Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

...as today I have been mostly fighting Exchange. And VPNs.

We've got a new router - which unfortunately has a known bug which stops Microsoft PPTP VPNs working. I spent some time struggling to configure an IPSEC VPN on the router (and gave up when I couldn't find a free VPN client), before trying to get Exchange's RPC over HTTPS connections working.

The server was set up correctly, and all the diagnostics we're reporting that I could make a connection - but Outlook just wasn't connecting to the server. I went through all the documentation I could find, double-checking as I went. Everything was correct - on the laptop and on the server. But still no connections...

Finally I found the answer, hidden in a comment on a discussion forum somewhere in Germany.

As I was self-certifying my server, I needed to install the root certificate as a Trusted Root Certification Authority. I exported the certificate from the server, fired up Internet Properties on the laptop, and installed the file. Finally I fired up Outlook.

Everything worked.

(And I sorted out my remote file access issues by installing OpenSSH and WinSCP)

I've started playing with Democracy, the video blog client from the folk at the Participatory Culture Foundation.

Download and watch all the best internet TV shows and videos in one powerful application. New channels arrive daily in the built-in Channel Guide.

Stop squinting at tedious web videos-- sit back and watch big, high resolution videos one after another. It's so easy to use that you'll be watching interesting videos in moments.

It looks good (if a little on the black side). It's preloaded with links to sites like Videobomb, so you can see what people are doing with Internet video - before you go out and make your own...

PC and Mac versions available

Yup - chickens (at least certain mutants) can grow teeth...

The researchers recently created more Talpids by tweaking the genes of normal chickens to grow teeth.

"What we discovered were teeth similar to those of crocodiles—not surprising as birds are the closest living relatives of the reptile," said Mark Ferguson of the University of Manchester.

So they're not that rare.

Interestingly, the mutation is also evidence of birds' dinosaur ancestry...