“I’m sure there was a tree around here last time”
A furry visitor
Fast hard disks
So exactly how much faster are the latest hard disks? A number of people commented that using the old IDE disk on my Dad’s new Vista 64bit box wasn’t the best idea. I grabbed a copy of HD Tune to get some benchmarks of each of the 4 disks in the system to get an idea of how the drives compared.
Here’s what I found:
| Measurement | IDE Disk 1 | IDE Disk 2 | WD2000JD | WD10EACS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer Rate Minimum (MB/sec) | 1.1 | 7.6 | 32.1 | 37.2 |
| Transfer Rate Maximum (MB/sec) | 43.5 | 45.1 | 55.1 | 90.5 |
| Transfer Rate Average (MB/sec) | 28.8 | 33.8 | 48 | 68.3 |
| Access Time (ms) | 14.5 | 14.3 | 20.5 | 15.5 |
| Burst Rate (MB/sec) | 53.3 | 49.8 | 91.9 | 124.6 |
So that 1Tb drive really is quite a bit faster than the other drives after all.
I’ve since re-configured the new Vista box to use the fast drive for the operating system, and left the other drives in for video files (but with the knowledge that it will be a simple upgrade path to swap them out for additional SATA drives as required).
CAT.NET and Xss
Microsoft Code Analysis Tool .NET is a new tool to detect certain vulnerabilities in your code – including Cross Site Scripting, SQL Injection, Process Command Injection, File Canonicalization, Exception Information, LDAP Injection, XPATH Injection and Redirection to User Controlled Site.
Also there’s a beta release of version 3 of the AntiXSS library which can help reduce the chance of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities in your ASP.NET application.
The 3 Ps of successful application deployment
- Planning
- Preparation
- Proximity to a bakery
Have I missed any others?
Google Transit for Adelaide
I saw this mentioned on Australian IT today – if you open up Adelaide in Google Maps, you now get the option of listing directions by “public transit”.
So for example, if I wanted to get from “Westbourne Park to Glenelg”, just enter exactly that phrase and search, then click on the ‘public transit’ link
As you can see from the map, it indicates the bus route (216), then you change to a tram (
), then finally you walk (
). The directions panel contains bus stop details and the service times.
Ever since I owned an Apple Newton MessagePad and more recently a few Windows Mobile devices I’ve had an idea for an application that would allow you to interactively find out when the next bus was, and tell me what time I would arrive home – taking into account that I used to catch two buses and a train to get home. Well it looks like Google has pretty much implemented that idea for me!