Orin Thomas

The new (3rd) edition of Windows Server Inside Out is now available. 864 pages and nearly 250,000 words, this is EVERYTHING I know about Windows Server. The last edition of this book (Server 2019) was published just after I'd started as an FTE at Microsoft and in 7 years working with the product, documentation and Advocacy teams I've learned endlessly more about the operating system and its functionality - all of which I've embedded in this textbook. It covers all supported versions of Windows Server up to Windows Server 2025 and includes everything from Securing Active Directory and Hardening Windows Server, to how to host and manage Hyper-V, integrate with Azure Services and how to host generative AI workloads like Ollama and Foundry Local. A big shout out to Jeff Woolsey, Dan Cuomo, Ned Pyle, Robin Harwood, Rob Hindman, Ben Armstrong, Theo Tran, Yash Shekar, Elden Christiansen, Rick Claus and countless others for all teaching me even more about a wonderful operating system that I'd already written a multitude of books on before I got a blue badge. amazon.com/Windows-Server…

@draginol (Analyze this doc & turn it into a mindmap is an app waiting to happen ... maybe I'll see what CV can do with Copilot CLI as a weekend project)

@draginol That's definitely a lot closer. I've always been frustrated that the main note taking tools don't have good mind mapping functionality. Was your CV prompt "analyze my obsidian notebook & represent information topics in a mindmap"?

If you're an Obsidian fan like me, you will want to take a look at this: x.com/kepano/status/…. Under the covers, these are just .MD files!

@MazmorraStudio That's not very calibrated

👀

@draginol (also makes an excellent date night)

@draginol I saw it in "Gold Class" which is an expensive premium option. Small theatre, very nice seats. Worth if for a movie I want to see. villagecinemas.com.au/experiences/go…

So just went to the movie theater to watch Project Hail Mary. It'd been awhile since I'd been to a movie theater. What an awful experience. Great movie. But I wish I'd just waited and watched it from home.

@jamonholmgren As someone who can still here the Janes AH64-D Longbow title screen music in his head, I'm on this like an Orangutang on a Banana Tree.

So. Uh. I did a thing. This is my game.

@draginol The format makes it easier to manipulate - and when you see it in the big spiderweb it's easier to think "oh that should go over there" and "I'm missing this and this" which can be harder to see on a linear outline. I started working with them back in the 90's as a postgrad.

@draginol I use them a lot when speccing out topic structures for books or other long works, giving me an idea down to the H3 or H4 level (H1 being Chapter, H2, Section, etc ad absurdum)

@coldesign_ltd And it looks FKN AWSM

im building a world

Unless I missed something obvious, Obsidian’s core feature set does not list a dedicated mind‑map mode among its built‑in plugins. The Canvas plugin can be used for mind‑mapping style layouts with cards and links, but it’s not a classic collapsible mind map tree. My mapper of choice is iThoughts which is far from perfect but I don't think I've found anything perfect (used to subscribe to MindManager 25 years ago but it got unusably worse)

@orinthomas Obsidian has a pretty good mindmap does it?

@chamath Best. Sweaters. Ever.

If I hypothetically owned an American resource with 5m oz of gold should I:

@emollick Helps you understand it (and how you can better your process) as well ;-)

I think even being forced to explain what you built to another human every couple days would help.

We need guides through the inevitable bout of AI psychosis that affects professionals after they finally “get” AI. They often engage in intense, sleepless & impossibly complex projects in their area of expertise, with only AI for company. Its usually temporary & can be productive

@neomechanica SCP Vibes

@draginol A chorus of different AI is really good at fact checking. Sort of like "post something on the internet and everyone will correct you As A Service"

Reducing AI slop. Before I ask human engineers to review code I ask multiple AI models to review.

@draginol (I also like ideating in mind maps which only open on certain platforms so might post a screenshot of one of those to sync across platforms)

Evernote for some sorts of note (easiest to have synced across platforms & mobile devices), Notes/Pages in Teams/M365Copilot, Sticky Notes, OneNote (less so), Personal Slack Instance, text files in OneDrive ;-) (so an ideosyncratic pot pouri). My idealized system is whatever Janov Pelorat had in Asimov's Foundation's Edge ;-)

@draginol I've tried to like it, but keep going back to other options as even with the cloud vaults I find using across a large number of computers running a variety of OS a trial. So I'm still using a combo of about 5 other things ;-)

This is why MS and others should not take users for granted. They have no mote once people realize they can just grab Obsidian and as their note taker. Looking at you "Notepad" which now has defaults that make me pull my hair out.

Introduction to Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets youtube.com/watch?v=yEBGai…

@JosephNWalker A Yoghurt bust always follows a Yoghurt boom ;-)

Cultural evolution