8 years mark. Blog is slowly turning into books reviews page. Already posted 9 reviews since new year and at least a few more coming. Meanwhile the most popular posts here are some random tech posts that bots for some reason like to crawl, i guess (like tweaking Japanese language support in Windows). I know the stats are not quite real as many visits are seconds long and probably by bots, but still kind of fun to see what gets more hits.
Tag: en
Windows 11 Just Had A Moment
The headline is silly, i know. Couldn’t help myself π So, i just recently learned that Microsoft decided to change its feature release method again. They had semi-annual feature releases for Windows 10 for a while, with fall releases having longer support time and usually being more reliability, performance and security focused. With the release of Windows 11 they said that they are switching to big updates once a year, because customers (or rather admins) are tired of too fast of a cadence. At my place we just ignored spring releases and only installed second release of the year anyway. But now they say customers want more rapid release of features. Are they polling the same customers or different crowds every time? π
Blog annual stats (v2022)
2022 was another less active year. With especially long hiatus from posting between March and August. Haven’t read anything at that time or watched any special movies or series to write about and i guess spring and summer was not that hot on tech news for me. But there were a few popular articles about IE deprecation and latest Windows 11 update, which i reposted on LinkedIn and they got a bit more of a traffic. A few older articles got lots of attention this year for some reason. In September there was an issue with SSL plugin i use and for a few days only home page was accessible, until i finally noticed and fixed it. Shouldn’t affect overall stats that much, though.
- Posted 14 entries (-12):
- Technology β 6 (-9), this is probably what my average will be from now on;
- Reviews – 5 (-1), similar to last year;
- Books β 4 (+2), the only category with positive difference and i almost completed another book, but didn’t want to rush it to complete by the new year. My reading numbers are kind of steady now.
- General β 2 (-);
- Movies β 1 (-2), have only posted my thoughts on different movies based on “I am Legend” book . Last year even skipped Kinopavasaris movie fest which i was going to for so many years. Maybe i will get back into it next year.
- Board Games β 1 (-1), the only thing i posted was my stats post for 2021 and i skipped doing it this time, so this category might go to zero. Have cooled on board games in general.
- Artwork β 1 (-1);
- Top 10 β 1 (-);
- TV series – 0 (-).
- I have approved one comment this year, which might still be spam, but it seemed real enough. Someone thanking on a very old board game review (+1).
7 years
Blog is 7 years old today. Not much new. Not very active for the last few months. But in total since the last milestone did 10 tech, 3 books and 1 movie post. So, not less than last year at least. Nothing on board games still. Kind of cooled off on them and not even going to board game meet ups at work anymore. So, it probably will be tech and books posts for a while.
Personal Task Management in Microsoft 365
Sharing a few facts and impressions from my experience of using To Do and other Microsoft task management solutions. In the past i have used Excel to manage my list of tasks. I know, that sounds weird, but it was very organized, with dates, automatic coloring of various types of tasks and so on. I was getting my work done and that was the most important part. So, nobody cared what i use. For team’s projects we had very convoluted Excel sheets, our manager also used Project and at some point we started to use Planner. But these tools were not really designed for your personal tasks. Then i have switched jobs and as i was starting with a clean slate, i decided to try some app to track my stuff.
Edge IE Mode Tips
This is a companion article to previous ones on the same subject:
Enabling Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer 11 and Edge
Enterprise Mode changes in Edge browser
Cloud managed Edge IE Mode site list
Simulating Internet Explorer retirement scenario
All these articles talk about enabling IE mode or doing additional things to aleviate issues when IE is eventually retired this year. Below are just a few quick tips.
Simulating Internet Explorer retirement scenario
A little bit less than a year ago Microsoft announced that they are going to retire Internet Explorer 11 browser on June 15, 2022. Which is now almost 4 months away. They have also since posted an FAQ detailing all the steps and which versions of Windows can still have IE for some time (LTSC and Server). And explained that IE engine itself is not going away until at least 2029 for supported versions of Windows 10 and 11, it is just the browser itself that is going to be disabled. They also made advancements in Site List for IE mode management and made it possible to do it completely via Microsoft 365 console. IE mode is used in Edge to utilize IE engine to render older websites and systems that still rely on old technology. It is when i remembered about a new group policy they added in January of 2021 that enabled administrators to disable IE11. Which in turn allows to simulate disabling Internet Explorer before its official retirement date.
Update Connectivity – You are just not updating it right
The title of this post is tongue in cheek. Last week Microsoft has posted an article about Update Connectivity value and what role it plays in PC’s ability to install updates in a timely manner. Post made some waves on various IT news sites and also garnered critical response from systems administrators.
I cannot check if this parameter correlates with problems with updates (we use 3d party tools for updates). But, if you use Intune, maybe you can test this theory and find some useful insights. Although Microsoft provided rather vague explanation on how much time is actually required for PC to successfully update:
Specifically, data shows that devices need a minimum of two continuous connected hours, and six total connected hours after an update is released to reliably update.
Does this mean that only 2 continuous hours needed to initiate update, but the rest 4 can be divided in chunks, but still 6 in total needed to complete? So, if PC is online just 2 hours every day it will take 3 days to update? They need to clarify this part. By the way, this means being connected to Windows Update service, not just being online. But can update itself be interrupted? If not, then why they not say 6 continuous hours. Download already can be resumed next day and shouldn’t be that long anyway. Lots of confusion and questions here as it seems that you kind of need to keep it online for 6-8 hours to make it to update for sure. Which is not optimal. And this probably came from all the smart things introduced in Windows 10 gradually (active hours, Windows trying to find time to update when you are not actively using it). Updates got so big and they need so much time to install that it became a problem for users (being interrupted with updates). But Microsoft’s solution for this was not installing updates at all. Which is bad for security and a headache for administrators. And response from Microsoft is – Windows 11 has smaller and faster updates. Right. Though Windows 10 is not going away yet. And it was “last Windows” version and was intended to be polished and improved all the time. Why not improve update process in it instead of as usual touting better things for new and shiny versions? Who knows, maybe updates will not require a restart. In Windows 65 π
Blog annual stats (v2021)
This year has a lot less posts as i have stopped doing M365 news in January. I still post in Technology category occasionally and some new articles get some views, but not that many. Also sometimes i repost in LinkedIn and i get some traffic from there. I have decided to post about interesting M365 news directly on LinkedIn. Got tired of collecting all the news and summarizing them. Again a few posts about board games, books. Will use Matomo for page views stats this year again. Because numbers differ from Google Analytics (Matomo has a bit higher count) and it will be better to compare with numbers from the same system.
- Posted 26 entries (-50):
- Technology β 15 (-36), stopped doing M365 news, also decided not to post Firefox release notes, so next year will have even less posts;
- Reviews – 6 (-12), less books read, less movies or TV series watched;
- Movies β 3 (-5), only 3 movies watched during Kinopavasaris, no completed TV series to write about, but i have watched lots of old movies, starting with all James Bond films;
- Books β 2 (-6), bad year for reading, only managed to finish two first books in Dune series;
- Board Games β 2 (-2), only 1 review in LT for Carcassonne and yearly stats, not playing that much either;
- General β 2 (-);
- Artwork β 2 (-);
- Top 10 β 1 (-);
- TV series – 0 (-1).
- No comments this year (-2).