5th August 2011: Drove the 4 hours to Napa in one hit. Napa looks a bit Disney. We stayed at The Inn on First which is a very swanky B&B on 1st Street. We arrived befor check-in so went for a wander. Mainly full of (no surprise) wine tasting places, antique shops and places to eat.

Checked in at 1530, complimentary bubbly in the room, very nice.
Off o Neela's Indian tonight which should be interesting and then off on a 5 hour wine tasting tomorrow.

6th August 2011: Off wine tasting with Platypus tours. Our guide was called Karl, an ex-San Francisci cop, who was superb. We had 10 in our party and all quite subdued when we set out. We went to small intimate wineries and the quality was really good.

3rd August 2011: This was the park I was expecting the least from but actually enjoyed the most. The recovering volcanic park is stunning. The last eruption of Mt Lassen was only in 1915 so you can see both old volcanic landscapes and newly created ones. There are hot springs whilst around you is still some patches of really thick snow. Very strange to be in a teeshirt wandering down a narrow path with snow either side higher than your waist.

1st August 2011: Left to go over the pass to Tahoe. Extraordinary landscapes on the way. The meadows were stunning and then the rich farmland below Tahoe. Lake Mono is vast and weirdly out of place.
Stayed at the Black Bear Inn which is very nice. After our complimentary wine and cheese we adventured to the laundrette. We were guilty of the ultimate laundrette crime of over sudsing, I blame Kath. Some fairly odd people there, no great surprise. So after slumming it we went next door to a rather nice wine bar and drank rather nice expensive American wines. Stayed until closing due to, yet again, chatting to a local.

30th July 2011: Headed up to Yosemite and arrived around midday. Decided to do the Glacial Point route as we would have little chance parking at the village. Fabulous views, this is a park that does not disappoint!
We stayed at the Narrow Gauge Inn. The rooms didn't look like they had been updated since the 70's except for a flat screen tv. You also had to pay for wifi.... Really, pay for wifi!
The Inn has the premier dining spot in the area. It does have table clothes and metal cutlery and that's about all I want to say about that. The barman, however, was a delightful chap called Shane. An excellent host who took the time to collate a bourbon tasting list and made a very decent Cosmopolitan for Kath.

31st July 2011: Drove the hour and ten minutes to Yosemite Village. Used the shuttle bus network to get to Vernal Falls.... Very nice, same about the number of people. Started peeing it down so went back to car... Bit of a snooze then off to Yosemite Falls followed by Mirror Lake. Very nice, but..... People have no idea how annoying they are. You spend time trying to get the perfect reflection shot and them some lovely individual decides to go paddling right through your shot...
Another interesting dining experience followed by a very enjoyable session in the bar with a local couple. He was a retired naval officer and she enjoyed going to see Dancing with the Stars.

Thursday 28th July: Left Dana Point at 10am for the 4 hour 50 minute drive to Sequoia. Route took us back through LA on the 450 which was rubbish. As you drive away from the coast California becomes more like a desert. The only patches of green are the irrigated fruit plantations. It is a very harsh landscape. As you approach the hills of Sequoia a bit more green starts ap Dari ing high up.

We stayed about 10 miles from the parks entrance. We did a quick venture in during the late afternoon. It is a bit like driving in the Alps, just tight turn after tight turn. Pretty amazing scenery.

Had an interesting culinary experience that evening. We walked Fromm our B&B to the nearest eatery, The Cidar Mill, a simple ribs and burger joint next to the main road. Played it safe and ordered the half rack of ribs.... 45 minutes later and a fairly mediocre rack was delivered. Kath had tequila marinated chicken although no hint of tequila could be detected.. Ho hum, off to bed.

Tuesday 26th July: Left LA and took the Pacific Coast Highway south. Thought it would be a nice Coastal drive but most of the way is 8 lanes of concrete. Passed Huntingdon and Laguna Beach but both were so commercial we decided not to stop. Now Dana Point is a odd..... Very clean.... Very nice..... Very Stepford! We stayed at the Blue Lantern Inn, a very nice timber frame hotel over looking the marina. Everywhere in Dana Point feels like a gated community but saying that you are quite happy to walk at night and it is very.... nice.

There is a small public beach down by the marina and a sea conservation society that runs summer camps. It has a couple of large sailings ships that take out groups of kids on week long adventures. Would have loved to do that when I was growing up. The odd thing about the Marina is the total lack of any commercial ventures. No fast food, no selling of tat. The only place you could buy a sandwich was from the lady selling the whale and dolphin excursions. So if you are going to Dana Point, get a packed lunch..

Don't eat at Cannons, it is truly weird. They are determined to put cheese with everything. Carrots with sweet stem ginger and raisins. What were they thinking.
Do eat at Luxe, it gets terrible reviews but don't worry about them. This is assuming you also enjoy an adventurous martini... Try the ones with chilli in them, bloody genius. So impressed, I had two. That's two more after the first one.

Arrived in LA at around 7pm, took a quick taxi to our b and b in Playa del Ray.
Nice accommodation but the area was a bit run down. Totally knackered so went straight to bed.
10 hours sleep later felt more human.
Sunday 24th, went back to LAX to pick up our hire car, white Chevy Impala.... Alright but nothing to write home about. Also came with a satnav. Here's a useful life lesson, don't hire a satnav. Spend £145 at home, buy the maps you need and take it with you. We ended up going back to Dollar 4 times and went through 5 satnav and cable combinations.
So back to Sunday, went to the Getty Center. Well worth a visit for a bit of culture in LA plus some spectacular views and architecture. Satnav died on the way there so Kath did a brilliant bit of off the cuff navigation across LA. This led to our first trip back to Dollar!
Wandered down to Playa del Rey for a bite in an Italian restaurant. Had to wait in the bar next door and was treated to a wonderful cross section of local LA colour. However, the clientel of the restaurant were even more wondrous to behold. It really was like the Cateena scene from Star Wars including a jazz band..
Monday 25th July: Went to Venice Beach..... via Dollar as the satnav had died again. Venice Beach, what can you say but wow, Kath said it was a bit like Hebden Bridge. I said let's wait and see what wanders by to change your mind. Within 2 minutes we saw a skate boarder being pulled by a couple of dogs, not to unusual. This was quickly followed by a woman with a pram full of puggs and then a very old Jimmy Hendrix look-a-like on roller blades playing an electric guitar. Like Hebden Bridge my arse!

The afternoon was a mad dash across LA to Warner Brothers for a studio tour. Good fun.
Oh yeah, on the way the satnav died. So afterwards back to Dollar again. This time we didn't get out of the carpark before the satnav froze. Back in and yet another one and back on the road.
Dropped in to the LAX Gun Range for a quick 150 rounds and then back to the B&B.

Went to the Triple for beers and food. Really nice, lots of locally brewed and exotic beers plus really good scoff. Home and sleep.....

So the next adventure is a 3 week tour on the California Pacific Coast.

LA - San Diego - National Parks - San Francisco - LA

We finally got a flight at 0045 on the 22nd (Thailand time). The lovely Qantas people gave us an upgrade to Business Class as the 747 didn't have the equivelant to premium economy. Back in the UK at around 0730 and back home by 1100.

Now looking forward to dinner at the pub.

Amazingly Qantas are still paying for our accommodation and food at the glorious (some sarcasm here) Amari Airport Hotel. We are on our second day and are already starting to feel a bit institutionalised.  We get a daily morning report from the very nice Qantas man which is basically no change and we’ll pick up your bill for another 24 hours.

So we are using the “About a Boy” technique of passing your day by splitting it in to 30 minute units.

Breakfast – 1 unit
Gym – 1 unit
Swim – 2 units
Lunch – 1 unit
Shopping – 2 to 4 units
Dinner – 2 units
Drinking in the American theme bar – 6 units

Still no idea when we will fly. Once things get moving we will be on constant standby but at best we are looking at Thursday but more likely the weekend.

The hotel is in a pretty basic Thai suburb of Bangkok about 30-45 minutes out of town. Qantas say it is so we are far away from any protest, however, I think cost is probably more of a deciding factor.

We leave for Bangkok at 19:30 local time (6 hours ahead of you). So far the flight is not canceled.
I imagine we will see alot of Bangkok airport!

Anyway, we've packed spare pants and there's room on the credit card but if anyone can think of a novel way to get back home from Asia then let us know!

We are currently in Ko Samui Thailand and due to return home tomorrow... Don't think that's going to happen. Apparently some Icelandic Volcano has gone off and is very inconveniently disrupting my travel plans.

So we are heading to Bangkok ...   more »

Here are more pictures of the happy day. I have seperated them in to a few albums.
Enjoy.

Picasa - Jon and Leanne Photos

If anyone wants a photo removed due to any reason (incriminating, not your best side or you are wanted by Interpol) then let me know at ian.smedley@longcrest.co.uk.

I shall be giving all the pictures to Jon, so if you want copies then please chase him, not me.

Ta

Ian :-)

Wednesday and on to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. The guest house was a lovely peice of Maine traditional summer house design. Don't let "summer house" make you think it was small, it had a huge hall, sweeping staircase and lavish rooms. The gardens were very well kept and all in flower.

Thursday we took the car in to the park. The landscape is spectacular, with clear air and the sun shining the view from the top of Cadillac Mountain was stunning. We did the Park Loop Road as we only had a day and then took a detour into Northeast Harbor where they were having an arts and shop opening event. Live jazz played by two teenagers was really good and there were a few engaging shops.

That night we dined simply at Gringos, a Mexican burrito bar which made the best Margeritas.

Friday took us back south to Ogunquit (hour and a half from Boston) where we stayed at the Puffin Inn run by two charming gay fellows. Again a lovely guest house. That night we dined at Tapas and Tinis and eat to much Tapas and drunk too many Tinis!

Saturday moring we walked around ogunquit and then headed for Boston Logan Airport where I am typing this while having a glass of Champagne in the Virgin Clubhouse. 2 hours till we board... boo hoo.

Tuesday continued: So cursing under my breath, we fought our way through breakfast and then went to kit up for rafting. Luckily Kath had booked us on the "Row Frame" which meant we had a boat to ourselves with a guide who did all the work. Also we would be at the back and able to watch any disasters as they happen ahead.

The trip to the river was in old American school buses with hooting and whooping excited kids.... lovely. The phrase "totally frickin awesome" is rather over used here.

Got to the top of the river where there is a huge dam and hydro plant, The river flow is controlled through timed releases from the dam and our trip was during a medium sized release. The guides were busy winding the kids up but Robert (the son of the owner) was just chatting about the beautiful weather. We had a gentle breeze and cloudless skies, up to now they've had pretty poor weather.

So to rafting, I must say it wasn't up there on my list of things to do but now I can see the appeal. What a laugh, although could do without all the getting wet bit! In between the vaguely scary bits the drifting down the Kennebec River was lovely.

Post rafting was a steak lunch with the horrors, I mean kids. Luckily they all disapeared after lunch and we headed for the pool and the hot tub.
So to dinner which we again took in the lodge bar. What could of been a quiet night turned in to one of the best of the holiday. It all started by me talking to an ageing hippy called Frodo and his partner Maggy. He was an ex-politician who had dropped out to be a painter and decorator. This led to lemon drop shots.... Then we chatted to another 60's generation hippy chic which led to more drinking and finally they wanted to shut the bar so we had to go to bed... Probably just as well but a really good night.

So Thursday was supposed to be shooting in New Hampshire but luckily I phoned the range before I set off from Boston. It now turns out you cannot turn up on your own and shoot, you need someone else there to meet the insurance requirements. So ended up moochng around Boston and going to the pictures to kill time.

Friday Kath finished around 14:00 so we headed down to Faneuil Hall to hunt for presents for Kath's sister. Luckily we ended up in the other Cheers Bar and had a rather groovy afternoon......

Saturday we headed off to Booth Bay Maine. Very nice B&B and found an excellent Tapas restaurant called the Boatyard. Thoroughly recommend eating (and drinking) there if you get the chance.

Sunday, woke up to dense fog and we were going sailing! Met Captain Franke Grande (Italian American ex US Sailor) at the dock and decided to do a bit of re-scheduling. So we wandered back in to Booth Bay and this gave me a chance to look at all the Harley's that were there for the 29th Lobster Bake run. About 3000 bikes, very nice.

 

Later we returned for a lobster dinner on the boat (Maine soft shell lobster are fantastic) and an overnight to see what tomorrow would bring.

Monday, after a slightly foggy start we had sunshine. After breakfast we went for a 7 hour sail, we both got to drive, learn a few knots and I pulled some sails. Lovely day and I also saw the fin of a whale - not that Kath believes me cos she was asleep lying in the sun.

 Once we docked I then drove the 3 hours to Two Forks where we had booked white water rafting the next day. Welcome to HicksVille USA. Crab Apple Lodge was a bit basic by our standards but it did have a pool, hot tub and a jacuzzi bath for two in each room. Rather limited menu but it was OK, very quiet in the bar so we thought it would be quiet tomorrow.

Tueday, went to breakfast at 8 and the lodge was full of hundreds of American school kids from 2 summer camps. It was my idea of hell on earth, and yes they were all going rafting.

 

Until last night I didn't think I would get a decent meal in the US. So far I've had an over salted Italian sea bass, deep fried prawns, unremarkable lobster, a hideous Mexican fajita but finally Boston saved itself with a brilliant Tapas restaurant on Newbury Street.

But enough of food, what have we done so far. Arrived Saturday evening around 2 hours late and took a $40 cab ride to the hotel (only 5 miles but Boston traffic is pretty bad). The Boston Park Plaza and Towers Hotel is very grand in a 1920's style (yes it is that old). Kath had to call maintainance almost immediately to fix the air-con (you couldn't switch it off) and to get the window open. It seems US health and safety doesn't trust you not to jump at any chance you get! So we can now switch off the air-con and open a window. Just to note that since the first night with sirens going off and sounds of partying people in the street, the window has remained shut and the air-con on..... Also had a fire alarm in the wee small hours of the first night... False alarm of course.

Sunday we walked for miles around Boston, took a tour bus and had a look at Harvard and Cambridge finishing with a pint in Cheers (Bull & Finch).. Technically 2 pints then.

Monday picked up our 2 door hire car which turned out to be a huge white min-van.... Typical. It is huge. Drove to Plymouth and visited the Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock (yes it is just a rock).

Stayed at a lovely B&B overnight and then went Whale watching in the morning. Saw many Humpbacks which was great... didn't see any breaching though.

After that we mooched about Plymouth and then headed back to Boston.

Wednesday, Kath went off to first day of her conference and I headed off in to Boston. Made my way down to Faneuil Hall and found the other Cheers bar... so had a couple of pints. Wandered around the Aquarium, very nice and then went and watched a 3D Imax film on Whales and Dolphins. We need more 3D stuff cos its groovy! Wandered back to the hotel to meet Kath and have another beer. Evening was the Tapas restaurant, which is where I started.. so now I'll stop.

Rest of the pics at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/IansPicasa/BostonMAAndMaine2009#

Just got back from a week in the Rea Sea diving with Ocean College.

Looks like we were a little early for the big stuff this year (although Hammerheads were reported by other boats) but no shark sightings for us... although we did get to see a Manta Ray!

I have posted a few pictures in the Sharm 2007 category if you fancy a look.

This was a one day event held by Microsoft at the British Library Conference Centre in London on May 23rd 2007.
It was aimed at IT Professionals and also Internet hosting companies (RackSpace staff attended in large numbers).

So this was a day looking at the current Beta 3 release of Longhorn Server focusing just on IIS7.

I have tried to roll-up all the various points made in the day into separate sections of interest.

Security

MS are building on the proven security of IIS6.
Examples quoted: “No critical IIS 6 hotfixes since RTM”

With IIS6 pretty much all of the components were installed but disabled, with IIS7 the design is modular with few dependencies between modules. This allows you to just install the components you need thus reducing the attack surface.

All application pools are sandboxed by default. New sites are automatically assigned to a unique pool which is associated with a unique SID. A temporary applicationpool.config is created at runtime which contains only the settings for that pool with only the unique SID allowed access. It is not possible for any other pool to read the configuration of another pool.

Architecture

IIS6 had a monolithic implementation; you installed either all or nothing.
IIS7 is split into 40 modules which allows a minimal installation for a designated role. The request pipeline is now generic with any modules being able to plug into it. All modules extend the server functionality through a public module API which makes it easier for developers to extend functionality.

Unlike IIS6 the UI is easier to extend, it is designed to be extensible, modular and it is built on .NET.

ScalabilityMS are building on the proven scalability of IIS6.Example quoted: “MySpace – 23 Billion Page Views/Month”, “Microsoft.com – 10K Req/sec & 300K Connections”, “Match.com 30 million page views daily”

IIS7 supports shared configuration to aid management of web farms. This allows each web server to load their config at start-up from a central resource and there is the option to cache that information should the config server go offline. However, MS are still looking at potential polling options for when the config server comes back online.

Administration & Management

The IIS Manager UI is now task oriented (similar to the ISA 2004 experience). It has a context sensitive “Actions” pane and the familiar IIS tabs have nearly all gone being replaced by icons.

Both IIS and ASP.NET configuration are both performed in the one UI. You can view health and diagnostics and there is built in remote administration over https (using a wizard driven self cert certificate so no need to install a separate certificate server).

Remote Admin: The admin website is gone so all admin has to be performed from an installed client on Windows 2003 or XP (client may ship with a service pack) but it should be native on Vista. You can use Windows and non-Windows credentials, IIS7 has its own users called IIS Manager Users. Users are added to sites for management delegation, you cannot allocate sites to users. These users are only used by the WMSVC and Admin UI, no other IIS components and importantly they do not map to Windows user accounts.
To enable remote admin you must install the Management Service and them enable it.

The UI is designed so that it is simple to manage either 1 or 1000 sites. It has a filter box so that partially typing a site or app pool name will then only show matching sites in the UI.

Tracing and Diagnostics

IIS7 has prescriptive error messages which give better guidance of where to look for a problem. Also built in failed request tracing that can log the entire request process to aid diagnosis or a problem.

Secure FTP

Microsoft’s implementation of FTP hadn’t developed from the IIS4 release. It didn’t support current internet standards such as SSH, UTF8 and IPv6. The new version called Secure FTP will support SSL but not SSH. It will not ship with the RTM but will be delivered out of band.

What’s Not In IIS7

Currently no publishing method. WEBdav was Microsoft’s preferred publishing method but it hasn’t really caught on as a standard and so it is not in this release of IIS. Secure FTP should come along out of band but probably won’t be there for RTM. It is interesting to note the WEBdav is owned by the Exchange team and SharePoint 2007 again seems to use its own version (not all the WEBdav features work in the SharePoint implementation but those features just aren’t required).
FPSE (FrontPage Server Extensions) have also been dropped but might return out of band.

Content replication is not supported as there is no replacement for Application Center Server 2000. The current thoughts are UNC storage on fast SAN (or equivalent) and use shared configuration for the IIS configuration. MS are to produce a White Paper in due course.

Web application written in .NET2 that make use of http handlers won’t work with IIS7, you will get a 500.22 error. There is, however, a migration path to get the functionality working using a command line tool.

No Admin, Website, POP3, NNTP or IIS5 Worker Process Isolation Mode.

 

I am currently working on 2 sites, the first for Mayday Mortgages and Loans and the second for their sister company Harding Thomas Ltd. Both these sites were designed by a third party with little thought of optimisation for search engines and less thought for accessibility issues. However, with a little work.... or several days per site, they can be improved.   more »

I have been asked by many people over the last few weeks about which anti-virus software they should buy so I thought I would point out a few of the free resources out there.

A good site to start with is www.freebyte.com which has links to many good products.

Anti-Virus: I have tried AVG's free product and it seems to perform well on XP. Haven't yet tried on Vista.
Current release is at http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/5390/lng/us/tpl/v5 which is v7.5.

Office Software: Have a look at Open Office. The current version can open and save in common Microsoft formats and is suitable for most home or small business use.
Go to http://www.openoffice.org.

ZIP file compression software: I use Zip7 which can be found at http://www.7-zip.org/

I'll publish more when I have tested products on Vista.

We are about to develop an Internet facing customer portal as a demonstrator based on the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 product.

There are already many excellent resources out there and I shall try to remember to lists the ones I use in both the design and implementation.

Work is starting this month....

Useful Links

SharePoint 2007 Limits: http://blogs.tamtam.nl/mart/SharePoint2007Limitations.aspx

I have put a few pictures in the photo gallery from the Orlando trip, feel free to take a copy.

Photo link

This week I am at the Information Workers Conference in Orlando, Florida.
The conference is hosted by SharePoint Solutions and ...   more »