The new releases continue to flow! According to http://www.itpro.co.uk/643489/microsoft-releases-office-2013-to-manufacturers Office 2013 has now been released to manufacturers, which means general availability should be sometime in Spring.
No news yet for Technet, MSDN and MAPs subscribers.
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One thing that can make a huge difference to the look and feel of a website are the fonts used within the site. It's very easy to get locked into the idea that you should restrict yourself to the "web safe fonts" such as those defined at W3 schools.
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Not that you particularly asked to be kept updated, but I've now had confirmation that my Raspberry Pi is confirmed for delivery on 28th May - just can't wait to start playing with this little beastie!
In preparation for the big day, I've rounded up these extra bits and bobs.
- SD Card - 8Gb
- Power supply- AKA an old Blackberry charger - 3 pin UK plug to USB
- HDMI to VGA cable (because all my computer monitors have VGA but not HDMI connections, and I don't just want to use it on my HDMI capable TVs)
- USB Keyboard and Mouse
- Python tutorials
And I'm probably going to need to source a case for it soon as these early Pis get supplied without a case, but there seems to be a good candidate at http://www.modmypi.com/
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According to the rumours the much talked about Raspberry Pi looks set to launch this week.
The Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. Rather than reiterate all the details that can be found on their website, pop on over Raspberry Pi at http://www.raspberrypi.org/.
I'm looking forward to getting one of these little beasties as it really harks back to the days of the ZX Spectrum in the early 80s, when kids like me learnt how to program, which then set us up for later careers in IT. Don't expect a fully fledged Windows PC, this is very much a hobbyist Linux platform, but that is perfect to start your programming education.
So those of you who are geeks like me or have kids, it may just be time to take a look back to the future!
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Have you ever wanted to convert a Microsoft Access database to MySQL?
A quick and easy way of doing this is with the excellent Bullzip Access to MySQL tool available from http://www.bullzip.com/products/a2m/info.php. You can either transfer directly into a MySQL database or you can create a dump file instead.
Best thing about it is the fact that it is highly configurable and free! There is a commercial version available if the free version doesn’t have the features that you need.
Also if you need to split a SQL dump into multiple parts because of file size restrictions of any kind, you may want to look out for SQLDumpSplitter 2 by Philip Lehmann-Bohm, (
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Just recently I attended one of Microsoft's TechEd roadshows on virtualisation. And it must be said that these guys really know how to do an educational show. This particular session was headed by James O'Neill, whose blog you can read here.
I did have a degree of understanding of virtualisation before, simply by playing around with VMWare's server and workstation products. Today I have always used them for 2 basic uses:- to create an isolated PC environment to test a new bit of software, or to evaluate a new operating system such as Ubuntu Linux.
The line that came out of the day that described virtualisation the best was this -- "Virtualisation is about abstracting one layer on the technology stack from the next layer". Makes sense to me!
However what I hadn't really considered before was the various different types of virtualisation. In essence there are 4 different types...
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James Senior has published a new post on mesh here describing using Live Mesh with different kinds of devices.
In essence there are four types of devices available - Creators, Consumers, Rich End-Points and Processors.
Creators are devices that create content and put it into the mesh for synchronization to devices. Sot this could be a digital camera that is connected by an eye-Fi SD card to the Mesh.
Consumers would be devices that can consume information synchronized in Live Mesh, which could be a picture or a mp3 player.
Rich End-points are the computers and devices that want to do more than create or consume content.
Processors are devices that might carry out a service behind the scenes for the user or their devices in their Mesh. An example of a processor might be online backup where your data can be backed up in the background to a storage device outside of your existing Mesh.
When you view Mesh in this context, it really seems that they sky is the limit!
Anyway pop over to James' blog and read about it in more detail.
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What a day at PDC, (Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference)!
A number of new technologies have either been launched or previewed - all of which look pretty interesting.
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So the topic for today is Cloud computing... like most of the subject matter I cover with this blog I am by no means an expert, but I think that it's an area that is going to become far more prevalent very quickly, so I wanted to give a view on it in the vague hope that someone out there is listening!. If nothing else this works as a cathartic exercise to get these technologies that I "understand" into a written form which helps to solidify the idea in my head...
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