of 2024. I paid the $400 order fee and the wait began.

Waiting

From January to March, the Tesla mobile app displayed ‘delivery estimate January to March’ and it didn’t change at all during that period. The end of March came and went, and on the 2nd April the delivery estimate disappeared completely from the app.

Chasing

In the first week of April I called Tesla NZ a few times looking for updates on estimated delivery. My first call was met with a ‘we don’t have any further details’, just keep an eye on the app. The second call, when I spoke to a really helpful guy called Matty was more enlightening. His advice was to keep an eye on the existing inventory on the Tesla website to see if something suitable became available, and if so, to give them a call back to get my existing order changed. He also told me that he had been informed that the next availability from a shipment into NZ was going to be ‘sometime after August’. I was somewhat despondent after this and disappointed in the lack of clear information on anticipated delivery. There seemed to be a disconnect between the various teams within Tesla NZ and nobody was really certain what was going on.

A bit of luck

Whilst I began considering my options, I kept an eye on the existing inventory across the country, checking every morning. Whilst there seemed to be plenty of Standard Range available, there were no Long Range, until, miraculously, one showed up, in blue, in Wellington. I immediately called Tesla NZ and the agent I spoke to this time let me know that he would take care of it. I received an email a few hours later with an update to my order. A few days later I received an order confirmation and final invoice. I paid this, and a day or so later, the mobile app was updated and a VIN was allocated. As an aside, I received the good news the following day that Tesla had dropped the base price and was issued another final invoice, showing that I was due a $2000 refund (I still haven’t received this. I spoke with the accounts team last week and they said it would be processed onto the card in my Tesla account ‘sometime over the next week’).

Collection

I received a call from a Tesla agent and we agreed a time and date at the end of the second week of April for me to collect. I received a few email confirmations with the address and other details. After a typically bumpy flight into Wellington, I got an Uber out the Lower Hutt address given. I struggled to find the building and only discovered the Tesla sign after wandering around for 15 minutes after being dropped off by the bemused Uber driver. The service centre and collection depot is in an old, Cold War era building. An unlikely place, but on reflection, a pretty cool contrast to the high tech vehicles contained within. My car wasn’t there when I arrived, and I was informed that the sales guys were out getting the registration and plates sorted out! They turned up half an hour later and the remainder of the handover process was great. I spent 45 minutes inspecting the car and being instructed on the basics, and then I was off on the epic journey home.

All in all it was a weird, funny experience that worked out in the end. I’ve had friends purchase other Tesla’s in NZ that have experienced ‘Apple Store’ like slickness end to end, and I wonder with the decline in EV sales since the removal of the clean car rebate, times are tough enough that it’s affecting the ‘usual’ process. I’m not sure how others less familiar with the modern way of app based buying would cope with this weirdness, but maybe it’s just a point in time.

Regardless, the end result is that I’m fortunate enough to now own one of these wonderful machines, and I couldn’t be happier with it. I’m actually even glad I was forced into getting a blue one in the end!

Mac Mini HTPC Initial thoughts

Happy new year people! 

Following this post about using a computer as a source for my high system, I got myself an HRT MusicStreamer DAC and I've been very impressed with its performance. Compared to the old DAC I was using, music sounds livelier, punchier and generally 'better' all round. If you are using a computer to play your music through a hifi, it's definitely a cost effective upgrade and I'd highly recommend it (or the more expensive MusicStreamer 2 +) if you have the hifi to justify it :)

I tweaked the QuickTime settings on my Windows 7 based MediaCentre pc as per these guidelines, but in a back-to-back comparison with a Mac, I still thought that the sound from the Mac was better. So on to part 2, replacing my Windows MediaCenter PC with a MacMini.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, so had done some research beforehand. To be honest, I really like the Windows Media Center experience, and after years of using it, I had a pretty slick setup that allowed me (and my wife and 6 year old daughter) to easily:

• Store and play digital music (wmv, mp3)
• Store and playback digital photos
• Play digital video files (including avi, mkv, mpg and ripped DVD's)
• Watch, pause and record freeview and view an EPG
• Control all of this with a Logitech Harmony all-in-one remote
• Break out of the Windows Media Center shell and use a Logitech wireless keyboard to browse the web (YouTube etc.)
• Store and play Apple Lossless audio files using ITunes and my iPhone to control playback

So, the task with the MacMini is to try and replicate and even improve on this.  So far I've got the Mac Mini setup, copied some audio and video files on, installed and configured Plex Media Center, and setup the Logitech remote. It all looks and works well so far, and the plugin repository for Plex means it's really easy to add functionality to Plex (i.e YouTube, Vimeo etc. within the Plex Interface).  I've purchased and installed the Plex app onto my iphone and that is also working well. So what's bugging me so far:

• I haven't got the freeview/DVR side of things going, and it's looking complicated
  
• Every time I restart Safari it resets to the default 100% zoom which is too small to read from the sofa. I guess I could install Chrome to see if that works though...
• Storage - my Windows Media Center has 2tb of storage, but the Mac Mini has only 500gb. They use 2.5" hard drives which are currently limited to 1tb in size. I could always use an external drive, but this ruins the aesthetics somewhat. I could also use another pc as a storage server, which I may end up doing. Part of the reasoning behind a Mac Mini however was to reduce our power consumption, and adding another PC doesn't really help with that...

Well, that's it for now. I'll keep going with the Mac and see how it goes...

a Bit Perfect

I'm a Hifi enthusiast, or more accurately I suppose, a music lover, but in my mind the two things go hand in hand.

In my teenage years I worked in a hifi shop and blew most of my wages on upgrades to amps, CD players, record players and even tape decks. After a while though, I realised that as my Hifi got better, the music that I was listening to got worse (I think the all time low was playing a dreaded Simply Red album to listen for some particular symbol crash or something...). So I sold my entire Hifi and all of my vinyl and CDs (this actually paid for my ticket to New Zealand back in 1999).

Over the last 5 years or so, I've been gradually getting back into it, and I've got a reasonable, mid priced stereo Hifi (Cambridge Audio amp, Mission speakers etc.). I've never been into home theatre, in fact I dislike it immensly, but I really love listening to music on a good sounding stereo. Recently, my daughter has started to get into it too, and we have some good times just sitting and listening.

I've been investigating using my computer as a source for my Hifi music. I've had my music in digital format for over 10 years (mostly in 320Kbps Mp3) but I never really thought of it as real Hifi. I've had a Windows Media Center in my lounge for even longer, and have used it for playing and recording TV, gaming, watching movies, and listening to music, but I've never really taken it seriously as part of my Hifi.

Last week however, I went into the local Hifi shop (Totally Wired) and was blown away listening to some digital music while I auditioned some Monitor Audio speakers. I came away with my mind reeling not only about the speakers, but also how I could use my PC as the main source of music through my Hifi. So having done some research over the weekend, I've decided to upgrade my DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter for those of you that aren't familiar with them). At the moment I use an ageing 'Xitel Pro HiFi Link' to go from a USB port on the PC to the analogue input on my amp. I've decided to replace this with an HRT Music Streamer 2 DAC, which has won rave reviews over the past few years.

But the sticking point has come over the computer itself. It turns out that Windows is incapable of producing 'Bit Perfect' audio (see here) which is the real key to getting the best sound from a digital device. I'm an iPhone owner, and I therefore use iTunes (and am one of the few people that seem to like it). I can copy my CD's into the Apple Lossless format and use iTunes (on my Windows PC) to play it back through the USB DAC and my Hifi. I can even use the excellent Apple Remote to control the playback from my iPhone.

But it won't sound as good on a Windows computer as it will on a Mac. I've tested this, and I think it's true. I've always thought that music from a Mac sounded tighter, punchier, even when listening on headphones, and this leaves me with the dilemma of whether I replace my Windows Media Center with a Mac (probably a Mac Mini, running XBMC or Plex as the Media Center front end), or leave things as they are. I've currently got 2 separate audio libaries on my PC, one for MP3 and another for Apple Lossless files. The setup is all pretty slick and after years of tinkering with and improving Windows Media Center, the Media Center is an intrinsic part of our TV, Movie and audio experience at home. So I'm wondering, do I leave it as it is, knowing that the sound quality isn't quite as good, or do I take the plunge and get a Mac Mini, and start all over again?

The IT department works for you and not the other way round

I had a number of feelings when I read this post fromMediaSnackers (I company that I follow, like and respect by the way). The IT Manager in me smarted a little, and I wanted to stand up and defend IT Departments around the world, glowing with pride at the helpful, appropriate, efficient service that we all deliver to our organisations.

Sadly, I don’t think I can do that.

But I can put forward some of my rambling views as to why IT Departments are often seen as barriers, rather than enablers of all of this wonderful technology that we have.

I’m the first person to agree that there are some really bad IT departments out there, and there are some really bad IT people in those departments, often running them. Being an IT person is no excuse for being an unhelpful bastard, but for some reason the industry does seem to attract its fair share of power hungry, self-centred types that seem to revel in knowing more than someone else.

But I don’t think I’m one of those, and I know of lots of other IT Managers and departments that are willing, helpful, passionate and communicative. So why is the IT department often seen in such a negative light?

I think some of it comes down to the nature of what an IT department actually does. We have to manage incredibly complex systems, and make them simple and easy to use for our end users. We have to balance usability with systems that are functional, secure, easy to scale and (normally) affordable. As well as managing the complex technical stuff, we are also often tasked with providing training for our end users. Oh, and because we can make computers work, we are also expected to be able to make projectors, printers, cabling, hifi systems and cellphones work as well. To be a good manager or member of an IT department, you have to be incredibly flexible, and unfortunately, techy people often aren’t.

Throw into the mix that often the people that are really good technically are the worst people to try and explain something useful to the end user. It’s rare to find someone who can code complex vb scripts with their eyes closed but can also explain to an end user why their 500 page full colour print job is taking more than 20 seconds to render to a printer that’s 15 years old, politely. But this is often what IT generalists in IT departments are expected to do, and this is where a lot of the problems stem from.

But the organisations have to take some of the blame. They do need to take IT ‘seriously’. They often want the world, but they don’t want to pay for it. They won’t invest in good infrastructure, good people, and professional development to train the people at the coalface. This often means that things don’t work, or they don’t work easily or efficiently, and then the IT department takes the blame, and gets bitter about it, and then things descend into the vicious “them vs us” circle that I’ve seen time and time again in businesses and schools. This is often when IT departments start saying no and being generally unhelpful.

Time was when a system or service wasn’t running, it wasn’t a big deal, but these days, if a server is down, the network isn’t functioning or (dare I say it) the Internet isn’t working, then a lot of people simply cannot do their jobs. This means that the people managing these departments have a lot of things to consider, and a lot of responsibility. But in my experience a lot of these people are woefully unqualified and lacking in the skills necessary to handle this responsibility. So when the pressure comes on, they respond by saying no to everything. But often this comes back on the organisation because they won’t pay enough to hire good people.

When I have to say no to something (more often than not it’s actually “not now” rather than no) I ask myself if I’m just saying it because it’s something I don’t want to do, or because my experience and knowledge tells me that there are some very good reasons why we shouldn’t do it. If it’s the latter, I’ll try to explain why in a way that end users, or other decision makers understand, without them having to know the in’s and out’s of Active Directory  or Cisco switches, because that’s what they pay me for.

Personally, after 15 years in the job, I’ve come to see myself as an enabler of technology, rather than someone who puts up barriers. However, I’m a ‘cautious enabler’. If I’m asked whether we can do something with technology, as a network manager I have to take into account everything that’s involved – technical, infrastructure, finance, security – all come in to play. By its very nature though, managing complex IT sometime entails playing ‘bad cop’ to some people with some brilliant ideas. If we didn’t, the IT systems (and remember, that word systems is really important) would fail, and then everyone would be pissed off, including the IT people……

IT systems do need to be managed skilfully, and sometimes that means saying no (or “not now”).

Having said that I think we’d all do well to remember once in a while that (as the post says) the IT Department works for the company, not the other way round.

End of ramble

John Driver

Kinect on Windows 7

I bought an Xbox 360 with Kinect recently, my first ever gaming console.

Prior to this the only computer game I've ever had any interest in has been Flight Simulator, but it wasn't just the Kinect games that drew me to the Xbox, it was the Kinect itself. For those of you that don't know, there are a gazzillion links out there that tells you what the Kinect is, but basically it's a motion sensor camera that detects and uses your movements to control the Xbox and the games. Having used it for a few weeks, I can attest that even to a non-gamer like me, it is truly awesome, and hints very favourably as to where the direction that user-interaction might be heading.

But now, I want to be able to use the Kinect to control my PC, and I'm going to use this blog to document some of my experiences with this. I'll start by saying that as far as I'm aware, at the time of writing, this is totally unsupported by Microsoft. They are working on an SDK for Kinect, but I don't think that's available yet.

So to start, I'm going to use some free software called Kinemote to try and get it to work. The Kinemote software promises "Minority Report" like gestures, which sounds cool to me. After downloading 4 pre-requisite bits of software from the Kinemote site, I then register (which is actually pretty tricky as the Captcha phrase box is probably the worst I have ever seen, and is pretty much unreadable), and once I've completed the registration and signed in, I then download the Kinemote Software, and something called the PCD Engine Dev release, which I'm not sure I need, but I download it anyway.

Software Installation
No issues with installation of the 4 bits of required software on my Windows 7 x86 machine (untested on x64).  I didn't do anything with the 'Motor Driver' as I figure this will come when I actually plug the Kinect in. The Kinemote software is also a standard install. When it comes to the 'Palm Click and Drag' (PCD) install, there is a directory with some raw files, and I don't know where to put those, so I leave that for now.

Hardware Installation
Trying to connect up my Kinect to the PC's USB port, I realise the plug from the Kinect is not a standard USB connector, but reading around a bit more, I see that you have to use power adapter that's supplied with the Kinect, which as well as connecting to an electrical socket, you also connect to the Kinect plug, which then gives you a standard USB plug to connect to your PC. Once conencted, Windows finds drivers for all but the "XBox NUI Audio", which I guess I'm not too concerned about anyway.

Configuring Kinemote
I then opened the Kinemote software, modified the option so that to start a session I simply waved at the camera, and tried to start by giving a wave at the Kinect. Unfortunately, I got an error message "Kinect Motor Driver not found, Led and Motor control disabled". The Kinemote FAQ helped me out here. Having sorted that out, I try again, expecting to be able to control the mouse pointer with my hand, but it still doesn't work.

At this point I give up with Kinemote. There's no way I'm ever going to get this to work on multiple teachers' laptops with this amount of setup and fiddling around. Time to look into something simpler, and Win-and-I looks like the next candidate.....

Re-developing our intranet

Amongst other things, one of the projects that I'm really excited about at the moment is re-developing our school Intranet. Over the next few month's I'm going to try and use this blog as a diary of this re-development, in the hope that not only have I got something to look back on, but that others doing the same thing might be able to learn from our mistakes.

A bit of history first. When I started at school 2 years ago, there was an existing implementation of Moodle, hosted on a server in the school, that had been put together by some enthusiastic teachers, and the previous network manager. The Moodle site was being used, albeit by a handful of teachers, to deliver learning content but it really needed some development. As well as the Moodle site, there was a simple html page, also hosted internally, that was acting as the school Intranet. This page was a basic, boring, single level page with links off to .pdf files of school news, and some other limited sets of information.

One of the first things we did as a group was to decide that the Intranet site needed a re-design. In order to take advantage of some of the dynamic content that it offers, we decided to use Moodle as our Intranet. Looking back on things now, I can see that this has probably made things complicated as time has gone on and the uptake of digital learning has increased within the school, but for the last few years it has worked reasonably well.

So we presently have a Moodle site that is set as the homepage for all of the browsers in the school. It is used for delivering teaching and learning (the LMS) and also for distributing information such as school news, sports draws etc. through forums. We have recently setup Single Sign On on the site, so all users at school are automatically logged on.

What we are looking for now is to expand the 'Intranet' side of things to incorporate many more areas of the school, and in doing so, we've come to the conclusion that Moodle probably isn't the best place to do this. So once again, we are I suppose looking at reverting Moodle to be our LMS, and employing an alternative platform (perhaps Google Apps, which we have and use fairly extensively) to provide our Intranet. A mission statement (that I have just come up with!) is that it "is a 'one stop shop' where staff, students and the extended school community can learn and communicate in an effective, efficient and safe manner". Our 'Moodle Manager' and I are going to make a start over the upcoming holidays.

Reminder to self

When using the Google Apps Directory Sync tool, make sure you TEST the configuration file before you save and run it! 

I have just managed to delete a user from my Google Apps domain (including all of her email, contacts etc.) after  excluding her account from synchronisation. What I didn't realise was that I had set the Sync tool to delete any accounts not found in LDAP or that are excluded, so on first sync, bang, off it went.

Unbelievably there seems to be no way to recover things yet, but I'll wait for Google to get back to me on that one.....

My favorite things from 2010

Here are some of my favorite things from 2010, some techy, some not so. Merry Christmas everyone:

Lenovo Laptops - Built like a tank, styled like a brick, Lenovo (Formerly IBM) laptops are certainly not considered pretty. But that's part of the appeal to me. That, and the fact that they just seem to go and go means they are always top trumps for me

Ubiquiti Wireless (www.ubnt.com) - For years I used the high street branded wireless gear (Dlink, Netgear etc.) and then I discovered Ubiquiti and have never looked back. The most reliable, well put together tech gear I think I've ever used. And cheap. Ubiquitous.....


Cactus Supertrousers (www.cactus.co.nz) - Bombproof trousers made right here in NZ. Feel like stiff cardboard when you first buy them, but after 2 years they are as comfy as an old gin soaked friend

Leatherman - Laugh, but yes, I am one of those tools that carry a multitool around on my belt all the time. But I use it every single day and if I forget it it's like having one of my hands cut off

Microsoft Active Directory - If you've got more than 15 or so computers to look after, nothing comes close.....

Group Policy (www.grouppolicy.biz) - and if you want to manage and automate everything on your network, then Group Policy is the most powerful friend you have

Google Apps - Want to write a document, and share it with others so that they can write on it, at the same time,via the web? Get Google Apps. Love them or not, Google have created a cloud based product that is so good it's scary. Oh, did I mention that it's free?......

iPhone 4 - "Tried the rest, now get the best"........ Seriously, good that Android and Windows Phone are, they don't come close to the iPhone. I've used everything and I always come back to it. The 4 is the most complete handheld device I ever used, oh, and apparently you can make phone calls on it too.....

Danny Macaskill. Watch clips of this fella and his amazing skills on a bike on YouTube. Makes me want to be 18 again.... And braver than I am now....

John

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The quest for the perfect classroom speakers....

I've written previously about my quest for a perfect speaker system for the classroom. One that finds that balance of ease of use, value for money, and of course great sound. Well this week I discovered the M-Audio AV20 and AV40 systems and I think I've finally found the perfect system.

If you are looking for a powered, 2.0 speaker system thats well made, and well priced compared to other mainstream brands, then these are well worth listening to


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Laptops for the classroom

See this 'Google Techies for Schools' post about trying to find the perfect laptop for the classroom. Having researched this for the last few months, the Toshiba T130 is the winner. The HP5320 is a better notebook all round, but the 4 hour battery life doesn't cut it unfortunately....

https://groups.google.com/group/techies-for-schools/browse_thread/thread/6cf729506e26a8dc#

And I wonder why things seem so complicated these days.....

I Love the Internet. There, I said it, and I'm sure it won't come as a surprise to any of my friends to know that this is true. Occasionally however, I am bemused, and agitated at how our lives, which if you read the small print, should be getting simpler, are so ridiculously complicated these days. And I wonder if the good old interweb isn't to blame.

Case in point. Sunday saw the last breath of my trusty (?) iPhone 3G. Over the last 18 months I've dropped it so many times I've lost count, but the fall from my pocket to the concrete floor by the barbecue was just too much, and the screen and case smashed into lots of little pieces. I was a little dismayed, but it's recent poor performance since the OS4 update was driving me nuts anyway, so I wasn't too upset. Other than the inconvenience of not having a phone for a few days, I'll be honest and say that I was already rubbing my hands at the prospect of a shiny new iPhone 4......

Right up until the time I visited our local Vodafone retailer that is.......

They eagerly wrote me a letter to say that they had checked, and yes, the phone was beyond repair, and provided me with a quote for $1099 NZD to replace it with an iPhone 4. Having initially only paid $549 NZD for the phone from the Vodafone online store for the 3G, I queried the cost of the replacement, and the salesman explained that the original cost of the handset is subsidised when you first sign up to a plan (which I knew already I suppose). And obviously comparing an iPhone 3G against and iPhone 4 isn't a fair comparison anyway, so I happily accepted the quote, knowing that my insurance company would hopefully pay for it anyway.

All was going well right up until the point where I asked the salesman if they had an iPhone 4 in stock, and whether I could come back tomorrow to get one. He then proceeded to explain that, even though they had iPhone 4 posters throughout the store, and had just quoted me for a replacement, that they couldn't sell me one as "at the moment they are only available from the online store". Having dealt with the Vodafone store previously, alarm bells started ringing.

So later in the day, I get confirmation that the insurance company have approved the claim, and that I should go shopping for a new iPhone, and send them the bill, minus the $250 excess. I go to the Vodafone online store as directed, to find that the iPhone 4 is only available to buy with a new iPhone data plan. But I've already got a data plan, I just want to buy a replacement handset for the one I broke on Sunday. But I can't do it. I can go to the Apple online store and buy one, but it's $25 more expensive, and I have no idea whether it will work on Vodafone, and no idea how I can get my existing number put onto a MicroSIM (which the iPhone 4 uses) without going through Vodafone. I call Vodafone, who tell me to go into my local retailer........

Familiar circles. By now, I should be used to it. But for someone who spends his life championing the internet, this is the increasingly all too familiar situation I find myself in. Local retail is disspearing because it can't compete with the web, but the web falls short when it comes to physicality and flexibility. I understand the reasons behind it all, and I find it frustrating. I can't begin to imagine how the average day to day joe public gets on. Maybe that's the problem.

So. Day 2. Vodafone store here we go again..........

Lego Mindstorms

Thought I'd post this for any of you running Lego MindStorms NXT on your network. 

An issue that has cropped up for us has been the save location of the 'MyBlocks' components. Although MindStorms allows you to save the project files wherever you like (our students put them in their home drives), the 'MyBlocks' components don't provide a traditional save as dialog box. After a bit of digging we worked out that they are saved to "C:\documents and settings\%username%\My Documents\Lego Creations\Mindstorms Projects\Profiles\Default\Blocks" which for us (and I'm sure most networks) is a problem. Students have no access to C: and the profiles are deleted on logoff, so our students would work on a PC, create and save a project, then add some MyBlocks. On logging on to another machine, the project would open, but the MyBlocks would be missing.

To get around this we did the following:

- grabbed a copy of the 'settings.ini' file from "C:\documents and settings\%username%\My Documents\Lego Creations\Mindstorms Projects\Profiles\Default\

- edited this file and changed the "Data Directory=/C/...." to "Data Directory=/H/"

- copied this up to a public share

- created a script that xcopies this file to "C:\documents and settings\%username%\My Documents\Lego Creations\Mindstorms Projects\Profiles\Default\" then starts the Mindstorms program

- Edited the desktop shortcut on the student machines to run this script instead of running Mindstorms directly

So the student runs the shortcut, xcopy copies the ini file, then Mindstorms runs (hardly any delay really). When they save a MyBlock now, it goes into their Home drive so it now becomes portable across the network

If anyone knows an alterantive or better way, please comment

Be quiet, I AM SPEAKING.......

In my eternal quest for the perfect classroom speaker system, I'm now evaluating the Creative T20 Series 2 system.

A bit of background first. Throughout the school we have a mixture of classroom audio systems, from basic 2 channel speakers that sit on the teachers desks, to big, overblown 'surround sound' amplifier/DVD/VCR systems that were fitted before I started here.

To make things consistent from one classroom to another, I'm trying to standardize the systems in the majority of classrooms. The first thing I'm doing is removing the surround sound systems where I can. Most of the teachers find them too confusing to use and my technician spends an inordinate amount of time explaining (yet again) how to switch from the DVD input, to the laptop and back again. I'm working on the premise that all of our full time teachers have laptops with DVD Players in them and they simply don't need stand alone DVD players any more. So out they go. VCR's are a bit more troublesome. As of yet we don't have a 'video on demand' system across the school network, and a number of departments still use VHS tapes. So for now, I'm leaving those classrooms alone. Each of our classrooms has a docking station for the HP laptops, a projector (some ceiling mounted, some not; more about that in another post I think). My aim is to have a simple system whereby each and every time a teacher docks their laptop they are automatically connected to a wall mounted sound system and the projector. Sounds simple enough, and not unreasonable for teachers to expect I think.

There have been a few issues with achieving this though, including screen resolution problems (solved with Windows 7, the latest Intel drivers and a bit of tweaking). The biggest problem has been trying to find the perfect speaker system. After considering things carefully, I decided that the speakers needed to be:

1) Powered (i.e active 'computer' speakers)
2) Wall mountable
3) Of sufficient quality to fill a room and not distort
4) Ideally 2 speakers with no sub-woofer

I wanted to get away from amplifiers and switches (just another thing for the teachers to have to think about) so the speakers had to be 'self powered'. They need to be able to be mounted up on the wall with brackets or a home made shelf. They obviously need to be able to do the job, and ideally I want a 2 speaker system.

There are a plethora of active speakers on the market, from cheap $20 tinny boxes to $1500 B&W systems. The budget was really no more than $200 per room, and in that range the the Creative T series fits the bill well. I have used the T10's previously in smaller classrooms and they have been good. They manage to fill the room, they are relatively easy to install and power, and they don't 'boom' until you push the volume over 75%. The T20s cost approximately twice as much, and early testing makes me think they are definitely better than the T10's, but not twice as good. They still boom a little at high volume but they definitely hold it together better than the T10's when say playing a DVD in class. I'll get them mounted up over the next week and will post more when I do

HP Laptop magic disappearing network cards

Good post here on an issue we have been having with HP 6730B Laptops

Forcing Google Apps to use Chrome instead of Internet Explorer

Continuing on with our roll-out of Google Apps for Education here at school, we have been struggling a little with browser compatibility.

First off,  it's obvious, and it's inevitable, but Google Apps is much better in Chrome than it is in Internet Explorer, hands down. I'm not entering into the browser debate, and in lots of ways I don't really have a browser preference but Google Apps simply looks, feels and functions better in Chrome, and as new features become available in Apps, we are finding that IE won't even run some of those features anyway (Wave, Drawing etc.). There is a plugin available from Google (Chrome Frame for IE) that enables Chrome functionality within IE, but as with most things Google, there doesn't seem to be any offline installer that we can use to push out to all of our client workstations. We will keep looking though, because if we find one, it will solve most of the issues we are having.

Another simple solution would seem to be just to roll-out Chrome to all of our workstations right? Wrong. Again, Google doesn't make this easy. Although there is a standalone installer for Google Chrome it installs itself into the user profile directory rather than the common 'Program Files' and for a few reasons this simply won't work on our network. Again, no easy fix for this yet either.

Having spent a few hours on this, I went and did something else to clear my mind, and I then remembered 'Portable Apps'. Portable Apps is a collection of applications that have been packaged up to run on portable media (i.e USB keys) but they often run just as well on a network, without many of the hassles of applications that need to be 'installed'. We use Audacity and WinFF as portable Apps here and students run them seamlessly across the network. There is a portable apps version of the latest Chrome browser and I'm pleased to say it works a treat. I simply installed it to a network share, then created shortcuts in the student profile that run the portable version of Chrome, and call up the particular address for each Google Apps component on startup. So the students now have separate shortcuts on the desktop to Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar that force run Google Chrome. Job done so far. We still have links on our Intranet page that point directly to the web addresses of Google Apps, and these will open in the default browser (which is IE on most of our workstations) so that is the next problem. We'll keep looking for the Google Chrome Frames installer, and maybe an easy way to push Chrome out to workstations, but for now, it will do.

18/11/10 Update on this, the Google Chrome Frame installer is now available as an msi which can be pushed out via Group Policy

More livin' and learnin'..

It was a 'teacher only' day on Friday and as most of the staff were in a PD session I used the time to tidy a few things that had been niggling at me for a while.

One of those things was to increase space for my virtual 'Windows Deployment Services' server so I could store more images on it. In order to do this, I decided to change the VHD file (Virtual Hard Drive file) of my virtual print server from a fixed disk to a dynamic disk, to claw back some of the 64Gb of space from the print server to use on the deployment server. The print server was only using 11Gb of it's drive space anyway, so I figured that space was probably better allocated somewhere else. Although I had never converted from a fixed to dynamic disk before I have gone the other way a number of times and it's always worked well. So I went ahead and did the conversion, but in doing so I ignored the error message regarding the snapshot that I had loaded against my print server telling me that there could be a loss of data. Stupid move. The conversion went well, I booted up the print server, but I couldn't logon to the domain. Strange I thought, but maybe something to do with trust relationships etc. (?). So I logged on as the local administrator, removed the server from the domain, rebooted, rejoined the domain and hey presto that fixed that problem. As far as I was aware that was it all sorted.

I had a days leave planned today and yesterday was a public holiday. I had a text message from a teacher yesterday telling me they were having printing problems and although alarm bells started to ring somewhere in the distance, after logging in from home and running some basic checks I assumed it was just error between keyboard and seat and left it at that. After my technician had texted me this morning in a state of distress that everyone was having print problems, I began to regret ignoring those basic checks. I won't go into everything but it turns out that by ignoring the snapshot error I had basically reset the printer to a state of 6 months ago, when I first set it up. I had used the .vhd file of the print server and ignored the .avhd snapshot file when I had done the conversion. In itself this wasn't so much of an issue but what was screwing things up was that the databases that handle our print cost recovery (Papercut and Monitor Business Machines) had gone back to as they were six months ago too. Nobody had any credit and none of the new printers I had put in since six months ago existed.

Luckily, I had made a manual backup of the original .vhd and .avhd files and after restoring and merging the snapshot back into the .vhd things are back to as they were. Phew. Again, so many lessons learned. The main thing I think is that although living in a Hyper-V world has made SO many improvements to things, it's also made me a little blase about what I do with my servers. I have to remind myself that even though they are virtual servers they can still stuff things up just as well as a real server when I get it wrong  ......

Heart stopper

I happened to be in work today using the workshop and whilst I was having lunch decided to run the HP Proliant Support Pack on my three main servers, seeing that nobody was around to notice when they were offline for a few minutes. Made the classic mistake of telling my wife that I was ready to be picked up before doing the last server, just so I wouldn't have to hang around (which is what I am now doing anyway....) So PSP updates BIOS and firmware in P400i controller, server reboots and I get the heart stopping, stomach churning "no boot disk found". Long story short anyway, firmware update has put the 2 logical drives in failed state. I discover this after seriously rethinking my career kind of hour.

Anyway. Booted from SmartStart CD reenabled drives, ignored all warnings that all the data was probably screwed and prayed as the server restarted and booted up fine. A few data integrity checks later and I am relieved, but cold waiting for my lift, and a little older and greyer.

There are so many lessons and morals to this story that I don't know where to start.....


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Consumer madness

I love living in this country, but often the lack of options when it comes to buying things drives me insane. Case in point. I’m trying to buy a new bike for my daughter at the moment, and I can’t buy the one I want. I’ve researched it and found that the best one is a Scott Mach One Jr. Most of the others are mass produced steel framed bikes that weigh as much as a small car. The Scott is light, well made, gets good reviews and according to the Scott website is readily available in New Zealand. Most importantly it is adjustable enough to last until she is 8 or 9 unlike the other bikes that will only last for 18 months or so. However, having spent the last 3 days on the phone and email to pretty much every bike company in the country I have worked out that they all buy their bikes from one wholesaler and they, and the wholesaler are out of stock and another shipment will not be coming until October. End of story.

I understand that we are victims of our remoteness here, but the socialist in me can’t bear this lack of competition. It pretty much applies to everything that you buy in New Zealand. Whiteware, cars and definitely computers.  In every industry there is the manufacturer, an importer (generally only one or two), the wholesaler, and a couple of retailers thrown in for good measure. We as the consumers get shafted from all directions – price, availability, quality and after sales service (which also is surprisingly bad here in NZ)

Maybe, it’s just me. Maybe I need to research less and just buy what’s on the shelves and be done with it. Put my logical side of me away and stop questioning this stuff. Otherwise I’m going to end up even more bitter than I already am..... If that is at all possible.....

Snobbery

I am trying to understand the inverted snobbery that is associated with computers and technology in general. The attitude that I come across daily that computers are somehow 'below' many people. That they are too busy or important to have to think about these pesky computer things. Or even better the certain pride that some people have about being (can't believe I'm even going to write it) "Computer Illiterate"......


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