Windows Web Hosting, Web Technologies, etc
Archive for August, 2006
Embedding Video in WordPress
Aug 20th
I enabled the WP-Extremevideo plugin from: http://www.rossgerbasi.com/2006/01/21/extreme-video-plugin-20/ in my wordpress blog so that now I can edit movies directly into a blog entry. This plugin is great as it allows all types of videos including, YouTube, Google Videos, FLV, Quicktime, etc. An example of a youtube video is shown below. [gv data="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=857396983002186497&hl=en"][/gv] [gv data="cv157ZIInUk"][/gv]
I never thought I’d say this but…
Aug 19th
I USE FIREFOX
I have officially migrated my primary web browsing to FireFox. I am one of the old salts on the internet and was using mosiac when it was first released from UIUC, then I started using netscape from "Mosaic Communications Corporation" before they changed their name to netscape. I didn't care for them converting netscape to a commercial product so when Microsoft released IE and it started to become the browser of all browsers, I switched to IE. I thought Netscape was on crack when they developed mozilla.org and the first mozillas were still slow and bloated and IE browsed circles around them. But now, after resisting and resisting waiting for the next "new and improved IE" and having the IE7 beta BLOW UP on me, I decided to 'test' firefox. Well it's funny. One of the things that made netscape superior to mosaic was that it loaded pages so much faster and soon mosaic was no longer the browser of choice, netscape was (even if it was a commercial software program). Eventually IE loaded pages so much faster than Netscape and netscape was no longer the browser of choice. Now comes FireFox and Firefox is without question the fastest browser I've ever used and with the number of extensions available for it I have some great features that even IE7 doesn't have. So I guess we've gone full circle returning to an open source browser once again. Interesting this technology of ours…
It’s been a full year and now a major change .. now blogging in WordPress
Aug 19th
I just realized that my blog has been active for over a year now. Can't believe I'm still blogging, I thought for sure I would have quit by now. Well after much research I've decided to migrate my blog from Community Server (a dot net based blogging application) to WordPress, a php and mysql blogging application. CommunityServer is a great application developed and backed by a commercial organization, unfortunately as a commercial organization they want to make more money and have released many add-ons as commercial plugins. Since this is a personal blog and I make no money from it, it doesn't make sense to purchase these add-ons. So I looked for an alternative and really wanted a dotnet based application but when it's all said and done, WordPress won. WordPress is written in PHP & MySQL and contrary to what the linux drones would have you believe PHP & MySQL run without flaw on Windows thanks to good developers and a little talent from the system administrators at AppliedI.net. One of the features I wanted from my blog was the ability to create blog entries via email, with community server you have to purchase this add-on, with wordpress, you have to simply enable it. I wanted a better theme system and with wordpress there are hundreds of freely and commercially available themes. With CS, it was a hard hunt. Finally, I just wanted a change. So here it is. I have to say wordpress was quite easy to get up and running and migrating from CS wasn't the easiest possible as I had to move each entry manually, but alas it's online.
Connecting To Server Console In Terminal Services
Aug 18th
This was pointed out to me by my colleague Carlos, If you want to connect to the server console of a Windows 2003 server through terminal services (if you don't know what this means, it's the same as if you connected a keyboard, mouse and monitor to the server and logged in directly from in front of the box) you can execute the following:
If you want to connect to a terminal server via the command prompt you can do so by typing the following: “mstsc -v:servername /F –console”. ‘mstsc’ represents the remote desktop connection executable file, -v specifies which server to connect to, /F is for full screen mode, and –console to indicate that you want to connect to the console.
That's a pretty handy little trick as some applications will only run from the console and many popup messages only display on the console.
If that doesn’t work try: mstsc -v:servername -console
