Author: Adam Fowler

How I started in I.T.

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Hi,
I thought this would be a good discussion point. I’m sure we have some readers who have a passion for I.T. but may not know where to start for their career, and there’d be some interesting stories on how some of us managed to get our way into the industry.

Personally, growing up I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do – but I did know that I liked computers, and spent a lot of time on them from a very young age. My Dad was a computer technician in the hardware and building PC’s sense – so I sort of assumed I’d do that. After doing some work experience with him, and being put on a production line (he was higher up than that) being told to sort out a box of screws to different sizes, I decided I probably didn’t want to be a computer technician after all.
After finishing high school, I then had an opportunity to do two weeks work at my Dad’s new place of employment, where he was the systems builder and tester. I was excited to be earning $13 an hour back in mid 1999 but the job was pretty much just building PC’s out of components, installing an image and testing that the basics worked. Again, it put me off being a computer technician, but I had no idea what else to do.

I then decided I’d do a TAFE course in Diploma of I.T. It would take 3 years to do, and from what I can remember, the first lessons I had were: Programming (something I knew I didn’t want to do), Networking (Interested in this but was too basic so lost interest), Flow Charts (this wasn’t what the course was called, but that’s all it seemed to be and was incredibly boring) and I don’t even remember the other two. I didn’t last long, dropped out and gave up on my IT career as I still didn’t really know what I wanted.

Jump forward 6 months, and I ended up applying for a call centre job. It paid well for a 19 year old ($28k back in late 2000) and thought I might as well give it a try and see how it went. 3 months into this job, and IT role came up in the company, to support the call centre itself. I considered applying, but missed the deadline and thought I won’t bother because I have no experience. The job came up again, as no suitable applicants had applied yet. This time I thought that I might as well give it a shot, and actually got it! From then on, my career continuted to be in I.T.

That’s how my I.T. career started, and despite my efforts, I landed a job. Part of it was dumb luck, part passion of a hobby, and partly being able to demonstrate the right skills and knowledge requierd. I had no qualifications or formal training either!

So, what can I tell you from all this? Aim to do what you want, and if you don’t know – just try something else. You might find a job you like, but even if you don’t it will open up more opportunities, contacts and experiences to help your career along.

Hopefully some of you can share your stories below as myself and others would love to read.

How did you get into I.T. ?

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Hi,

I thought this would be a good discussion point. I’m sure we have some readers who have a passion for I.T. but may not know where to start for their career, and there’d be some interesting stories on how some of us managed to get our way into the industry.

Personally, growing up I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do – but I did know that I liked computers, and spent a lot of time on them from a very young age. My Dad was a computer technician in the hardware and building PC’s sense – so I sort of assumed I’d do that. After doing some work experience with him, and being put on a production line (he was higher up than that) being told to sort out a box of screws to different sizes, I decided I probably didn’t want to be a computer technician after all.

After finishing high school, I then had an opportunity to do two weeks work at my Dad’s new place of employment, where he was the systems builder and tester. I was excited to be earning $13 an hour back in mid 1999 but the job was pretty much just building PC’s out of components, installing an image and testing that the basics worked. Again, it put me off being a computer technician, but I had no idea what else to do.

I then decided I’d do a TAFE course in Diploma of I.T. It would take 3 years to do, and from what I can remember, the first lessons I had were: Programming (something I knew I didn’t want to do), Networking (Interested in this but was too basic so lost interest), Flow Charts (this wasn’t what the course was called, but that’s all it seemed to be and was incredibly boring) and I don’t even remember the other two. I didn’t last long, dropped out and gave up on my IT career as I still didn’t really know what I wanted.

Jump forward 6 months, and I ended up applying for a call centre job. It paid well for a 19 year old ($28k back in late 2000) and thought I might as well give it a try and see how it went. 3 months into this job, and IT role came up in the company, to support the call centre itself. I considered applying, but missed the deadline and thought I won’t bother because I have no experience. The job came up again, as no suitable applicants had applied yet. This time I thought that I might as well give it a shot, and actually got it! From then on, my career continuted to be in I.T.

That’s how my I.T. career started, and despite my efforts, I landed a job. Part of it was dumb luck, part passion of a hobby, and partly being able to demonstrate the right skills and knowledge requierd. I had no qualifications or formal training either!

So, what can I tell you from all this? Aim to do what you want, and if you don’t know – just try something else. You might find a job you like, but even if you don’t it will open up more opportunities, contacts and experiences to help your career along.

Hopefully some of you can share your stories below as myself and others would love to read.

CCNA – CCENT Study Experience

Posted on by Adam Fowler

I thought I’d share with you my experience with taking the first steps to be Cisco certified. I didn’t really know what to expect when I started, but hopefully for anyone else considering doing their CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) or CCENT (Cisco Certified Entry Networking Technician).

This is part 1 of 2, as I’ve only gone so far as doing CCENT. It’s half way to becoming a qualified CCNA, and a lot of good fundementals in general networking. To explain further, the first half of the CCNA course is called CCENT 1 (which is just CCENT) and the second half is CCENT 2. You can either do a seperate exam for CCENT 1 & 2, or just a full CCNA exam which contains questions from both courses.

At this point, I’ll quickly mention that if you’ve done your CCNA pre 2007, the course changed and became a LOT harder. So if you see someone’s resume listing CCNA, find out when they did it. Also, Cisco certs are only valid for 3 years unless you do another exam!

So what did I do? I started by getting my employer to pay for me to do a week at DDLS (Dimension Data Learning Services) to study in a classroom environment. I really enjoyed this. The general topics covered were:

  • What is a Network?
  • OSI 7 layer model
  • TCP/UDP basics
  • Ethernet – LANs, Switches, Hubs, Routers
  • Wireless basics
  • Subnetting and Binary
  • Cisco basic router configuration
  • DHCP router configuration
  • Static and dynamic routing
  • WAN basics, including NAT
  • Management and security of Cisco routers

This is actually a lot to take in for a week. You might look at this list and go ‘yeah I know all that stuff it’s easy!’ But this course really gets down to the whys and hows, not just ‘Do X and Y happens’. You start to understand what’s really involved when you do anything on a network – what data gets put into a packet, how the packet gets from A to B, what changes and stays the same… many people have a general grasp to get by, but you’ll get a proper understanding of how data goes down through the 7 OSI layers and back up again at the other end. What’s the OSI model? Have a quick read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model

Anyway, I got through the week and was keenly learning the whole time. I thought I pretty much knew it all, and was ready to go sit the exam. A few things happened, and it ended up being 2 months before I sat it. A few days before I flicked through the books provided to refresh myself, and confidently went in to take the exam.

Now, there’s a few things about the exam you should know. Firstly, it’s 1 1/2 hours long – and you’ll pretty much need all that time even if you know what you’re doing. Secondly, there’s labs in the exam – so it’s not just multiple choice, but you have to log onto routers and switches, run commands, work out what the answers are and pick the correct choice. Thirdly, you can’t go back once you OK a question. This means time management is really important, as you can’t just fly through once then go through again to re-think your difficult questions, or try and work out answers based on previous questions. You can’t even go back and look at what you answered previously.

Despite all this, I had been told subnetting was a really important part of the exam, and that’s what you should focus on so you can calculate it all in your head. I practised and managed to do this, so walked in confidently…and failed. I was also told, people can do these exams 2-4 times on average, so don’t expect to get it right first time.

I took another week to study, and failed again! I’d learnt everything I wasn’t sure in the exam, but the second time I took it none of those questions even came up, and there was a second bunch of questions I really wasn’t sure of! Even more annoyingly though, I failed by ~1 question.

Third time lucky? Yes. I passed, and was very relieved to get it behind me. I can tell you this is a very difficult exam, and you need to know a huge amount of stuff (both logically and just brain dumps of terminoligies and acronyms) to be able to pass. For example, DHCP – you don’t need to just understand what it’s for, but you may need to know what TCP commands are sent between the server and client, and what order they’re in. You’ll need to have a full understanding of the contents of a TCP packet, and what information changes in it depending where it is on the network. You’ll even need a full understanding of a Cisco switch and how it’s configuration might have security risks, and what you’d need to change, plus remember those commands off the top of your head. You’ll need to convert IP addresses like 192.168.1.44/29 into the network mask 255.255.255.248, and know that the network address is 192.168.1.40 with a broadcast address of 192.168.1.47 leaving you 6 available hosts (I hope that’s right as I worked it out as I went along :) ). What are the channels available on wireless, and which ones should you use and why? What are all the differences between 802.11a, b & g?

So the point I’m trying to make here is there’s a lot to know, but it’s all really good information to have. Once I did the course, I went back to work and really had a much better understanding of what was going on generally, instead of just knowing ‘if I put this here, it works’ I now know why.

You don’t need to go to a classroom though, there’s some great books available, as well as resources like CBT Nuggets which are training videos, very similar to a classroom setup.

I’d recommend this course to anyone who deals with networking, even on a fairly basic level. You’ll need to commit yourself to studying and knowing the contents of the course inside out, but you’ll come out the other end much more knowledgeable and confident of what’s happening on the networks you use.

iPad2 Review

Posted on by Adam Fowler

It’s an Apple product launch day, so fanboys and haters are all excited to see what’s come out of the pome factory (an apple is a type of pome, thanks wikipedia).

The iPad 2 by all accounts, is a whole 1 better than the iPad 1, even though the iPad 1 wasn’t actually called an iPad 1. What does this extra 1 mean?

It’s thinner, 33% smaller. Smaller is better!

It’s faster, 100% faster CPU. What that really means is it’s a dual core. It’s also 900% faster in the graphics department, which to me indicates the iPad 1 didn’t have very good graphics. I think part of this is that some high graphics quality games have started to come out in the App Store, and really a lot of people want an iPad as a casual gaming device.

It’s got cameras. Two! Just like your iPhone 4! The front is VGA, so facetime chats are the only thing it’s good for. The back camera will take 5 megapixel stills, and record video at 720p. At least that’s what I can make out, there’s so much misinformation on the web about the iPad 2. One site claimed it was only a 1 megapixel camera, but magical devices have higher resolution cameras than that.

It’s got a battery! You can’t swap over or get to it, and it’s got the same battery life as the iPad 1 – about 10 hours of use.

It’s got a screen! The exact same one as the iPad 1. A bit surprising there, so those of you spoilt with RETINA DISPLAY on your iPhone 4’s may complain about being able to see the pixels. Then again, you’re probably taking your iPad to bed with you and cuddling it as you fall asleep, with your fancy sleep rythm apps and sex positions to study… sorry I’m getting sidetracked here.

It has HDMI out*! *If you buy a US$40 adapter. At first this sounds amazing, but then why would you want to game with an iPad plugged into a TV? isn’t that what consoles are for? In a business environment, I could see someone plugging it in to a projector and displaying fancy pie charts showing how your company could improve profits by 2% if they changed over to single ply toilet paper.

And the big one…

You can get it in black OR white! No longer will whitey be opressed with vague promises of existance to the masses (because you know, Stephen Fry has a white iPhone 4), to be crushed time after time again. Of course you’re probably putting a case over it anyway, but it doesn’t matter what’s on the outside, it’s the inside that counts.

Summary:

It’s a bit better, but even moreso if you have an iPad one, no reason to upgrade unless you can poop money somehow. If so, feel free to use my toilet but don’t flush. Once some more powerful apps and games come out to use the extra power, then maybe you’ve got a good reason. I’m not sure why the normal person would take a picutre of anything using a giant pad, rather than say their mobile phone – but there’s always someone with a specific need.

Sources:

http://www.padgadget.com/2011/03/02/ipad-2-specs-out-dual-core-a5-baby/

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ipad-ipad2-ipad-2,news-10329.html

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/02/ipad-2-to-feature-hdmi-output/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pome

Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) for Internet Explorer 8

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Today I thought it would be worth having a look at this utility!

For starters, here’s where you can download it: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/bb219517

Why download it? What does it do?

The IEAK is used for settings in Internet Explorer 8, and can either be as part of the IE8 deployment, or after initial deployment. If you’re on Windows 7 then you’d really need to use it after since it’s built into the OS already. There are some painful ways to do a lot of this with importing registry keys etc, so this is a much neater and nicer way. There are 100’s of settings in Group Policy and Group Policy preferences for IE8, but IEAK is better for the newer features. Here’s what IEAK does (shamelessly stolen from Microsoft here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/cc889351.aspx).:

Accelerators. You can include custom defaults for Accelerators in Internet Explorer 8.
Web Slices. You can add Web Slices to your custom Internet Explorer 8 package.
First Run Wizard and Welcome Page options. You can configure the First Run Experience for Internet Explorer 8.
Compatibility View. You can choose if content is rendered in Internet Explorer 8 standards mode or Internet Explorer 7 mode.  NoteBy default all sites in the Intranet Zone are rendered in Internet Explorer 7 mode.
Search Enhancements. Internet Explorer 8 supports search providers which offer rich text and image suggestions. Through IEAK 8 you can add and configure these providers for your installer.

The main reason I am interested in this is for Accelerators. We don’t want to use Bing, and that’s probably a whole other blog as to why, but we feel Google search is superior. This will also be for Windows 7, so I’ll be looking at the Configuration-only package (after deployment of IE8).

Installing IEAK

Once you’ve downloaded the program, you’ll get the options of which license mode you want to use. The options are (stolen from here this time, Microsoft doco is really good for this! http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff383944)

1.    External Distribution – ISPThis mode is available to Internet Service Providers, to help them create a customized browser for the users of their Internet Service.

2.    External Distribution – ICP (Content Provider or Developer)This mode is available to anyone who wants to create a customized browser for distribution outside their company (e.g., Web sites, ISVs, etc).

3.    Internal Distribution – Corporate IntranetThis mode is available to companies for the creation and distribution of a customized browser to their employees ONLY.

We’ll be choosing the last one of course.

You’ll then be prompted for an Organization (Americans!) Name, which is mandatory and used inside your packages.

The rest is basic – and there you go, it’s installed!

Using IEAK

Run the ‘Internet Explorer Customization Wizard 8 program’ , and it will ask you where you’d like to put your builds. You will then be prompted for what OS version you’re building this for. There’s no option for Windows 7, but you can choose the Windows Vista option for that.

Next, you’ll be asked for the Media Selection. As I’m only doing this after IE8 is installed, I’ll be choosing ‘Configuration-only package’.

The Feature Selection will then ask which features you want to configure. You can remove some if you don’t need them, but I’ve left them all ticked so I can check out all the options.

Next is a nice addition to the wizard – Automatic Version Synchronization. The setup will force you to make sure you have the latest install files for IE8 from the web. At the time of writing, it is only 12.7MB so you won’t have to wait long.

Continuing on, you’ll then get prompted for the User Experience. You can have the user pick lots of options, or just have them see the progress, or silent. I’ll pick silent as my users aren’t interested :) Also there are restart options – Prompt, No Restart or Force Restart. I’ll pick No restart because this will only be used for new machines, which will get rebooted before a user uses them. It’s not critical stuff, but also I can use SCCM to deploy and force a restart if I really wanted to.

Customize Title Bars is next, if you’d like your company name in the IE8 Title Bar. There’s also an option to adjust the amount of additional buttons that appear on the toolbar. Not touching that option…

Search Providers – the one I’ve been waiting for! You can manually specify the settings for your search provider, or go the easy option of just clicking ‘Import’ and it’ll pull whatever you have set up locally on IE8. I’ve got Google and Bing there already, so it’s imported them the way I want it.

Important URLs – Home Page and Support. This gives you the option of forcing IE to open up multiple tabs on execution – could work in some environments but not here. Passing on this one too.

Accelerators – same as Search Providers really, can import or add via XML file.

Favorites, Favorites Bar and Feeds – push out default favorites if you like. Probably not the method I’d use to do this, I’d rather have it in Group Policy Preferences.

…A bunch of other basic stuff continues from here – I didn’t configure any of it as it can all be done via GPP.

Once you’re done, it will crate the package and tell you where it is.

Deploying your settings

Now that you’ve packaged up the settings the way you like, there will be an exe and msi file in the directory specified earlier then under BrndOnly\AMD64_VISTA\EN called IE8-Setup-Branding.*

This is the file you’ll need to deploy (.msi is easy via Group Policy, run once) which you can manually run on a PC or three to test.

All done!

Conclusion

It’s a very straight forward, very customisable and easy to deploy method of pushing out your company’s IE settings. Microsoft have done well on this, so I highly recommend you give it a try.