And connections is out aswell. Severe geekfest this weekend.

Download the monster for Portal… or just download the 66Mb version for Domino that works as well

Since
the "loss" of my 8800 I have been working and playing with the
new Blackberry 8300 "curve" model.  One full week of working
with it and now I have good grounds to write a few bits….

First of all, the feel of the curve
is solid.  The build quality is far better then the 88 or even the
pearl.  It is heavier (most likely caused by the 2MP camera built
in and has a "treo"ish feel to it.  The keyboard is much
better then the 8800, and the style is nice (instead of the straight black).
It is still small enough to go in a shirt pocket, but it is a bit bulky
by pearl standards.  Although I was never used to a small phone/pda,
the Pearl has set the size standard for me and others.  I, however
would gladly give up the Pearl for a QWERTY keyboard.  

 Aimed more at the consumer market,
it sacrificed the built in GPS for the camera, and has extended multimedia
software/options.  The software build is solid, and the bluetooth
capability is far stronger then the pearl.  Personally, I miss the
GPS, as I have little need for a camera in my phone. Battery life is (as
ever) outstanding and I have only charged it twice (even though it is used
in anger).   I was not expecting to like it too much, but as an all
round unit, its now my favorite blackberry.  At least until the Pearl2
comes on the market.

Of course, now I am a Mac owner, I have
been starting to play with Pocket
Mac Sync Manager.  I wonder
if I should try getting a .Mac account now?

Ok, I have to ask this question, and
would really appreciate some feedback from the admin weenies.  Over
the past few years, I have worked on many sites that incorporated SAN’s
as reasoned alternative to local disk storage for sites.  Be it for
Domino solutions or anything.  At Admin2007 and ILUG2007 I also asked
the audiences questions on SAN’s just to see if I was barking up the wrong
tree.  Simple question is -are they worth it?

Many sites I know have come back to
me over the past year, stating they never found their SAN deployment to
be cost effective.  When they take into consideration the cost of
the SAN (which is initially huge), the requirements for it, blade server
costs, disk costs and maintenance/upkeep, they were an expensive investment.
 At this stage, it is quite easy (and relatively cheap) to chuck 1TB
storage into a local disk array on a server, and based on the solutions,
even that amount is rarely required.  Blades  versus small servers
are relatively equal for costs and even NAS can be used (although slower)
if extra space is required.  I am aware that there are other advantages
to SAN’s including backup and dynamic disk allocation and build standardisation
for blades, but are not a lot of those less valid these days with improved
software for local servers?

I’m not asking to be flamed, or to start
a row.  But at this stage when asked "should I go with a SAN?"
I rarely find a need to say yes.  Specifically Domino makes little
use of SAN data replication, as normal clustering / replication is required
over NICs.

Any thoughts?

A bit later then expected (we needed
sleep), but an email to all delegates that attended has gone out, with
a link to the evaluation form.  Please take a second to fill it out.
 Also, if you look through the email, you will see some special offers
and extra information from the sponsors.  Be sure to take a look.

Yup… Rob
got there just ahead of IBM.  QuickR
ship date has been released.  On June 29th, the QuickR 8.0 product
(i.e. Next Generation of Quickplace) is available.  Actually, this
leads to a question on the eagerly anticipated FREE QuickR templates that
are being cooked by SNAPPS.  Are they all available on the same day?

Guys, I imported all my pictures to
iPhoto over the weekend.  One thing I noticed is now that all the
pictures are in, when I try to start a slideshow the screen is blank.  If
I double click on a picture or try to view one by selecting it, all I see
is a grey box with an exclamation mark.  Any quick suggestions on
this?  In fairness I have not done the legwork on looking into it
too much as yet, so there well may be a dumbass simple answer.

Then read
Francie Whitlock’s site.  For
those that do not know her, she is one of the best Admin weenies in the
Lotus world.  I was lucky enough to be asked to co-present at her
"debugging Lotus Domino server crashes/nsd’s" presentation at
Admin2007.  And… she lives in paradise.

Its mind June, and could easily be mistaken
for November in Dublin.  I need a drink.