About Jonathan

Windows Server infrastructure administrator at Newcastle University since 1999. Microsoft MVP for Cloud and Datacenter Management (& previously for PowerShell). Member of the Microsoft Technical Community Council. Co-founder of the NEBytes user group. @jonoble on Twitter.

VBUG Newcastle’s first IT Pro event

Posted on 26 March, 2009 by Jonathan

On Tuesday, the University hosted the first IT Pro event held by VBUG Newcastle. Going forward the aim is to host developer and sys admin events in alternate months. For the first set of sys admin content, I did a presentation entitled “PowerShell: 0-60 in One Evening”, which you can find the details of at: http://www.jonoble.com/blog/2009/3/26/powershell-0-60-in-one-evening.html

For a first event of a brand new group, I think a turnout in the high teens was ok, and from a speaker’s perspective the level of interaction was good, but we’d love to see double that number next time. We’ve got a great speaker planned for the May event and I’ll post the details here as soon as everything is confirmed.

Free PowerShell event: 24th March

Posted on 10 March, 2009 by Jonathan

I’ve been working with Andrew Westgarth, who runs the VBUG Newcastle events, to try to provide IT Pro (i.e. sys admin) content as well as their traditional developer events. The idea is that we’ll run free developer and IT Pro events alternate months on the Newcastle University campus.

The first of the IT Pro events will be held on the 24th March in Claremont Tower and I will be presenting “Windows PowerShell: 0-60 in One Evening”. The presentation will highlight a number of free tools to help you get up to speed quickly with PowerShell.

All the details are on the VBUG site at:
http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/March-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-Windows-PowerShell-060-in-One-Evening-with-Jonathan-Noble.aspx

If you’d like to come along, please book your free place (just so we don’t run short of refreshments).

Forthcoming Events on Campus

Posted on 16 February, 2009 by Jonathan

I will be preseting a brief introduction to Windows PowerShell at this month’s Super Mondays event in the Beehive (Old Library Building) on the 23rd at 18:00. These events are growing rapidly and well worth attending – the topics are usually diverse enough that there should be something of interest to everyone. See SuperMondays.org for the full line-up and the Upcoming link if you’re attending. I hope to see you there.

The postponed VBUG Newcastle developer event on “Parallel Programming in .NET (VS2010)” with Eric Nelson has now been rearranged for Tuesday 24th February at 18:30 in Claremont Tower room 118. Sign up at:
http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/February-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-REARRANGED–Parallel-programming-in-NET-VS2010-with-Eric-Nels.aspx

.Net Developer Event Cancelled

Posted on 2 February, 2009 by Jonathan

[UPDATE] This event has now been rearranged for Tuesday 24th February. Sign up at:
http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/February-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-REARRANGED–Parallel-programming-in-NET-VS2010-with-Eric-Nels.aspx

Unfortunately, due to the weather causing flight cancellations, the VBUG Newcastle event on 3rd February, which was announced here: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/blogs/index.php/wit/2009/01/21/developer_event_parallel_programming_in_ has had to be cancelled.

The event will be rearranged for a later date which will be posted on this blog.

Developer Event: Parallel programming in .NET (VS2010)

Posted on 21 January, 2009 by Jonathan

[UPDATE 2] This event has now been rearranged for Tuesday 24th February. Sign up at:
http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/February-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-REARRANGED–Parallel-programming-in-NET-VS2010-with-Eric-Nels.aspx

[UPDATE: Due to flight cancellations caused by the weather, this event has been cancelled and will be rearranged for a later date.]

This is a slight departure from our normal topics, but some of you may be interested in attending this event, which the University is hosting for VBUG Newcastle…

Date: Tuesday 3 February 2009 from 6:30 PM to 09:30 PM

Topic: VBUG NEWCASTLE: Parallel programming in .NET (VS2010) with Eric Nelson

Overview
The next version of the .NET Framework will come with new classes that start to remove the difficulties in building multi-threaded applications that are able to take advantage of the modern multi-core processor architectures and the future many-core architectures that are coming over the next few years. In this session, we will look at why we will all need to start thinking about parallelism and drill into what is available in the current previews for managed code development.

Location: Room 118, Claremont Tower, Newcastle University

For more information, and to book a place, go to:
http://www.vbug.co.uk/Events/February-2009/VBUG-NEWCASTLE-Parallel-programming-in-NET-VS2010-with-Eric-Nelson.aspx

Windows Live Essentials released

Posted on 8 January, 2009 by Jonathan

As well as the Beta of Windows 7 (and it’s companion, Windows Server 2008 R2), Microsoft has also used the CES to announce the final availability of its Windows Live Essentials suite.

These are products that have been around in Beta and Release Candidate forms for a while. The announcement that they’re now final, should actually read that they were ready a little while ago – the final version is the same as the recent release candidate!

The suite includes the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery (which is a great improvement over the Photo Gallery built in to Vista, includes Flickr support and works on XP), Windows Live Mail (also better than the version that ships in Vista) and the fantastic Windows Live Writer, which is the best blogging software available (sadly this blog’s host doesn’t support it, which is partly why I don’t post as much as I might!).

You can get the suite from download.live.com.

Money for nothing and your learning for free!

Posted on 15 December, 2008 by Jonathan

[Disclaimer: Though the title may suggest it, this post has no information about gaining money for nothing; only learning for free. If you have a fool-proof way of getting money for nothing, please add it as a comment.]

You may already know that Microsoft have compiled a huge collection of self-paced learning materials at the Microsoft Learning site. What you might not know, is that they regularly publish courses for everyone’s favourite price – FREE!

These free courses and clinics are usually introducing new features in new versions of products, or giving giving overviews rather than digging into deep technical detail, but a lot of the time that may be just what you want.

Some examples of free content that are currently available are:
Database Fundamentals in Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Introducing Windows Server 2008
ASP.NET for PHP Developers: Introduction to ASP.NET

They handily provide a catalogue of free products, which I suggest you have a look at. If you want to take up one of the free offers, you don’t have to complete the course right away; typically you just activate a subscription to the content, which may give you access to it for 3, 6 or 12 months.

Happy learning!

Windows Live Wave 3 Online Services Launch

Posted on 3 December, 2008 by Jonathan

I posted about the update to SkyDrive before, but the Windows Live people haven’t just been busy there. They’ve just launched a load of updates and new online services. home.live.com ties all of your existing Windows Live services together (such as Spaces, SkyDrive, Hotmail and Events) and they’ve added Groups, Photos and Windows Live Profile.

Check out the Windows Live Team Blog for the details.

Coming soon to SkyDrive

Posted on 13 November, 2008 by Jonathan

I’m generally happy with Windows Live SkyDrive (Microsoft’s “USB stick in the cloud”), but there’s a couple of features that have held it back for me. I’m glad to say that they appear to be getting added in the next update!

You’re going to have the ability to download an entire folder as a single zip file (this is easily my most-wanted feature)
Share files without requiring people to use a Windows Live ID
Move and copy between folders
Better photo handling: improved slideshow, download photos to Windows Live Photo Gallery

And they’re increasing the storage limit from 5 to 25Gb!

Good news, and that’s not all – you can read the full list on the SkyDrive Team Blog.

Group Policy Preferences – TechNet Edge video

Posted on 7 October, 2008 by Jonathan

When Microsoft introduced Group Policy Preferences with Windows Server 2008, they gave sys admins the ability to easily do a bunch of common tasks (adding domain users to local groups, mapping drives, creating shortcuts, etc) in Group Policy without having to write scripts. I’m a fan of scripting, but I still see that as a good thing!

Yesterday TechNet Edge released a video about Group Policy Preferences, which I’d recommend you check out. It starts off slow, but then talks about how you can manage the scope of different preferences, so within the same Group Policy Object you could map a particular drive for everyone using a PC under the policy scope, plus additional ones just for users in particular security groups. This means that you can have a relatively complex arrangement of drive mappings for all the users you manage all in the same policy. 🙂

If you’ve not come across TechNet Edge before and you’re an IT Pro managing Windows systems, head over there now and see what you’ve been missing.

In case you missed them, James put some posts on this very blog a little while ago about using Group Policy Preferences to add domain users to local groups and mapping network drives.

Infrastructure Systems Group Blog

Windows and Linux Infrastructure at Newcastle University

Author Archives: Jonathan