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Multiple desktops on Windows

I've never been able to find a decent piece of Software that would give you multiple Desktops on Windows. Any *NIX person just can't leave without them... I've tried the Windows PowerToy and another one (whose name I don't remember ATM), and both sucked..the whole desktop would stop being responsive and the general experience was just horrible. By pure accident I stumbled into VirtuaWin and I must say it's actually working quite fine for me. Thanks Johan ;)

Back from Mexico

Back. Still jet-lagged. Not much done today: wading through mails, upgraded some packages on the server (clamav, spamassassin, wordpress, gallery), dist-upgraded my laptop to Sid and dist-upgraded workstation to ubuntu gutsy.

ps. Pictures of our trip are uploaded :)

No internet

Thanks to our wonderful telecommunication monopoly here in banana-land I have no internet access at home since a few days. I'll be rather slow at answering mails.

Temperature in your server room

At work we bought a couple of Ethernet Boxes from MessPC to keep an eye on our different server room and monitore temperature, humidity and the presence of smoke. These Ethernet boxes are quite neat: they have one network port (10 Mbps half/duplex only, beware) and four RJ-45 ports where you plug-in the sensors you need. We got sensors for temperature, humidity and a smoke alarm.

Ethernet Box

Once connected to the network, you configure everything (IP, sensors and snmp communities) through the web interface. Once everything is in place you can start monitoring your box via snmp. The temperature sensor is on physical slot 1 (port 1-4), humidity on slot 2 (port 5-8) and fire alarm on slot 3 (port 9-12). The OIDs are : .1.3.6.1.4.1.14848.2.1.2.1.5.x - where x is the port. The returned values is the respective measured value multiplied by 10

  • .1.3.6.1.4.1.14848.2.1.2.1.5.1 - Temperature

  • .1.3.6.1.4.1.14848.2.1.2.1.5.4 - Humidity

  • .1.3.6.1.4.1.14848.2.1.2.1.5.8 - Smoke

I still need to properly test and configure the smoke sensor, but temperature and humidity are taken care of:Humidity Graph

Temperature Graph

The temperature/humidity sensor:

Temperature and Humidity Sensor

Astrud Gilberto / Flying on the moon

Dinner with old colleagues

Left at 17:00 from Vipiteno, drove to Milan had an excellent dinner with my former work-colleagues of XSec ;)

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Lots of fish, laughing and drinking. Woke up at 5' in the morning to be back home for work fresh like a rose :)