This Saturday i decided to take a trip to the Science Museum for some inspiration for an assignment. When i got there i was pretty disappointed, I'm not saying it wasn't interesting because it was. There some excellent Charles Babbage Machines and Pegasus that was about it. The biggest issue i have taken away with me is although this was interesting to me it would have been boring for any potential Computer Scientists on a school trip for the day.
It just wasn't exciting or engaging for youngsters like say the section on energy. It has eye catchers, interactive activities and what is being looked for in the future. If i were ten I'd want to be looking at the future of energy.
I believe the reason this was successful is largely to do with the fact that it had sponsorship from BP and Shell who are obviously looking to amaze and inspire. This didn't appear to be the case for computer science. I think it could really benefit from a quality sponsor who are able to showcase the further of computing as well as the past and present.

This is only the beginning so don't be disappointed. What i have decided to do is share with everyone some of my favorite tools, it consists of a c cleaner and Spybot download but i will be adding more useful tools. So keep checking :

http://chrishocking.20m.com/box_widget.html

Recently as I may have mentioned, I have been trying to put Suse Linux 10.3 through its paces and establish whether it is a viable option for my companies needs.

I have so far managed to install it on a laptop which until today has been stationed at our Heathrow offices. Its looking very good I’m on the domain and able to map to files on our file server which is key, however when it comes to being able to see printers on the Microsoft network it’s a real struggle. In fact I can’t connect to a network printer only locally. I had started off using gnome but network functionality was poor so I have swapped it for kde which is much better but still no joy with gaining access to network printers.

Now I come to today. Although it is only likely that my company would look to use it on desktops that would never move I happen to have come to another office to day and want to see if I can join that domain. I think my biggest problem in these offices is there is no DHCP I may be wrong but I think this is why I cannot successfully join the domain. However I tried everything I could think of to join the domain (obviously I have added everything that needs to be in place manually) but no luck.

My two Questions from this therefore are:
1. Does anybody know how to print through a printer on a Microsoft network
2. Not too important but does having no DHCP present create any issues joining a windows domain from Linux.

Recently I have been looking into improving the way in which the guys I have in the warehouse scan serial numbers for one of our client’s phones. My main goal was to be able to see how many were scanned and stop duplication.
I had a look around but all applications for sale were not really what I wanted, and it’s only a small issue so I don’t require software made specifically as I could not justify the cost. In one location the handsets run windows ce and in the other windows mobile with built in excel up until now the serial numbers just save as a word document no numbers and every possibility of duplication.
Now I thought I would create a simply excel spreadsheet to stop duplication and also provide a number down the side. I managed this and managed to find a third party application to run on windows Ce, it works brilliantly exactly how I and my guys want it to. So why is it that Windows Mobile which has excel on it fails to achieve the same results, it simply fails to read the formula and allows duplication. Now surely the two should work together, I’ve set active sync to allow the spreadsheet template to be .xls instead of pocket excel format but no joy.
Is this me or is Windows Mobile Pocket Excel Useless