I finally got around to taking that Final Cut Server exam this week. It was pretty straight forward. I think there is definitely a methodology to writing exams. I wrote a few for Brainbench and because their structure was extremely laid out really got to learn a lot about the methodology to writing questions. I liked the fact that Apple is adding more and more questions where you click on the appropriate item on a screenshot, I look forward to scenario simulations. Microsoft exams mostly require you to get at least one simulator correct in order to pass the exam, some vendors have gone to simulation-only, but the closest Apple…
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Mac OS X Server and WINS
I get a lot of questions about why a Windows computer cannot see a Mac OS X Server on the network when Macs can – or put differently why a Windows computer cannot browse the network for a Mac OS X Server. The first thing I always ask is can you ping it by IP address AND by name. If you can ping the host by IP address then you know the host can communicate with the client. If you cannot then you could be having DNS issues or NetBIOS issues. If you use DNS then that’s easy enough to fix, create or edit the record for the server and…
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Similar Posts
A couple of updates to the site today. First, if you view an article it will show a list of similar articles to the one you’re viewing. Second, I moved the tag cloud to the top of the side bar and changed the tag cloud to show categories. Hope you enjoy/approve/whatever.
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Southern California Linux Expo Soon!
I’m pretty sure this will be the first SCALE that I will not be attending or speaking at. I do wish I could go, but alas, timing is bad… But since I can’t go you should go. It’s a great little conference (although far bigger year in and year out). To Quote Them: Free and Open Source software can save you money. Whether you’re running a business or are a computer user, FOSS software is high-quality software that can be quite inexpensive. Smart organizations know that, and they come to SCALE, and sponsor SCALE. And because the FOSS community continues its vibrant growth unabated, there were more than…
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Article on scripting networksetup for Xsan on Xsanity
Wondering why I’ve been a little light on Xsan postings? I posted an article on how to write a script to automate the setup of the Metadata and house networks in an Xsan environment on Xsanity. It uses networksetup for the most part and is meant to be a hybrid between a networksetup walkthrough and a mini-shell scripting tutorial. It can also be leveraged for scripting the initial setup of your clients in an imaging workflow, although you will typically not need to use static IP addresses in a mass deployment scenario.
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Using Final Cut Server to edit over a WAN?
Maybe you will, maybe not… In terms of how it taxes the network, clips will typically be 5 to 25MB per second (big B there By the Way) according to how many frames per second and other design considerations. Obviously even if there is a 5MB pipe, the clips are likely too big to edit given a live master asset so you’d need to cache locally, which means for each clip (and however many clips in a project) you’re talking about that much data caching to the local host before you can start editing. To put this into a pseudo-real-world scenario (taking collisions, encryption and network latency out of the…
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Google Mail adds ActiveSync
Exchange/iPhone users, you’ve finally gotten the Google hookup. ActiveSync has been added to the Google repertoire allowing gmail users to sync their contacts and calendars in the same fashion that Exchange and Kerio users can, although mail will still need to go through IMAP, which is fairly straight forward to configure. This means that Google Mail is finally in serious competition with a few other players in the messaging market. At this point, Google has finally knocked down one of the serious barriers I had with gmail adoption for companies. I am glad to see that they realize (and I’m sure have realized but just got the kinks worked out)…
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Moodle Security
Moodle is a popular Course Management Solution (CMS) that is typically deployed in a less-than-secure manner. This is an issue with any system, but in a number of schools it can cause some pretty serious problems given the penchant that students have to muck with things. In the broader technology certification world it can be an even bigger issue in that, well, we’re geeks… So a few tips on securing Moodle: Tie Moodle into Active Directory (from the Admin console, Users->Authentication->LDAP) or some other Directory Service. From the Admin console, go to Administration->Security and make sure all of these settings match your security plan. Automate security scanning. For example, check…
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Moving Day
I am deep in the throes of moving into my new house. Which makes me think about moving racks. One should always, always, always make sure to take all of their servers out of the rack when you move it. Don’t move full racks (or trust movers with full racks)… I must admit I usually leave the UPS in there, but hopefully it’s sitting on the bottom and actually increases the structural integrity of the rack (or so I say to myself while staring down the barrel of having to pull one out of a rack)… I don’t have an issue leaving fan assemblies or PDUs either. But not the…
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Deployment Considerations for OpenOffice.org 3.0.1
A number of school districts and companies around the country are currently looking at buying the next version of Microsoft Office and a surprising number of school districts are starting to shift towards OpenOffice.org. However, there is not as much traction on the corporate side of the fence. So what does it mean to switch to OpenOffice? To me it’s all about training. OpenOffice is able to do almost everything that Office can do. It’s mature in the 3 release and it’s of course, open source and therefore doesn’t require you to purchase it. However, OpenOffice is a drastic change for some users. Sometimes features are in different places or…