Its not cost very much so far as upgrading my main desktop a couple of months back. I have a spare motherboard and memory as well as a power supply. The only missing pieces are a CPU and case. I am using my desktop CPU and have a new faster one on order for my main PC.  The case, well I have purchased a new one as well as a new hardware as I’d prefer not to use my old drives that are probably starting to degrade.

The case I have got for it is a Fractal Design Define R2. I had seen it a while ago and was impressed with its 7 internal drive bays and sound proofing features. First impressions I see these are actually working and its current near silient sitting on my worktop while its copying data across from the old home server.

More on this soon!

In Exchange2010 you can do all this via a Transport Rule, this is new as you can’t do this on Exchange2007 or Exchange2003 as I have seen in a SBS 2003 set-up I manage.

To do this..

1. Open Exchange Management Console and navigate to “Organisation Configuration” > “Hub Transports” > “Transport Rules” > “New Transport Rule” .
2. Give the new rule a name and a commit and click next.
3. Select the condition “send to users that are inside or outside the organisation, or partners” and click next
3.1 May be worth to later create two rules one for sending to inside the organisation and another for sending to outside the organisation.
4. Select the action “Append disclaimer text and fallback to action if unable to apply”.
5. click the blue text “disclaimer text” and edit the field. click next and create the rule.

Test this by sending an email to someone other another address.

You can use the following macros for inserting user specific information to the signature..

Display Name: %DisplayName%%
First Name: %%FirstName%%
Last Name: %%LastName%%
Business Phone: %%Phone%%
Title: %%Title%%

As well as inserting Word formatted HTML..

This all seems a little pointless on my Exchange installation as I only have a few users but I imagine this could save quite a few pennies on storage as it stops the signature from being appended on Outlook and then saved in the sent folder, this frees up space in the mailbox.

I suppose it also centralises management of signatures for when you are adding disclaimer or marketing messages

In terms of university I heard my option module has been cancelled, lack of a student interest apparently, I would not be surprised if I was the only one that signed up. I have now decided after not much thought as well a lot of modules did 1) Not appeal to me, 2) I am already doing and finally 3) I could not do as I did not do the required level 2 modules, chosen to do Information Systems Engineering in Industry. This however has just put a dent in my timetable and I no longer appear to get Fridays off in the first semester, shame I know but then I’ll be at university and be able to study during the gaps between lectures.. I say that but if it is anything like last year the Library staff seem to enjoy baking and working in the Library with the heating on not only in the winter but the summer to is really off putting, its not even warm, its just hot in there but anyway.

I’ve not had much final thoughts on my final year project but I think now that I have the forthcoming weeks off I’ll start to press on with that, I can imagine doing something with IPV6 but I’m getting put off by that idea if every other person is doing it to..

Placement has been fun although in the last month my role has been to step aside and be more of a supervisor to ensure my replacement is up to speed and knows what he is doing so I have not been as hands on as I like to be.
Lately I have been brushing up on my C# skills ready for September and have created a few applications, I may release one or two so stay tuned for that if your using XBMC…

During this time of darkness though my house mates and I took ourselves to Cannock Chase. Its a forest with great landscapes and perfect for mountain biking. Non of us had ever been or done any kind of mountain biking before but we thought it would be a change and there is only so much you can do without the Internet. It was an awesome day and riding downhill was extremely fun, we headed down some steep hills which required a little bit of skill but we made it and didn’t break any bones.

The kit its self if quite cheap, £55 and it comes with everything to get started, lots of cool LED’s! A mini servo and motor, push buttons as well as photo resister. I’m not going to reel off the list of its contents you can check it out here.

I’ll leave you now with some nice photos from my iPhone but more on this later and what my plans are with it!

I didn’t feel the new to buy top of the range parts so I thought I’d get a new motherboard which is more compatible with better RAM and CPU for when I found a second hand deal I just had to grab. Although I’d been thinking about this for a while a motherboard appeared on the OCUK forsale forums which seemed to fit the bill. A Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3p arrived in the post pretty soon after I handed over some funds. I thought Great! but I soon hit some unplanned fails.

First fail was just after I took apart my PC I realised that the new motherboard would not fit in the case which wasn’t so bad because I also wanted to add another harddrive and the case only accommodated for 2 hard drives so I got a new case. A pretty cheap one I don’t really see the need in expensive cases so I purchased, from OCUK, an Xigmatek Asgard for £25. Next fail was while I was waiting for the new case to arrive was that I found the CPU cooler would not fit on the new motherboard due to it having 2 large cooling pipes extend outwards and conflict with the 3 heatsinks on the motherboard surrounding the CPU socket.

At this point its not so bad a quick £65 upgrade has turned in to a not so quick £100 upgrade however..

The case came and I grabbed a new cooler from Maplins in the city. I built the new machine and as I was connecting the power supply I thought oh wait. My power supply wasn’t of ATX 2.2 specification and didn’t have the extra 8 pin motherboard connection. I thought it would work anyway so I connected the 4 pin connector to the 1st half of the 8pin socket and booted up..

Beep Beep beeeep!.. Is what I half expected and I was right, quick look at the trouble shooting page in the manual and it appears short beeps related to a power failure. I put two and two together and order a new power supply. To be fair it was probably for the best, its not wise to run a demanding graphics card of a cheap and nasty power supply.

Well it came today and I slot it in and ruin my nice cable job in the new case, boot up and I soon find I have the same problem a power error. Hmm as I start losing the will to live and wish I’d never got in to computers the techy in me started checking all connectors and I start to do minimal configuration.. I get to the RAM and take out one of the two sticks… Still no post, just beeps. I switch the sticks and hit the power button once more.. Success!! the monitor flashes with crazy BIOS image and I am greeted my the Windows 7 Setup Wizard..

Which brings me to now after a rather quick installation. As it appears one of my memory sticks is faulty I’m looking at a new set but I think I’ll hold off until a bargain comes around else this upgrade is going to hit the £200 mark..

The lesson learnt here is that nothing is simple and you’d ought to plan upgrades carefully or they’ll kick your bank balance in the nads.

We’ve had some new tech at work too. I’ve had my hands on a HTC Desire this week, I’ve been quite impressed with Android and the HTC phone but its not something I’ve got used too but then I’ve not had my sim in and my iPhone as always been in reach. I could though see myself hopping over to Android in the future. Looking at the iPhone 4 details nothing really shouts awesome which is good as it won’t make my iPhone 3gs to obsolete. I can however see future Android phones having some quite epic features and being able to root it and unlock more sounds pretty cool add-ons like tethering for free just seals the deal!

Last week marked a slight milestone for me on placement last week as well, firstly I kicked off my report for University but also I started the hand over period with my replacement. Although its 3 months of hand over it marks the time where I start taking a step back and sharing my knowledge.

I’ve also started preparing for going back to Staffs. I’ve got my moving date in the bag which is quite soon so I’ll be commuting for the final part of placement but I’d also been brushing up on my programming skills as I’ve had a tip off with regards to next years assignments and reading up on IPV6 as its likly that’ll be the subject of my final year project. I’m getting quite excited really it’ll be great to get back to work and

So here it is.

Awesome eh?

Currently holding my Cisco 2600xm router and 2900XL Switch.