Microsoft just released a whitepaper documenting backup and recovery options for those that implement small to medium SharePoint 2007 farms. The document covers everything from the file to the farm level, as well as mentions some additional tools available on CodePlex to autoarchive on site delete, and some guidance on customizations via Solutions. Check it out.
Well the site is now on the production MT 4.0 codebase, which was released today. I haven’t had the time to dig into why the sidebar templates get all clobbered when I try to strip out the junk and add in a widget set, but hopefully I’ll get to it soon.
Jesse Gardner recently posted a great article on his Movable Tweak site documenting the fundamental design changes between MT3 Templates and MT4 Teamplates. If you haven’t looked at the templates, basically all of the current templates have been modularized so common components are read from the same file, where previously you had to go to every template you wanted to change by hand. You can read the article here.
So I just upgraded from MT4 Beta 6 to RC1 today, and also went through every template to update it to the new MT4 code (something I didn’t do during Beta 6). Everything works as intended. I then try one of the new standard styles available through the UI. It loads okay, but it removes the widget list I created. The problem is, the styles should enumerate / create a widget set to use for the style, and instead it seems to be hard-coded to the style itself. Nice, now I have to scrape through module code to take their stuff out and put back the widget selection code that should have been there in the first place. Ugh.
After having yet another Windows Update with the nagging restart later pop-up, I had it. I searched around and on The Code Project they had the solution:
I found this after a lot of Googling, so I’d like to share the solution. Yep, this may not be new or even advanced but it surely helped me…
Anyone who is running Windows XP SP2 know what I’m talking about. That stupid, annoying, most ill-designed dialog box ever invented in the history of the computer science that asks “Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?”
And there are only two options: Restart Now/Restart Later. “Restart Later” means that this stupid thing will ask you again in 10 minutes. Yes, if you’re willing to work for the next 4 hours until lunch before rebooting, this means you’ll need to answer this question 24 times. Did I mention that the dialog steals the focus?Now, to get rid of it:
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installationsYou can configure how often it will nag you (I re-configured it for 720 minutes, which means I’ll be asked twice on a work day), or completely disable it.
[edit]Oh, I almost forgot: this setting is only loaded when Windows starts, so a reboot is needed. If that stupid dialog is on your screen now, just stop the “Automatic Updates” service (but keep it as Automatic, so it gets reloaded on the next start) and you won’t see it again [/edit]
Fantastic, now I won’t get nagged to reboot every 10 minutes!
Update: Silly me, it’s on StickyC.com too. Guess I should have poked around his blog a little more before doing a search!
As I was finally reinstalling MapSource Topo USA for my Garmin eTrex Legend GPS, now that I bought a replacement link cable for the one that got stolen in Hawaii, I remembered what a pain it was that you had to have each data CD in the drive to select map segments to view / transfer / etc. That is until I found a post on StickyC.com where Chris found a way to run MapSource Topo maps off of the hard drive:
Rather than making yet more ISO’s, I found out where the Garmin software stores it’s data paths in the registry and fixed it there, so now I can just copy all of the Topo maps to the local hard disk and everything runs just fine.
Here’s the step-by-step on what to do if you’re in the same boat:
You need to edit the registry to change where the Garmin software looks for the files and manually copy the files to the hard disk.
IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT A REGISTRY IS OR DO NOT FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH EDITING ONE - PLEASE DO NOT FOLLOW THIS PROCEDURE! I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT MAY OCCUR DUE TO THIS PROCEDURE! IRREVOCABLE DAMAGE MAY RESULT IF A MISTAKE IS MADE!
On each CD, there’s a folder containing the .IMG files (The folders are East, West, Alaska, and Hawaii). Create a folder on your hard disk and copy the folders for the particular regions you want into it (I went with C:\Garmin\Topo).
In the registry, the paths are stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Garmin\MapSource\Products\X\Loc
Where X above is a number (for Topo, there’s 6, 7, 8, and 9). Each number corresponds to one of the maps.
You want to change each entry for Loc to the path to where you copied the files. For instance, in my case, 6 is for East and I changed it from D: to C:\Garmin\Topo\East. Double-click on the Loc text to open a dialog to change the Value Data to the path where you copied the files. Repeat for each of the 4 entries that you copied to your hard disk. If you didn’t want to put all that data on (say you never plan to geocache in Alaska), just don’t copy that folder to your disk and leave the registry entry as it was.
I followed the directions and it worked flawlessly 
Over on the Excel Team blog, I found an old post referencing new limits in Excel 2007 while researching something for some new SharePoint sites.
Here are some of the highlights:
The total number of available columns in Excel
Old Limit: 256 (2^8)
New Limit: 16k (2^14)The total number of available rows in Excel
Old Limit: 64k (2^16)
New Limit: 1M (2^20)Total amount of PC memory that Excel can use
Old Limit: 1GB
New Limit: Maximum allowed by WindowsNumber of unique colours allowed a single workbook
Old Limit: 56 (indexed colour)
New Limit: 4.3 billion (32-bit colour)Number of conditional format conditions on a cell
Old Limit: 3 conditions
New Limit: Limited by available memoryNumber of levels of sorting on a range or table
Old Limit: 3
New Limit: 64Number of items shown in the Auto-Filter dropdown
Old Limit: 1,000
New Limit: 10,000
It’s nice to see that the row limit is finally higher than 64k, and anything more than 1 million rows should probably be in a more robust application (SQL Server DB).
For the entire list, visit the Excel Team blog.
I received an email from Sony today regarding PSP news. I don’t have a PSP, but I look at the newsletter anyway. I notice that they’ve just released version 2 of their firmware for the unit. So I curiously look at what’s been added. I see 4×3 support for video, some more interoperability with Memory Stick Duo items, etc., but towards the bottom I see the following:
“MP4 (the audio codec for MP4 format audio files is MPEG-4 AAC) and WAV (Linear PCM) have been added as playable file formats (for music saved on Memory Stick Duo? media).”
Now this isn’t protected AAC mind you, but with something like jHymn, you can now use your iTunes songs on the PSP (after some massaging of course). Now the iPod still has far greater memory than the PSP, but it definitely thrusts the PSP further into the all-in-one handheld entertainment device space.
The more I read about the upcoming iTunes 4.9 with podcasting support, the more it makes sense why they’re adding it. It’s not necessarily to help bring podcasting to the mainstream. It’s not because they’re all around good folks at Apple. It’s because if you look for your podcasts via the iTunes Music Store interface, which all the demos have shown, Apple now has even more visits / views of their other purchasable content at the store. It’s a give and take (hopefully) that Apple will locally host your podcast .mp3, .aac, ogg vorbis, or whatever, but you have to deal with Apple having links to buy songs all around the link to get to your podcast. That might sound all fine and dandy, but what if the Apple provided content surrounding your podcast doesn’t agree with what your podcast might be conveying? Unfortunately since you don’t own the real estate where that link is shown, you’re simply out of luck, with the only recourse being to request that your podcast be removed. Another thing that should be interesting to see are those podcasts with in-line/cast sponsorship, especially if it involves an Apple competitor. Will they be listed as fairly as Apple-friendly podcasts? Will they not be listed at all? One can only wait and see.
What is nice about this model are those who can’t handle the bandwidth limitations on their podcast, which Apple will help with, but would your podcast being in the Music store be the podcasting equivalent of selling out? Does that limit the ability of sponsorship later on? Unfortunately we won’t know the answer to this until after iTunes 4.9 comes out. Here’s to hoping that the advent of podcasts in the iTunes Music Store does not remove the freedom and openness of podcasting and lower it to a “gateway mechanism” to buy songs at the store.
On Maximum Aardvark, AJ talks about how to make the shuffle function work better, namely by optomizing some smart playlists to tailor to your listening preference for the day. The ideas he has are good for someone who has spent the time to rate their songs on their iPod or in iTunes, but I’m not that inclined to rate tons of songs nonstop to get to that point.
You can read more about it here.
