Category: Blog

Can’t log into SQL Server 2012 with domain admin account

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I recently migrated a database from SQL Server 2008 to a new server running SQL Server 2012. Everything worked fine, but it was annoying me that I couldn’t log into the database (using SQL Server Management Studio) as a domain administrator – specifically DOMAIN\administrator. Logging in as the SQL user “sa” worked fine, but using Windows Authentication I got the error: Error Number: 18456 Severity: 14 State: 1 Line Number: 65536 Now, I’ve had similar to this before, and the …

Photos that Google thinks are cars

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Google Photos is a relatively new product from Google, at least in it’s no-longer-Google+ shackled form. It’s pretty good, in terms of some of the syncing and organising it does, and I’m a fan of how it makes animations from photos it thinks are quite similar – in particular, “burst mode” photos. One of it’s “magic” features is how, when you search your photos, it automatically detects things in them and adds them to albums based on that content. Some …

Upgrading your 3DS SD card, your 3DS, or both

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Once more the time has come to update my seemingly rather popular guide to upgrading your Nintendo 3DS SD card (previously here). This time, I’m going to cover several scenarios – upgrading your SD (or SDHC) card to another SD (or SDHC) card, upgrading your SD/SDHC card to a 64GB or larger SDXC card, and upgrading your 3DS to a New 3DS, transferring everything to a MicroSD/SDXC. EDITED 11/02/15 to clarify some points in Section 3 Firstly, some information: Nintendo’s …

How to set up a Linux lab with no Linux machines

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So when you’re told that you might have 30-odd students that need access to Linux for some course they’re doing, and you don’t have any spare machines and don’t want to dual boot with Windows on a computer suite and you don’t have time to do that anyway, what do you do? Well, one solution is what we’ve done: A Linux virtual machine running on a Hyper-V server, with “child” virtual machines, each accessible from a Windows machine. Specific for …

I made a game (with no zombies in it)

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It’s not a very good game. In fact, the only “game” element is trying to collect all the items more quickly than before. It’s also a mutation of the example Phaser HTML5 game, although much is rewritten or modified. It’s also not very good. I think I said that. But! It shows how easy it is to make a HTML5 game with Phaser. Making a good game though? Bit trickier, and not really something Phaser can help with. Anyway, you …

Switching audio output between jack and HDMI on RetroPie

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RetroPie is a great multi-emulator project for the Raspberry Pi, but I noticed that its auto-detect for which audio device to use seems a bit erratic. I’ve speakers plugged into the 3.5mm jack, as the HDMI cable runs to a speaker-less monitor, and usually (but not always) RetroPie defaulted to squirting sound out the HDMI port. There’s two ways of fixing this. Firstly, you can change the audio output for the current session (i.e. until you reboot it) by issuing …

Finally! The version of RSG you’ve been waiting for!

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Many, many, many years ago, I wrote a terrible text based roleplaying game called RSG. I initially made a version for the Sinclair Spectrum, but lost the code soon afterwards. Then I wrote a version for the Acorn A4000 in BBC Basic instead of doing my A level computing project. Then a version for the Casio programmable calculator when I’d finished a physics exam. At some point I also made a version in AMOS on the Amiga, and eventually rewrote …

Fixing “Not enough free space” error when deploying Windows image

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After creating a new install of Windows 7, with all the software on I wanted, I then tried to use our Windows Deployment Services Server to capture the image. However, it failed using both methods we’d used previously. When booting to Windows PE over the network, choosing all our usual capture options, and then triggering the capture, an error message came up – “not enough free space”. This seemed odd, as there was a good 60GB free on the local …

Next gen gaming is nearly here!

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Well, it’s the next console I’ll be buying, anyway. I’ve literally zero interest in the PS4 and Xbox One. I’m slightly surprised at myself actually, as I secretly thought I might be by now. Anyway, the Retron 5 is coming Real Soon Now, with the current release date set as April. Sadly, there have already been a few delays (it was originally supposed to be last October), but lets hope it meets this one, yes?

The 2013 Gaming Expenditure Horror

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It’s that time again, where I perform an autopsy on my games spending over the last 12 months. Some real changes this year as well. Let’s have a look at how the total compares: 2010 – £590.32 2011 – £888.22 2012 – £834.48 2013 – £342.82 So, a massive 58.9% decrease in spending. That’s a lot. However, there’s a reason for much, but not all, of that – in 2011 I bought a 3DS (and a PS3), and in 2012 …