Storing system time in UTC in Windows XP

A friend of mine came across an article describing how to store the system time as UTC in Windows XP.

This is helpful for me because I have several machines that dual boot between Linux and Windows XP, and one that dual boots between OS X and Windows XP. Linux and OS X like to store the time as UTC, while Windows likes to store your local time (e.g. UTC+10). Most Linux distros provide an easy-ish way of storing local time instead of UTC, allowing you to boot into Windows without experiencing a time warp. However, OS X doesn't (to my knowledge) allow this -- which is probably a good thing.

The magic key is at:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\RealTimeIsUniversal
It's a DWORD that needs to be set to 1 (I had to create it). Of course, you need to reboot afterwards.

There have been reports of side-effects, but so far it seems OK for me.

Join Our LUG!

If any of you have listened to episode 18 of the LUG roundup you may have heard some crazy song about my local LUG at the end of it. There were some requests for the songwriter to put up the lyrics, so I figured that since I know the guy pretty well, I'd ask him for a copy ;)


"Join Our LUG"

It's sung to the tune of "Be Our Guest" from Disney's Beauty and the Beast or The Simpsons' popular re-interpretation sung by Mr Burns: "See My Vest".

Some use Windows XP,
Others, OS Ten,
The OS we are pushing for,
Is superior to them...

Join our LUG, join our LUG,
We're from Sydney, we get mugged,
Have a flame-fest on the SLUG list,
See whose patience is the longest.

Stibbons, Jaq, Rob and Mark,
ctd, our underage clerke.
Bruce and Ken and Grant and Jan and,
Pia, jdub: "Awesome, awesome!"

Installfests here, codefests there,
Monthly meetings are fun, I swear!
Erik, Lindsay, Matt and
All the rest!

LCA again,
Two-thousand and seven,
Join our LUG, join our LUG,
Join our LUG!

Distro wars, Fedora bores,
Most of us are Debian whores.
But Ubuntu on the desktop
Is the best!

So let's put out the word,
Linux ain't just for nerds,
Join our LUG, join our LUG,
(Oh please now won't you join it!)
Oh please, won't you join our LUG!



Here's a link to the original recording. ctd also wanted the backing music (which I did not create, but found somewhere =)).

A big thanks to MotherLUG for coming up with the competition idea and, of course, for all the great LUG roundups. Also thanks to purserj for the LA Updates and putting the mechanics into place for all of it to happen!

Finally, apologies for getting such a poorly sung song stuck in people's heads!

Social Web Browsing

I'm posting this blog entry through a new Firefox-based web browser called Flock. It seems to aim to redefine the web browsing paradigm, making it more social. It has built in features to integrate blogging, bookmarks sharing, photo sharing and more. I haven't used it lots yet but it seems like a really promising idea!

Maybe Later I'll update this post with some of the cooler stuff it lets people do.

Colour me pink... or yellow, or...

I like taking quiz things and putting them here. I most certainly do doubt their accuracy most of the time though.

Your Blog Should Be Yellow

You're a cheerful, upbeat blogger who tends to make everyone laugh. You are a great storyteller, and the first to post the latest funny link. You're also friendly and welcoming to everyone who comments on your blog.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

In other news, I'm jumping on the big, wide, hyped bandwagon knows as Ruby on Rails. While I think it has generated a disproportionate hype-bubble, it doesn't mean it's not worth learning ;)