Notes

PosteRazorMake your own poster!

via PosteRazor – Make your own poster!.

c:\netsh firewall set logging droppedpackets = enable

Although the log file doesn’t include the name of the program that is trying to make an outbound connection, the log file can then be found at: %systemroot%\system32\LogFiles\Firewall\pfirewall.log

via Enabling Windows firewall "dropped packets" log – Microsoft Answers.

Windows 8 Developer Preview downloads

via Windows Metro Style Apps Developer Downloads.

Classic application to disable autoruns and more: HijackThis.

Another option would be Autoruns from Sysinternals by Microsoft: Autoruns

Windows: Uninstall an Application from the Command Line

Contributor Icon Contributed by shamanstears Date Icon July 23, 2008

Tag Icon Tagged: Windows

By using the Windows Instrumentation command-line interface (WMIC), you can easily uninstall an application without having to use the GUI. Once you become familiar with the steps, it will be much faster than having to access the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. This Tech-Recipe applies to Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.

1. Open a command prompt and input WMIC

wmic

2. You will see a prompt that looks like this:

wmic:root\cli>

3. At the new prompt, execute the following command:

product get name

This will generate a list of installed applications.

4. At the prompt, execute the following command:

product where name="" call uninstall

where application name is the name of the program you wish to uninstall (use the exact name provided by the previously generated list).

For example, if I were wanting to uninstall Adobe Reader 9, my command would look like this:

product where name="Adobe Reader 9" call uninstall

5. When prompted, input y to confirm that you wish to uninstall the application and press Return.

via Windows: Uninstall an Application from the Command Line | Windows | Tech-Recipes.

Spiceworks: complete network management software, helpdesk, PC inventory tools & IT reporting solution (for free).

If you want Excel to keep a field’s leading zeros when opening a CSV file using Excel, you can change it to =”value”.

For example, if you have a row with 4 values that looks like this:

test,00016102,test,test

Just change it to:

test,="00016102",test,test

To avoid getting the error “Your operating system does not meet system requirements”, I had to use User Agent Switcher to download the spreadsheet at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC300022771033.aspx for electric meter logging for energy efficiency. Then I used cabextract to extract the .cab file and used Open Office to view the 30002277.xltx file. Here it is saved using Open Office’s ODS format: electricity_tracking.

I was getting this error:

[Mon Jul 20 12:32:05 2009] [error] [client 192.168.241.233] Premature end of script headers: elite_inventory.pl
[Mon Jul 20 12:32:05 2009] [error] [client 192.168.241.233] DBI connect('my_database','my_user',...) failed: [INTERSOLV][ODBC Informix driver][Informix]Unable to load locale categories. (SQL-HY000) at C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/script.pl line 37

The fix involved modifying Apache’s environment variables using SetEnv in httpd.conf:


SetEnv INFORMIXDIR "C:/informix32"
SetEnv INFORMIXSERVER "isaac_net"
SetEnv DELIMIDENT n
SetEnv DBANSIWARN n
SetEnv CLIENT_LOCAL "en_US.CP1252"
SetEnv DB_LOCAL "en_US.CP1252"


This is because even if the variables are set in the registries in Windows (they are environment variables in Linux), the web server doesn’t use them.

Reference #1 and Reference #2.

You might need to use a different locale under Linux or Unix.

If you need to select the whole data region (it might included some empty cells) in Excel without selecting all cells (<CTRL>+<A>), click on any cell inside that group and then type: <CTRL>+<SHIFT>+<8>. It is very useful for large data sets.

You should then get something like this:

Try http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_rnib003503.hcsp for more keyboard shortcuts.

GLOBALSAT BU353 Waterproof USB GPS Receiver

GARMIN 010-00321-00 GPS 18 Deluxe USB Sensor

The Globalsat BU-353 would be my first choice, it has very good reviews and it is waterproof.

There are only 2 files you need to backup:

• signons.sqlite
• key3.db

You can find those in your Firefox profile:

Linux

~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/

Windows

1. Click the Windows Start button, and select Run….
2. Type in %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ then click OK.

You can then copy those file to another computer in your Firefox profile to use them.

Autocad plot pdf text as text with PDFCreator (instead of images of text):

File – Page Setup Manager – Manage Page Setups – Page Setup Manager – Modify – Printer/Plotter, PDFCreator.pc3, Properties – Graphics – True Type Text – True Type Text as Text

For example, you have 2 sheets, Sheet1 and Sheet2: they both have a list of part numbers in column A and a list of prices in column B. You want to compare the prices for the same part numbers in each sheets. One way to do this is to copy the prices from Sheet1 to Sheet2 in a third column and then use conditional formatting to highlight the different prices:

Copy this formula in cell C2 of Sheet2 (and then drag it down to the cells below):
=INDEX($Sheet1.A$2:B$3001;MATCH(A2;$Sheet1.A$2:A$3001;0);2)

This formula assumes that there is a maximum of 3000 different products in Sheet1 (starting at cell A2).

Sample file:compare_four_columns.ods

KinoSearch is the winner

The following perl scripts index *.txt in the current folder and search for “TEST”. The first one is using Perl’s KinoSearch module and the other one is using Plucene. KinoSearch is alot faster then Plucene and also gives better results.

(right click to download)

KinoSearch.pl

Plucene.pl

Batch renaming made easy with Renamer

“ReNamer is a very powerful and flexible file renaming tool, which offers all the standard renaming procedures, including prefixes, suffixes, replacements, case changes, as well as removing contents of brackets, adding number sequences, changing file extensions, etc. For advanced users, there is a PascalScript rule, which let users program their very own renaming rule. Program allows you to combine multiple renaming actions as a rule set, applying each action in a logical sequence, which can be saved, loaded, and managed within the program. In addition, it has an ability to rename folders, process regular expressions, Unicode capable, and supports variety of meta tags, such as: ID3v1, ID3v2, EXIF, OLE, AVI, MD5, CRC32, and SHA1.”

Download.

Ultra-Mobile PC (laptops)

Sometimes, when you print to PDF using PDFCreator, you can get the following error on the last page of your PDF output: “ERROR: undefined [...] OFFENDING COMMAND:_ [...] STACK: [....]”

You can fix this problem following these instructions:

First, you must Rollback to PDFCreator 0.9.3 (unless a newer version then 0.9.5 is out).

Find the PDFCreator printer in the Printer and Faxes control panel. Right-click on it and select Properties:

Select the Advanced tab:

and select Print directly to the printer (this prevents spooling the PDF output to the disk twice). Now select the Device Settings tab:

and set Send CTRL-D After Each Job to No. Also change the Wait Timeout to 1 seconds:

Thanks to David Taft, Brent Powers and http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~henrik/GSWriter/GSWriter.html.

PS: If PDFCreator truncates, trims or cuts filenames, make sure the path is not too deep. Try copying your files to the root folder and see if it fixes the problem.

Note: I re-posted this solution with different keywords because I had a hard time finding it because it was specific to GhostScript/Redmon.

First, download and install Audacity.

Then, to be able to record both the microphone input and the sound card output at the same time using Audacity, you have to un-mute the microphone playback in the Volume control.

1. Double click the speaker in the System Tray
2. Click Options – Properties – Playback – Check Microphone – Click OK
3. Un-check the microphones mute and raise the volume

You should now be able to hear yourself in the speakers or earphone when you talk in the microphone and also be able to record the output (person you called) and the input (you) in Audacity. Select Stereo Mix on Audacity’s Mixer Toolbar and hit Record.

Resources for setting up a motion-detection camera security system controlled from your PC using an analog camera.

1. Tutorials

   • Using your PC and a Webcam as a security camera
   • MythTV and a Security Camera
   • Setting up SAA713X in Linux

2. Software

   • Dorgem (Free)Supports an unlimited number of simultaneous cameras. It has a built-in webserver for still images and can be used as security camera because of its motion detection. (Windows)
   • Motion (Free)Software motion detector for Linux. Guide or Download
   • ZoneMinder (Free)Set of applications which together provides a complete surveillance solution allowing capture, analysis, recording and monitoring of any cctv cameras attached to a Linux based machine. Documentation
     or Download
   • Gspy (Free)Special motion detection algorithms are used to reduce the size of the daily movies by eliminating pictures with similar content as well as the mpeg compression. (Linux)
   • VideoLAN (Free)Video streaming server with extended features (Multi-Platform)
   • DSLR Remote ProAllows remote operation of a Canon EOS 5D, 1D Mark II, 1Ds Mark II, 1D, 1DS, 30D, 20D, 10D, 400D/Digital Rebel XTi/Kiss Digital X , 350D/Digital Rebel XT/Kiss Digital N or 300D/Digital Rebel/Kiss Digital digital SLR via a PC using a FireWire or USB cable.
   • Webcam Camera System

3. Recommended Cheap Hardware

   Look for a TV Tuner card or USB capture device with composite(RCA) input if you have an analog camera. Get one which uses one of the following chipset (Should be listed in the product’s specifications):

   • ZoneMinder Supported Hardware
   • Gspy Supported Hardware
   • Motion Supported Hardware

   You should be able to find something for about $20 to $30 on the internet.

4. My Setup

   • I have a TV Tuner card with cable, composite and s-video inputs which has an SAA7130 chip (Module SAA7134 from Kernel 2.6.X is
     required)

   I couldn’t get it to work with Zone Minder, but it does work pretty well with Motion. I got it from eBay for $15.

   • I also bought an analog wireless camera with receiver for $30 on eBay (composite output).
   • Motion. It is not a GUI program but it is easily setup from the
     motion.conf file and has many nice features (capture video or pictures on motion detection for example).
   • I use Slackware on a P-III 1Ghz (I get about 5 frame per second while motion is detected)

You could also use a webcam like the one listed below, which features infrared lights for improved night vision (and it is USB so don’t need any special hardware for composite input).

So you want to move your Rails project from Windows to Slackware and your are using MySQL database?
Then you can fallow these step-by-step instructions.

Table of contents

1. Backups
2. Packages you’ll need
3. Install Ruby
4. Install Rubygems
5. Install Rails
6. Install MySQL gem
7. Import your Database schema
8. Edit config files

1. BackupsFrom Windows, use mysqldump to create a backup of your database schema and data:

   c:mysqldump -u root -p Database_name > DB_backup.sql

   or to backup all database without the data

   c:mysqldump -u root -p --all-database --no-date > DB_backup.sql

   Next, copy your project directory and you database backup (DB_backup.sql) to a CD
   (or you can mount your windows partition from linux if they are on the same computer)

2. Packages you’ll need
   • ruby-1.8.5-i686.tgz
   • mysql-5.0.16-i486-1.tgz
   • rubygems-0.9.0.tgz
3. Install Ruby

   ~$ sudo installpkg ruby-1.8.2-i686-1.tgz

4. Install Ruby gems

   ~$ tar zxvf rubygems-0.8.10.tgz

   ~$ cd gems-0.8.10

   ~$ sudo ruby setup.rb

5. Install Rails

   ~$ sudo gem install rails

   or to install latest beta:

   ~$ sudo gem install rails --source http://gems.rubyonrails.com

6. Install Mysql gem (the first — are meant to be there)

   ~$ sudo gem install mysql --with-mysql-include=/usr/include/mysql 

   --with-mysql-lib=/usr/lib/mysql

7. Import your Database schema

   ~$ mysqldump -u root --password='Yourpassword'

   mysql> create database database_name;

   mysql> exit

   ~$ mysqldump -u root --password='Yourpassword' 

   database_name > DB_backup.sql

8. Edit files

   ~$ edit ~/yourproject/public/dispatch.*

   and change the first line to:

   #!/usr/bin/ruby

   (or wherever ruby binary is)

You should be all set.