What am I talking about I hear you ask? Well recently I was unfortunate enough to send my beloved canon 30d to swim with the fishes. Now granted, it was an accident, and granted I didn’t want to see the end of that camera, but I still feel bad about it none the less.

A recent event with Ken Duncan, world renowned photographer, didn’t go so swimmingly for me (boom tish). After leaving the main group of photographers listening to Ken talk (we couldn’t hear him, hence why we went out on our own), we found ourselves on rocks at the sea side, preparing to attempt to take some passable photos. (Slightly hard when there were probably over two hundred other photographers there as well). At one point, while gingerly making my way over the rocks and searching out the slippery spots, I managed to miss one. Well, more accurately, I found it. The hard way. Legs and arms went flying, and the beloved camera was suddenly flying through the air.

Have you ever noticed that camera equipment bounces quite well? No? I don’t recommend you trying, just take my word for it.

My camera, having seen much better days.

Unfortunately, my camera bounced three times and ended up in a shallow pool of sea water. I was quick to get up, recover most of my gear, and quickly remove the batteries from the battery grip. One of them anyway. The other had gone AWOL, along with the battery cover that I had conveniently stored in that little spot in the grip.

This would be me draining the water out of my gear. Thanks to David Reed for supplying the image.

Now the short of the story is that when i got home, I quickly plonked all of the wet gear in a box of rice and left it a few days, but my camera unfortunately didn’t survive. The shiny new lens that I had on it did however! At least that is some small mercy.

Some things that I learnt, that if you find yourself in the same situation may help:

1. Cameras should be on the fancy camera strap you have. Unfortunately I had my tripod hanging from the strap as I was sick of carrying it around.
   I’m not entirely convinced it would have helped in my particular instance, as the way I fell I probably would have landed on it anyway.
2. Get the batteries out of the camera as quickly as possible.
   I did this, however have since found another battery in the camera. It is the little button cell that lets your camera remember the date and all its settings when there is no main battery in.
3. As soon as possible, put it in a box of rice and/or those little silica gel baggies that you should store with your gear to remove moisture from the air.
4. When buying bags of rice from the service station on your way home, check for weevils before you buy it. It’s a pain to have to go through and remove and kill them all
5. Be careful of the “rice dust”. You don’t want it inside your camera if it survives. I sifted or strained my rice first, which had a duel purpose. (See #4)
6. BE PATIENT. Let the gear dry for at least a few days. I waited about 5 days.

Some other things/ideas that may assist you:

1. L series lenses are hard to justify for most, myself included. This was my first, but boy did it pay for itself. They are TUFF buggers. My lens didn’t have a scratch on it. They are also apparently water tight. I have no doubt that if I had one of my Sigma lenses on, they would not have survived quite as well.
2. Don’t expect sympathy from your friends. DO expect them to laugh and deride you, and expect them to ask you to do it again, so that this time they can photograph it!
3. When photographing near the seaside, take a change of clothing with you and leave it in the car. I was wet for about four hours, in jeans. Yuck.
4. Keep an eye out for brown moss on rocks, that’s the ones that will cause you to slip and fall because you are less likely to see it.
5. So far, I dont believe Changing shoes would have helped. I had really grippy shoes on that night, with tread that went in all angles.
6. I’ve taken photos of all of the serial numbers of every piece of camera gear that I use and take out in the field with me. This is more in case of theft. I store these images in a program called Evernote. This allows me to have them available no matter where I am, and no matter what device I am on. As long as I have an internet connection, I have access to the images. Always helpful for police reports. Evernote is also a really great place to store recipes, do research with etc. I thoroughly recommend it even if you don’t use this tip.
7. Scan all of your receipts/Invoices and store them with the photos of serial numbers etc. Again, I use Evernote to do this. This will make it much easier to find your receipts are needed, i.e. in the case of an insurance claim. I had not done this and I am now in the process of searching my filing cabinets for receipts.
8. Ensure that all of your equipment is listed on your contents insurance policy. I am lucky that my L series lens is still ok, as I had not gotten around to listing this on the insurance. Most insurance companies will automatically cover you for some items when taking them from the home, however they will only cover you to a certain amount. If you have the items specifically listed, your will be covered for more of the costs.
9. Keep a copy of your insurance papers in Evernote with the camera images and receipts. If you are concerned with privacy of this sort of document “in the cloud” as you rightly should be, there are a number of encryption programs out there that will allow you to encrypt the file before putting it in Evernote. Just don’t forget your encryption key.

You may have noticed I’m fond of evernote.  My wife certainly did when going through and correcting my typing.  So in answer to her question, NO this page has NOT been sponsored by them.

Now, has anyone heard when the new Canon 5D Mark III is due for release?  I seem to be in the market for a new camera.

———–

As an update on this, my insurer made me get a professional opinion on the camera before they would proceed. I sent it to canon who wrote it off saying it was beyond economical repair. Once I had the email from Canon saying that, NRMA swiftly approved a replacement body and battery grip. I currently have a 60D winging it’s way to me. One thing to keep in mind however is that NRMA use JB Hifi as it’s replacement service. While this would be ok normally, I get the feeling that the camera being sent out is a grey import and NOT an Australian stocked item. This may mean that if you are with NRMA and get a replacement, you may have issues with Canon service down the track.

The usual method for developers to upgrade to Beta versions of the iOS is to use Xcode organiser.  Doing it this way on this occasion was NOT the way to go, as it left me with an iPad in DFU mode.  ie, unable to turn the device on and left with a warning about being in recovery mode when plugged into a computer running iTunes.

Getting the new iOS ended up being realtively easy to do using iTunes however using these steps.

1. Simply hold down the Option key (on a Mac,  I think it’s ALT on a windows based machine) when pressing the restore button in itunes and instead of just re-installing the lastest publicly available version, you will be presented with a finder dialog box.
2. Select your downloaded iOS 5.0 Beta 2 ipsw file, press ok and wait.
3. The OS will be upgraded successfully and then allow you to do a restore of your latest backup.

Easy

NOTE : This method worked for me using the legitamate Apple release to Developers and is not intended as advise for those running non legit versions of the iOS release.  I have no knowledge of the installation methods on so called hacked versions etc so do not bother asking about them.

Good Luck

Note the only thing I did differently here was instead of using the command sudo pico /etc/fstab I used the command sudo vifs instead.

The answer is to open Terminal and enter “diskutil list”. In the identifier, the drive should be listed as something along the lines of “disk0s3″. Now type “diskutil info (whatever your drive is listed as)”. For me: diskutil info disk0s3. That will list a whole bunch of information about the drive. Look for where it says “Volume UUID” and copy the string.

Next, enter “sudo pico /etc/fstab”. Terminal will open an fstab file. This file will let you tell your Mac not to boot a drive. The file should be empty. Enter the following:

UUID= (Insert your drive’s exact UUID here) none ntfs ro,noauto 0 0

For FAT32 formatted drives, replace “ntfs” with “msdos”. Exit and save with ctrl+x (it will prompt you to save the changes).

Exit Terminal, restart, and the drive should not show up. You can still boot it as a Virtual Machine, and if you need to mount it to access anything from within Mac OS X, just go to Disk Utility, click the grayed-out Boot Camp volume name and mount it.

This is not some crazy new idea or anything, it’s the proper way to prevent auto-mounting through OS X’s Unix foundations, but it can be hard to find and I thought I’d put it down in writing here. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or corrections!

The original post can be found here.

1. After restoring your volume but still in the Shadow Protect Windows PE environment, Press CTRL – SHFT – F12.  This enables the Command prompt menu option in the tools menu.  You will know it has worked when you get a smiley face in the system status tray.
2. Open up the newly created Command Prompt from the tools menu.
3. Run “chkdsk /f  C:”
4. Once this has completed continue as normal.

“Call “PropertyCollector.RetrieveContents” for object “propertyCollector” on vCenter Server “” failed.”

Removing the VM from Inventory and re-adding it worked as per VMWare Knowledge base article 1025367.  It would appear to have been an issue caused by our upgrade to ESXi 4.1.

VMware KB: Unable to edit the settings of the template in vCenter Server 4.1.

Easy Fix

1. Monitor if anything is using massive amounts of CPU and RAM
   Pretty much the same as its equivalent in windows, Activity Monitor will show you whats running and how much CPU time and RAM individual applications are using at any one time.  In my case this didn’t really pick anything up that surprised me, Firefox was a bit of a hog but nothing that worried me.  Note that if you are regularly using virtual PC apps like VMware and Parallels, these will take up a lot of RAM and CPU cycles.  It’s just the nature of those apps.
2. Repair Permissions
   Do this by opening the disk utility (Applications, Utilities, Disk Utility) and selecting repair permissions.  I have seen comments on various posts around the web that say you should do this after every program installation, personally I had never done this.  Ever.  So this process for me took about 10 minutes and did pickup(and repair) quite a few “issues”.
3. Clear system cache’s
   What I did here was install a third party app called Cocktail.  Now be careful here because this application can do some damage if you do the wrong thing.  All I did though after installing it was to choose Files from the toolbar, then select Cache from the Tabs that appear.  In here place a tick next to system in the current user column, and ticks for both User and Internet in the “Everyone’s cache” column.  Then simply click on the clear button.  Note from memory you will have to reboot at this point.  Do so.
4. Manually run the system maintenance scripts
   Now theoretically I probably didn’t need to do this, as these are supposed to run automatically.  I couldn’t think of any reason not to run them manually however so I did.  So far so good .  To do this, open up Cocktail again but this time click on the System button in the toolbar.  The scripts tab should be automatically selected, so make sure “All” is chosen for what scripts to run and press the run button.

This is what I’ve attempted so far.  I’ll add more if and as needed, but so far so good.  The system already seems a fair bit snappier.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the repair permissions step has done the most good, but that might be a test for the next time I see the issue.

On the blackberry in question go to Options > Advanced Options > Enterprise Activation
In the email field press and hold the ALT key and type CNFG.

Once you enter this a hidden menu will appear and you need to change “Wireless Sync” to No, now exit this menu and wait 30 seconds and repeat the process but turn sync back to Yes. Once you’ve changed this setting you will see a slow sync will automatically start and it will repair all the wireless sync settings.

In the rare case that this fails you may need to wipe the device and reactivate.

One thing to note before I go on is that Microsoft is “de-emphasizing”  public folders going forward from Exchange 2007, and as such they are beginning to make it harder to do things.  Under Exchange 2007, you must have SP1 or better to even support Public folders as the support is pretty much non-existent in the Original release version(well it does exist, but all via powershell commandlets).  Even in SP1 you still need powershell to control a LOT, but then EX2007 is all like that anyway.

I used the following command to give access to the public folders button on a user by user basis.  Note that although the main option required here  is -OWAPublicFoldersEnabled, I found that once you had set one of these options, you had to set ALL of them.  This command is what I used for this particular situation, however obviously you may wish to change some or all of the settings.  1 = True and 0 = False.

Set-CASMailbox username@domain -OWAEnabled 1 -OWACalendarEnabled 1 -OWAContactsEnabled 1 -OWATasksEnabled 1 -OWAJournalEnabled 0 -OWANotesEnabled 0 -OWARemindersAndNotificationsEnabled 1 -OWAPremiumClientEnabled 1 -OWASpellCheckerEnabled 1 -OWASearchFoldersEnabled 1 -OWASignaturesEnabled 1 -OWAThemeSelectionEnabled 1 -OWAJunkEmailEnabled 1 -OWAUMIntegrationEnabled 0 -OWAWSSAccessOnPublicComputersEnabled 0 -OWAWSSAccessOnPrivateComputersEnabled 0 -OWAUNCAccessOnPublicComputersEnabled 0 -OWAUNCAccessOnPrivateComputersEnabled 0 -OWAActiveSyncIntegrationEnabled 1 -OWAAllAddressListsEnabled 1 -OWAChangePasswordEnabled 1 -OWARulesEnabled 1 -OWAPublicFoldersEnabled 1 -OWASMimeEnabled 1 -OWARecoverDeletedItemsEnabled 1

You can check the settings have saved by running
get-CASMailbox username@domain |fl OWA*

To make it easier for myself I created the following script.  Just copy and past between the snip lines into notepad, changes settins as required and save the file as changeOWA.ps1

———————-SNIP————————

Write-Host “OWA Settings before Updates”
get-CASMailbox $args[0] |fl OWA*
Set-CASMailbox $args[0]-OWAEnabled 1 -OWACalendarEnabled 1 -OWAContactsEnabled 1 -OWATasksEnabled 1 -OWAJournalEnabled 0 -OWANotesEnabled 0 -OWARemindersAndNotificationsEnabled 1 -OWAPremiumClientEnabled 1 -OWASpellCheckerEnabled 1 -OWASearchFoldersEnabled 1 -OWASignaturesEnabled 1 -OWAThemeSelectionEnabled 1 -OWAJunkEmailEnabled 1 -OWAUMIntegrationEnabled 0 -OWAWSSAccessOnPublicComputersEnabled 0 -OWAWSSAccessOnPrivateComputersEnabled 0 -OWAUNCAccessOnPublicComputersEnabled 0 -OWAUNCAccessOnPrivateComputersEnabled 0 -OWAActiveSyncIntegrationEnabled 1 -OWAAllAddressListsEnabled 1 -OWAChangePasswordEnabled 1 -OWARulesEnabled 1 -OWAPublicFoldersEnabled 1 -OWASMimeEnabled 1 -OWARecoverDeletedItemsEnabled 1
Write-Host “Press any key to continue …”
$x = $host.UI.RawUI.ReadKey(“NoEcho,IncludeKeyDown”)
Write-Host “OWA Settings AFTER Updates”
get-CASMailbox $args[0] |fl OWA*
———————-SNIP————————

To use this script,  ensure the script is saved on the exchange server.  I have saved it to the currently logged on user’s desktop.  Go into Exchange Powershell and type the following command:

.\changeOWA.ps1 username@domain

Replace username@domain with the relevant user and domain that you are trying to edit and hit enter.  The screen will now show you the user’s settings before any changes are made.  Press any key to continue and the changes will be made and the results displayed.

Just to reiterate, this script will not work at a standard command prompt.  You must be in the Exchange Powershell to use the script as it requires the commandlets it adds.

To do this simply open VI Client and follow these steps.

1. Right click on the virtual machine containing the HDD that you wish to increase and select Edit Settings
2. Select the hard disk you wish to enlarge and type a new value for the hard disk.  Click ok to close the virtual machine settings.
3. Console into operating system of the guest and bring up a command prompt
4. Type Diskpart
5. type list volume
6. work out the volume number of the disk you are enlarging the type select volume <no>
   (Replace <no> with the volume number you worked out)
7. Type Extend

Done.  However what if the volume you are trying to extend is a system volume?  Windows will (understandably) not let you enlarge a volume that it has used to boot from as the volume will contain files in use.  Trying the diskpart commands above will fail if this is the case.   We can get around this issue by performing the following steps

Disclaimer:
This process has worked for me in my testing and on production VM’s, however i strongly suggest you perform relevent backups and testing prior to following these steps in your production environment.

1. Right click on the virtual machine containing the HDD that you wish to increase and select Edit Settings
2. Select the hard disk you wish to enlarge and type a new value for the hard disk.  Click ok to close the virtual machine settings.
3. Shut down the virtual machine.
   You must shut down the original VM during this process to ensure only one VM is access the disk at a time.
4. Start up a temporary test server.   
   This is important.  The VM must be started before adding the disk to ensure it doesn’t try to use the extra disk as a system disk.
   It is probably best to use a clean system with no extra software installed on it, apart from windows patches.  I deploy a clean system from my SOE template and use that.
5. Edit the temporary Virtual machine by right clicking on it and selecting Edit Settings
6. Add a new hard disk Drive to the VM
7. When asked if you would like to create a new disk or select an existing disk, use the existing disk option and select the vmdk file for the system disk you are trying to increase
8. Click on ok to add.  When VI has completed the add process, open a console to your temporary machine
9. Open a command prompt
10. Type Diskpart
11. type list volume
12. work out the volume number of the disk you are enlarging the type select volume <no>
    (Replace <no> with the volume number you worked out)
13. Type Extend
14. Once completed confirm in disk manager or windows explorer that your disk has indeed increased in size and then shutdown your temporary VM.
15. Remove the extra hard disk from the temporary system
16. Start the original VM.  Once the system is started you should be able to confirm the new size of the disk.