This is both a tip and a rant. Vista RTM refused to connect to any of my SMB shares on my Mac OS X machines running Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.8). It kept on failing with "Authentication failed" messages - even though it saw the clients on the network.

I consider myself an expert computer user in most aspects of computing - including networks. Now if I could not resolve this problem on my own and only by extensive searching on the internet found this article, I would have never solved it. How on earth will the average Joe Bloggs fix this critical issue when he goes out and buys Vista in a couple of days when it gets released to the masses?

Even though I knew Microsoft implemented SMB2 in Vista, I thought they had the savvy to ensure backwards (current?) compatibility with at least something such as Mac OS X 10.4.8. That is why I never suspected the problem has to do with an overly strict authentication policy.

When my friend showed me the Christmas lights people were decorating their houses with in some areas in Centurion, I was amazed since I never realised we have some of the spirit one can find in Europe...

Here are a couple of pics.

I take many, many photos of my daughter. Many of them are very nice, however the other day I took one that stood out from the crowd. It is a photo that captured the essence of who she is, and that is really something special to achieve.

Let the picture talk for itself.

Everyone that knows me know that my biggest passion in life (apart from the obvious things such as my wife and daughter) is computers. Therefore it should come as no surprise that I like to equip myself with only the best. Here is the latest addition to my main workstation - my Mac Pro 2 x 3.0GHz Xeon Dual Core, 3GiB RAM, 512MB ATI X1900, 1TB monster - Apple's 30" Cinema Display:

As was mentioned in the previous post, I recently upgraded my lighting. I currently have 8 x 54W T5 lights. To illustrate the difference it would make, I took a couple of photos.

First some background. The tank has glass top covers to prevent splashing of water, reduce evaporation and help keep the fish in the water. Obviously with time these glass covers get lots of salt residue on them. This reduces the amount of light reaching the water column. I never cleaned mine since I never thought about its effect on the lighting.

The 4 x 54W T5 I originally had in there consisted of 2 fittings of 2 T5’s with individual reflectors. Due to space restrictions I had to add a 4 x 54W T5 fitting - with one common reflector.