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Looks like I’m not the only one to have problems with friends and family wanting help with their computers. I’ve talked about this before and, whilst my own problem has been much reduced, plainly a lot of people in IT have problems associated with people expecting unreasonable amounts of help with their home electrical equipment. In many ways the problem isn’t close friends and family, it’s when friends and family start farming you out to their friends and acquaintances.

Whilst Google Code is a very good open source repository service, it does have a few wrinkles. Take the image below: Unless I’ve been missing something these last few years, there are only 24 hours in a day!

The chances are that the vast majority of the people reading this post are professional IT people in some capacity or another. As professionals we are prone to burn out unless we take specific precautions to prevent it. Bashing your head against the IT firewall everyday can leave you feeling a bit empty and burnt out. From my own perspective I have certainly been burnt out on this blog for at least a couple of months.

Excellent post on the Pushing Pixels blog about surviving a hobby open source project. Well worth a read if you are involved in a single person open source project.

One of the interesting things about Lisp is the ability to use macros to effectively create your own language. Instead of using Lisp to solve your problem, write a language in which your problem can be solved and then solve it using your own mini-language. When I heard of the new features in Powershell v2, the one that stood out for me was the ease with which you can create cmdlets using the Powershell scripting language rather than being forced to use C# or VB.

So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all of these years… if only I’d known this earlier I’d currently be sunning myself on a beach in the Bahamas.

I am currently in the process of broadening my knowledge of Windows Powershell and I thought I’d post some of the excellent resources I’ve found. Many are available for free online, some you’ll have to shell out money for. The book, Windows Powershell in Action, is well worth buying if you want to gain an understanding of how Powershell works. Tutorials PowerShell Pro Tutorial Arstechnica Tutorial – created prior to the rename to Powershell but still worth your time The DFO Show – introducing Windows PowerShell [video] Computer Performance Powershell Tutorial Community powershellcommunity.

A comparison of various open source network management tools with information about the support options available for each tool.

A comparison of various open source network management tools.

One side effect of the increased competition in open source network management is that it is becoming increasingly hard to choose which tool is right for you. With that in mind I intend to create a comparison featuring the best known open source tools to make the process of choosing the right tool a little bit easier. I’ll publish the comparison in tranches so that, by the end of it, a comprehensive comparison is available.