Stockholm Security Slides

I was in Stockholm this week giving two talks on IPSec and Perimeter Security. As promised, I've uploaded the slides. The IPSec talk is at www.reskit.net/stockholm/ipsec.zip while the Perimeter Securiy talk is at www.reskit.net/stockholm/perimeter.zip

I'll post more details on the sessions later!

Sawmill log analysis program

Sawmil is a neat log analysis program. I use it to analyse the hits to this blog.

Sawmill runs as a web server (on a local port) and can read my web log hit logs and gives me a great view of the traffic. What I find most interesting is where I'm getting hits from - I can see other blogs that refer to mine, etc.

Sawmill is a neat product!

Chris_Pratley's WebLog - an interesting read

I came across Chris_Pratley's WebLog the other day - it's a good read. Chris is Group Program Manager for Office Authoring tools, which includes OneNote. one of the guys who runs the OneNote product. His blog contains some great insights into the how and why's of OneNote.

OneNote is an incredibly cool tool - it reminds me a bit of some of the outlining tools I used in the mid-80s. I use OneNote today fairly heavily to organise my thoughts. I suspect that if I ever get a tablet, I'd use OneNote a lot more!

Ten Technical Communication Myths

I came across this article, Ten Technical Communication Myths, on a technical writer's web site. Very well written, it looks at some of the common myths surrounding technical writing.

I particularly love Myth 2: Sans Serif Fonts are Always More Legible Online. It turns out that there are other factors to consider, including the legibility of the page design, line spacing and width, word/character spacing, type size, plus whether tricks like ant-aliasing is being used. So sure, type font is important, but so are the other factors. When we forget this, our communication suffers.

Speaking about Security

It turns out, I am speaking on security this coming Thursday night in London. Come along - it should be a fun evening.

FeedDemon Ships

For a lot of personal reasons, I've been absent from blogspace for the past couple of months. Not that anyone noticed . In trying to get caught up, I came across an interesting product release!. It may be be old hat to some of you - but I only noticed yesterday that Nick Bradbury's most excellent Bradbury FeedDemon - an RSS newsfeed Reader for Windows has finally been released.

You can download a trial copy. If you like it, you can purchase the license and upgrade your trial copy to a full version. This product was so good in beta, that as soon as I noticed it, I bought it over the web and am now a very satisfied customer.

One interesting thing - I ordered the product for over the web download and activation, with a US$ credit card, but with a UK address. The site charged me VAT (at the correct rate of 17.5%). But when I entered my VAT number (I'm still VAT registered) and the VAT disappeared. This makes it easy - no VAT to pay or recover. But I like FeedDemon enough that I'd have paid the VAT inclusive price.

The joys of trans-national e-purchasing!

Witty Worm Targets Black Ice users

This is another new twist with the a Netcraft: Witty Worm targeting Black Ice users. What's nasty about this particlar attack is that it also can disable a machine. The way it does it means you can be infected and sugger damage long before you really become aware you have an issue.

Just more proof, as if it's needed, that users need to keep bang up to date and that defense in depth is a useful strategy. I suspect a lot of home users will get stung by this, and won't even know how it happened.

ISO Recorder Power Toy for XP

The ISO Recorder Power Toy is a cool tool written by MVP Alex Feinman. It allows you to read and write ISO images to/from CDs. Thus, you can grab an ISO image of a CD, store it on a disk, and later burn the ISO image. A simple tool - but most useful.

Sadly, this tool does not work on Windows Server 2003, which has updated the CD burning facility. The tool only works on Windows XP.

InfoWorld says Microsoft is to delay SQL Server, Visual Studio upgrades

In an on-line article, InfoWorld are reporting that Microsoft is to delay the launch of SQL Server Yukon and Visual Studio Whidbey. The delay, according to Infoworld will be till the first half of 2005, a delay of as much as 6 months. It looks like there will be an additional beta cycle for Yukon, which accounts for this delay. It remains to be seen what impact this delay will have on other products that are depending on Whidbey (for ASP 2.0) and on Yukon (e.g. SPS, CMS, CS).