Dom Barnes

Guide to New York

Monday, June 1st, 2009 | life | 1 Comment

As mentioned in my earlier post, I spent a week in New York last month. It was an awesome experience and I loved every minute, despite some rather crappy weather.
I figured it might be useful for some people to pass on some travel tips or advice as I had some good input from a few good people.

Travel Details

I booked my flights and hotels individually as I couldn’t find any decent package deals that suited our length of stay and travel dates. It seemed to be cheapest for us to travel on a Saturday evening, and we stayed for 5 nights.

Flights: I booked them online direct through American Airlines’ website. It was easy enough to do.  You are given a choice of seats in coach, and using SeatGuru.com, I chose the apparent best seats available. We sat near the back, in the first row of 4 seats in the middle. It means your screen and table are in the seat arm rest, which is kinda nice, although my iPhone headphones didn’t work with the headphone socket. Meals were average, expected for coach travel, so you may want to bring something yourself.

Hotels: I booked mine on Expedia.co.uk, getting Nectar points in the process. We stayed at the new Holiday Inn in Long Island, on 29th St. Its about a 10 minute subway trip into Manhattan, only a few minutes walk from 39th Avenue stop on the N/W lines.

Getting Around: We opted for the $25 week-long travel card when we arrived, and certainly got our use out of it. The subways are clean, and were surprisingly pleasant. Carriages seemed more spacious than the London Underground, and people were all kind. We only took a taxi ride once, mainly to avoid getting drenched by rain late at night. I think the cost was fairly reasonable considering we drove from the East Village, over to Queens/Long Island.
We also did a fair amount of walking around the city, rather than getting the subway a few blocks. It wasn’t too bad at all. Once you work out which direction the roads go, navigating gets easier. Best to remember avenues run north to south, and streets run east to west.

Airport Travel: We drive to Heathrow, parked at a nearby airport parking place, for £53 for the whole trip. They provided a coach to your terminal, and picked you up when you get back.  We flew to JFK, and from there, once through border control (having an photo and thumbprint taken) we rode the Airtrain ($5) to Jamaica Central where we caught the “E” to Queens Plaza. This dropped us on 35th Av/29th Street so it was a few blocks walk to the hotel from there. We did the same going back, although when we go again, we’ll probably get a taxi to the airport as we were supporting a few extra bags, and pretty worn out.

Attractions: We went to the Empire State Building (nice views, long queues, as in 5 before you even got upstairs), Museum of Modern Art (bit of a disappointment for us) , American Museum of Natural History (nothing like Night at the Museum but still very good), walked through Central Park, took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty (free), walked down 5th Avenue and did some shopping, went to Times Square, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, 2 of the 3 Crumpler shops, went to the financial district and saw the site of the Two Towers, and probably some other stuff I forget. Overall, most stuff was good. The ESB was $20 per person, and offered audio tours. We didn’t bother as we just wanted to see the city. The MoMA was too modern and irreverant for my tastes, although the photography section was good. Central Park was gorgeous. It was totally safe, really nice, and we stopped for a drink and snack by one of the lakes.

Meals: We ate breakfast at the hotel about 4 times, which cost about $30 a day for the two of us. Not particularly cheap but it was good food. We had a lot of quick foods for lunch, ate at the Candle 79 vegan restaurant one night. They were really pleasent and very accomodating to us, and other patrons. Not a bad word to say about them.

Tips

1. Plan your journey from the airport to your hotel. Find the local subways stations, and if its more than a few blocks, get a taxi. We wasted 20 mins going in the wrong direction before finding the right road to get to our hotel
2. Buy a travel card. It will save you money.
3. Don’t believe all New Yorkers are rude and in a hurry. Everyone we met was kind and friendly, and really helpful to everyone. Someone stopped in the street to ask if we were lost. Lovely people.
4. Get a Travel Money Card from the Post Office. Its easier and quicker than Travellers Cheques. And take some cash with you. You’ll need it for the Airtrain/Subway.
5. Get a decent map.
6. Plan where the things you wanna see are, and plan days around particular areas. We spent a lot of time going from one part of the city to another.
7. Don’t forget the prices you see are EXCLUDING sales tax. This is about 8% so you need to take that into account.
8. Tips. Tipping is fairly generous so read online or in a proper guide to learn the right tipping etiquite.
9. Plan at least 5 nights. Since we arrived so late, we pretty much had 4 and a half days for a 5 night stay.
10. Have fun. Don’t try to carry too much. Drink plenty.

So thats about it.  Let me know if you have any other questions. But you will love it, and like us, probably want to go back really soon!

Tags: guide, holiday, newyork, nyc, tips

And we’re off

Friday, May 1st, 2009 | misc | No Comments

Just a quick note to tell you all that I’m off on a weeks holiday to New York baby! We’re going out on Saturday and will be back on Friday. Wifi may be available so don’t count on too much happening with me online. I’ll post photos to Flickr when I can, and will probably be doing a bulk upload when I get back. Follow me on Twitter to see what I’m up to

Tags: holiday, new york

HOWTO: Install a WIM Image in VMWare Fusion

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 | howto, macosx, work | No Comments

My company builds their machines based on a USB rebuild solution, applying a Windows WIM image with Windows PE. I wanted to get this into a VMWare Fusion VM. After some googling, I managed to get it working, and here is how. My main resource was this invaluable page. I have put my steps here for clarity.

1. Follow the instructions here for creating a Windows PE boot disc. You will need a Windows system to create this with. Unfortunately the file resultant ISO file is 180MB, not really suitable to share here.
2. Get your WIM image on a USB drive.
3. Create you VM, selecting the appropriate OS, in my case, XP. Use the ISO image you created in step 1 as the install media.
4. Start up your VM and wait to be presented by a command prompt.
5. Type DISKPART to start the disk partition tool. Type the following commands

list disk
sel dis 0
clean
create part pri size=30000 (for 30GB, change as necessary)
ass letter=c
format fs=ntfs label=XP quick
act
exit

6. Next you need to insert the USB drive with your WIM image on. And we need to go back into DISKPART. You need to assign a letter to your partition on the drive. So do this

list disk
sel dis 1 (confirm disk number from list disk command)
list vol
sel vol 3 (in my case, my partition on the drive was 3)
ass letter=m
exit

7. Back at the command prompt, you can now begin applying the WIM to your VM. Type the following command, inserting your own wim file name where I put in filename.wim
imagex  /apply m:\filename.wim 1 c: /verify

The variables for this are of course your wim file name, the destination drive should usually be C:, and the “1″ is the index number on your wim. This is likely to be 1 but if you are unsure or have issues, refer to the Microsoft Support pages.

Then, give it about 10 minutes to apply your WIM and once done, type “exit” to reboot the system. You will probably need to shutdown the VM when it reboots, to allow you to remove the ISO image which will be attached to the VM as a physical disc. Once that is out, reboot and make sure you’re plugged into your company network if needed, and that the networking mode is Bridged. This will give your VM a physical IP address from the DHCP server, rather than using NAT routing to reuse the IP address of your Mac.

Tags: imagex, macosx, vmware fusion, wim

All Time Faves Playlist

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 | Music, apple | No Comments

During my job I make a lot of trips to Oxford on a bi-weekly basis and it was only this week that I actually bothered to put on my “All Time Faves” playlist to listen to. And I thought I would share it here.

The history of this actually goes back to an iPod leaflet I picked up in John Lewis in Norwich one time while walking past their Apple selection. On their screenshot of iTunes, they had a “All Time Faves” playlist, which I stole and adjusted to create this.
iTunes links are provided where available

1. Alanis Morissette – Hands Clean [iTunes]
2. Avril Lavigne – Don’t Tell Me [iTunes]
3. Barenaked Ladies – Aluminum [iTunes]
4. Blink 182 – Here’s Your Letter [iTunes]
5.Box Car Racer – There Is [iTunes]
6. Busted – Meet You There [iTunes]
7. The Calling – Adrienne [iTunes]
8. Dashboard Confessional – Hands Down [iTunes]
9. Dashboard Prophets – All You Want
10. Death Cab For Cutie – Summer Skin [iTunes]
11. Dido – White Flag [iTunes]
12. Fastball – Fire Escape
13. Goo Goo Dolls – Slide [iTunes]
14. Guster – Amsterdam [iTunes]
15. Hoobastank – The Reason [iTunes]
16. Incubus – Talk Shows On Mute [iTunes]
17. Less Than Jake – Look What Happened [iTunes]
18. Lostprophets – Last Summer [iTunes]
19. Mark Owen – Four Minute Warning [iTunes]
20. Michelle Branch – All You Wanted [iTunes]
21. OutKast – Hey Ya [iTunes]
22. Robbie Williams – Feel [iTunes]
23. Ryan Adams – New York, New York [iTunes]
24. Semisonic – Secret Smile [iTunes]
25. Smashing Pumpkins – 1979 [iTunes]
26. Sponge – All This And Nothing
27. The Starting Line – Best Of Me [iTunes]
28. Steriogram – Walkie Talkie Man [iTunes]
29. Superfine – Betsy Went Flying [iTunes]
30. Tenacious D – Tribute [iTunes]
31. U2 – Beautiful Day [iTunes]
32. The Vines – Ride [iTunes]

You can now get the whole playlist (minus a few tracks) in an iMix on iTunes. Get It Here

Tags: itunes, Music, playlist

Boxee vs Plex

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | macosx, tv | No Comments

When it comes to home media centres, there’s no shortage of options. You have Windows Media Centre, AppleTV, MythTV, XBox, and more. If you’re looking at something on the Mac platform, you’ve got plenty of choices. All new Mac’s come with Front Row, that gives you remote controlled access to your iTunes library of music, videos, podcasts, as well as access to iPhoto pictures. But what about if you have non-iTunes suitable content or you want to use some of the online streaming services? Front Row just won’t cut it. › Continue reading

Tags: apple, boxee, media centre, osxbmc, plex

New Additions

Monday, January 12th, 2009 | life | No Comments

Jude Alex Wheeler

Originally uploaded by domster83

Quick post here to say welcome to my new nephew, Jude Wheeler. He came into the world on friday at about 11.30 and joined his brother Reuben. Mother and baby are all fine. Looking forward to seeing him in the next few weeks.

Also just wanted to mention I’ve started a 365 on Flickr, that is a photo a day of me, not necessarily my face, but I’ll be in that photo somewhere. I’m hoping to learn some new techniques and get on with photoshop along the way. Check that out here

Tags: judewheeler

Hello 2009. Goodbye 2008.

Thursday, January 1st, 2009 | life | No Comments

Its been too long since my last post. I have drafted a few but never got round to fully publishing them. I’d like to fool myself and say its because I’ve had no time at all, but thats a bit of a lie. I’ve probably had time but filled it with quality time with the TV or my girlfriend. But no more!

2009 will be a bigger year for blogging for me. I’ll try and do at least one a week if I can, and get more interesting for those of you who read this. 

So what will 2009 bring for me? Hopefully a new house, hopefully a few less job changes and a bit more job security. Hopefully I’ll be able to clear some credit card debt. I may even go so far as publishing some figures on my debt and how I get on with it month on month. Nothing too detailed, just total numbers. 

I’m also hoping to get some more photography into my life, and a bit more travel if I can. I’d like to broaden my cooking horizons and take a stand on a few things in life. How will this all go? God only knows. Best intentions don’t count for much really.

Either way, whether or not the changing of the year means anything, its always a good excuse to make some new changes. Not resolutions as they hold as much value as a paper balloon, but perhaps the promise to myself to make things a bit better for myself and others around me.

And whatever you wish for and aim towards in 2009, good luck! Let me know how you get on.

Windows 7 running in Unity

Friday, October 31st, 2008 | misc | 1 Comment

Windows 7 running in Unity

Originally uploaded by domster83

Hey all. Just a quick post to show you all the latest preview of Windows 7 running in VMWare Fusion on my Macbook Pro. As you can see, Unity mode is working a treat, except for the desktop gadgets

And you can also see that they’ve finally updated Paint! Even if its just to give it the ribbon interface.

CheesyTina

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | misc | No Comments

When it comes to bags, there are a few big names. Louis Vitton, Gucci, Prada, Toki Doki, Birkin, but none of these have the eccentric names that Crumpler bring to the table.

The CheesyTina is my first (well second really) foray into Crumpler bags but I’ve coveted them, just like Jesus told me to, for a while. This usually comes from spending an hour looking at whatsinmybag tagged photos on Flickr and lusting over each bag. But the time came for me to roll my tongue back up into my mouth and fork over the cold hard cash.

Thanks to the kind people at Devon Cameras, I picked up the Crumpler CheesyTina for a mere £29.95 (plus shipping) which is a utter bargin! I was all set for a trip to the Crumpler shop in London and to cough up £80+.

Why did I choose this bag? Well its all thanks to one man. Benjamin Stanley. After a rather sucessfuly MMUG session at the Solihull Apple Store, a few elite mac geeks went to Pizza Hut Pasta Hut. And it was in this establishment that I spotted Ben’s own CheesyTina and made my enquiries. After a quick guided tour of the pockets and pouches and the ample laptop area, I was sold.

That night I placed my order and waited. Today it arrived, much to my gross excitement, and I can now present the first unboxing shots.

Unboxing

As you may notice, the packaging left a lot to be desired. Compared to my other bag (a Pretty Boy camera bag) it was starkers! No Crumpler cellophane at all!

 Here it is, in all its free-from-a-box glory, waiting to be filled!. 

Exploded CheesyTina

Exhibit C: The removeable Laptop Case, to fit a mac up to 15″  (yes it first 15.4″ widescreens)

I intend on doing a full review, with an indepth tour, and accompanying Flickr set, but need to give it a solid test run with its contents to see how I get on, then I’ll be contributing my own whatsinmybag photo to the pool.

Tags: bag, cheesytina, crumpler, laptop, messenger

How Not to run your network

Sunday, September 28th, 2008 | tech, work | No Comments

I’ve recently finished working with one employer, and start a new job tomorrow. This job was my first step into IT and it was quite a eye opener, mainly in the way of how not to run your network.

My former employer was a public sector company, and foolishly I expected things to be a bit more secure than they were. And as a result, I’d like to share a few details of what they were going wrong.

1. At least 40% of employees using PC’s used a generic login, really designed for the IT department for debugging.
2. User profiles were locally cached and stored. This meant all your files remain on one PC, provided no means of backing up data, and made PC replacements very difficult.
3. All users had local admin rights. You would be surprised how many PC’s I saw running Firefox, BBC iPlayer, uTorrent. I can say right now that I would never transfer MP3 files or any films downloaded by these tools.
4. Desktops were not locked down. Change your wallpaper, delete or create any files.
5. USB drives, floppy drives and CD drives were all open. So much so that I caught a virus on my USB drive from one PC and spread it around to others before McAfee even detected it!
6. Desktop Support was provided using a tool called PushVNC which is a back-alley way of starting a VNC session with a remote client. Doesn’t provide the user any notification someone is watching or ask for permission. Serious Data Protection Act issues there.

Issues like these can be easily solved, and if someone would make the effort, things would be so much more secure. Group Policies could limit files being saved to My Documents only, stop USB drives, CDs, and floppies being used. No local admin rights would save issues with unauthorised software being used. Roaming profiles could be implemented, mapping a drive to a SAN for the My Documents and caching profiles locally. This would also provide a easier method of backing up, and certainly make my old job of replacing PC’s quicker. I can tell you that the data transfer was the most time consuming thing, especially when you have a Dell GX150 with USB 1.1 giving slow data transfer rates.

Anyway, my new job is private sector, and I’m fairly certain their network will be much more secure and easier to manage. But we shall see…

Tags: networking, security, vnc, work