Summer IT Projects

By James | Published: November 12, 2009

Waiheke IslandMy last exam is all done and dusted, marking the completion of my B.Sc in Computer Science! No time to pat myself on the back for that just yet however.

Here is a list of IT projects I’ll be likely working on for the next couple of months. Hopefully I’ll be able to cross most of them off.

  • Refurbish our server room (done)
  • Recable admin block (done)
  • Consolidate / migrate 4 Windows 2003 physical servers to Windows 2008 R2 running in Hyper-V Core (done)
  • Deploy a Cisco UC520 phone system test phase (done)
  • Create a new Windows 7 deployment for 25 new staff computers (done)
  • Switch over to using UC520 in production (final testing stage)
  • Integrate the UC520 with Exchange 2010 (not needed)
  • Get Caller ID integration going with ACT! 6.0 (done)
  • Build a website in Silverstripe (cancelled)
  • Finish the Greymouth Baptist Church website
  • Find a job for 2010, or pursue self employment (done)
  • And if I get time, write my DFSR monitoring tool Windows 2008 (R2?) has a more powerful monitoring tool built in, including propagation testing which is what I was planning on doing.
  • Catch up with friends, family, beach, sun, lake, bike, garden (done)
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Atcom IP0X IP Phone System Mini-review

By James | Published: October 25, 2009
Atcom IP04

Atcom IP04

Back in 2008 I posted an article about Affordable IP Phone Systems. This was all very well but I hadn’t actually ever touched the Atcom IP04 / IP08 phone system.

A couple of months ago I was able to get my hands on a demo unit thanks very much to Hadley at Nicegear. I regret being very busy with Uni at the time meant I wasn’t able to conduct an in-depth or scientific review.

Here are some of the things I can remember about the unit and the process of getting it up and running. Please note I would recommend trying it out first if you are considering going this route before leaping into it.

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Posted in Research, Telephony, Work | Tagged | 6 Comments

Making Age of Mythology work in Parallels

By James | Published: October 23, 2009

Now I’m not a gamer, but I do like to have the occasional multiplayer game of Age of Mythology or Age of Empires. When I purchased the upgrade to Parallels 4 earlier in the year I was disappointed to find Age of Mythology wouldn’t run on it.

You wil get the error message “This graphics card is not supported by Age of Mythology”, etc.

I did some research and found a forum post by awittenauer which pointed me in the right direction. By copying existing GFX files and modifying them so that AoM would recognise the Parallels Video Driver, I was able to get it working easily. I imagine this process should work for other games if you are receiving a similar message.

AOM Parallels Screenshot

  1. First, download my Parallels GFX Config Files
  2. Unzip and copy the contents into the gfxconfig folders of your game. In my case this was C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Mythology\gfxconfig   &   gfxconfig2.
  3. You should now be able to run the game.

If you are still having trouble getting it working, or want to add support for different resolutions, open up the parallels.gfx file in Notepad. Here you can customise resolution options etc.

Please let me know how you get on! Thanks again to awittenauer for the idea..

Posted in Mac | 18 Comments

Affordable Video Conferencing – Part 2 – Software

By James | Published: October 22, 2009

Following up on the Affordable Video Conferencing – Part 1 post, I promised another post talking about the software I installed on the video conferencing unit. My Flare Solutions friends reminded me a couple of days ago to finish the series.

If you haven’t read part 1 – do it now. In summary, I converted a Dell Small Form Factor PC into a Video Conferencing trolly. I mounted the PC to the sack barrow using some tiedowns.

After trialling many different options – trying hard to find a free one – we were left with a shortlist of Mirial Softphone, or Polycom PVX. While there were other free products out there, we specifically wanted a product which would allow us to do direct IP calls, so we could call into parties using real hardware conferencing units too.

We trialled both products, not scientifically. The general consensus was that Mirial perhaps had slightly better performance/quality, but the user interface of Polycom PVX was much more intuitive.

Both are great products, in the end it came down to affordability – Polycom gave us a great educational price through an NZ dealer which sealed the deal.

Our video conferencing setup hasn’t been without its problems – first it was a faulty network cable, then we didn’t have a static IP address set for the unit in Hokitika, obviously small problems which could happen with any units.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this seems to be an area that could do with some quality open source development!

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IPv6

By James | Published: August 19, 2009

I’ve been playing around with IPv6 over the last few days; my ISP doesn’t give out IPv6 addresses yet, but thanks to Hurricane Electric I now have a /48 being routed straight to me. In theory I could subnet that /48 into 65536 subnets, each containing a ridiculous number of hosts.

This is a strange feeling after growing up with 1 routable IP address to somehow share across a whole network and having hundreds of NAT port forwards. It really should make life much easier.

But… there are a few implications. Previously in many situations we have been able to rely on NAT as a reasonably effective firewall. NAT is excellent at that. Customer ADSL/Cable routers will need to now have firewalls which many don’t… and if they do have firewalls it is almost certain they wont be managed properly.

So IPv6 end to end connectivity is all very well; but now instead of managing port forwarding there is going to need to be managing of firewalls instead. By default I am sure they will be managed by UPNP; so basically may as well not be running a firewall unless UPNP gets some security added.

Lastly, I realised IPv6 means you can no longer use the excuse of decreasing the size of broadcast domains when subnetting or using VLANs… It now will be reducing the multicast domains seeing IPv6 now uses multicast to replace the broadcast functions. I’m pretty sure most usually VLANs are more about security anyway than broadcast domains.

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