Here’s another couldn’t-pass-up bargain camera, the Nikon Coolpix 4500. it’s a slight upgrade from my Nikon Coolpix 995 – 4x zoom instead of 3x, slightly higher resolution, and a metal body. The chattery, constanf focusing is much quieter, and it’s a smaller, more solid feeling camera. Photos to come…
My first digicam was a Canon Powershot S100 purchased back in 2000, and it changed my perspective on photography. Being able to review images in real-time, for the first time, helped me improve as a photographer. 23 years later…
I found a good list of of new and missing features in the “New” Outlook; I’ve been swapping back and forth between the two at work and have been concerned about the features and workflows that have been part of Outlook from the beginning are being dropped.
One example is Microsoft ToDo replacing the Tasks folder in Outlook. I rely heavily on Outlook task categories for task tracking and ToDo has a long way to go.
Microsoft develops an Office app suite for Windows, another app suite for Mac, and the web components. With this “new” Outlook, essentially a web app wrapped in a Windows app, I can see the direction Microsoft it going -single code base, less effort, more parity between platforms.
Pin/Unpin Email
Snooze email
Density has 3 choices instead of 2
Can preview message body next to subject in message list (replaces 1/2/3 line message preview – see below)
Board
Integrates MS Loop cloud components
Features removed (in no particular order):
Customize ribbon
Ribbon cannot be hidden
Preview 1, 2, or 3 lines of message body in message list
Choose columns to show in message list
Separation of categories from subject in message list
Shared categories cannot have color
Cannot “view source” of HTML emails
Status bar
Item count, server connectivity status, zoom level, etc.
Rearranging folders in folder tree
Cannot set folder to show item count
Outlook forms
Notes view
Folders view
Folder pane cannot be “minimized” to show folders sideways
“Share to Teams”
“Send to OneNote”
Find/replace within message when composing email (Ctrl+F)
Outlook Today (although may be replaced with “My Day” or “Board”)
PST file support
Translate
Search ribbon
Advanced Search (Ctrl+Shift+F)
Search Folders
“Unread Mail” in favorites is an example
Cannot right-click and “Add to favorites” for shared mailboxes
Reply with IM (opens Teams chat with sender)
Copy email attachments
Sort/Filter options greatly reduced
Rules are far less capable
Can see, but not access/use better rules from old Outlook
Rule to move message to another mailbox
OneDrive link does not honor policies and be hidden
“To Do” opens in browser instead of within Outlook
No contacts from shared mailboxes
No print options in Mail view. Must open each message and print one at a time
No print options in Contacts view
“Clean up” mailbox
Send/Receive/Sync Now
Creating email signatures via script
Recall email
Resend email
Work offline
Quick Access Toolbar and Previous/Next email buttons when viewing a message
Public folders must be manually added to favorites to see them
Accessibility is basically gone
Using Outlook without mouse/touch is not possible
To Do bar (although may be replaced with “My Day” or “Board”)
View Settings is extremely gutted. (old Outlook is insanely powerful here)
Rich text format for composing email
Voting options (replaced with browser-based MS forms)
Does not use Word as email message editor, so these features are gone when composing email:
Styles, smart tables, thesaurus, find & replace, paragraph formatting, advanced character formatting, page color, effects, themes, smart art, word art, OLE objects, etc.
Set bullet type/style in bulleted list
Quick Parts
Right-click
Does not use Word as description editor for calendar event entries. So, above features are gone here too
Email composer does not support:
Message expiration
Hanging indents or tab customization
Reply-to alternate email address
Digitally signing or encrypting emails
Auto pick time for creating meetings
High importance & low importance tags for calendar events
Dictation
No way to open address book within “Create calendar event”
Looking at Settings/Options reveals dozens (hundreds?) of missing options when compared to old Outlook
None
Alt-R and Alt-W hotkeys
Not having Word as email editor:
Cannot put border or shading around inserted images
Can only select from a subset of Windows fonts
Does not migrate quick steps from old Outlook even though they are stored on the server.
Cannot open .EML or .ICS files
COM and VTSO add-ins
MAPI is gone. No more “Print PDF to email”, or other apps using email workflow
Can’t “share as attachment” from the other Office apps.
Mail merge using Word and Excel may not work
Message Templates
Unable to sort by name, then type in the name to go to that grouping.
Custom follow-up reminders for email
“Next 7 Days” Calendar view
Tasks view
Can’t delete attachments from emails and still keep the email
Can’t save an attachment where you want, it goes to downloads
Cannot setup multiple languages for spell checking within a message.
Read Aloud (text-to-speech) is only available within Immersive Reader instead of right-clicking
Right-click on message -> Find Related
Auto correct shortcuts are gone
Sort messages by category
Does not work with on-prem Exchange Server
Lots of missing Enterprise controls, such as using Group Policy to prevent users from adding their personal accounts.
Cannot drag-n-drop emails into other Office apps
Quick Steps cannot create new email
Cannot import Holidays into Calendar (.hol files)
Cannot minimize to system tray
Can’t view headers of attached emails
Gray theme missing, only white and dark available
Cannot change icons of quick steps
[via reddit ]
Windows support for compression standards like RAR, tar and gz has been lacking. RAR, for example, was released in 1993, for example, while we ran Windows 3.1 with Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect for Windows.
Buried in a blog post by Windows chief Panos Panay discussing AI and cloud-based improvements to Windows in a blog post today “We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project, you now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.”
As a sysadmin, I run into .tar.gz files frequently. Running a BBS means running into old files archived with .arc, .lzh, .7z, and other less common compression formats. The latter format gives me pause. As much as I’d like to see Windows functionality extended, 7-Zip has been a part of Windows builds for me since Windows 2000, and I’d hate to see their software become irrelevant.
OpenWRT is a powerful open-source firmware replacement for many home “appliance” routers that gives you enterprise router features out of home network appliances. One key feature it offers is the ability to implement Virtual LANs (VLANs), which allow you to segment your network into distinct virtual networks. I will guide you through the process of setting up VLANs in OpenWRT, with a focus on three use cases: isolating IoT devices, creating guest networks and isolating homelab networks.
A VLAN is a logical grouping of network devices. By using VLANs, you can create isolated networks that operate as if they were physically separate, providing enhanced security and efficiency.
a VLAN uses an identifier called a “Tag” to identify a virtual network. VLAN-aware devices can associate a tag with a specific physical port or wireless network and isolate traffic to those ports/networks.
A port can also be configured as a “trunk” port, which can pass all traffic. This is useful when you want to extend multiple VLANs across devices, for example a backbone network connecting two ethernet segments.
192.168.1.1. Hopefully you’ve changed yours. :)Navigate to System > Software and click on Update lists to ensure you have the latest package information. Then, search for and install the luci-proto-relay package. This package provides the necessary tools for configuring VLANs.
IoT).If you want each VLAN to have its own DHCP server, go to Network > DHCP and DNS. Click Add to create a new DHCP server for each VLAN interface you created.
IoT devices are notorious for their security vulnerabilities. My oven and my refrigerator both connect to a phone app which is mildly helpful and frighteningly connected. By placing them on a separate VLAN, you can isolate them from your main network, minimizing the risk of an IOT security exploit affecting my home network.They can talk to specific hosts/networks on the internet, but not any of my internal hosts.
Creating a guest network on a separate VLAN allows you to provide internet access to visitors while keeping them isolated from your private network. With my guest network, I’ve set an easy password and configured “client isolation”, meaning that a client on the guest network can’t access another guest, or my home network.
I have a VLAN set up for my homelab, so I can restrict my traffic from a test Active Directory environment, a test Linux environment and several home servers in their own virtual network, separating their traffic from my home streaming traffic.
Implementing VLANs in OpenWRT is a powerful way to enhance network security and efficiency. By segmenting your network into distinct virtual networks, you can isolate specific groups of devices and control their access. This is particularly useful for securing IoT devices and providing a secure guest network. With OpenWRT’s flexibility, you can tailor your network to meet your specific needs.
The WRT1900ACS is a capable router from several years ago that are dirt cheap on the used market and have a ton of features that I like. With an alternative OS like OpenWRT or DD-WRT, you unlock new features that compare to a proper router.
I started running home networks on a Linksys WRT54G, an ancestor to the WRT1900ACS. a pioneering router that redefined home networking. Its open-source firmware became a playground for tech enthusiasts, setting the stage for a community-driven approach to router customization. I still keep one in storage for nostalgia’s sake.
The WRT1900ACS was released in 2015 but still holds its own in 2023. Equipped with a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, 512MB of RAM, and four antennas, the WRT1900ACS holds its own. I use it as a border router on a 600 mbit cable circuit and it keeps up with multiple traffic streams.
This router has a USB 3.0/eSATA connection, a USB 2.0 connection and gigabit ethernet. I’ve used an external USB drive to act as shared storage for my LAN, and shared movies and music using the router’s built-in DLNA server.
One thing that attracted me to the WRT1900AC series of routers is dual firmware images. The router keeps a backup firmware image at all times. If the router crashes and doesn’t come fully up 3 times in a row, it’ll switch to the failover image. I keep the Linksys image on one side and OpenWRT on the other, so I can always go back if needed. If you want to go all-in, you’ll need to upgrade the firmware twice.
Under OpenWRT, I’m able to use enterprise-class networking tools with a friendly GUI. I’ve added network traffic monitoring, a Wireguard client and server, VLANs and a reverse proxy for my network.
If I were to compare the two, I’d say DD-WRT is a little easier to pick up, OpenWRT is more flexible. I’ve been focused more on OpenWRT of late, as I’m running a homelab and use it as a sandbox for ideas to use at work.
OpenWRT has detailed information about the router and installation instructions at https://openwrt.org/toh/linksys/wrt1900acs, but the process is pretty straightforward. You’ll use the Linksys stock firmware, go to the firmware upgrade section of the web admin tool, and upload the “Firmware OpenWRT Install” version. Mess up and brick your router? turn it on, wait for the lights to come on, then turn it off. Repeat two more times to return to the failover image and try again.
Once you install OpenWRT there is a multitude of extensions and applications available. Be mindful of available disk space and memory when choosing applications to install!
I’ve been looking for low-power, small footprint homelab servers; servethehome.com’s YouTube channel has a great comparison of “tinyminimicro” servers – ultra-small form factor (USFF) desktops that make great mini servers.
I’ve run into problems with USFF servers only supporting 16GB of memory – it’s why I paid less for a desktop form factor server that supports 64GB of memory. It’s not a problem if you run multiple USFF desktops in a cluster, but I wanted to have one system supporting all of my workloads.
ServeTheHome reviews an HP Elite Mini 600 G9 that supports 96GB of RAM, 2 NVMe drives, and 10gb ethernet in a low-power, quiet USFF form factor. Too much? He also creates a mid-level configuration with 2.5gb ethernet, 48 GB RAM and smaller, cheaper storage.
I noticed this support article; first, Microsoft put up ads in the Start Menu, then offer to change your default browser. If you run Microsoft Edge as your default and change the browser, you get a “Are you sure” prompt you don’t get with any other browser.
Now, for your convenience, Outlook defaults to Edge.
Microsoft is always striving to improve and streamline our product experiences—offering a new way to use the classic Microsoft Outlook app on Windows and the Microsoft Edge web browser.
If you have a Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription, browser links from the Outlook app will open in Microsoft Edge by default, right alongside the email they’re from in the Microsoft Edge sidebar pane. This allows you to easily access, read, and respond to the message using your matching authenticated profile. No more disruptive switching—just your email and the web content you need to reference, in a single, side-by-side view.
[via hacker news ]
Microsoft is changing the interface of Outlook in a way that will affect people who follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done system, or people who rely heavily on tracking tasks in Outlook.
Getting Things Done is a system that lets you capture information and tasks, take action by completing quick tasks, capturing the next actions required to complete the task, saving the information for future reference, or deleting the information if it serves no purpose.
The one, always available, tried-and-true tool for me has been Microsoft Outlook. Microsoft Outlook has a capable tasks interface that lets you prioritize, categorize and delegate tasks. David Allen even has a guide to set up Outlook to leverage GTD.
Microsoft bought Wunderlist, creators of To-Do in 2017. They shut down To-Do in 2019 and renamed it Microsoft ToDo, including it in Microsoft 365. Microsoft has had two competing task managers since then.
I’m a Microsoft 365 customer, and when I saw the option to check out new features in Outlook, I tried them out. What I saw was an interface that looked much like the Microsft365 Outlook web interface (which is good…) but no tasks folder (which is bad…). There’s a link on the sidebar that opens ToDo in a web browser instead of Outlook Tasks.
Apparently Microsoft decided which way to go with regards to tasks. In retrospect, the Android Outlook client not supporting Tasks makes sense. They may have been steering people to Microsoft ToDo and the standalone app.
Tasks show up in Microsoft ToDo under a separate Tasks folder, but the GTD setup is broken – you can’t sort by category. I’ll have to see if there’s a workaround from the GTD people when the changes roll out permanently.
I’ve used Proxmox for two years in a homelab that serves as a sandbox for work projects, a testbed Active Directory network, and running home automation tools. It combines the familiarity of F/OSS tools like Debian Linux, QEMU, and KVM, with a graphical interface that makes managing virtual servers easy – with a community supported, free tier and paid support models.
Changes in Proxmox VE 8:
More information is available at the following link: https://www.proxmox.com/en/news/press-releases/proxmox-virtual-environment-8-0
Upgrading from Proxmox VE 7 to Proxmox VE 8:
I upgraded my home lab to Proxmox VE 8 in approximately an hour, with limited downtime. Most of the time spent was moving my production workloads from one server to another while the upgrade took place. I have a 2-node cluster. Two of my VMs I wanted to keep running and ensure they weren’t affected by the upgrade, so I moved them off of Server1 to Server2, upgraded Server1, moved the VMs back to Server 1 and upgraded Server2.
One wrinkle I ran into was not being able to migrate the guest VMs back to Server1 – I received a host key verification failure. Running the following command on each server resolved the issue:
/usr/bin/ssh -e none -o 'HostKeyAlias=server-b-name' root@server-b-ip-address /bin/trueRun this command on the server with the host alias and IP address of the OTHER server.
Upgrading was simple. You can run the upgrade from the command line or the GUI. As with any upgrade, you’ll want to backup copies of any configuration files on your system. Backing up /etc and /var wouldn’t hurt.
pve7to8 command, looking for any errors/warnings in the output. I had one service that was stopped that I restarted before running the upgrade.apt update and apt upgrade to upgrade all of your 7.1x apps to the latest versions.apt dist-upgrade to start the upgrade process.During the upgrade, you’ll be asked whether or not you want to automatically stop/restart processes. Since I moved my production workloads to my other server, I selected Yes. If you’ve changed any configuration files that are being replaced, you’ll be asked to review changes, accept the new version or keep the old version. I opted to accept the new versions. At the end of the upgrade, you’ll want to reboot as soon as possible to use the new kernel.
By combining robust virtualization, extensive hardware support, clustering, backup and ease of use, Proxmox has made a great virtualization platform for enterprise and home use. I’m very happy with the platform and the level of improvement I see in Proxmox.
As I posted about wanting to make a 3-node high-availability cluster out of commodity USFF desktop PCs, I found this video outlining a 3-node Intel CPU cluster that runs on 10 watts of power! The cluster uses a SBC called a Zima Board that looks interesting – it’s got SATA, a PCI slot, and having an Intel CPU means less issues with cross-compiling to ARM and being able to run the same OS and binaries in my lab environment.
I’ve wanted to add high-availability to my Proxmox cluster, but I’ve got some work to do first.
CEPH is a distributed storage system that can be used as a storage backend in Proxmox VE. CEPH provides highly available and fault-tolerant storage by distributing data across multiple storage nodes in a cluster.
In Proxmox VE, CEPH can be used as a storage backend for virtual machine disks and containers. This allows for the creation of highly available and scalable virtualized environments that can easily scale up or down as needed.
With CEPH, VMs can auto-migrate on a server failure to provide high-availability.
It looks like CEPH wants 3 storage devices minimum to create a storage array. I’m considering upgrading to 3 USFF systems (see this link for lots of information about USFF desktops as servers). 3 i5 desktops with 16 GB of RAM and NVME drives could make a nice, inexpensive cluster.
Why not use a NUC? The second-hand market is full of off-lease Dell, HP and Lenovo USFF desktops.
Proxmox is an open-source bare metal virtualization system I use in my homelab. Proxmox supports clustering, high availability and backup using industry standard tools running on relatively mod-free Debian Linux, qemu and kvm. It supports any hardware supported by Debian, which makes use in a lab environment practical – after running VMWare’s vSphere and Nutanix CE and dealing with stringent hardware compatibility lists, I can appreciate a hypervisor that I can throw at any hardware I have in my collection.
Proxmox VE version 7.4 has been released and as minor releases have gone, the upgrade from 7.3 to 7.4 went flawlessly, only requiring a reboot when convenient to load a new kernel. There are the usual upgrades to the Kernel (now at 5.15), QEMU, kvm, and ceph.
Proxmox VE’s UI now lets you sort guest resources by name, which makes organizing VMs much cleaner – even in a small homelab like mine, with a handful of Linux containers, a Docker host, and a small AD test environment.
There’s also a dark mode switch in the UI now, much handier than applying a mode setting that gets reset every time you reboot.
The open-source architectures riscv32 and riscv64 can be used for LXC containers. I’m interested in trying these out to expand my homelab to architectures other than i386 and x64.
If you’re thinking of installing (or upgrading) Proxmox, I’d recommend taking a look at my earlier posts: Proxmox First Steps and Proxmox Helper Scripts For helpful tips on setup and streamlining ongoing maintenance of your Proxmox system.
I’ve got a couple of these sturdy hand straps from https://gordyscamerastraps.com on a couple of my cameras and love the feel, the size, and being able to match strap and camera colors is pretty neat.
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