Category Archives: Technology

Putty x64 Latest SVN Build

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Today i received a request from an American University for a x64 build of Putty, but using the latest SVN source as they required the GSSAPI support. I had a few hours so i did it.

The installer is here: Puttyx64_SVN-1.60.1.msi

The binaries are here: Puttyx64_SVN-1.60.1.zip

The installer will upgrade your existing Putty x64 installation from 0.60 to the latest SVN (revision 9026).

The new version will appear as 1.60.1. Let me explain this number. The first ‘1’ says that it is from the unstable branch, the ‘60’ says that it is from SVN after the 0.60 stable release. The final ‘1’ is a build number, each time i build from SVN it will be incremented until 0.61 is reached, then it will be reset to 1.

Enjoy.

MetroTwit

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About a month ago i started using MetroTwit. Its a really good, nice, clean twitter application which runs brilliantly on Windows 7. I moved to it because of its great UI but in the most recent update they seem to have gone a bit AWOL on the UI. So the aim of this post is to point this out to them so they can improve in the next version.

MetroTwitApp

I have colour coded the issues.

Starting from the top, the green box. Why is the Timestamp / Client at the top, i think it looks weird put it to the bottom.

Next is the pink box. Now this is personal preference, i personally think its redundant information, maybe make it a configurable option.

Next is the light blue box, now it is good that they added support for retweet API, BUT i do not think they put any thought into the design of that “Retweeted by ….” component, i think it could be done more subtly  without taking up the large amount of space that it does.

Finally we get to the orange boxes, they need to have a bigger margin with the window border. I would suggest looking at evening out the spacing between all of the buttons so it appears equal.

Just to close off i would like to just say that it is a great piece of software, and is by far the best twitter client there is for windows so keep up the good work guys!

MacBook Pro – Review

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So i have had my MacBook Pro for a few weeks now so i thought i would write down some comments about it, and any improvements Apple could make.

  • Matt Screen Option for 13” MBP (I am looking at getting a Matte screen protector)
  • Ability to Boot Windows Installer from USB without rEFIt (It can boot OS X / Linux from USB just not Windows – which seems weird as all modern bioses can (yes i know the MBP has EFI instead of a regular BIOS))
  • Option not to have a Super Drive, maybe replace with secondary hard disk drive, or bigger battery (think how many more hours that could add would make it the ultimate portable laptop).
  • I have set Windows 7 to be the default start-up partition, but every time i boot into OS X (rarely) it resets this to OS X, which if well – annoying. Imagine if Microsoft pulled a trick like this with the default web browser.
  • Maybe have options for or to remove the IR receiver and card slot they take a bit out of the minimal design, and the card slot will just collect dirt.
  • Move the sleep light to one of the sides, so the front is that bit cleaner.
  • Have some sort of covers for the various ports on the side, might improve the design a bit, and keep the unused ones clean (I mean who ever uses the Ethernet one? Which for me with just collect dirt and bits.)
  • Make the Touchpad slightly bigger, there isn’t much space, but every millimetre counts on these things.

Apart from that its a pretty good machine, and while i am not using OS X that much (it is more of a “Fisher Price My First OS” type of OS) as Unix OS’s go its pretty good, and while i have been on a rubbish internet connection it has made a good substitution for SSH’ing into my server, although i do not know how much longer it will remain on the laptop.

I should be getting some stickers soon from @bennuk (Microsoft Developer Evangelist), which should make my laptop look awesome. Will blog some pictures when i get them.

Domains Names for Sale / Transfer

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So i brought a new domain name today and I’ve realised how much I’m spending on domains each year so i have decided to sell / get rid of some of them.

If you are interested in any of the following please post a comment and we can arrange a transfer of ownership if an offer isn’t made on a domain by the lay day in october i will simply unregister it, and it will fall back to my registrar who will probably charge a lot more for you to acquire it.

Anyway the domain names are:

  • microsoftbugtracker.com
  • windowsbugtracker.com
  • stayoffthecake.com
  • applesucks.co.uk

If your interested post me a comment (with your email address so i can reply) or email me if you have my email address.

So I brought a MacBook Pro

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As my old laptop is rather crap (battery, speed, graphics) and it was restricting me from getting any real work done I decided to move up my intended purchase of a new laptop mainly a MacBook Pro 13.3/2.4/4/250.

Now I am a Microsoft fan and i generally hate Apple so why did I buy a MacBook Pro?

  • Student Discount – only £860
  • Lovely Screen with a good pixel density (1280×800 on 13.3” which is same resolution as my old laptop which is 1280×800 on 15”)
  • Exceptional Battery Life
  • Pretty damn good quality of hardware and design (although the Apple logo on the back annoys me)
  • Runs OS X without messing about so I can use OS X as a test/dev environment.
  • They are well known for running Windows exceptionally well.

Ok so that’s why I brought it, but how did it go? It didn’t go so well. In the space of 7 days I have had to have my MBP replaced twice due to dead pixels on the first two. The nearest Apple store is in Bristol which is a good 5-6hour round trip and I have now made that journey 3 times which as you can imagine is quite annoying. Anyway i finally got a non faulty MBP and it is now setup with all my favourite software, but there were some issues with this.

First issue is that you cannot boot a Windows installer from USB using the default EFI firmware, to get around this you need to install rEFIt which does allow it.

The second issue was turning off the annoying Start-up boing to turn that off you need to get StartupSound.prefpane.

At the moment I am on a terrible internet connection (only getting 40KB/s) and OS X wanted over 1gb of updates (including X-Code update) which it will download in the background if you don’t turn it off. To turn it off go to Apple Logo –> System Preferences –> Software Updates and turn off automatic downloading.

The most recent issue i have had is in Windows and finding the hash-key (which doesn’t work in Live Writer for some weird reason). After about 15minutes of playing around and downloading the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator i found out it is Alt-GR (the Alt on the right hand side of the keyboard) + 3

Anyway I’m really pleased with it, and it runs Windows 7 like a dream, its almost as powerful as my desktop. With some initial testing Windows does get a good 7+ hours out of the battery which while begin 3 less than OS X, its still very good.