Archive for the ‘Power User’ Category
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/24
Recently, I noticed that Scott Adams uses a Wacom Cintiq 24HD to do his art work:
I do all of my drawing directly to the computer screen of my Wacom Cintiq 24HD. I literally feel sympathy for any artist who still works with pen and paper. The system cuts my production time in half and allows me to do better work too. If youre an artist, and youre still drawing on paper, youre like the seventy-year old author who swears by his manual typewriter.
Great gadget that has it price, but loved by artists.
–jeroen
via: Scott Adams Blog: Today I Review Everything 02/10/2012.
Posted in Power User, Opinions, LifeHacker | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/24
Somehow, I have the impression that not all VMware View Client network admins fully read and understand the “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist“
That checklist is important, as it is easy to get things wrong and dissatisfy your users without reason (heck, they get worse than mediocre RDP performance experience, so you could’ve saved you the work of PCoIP in the first place).
So please do read the “PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist“.
It starts with
The PCoIP protocol provides a real-time delivery of a rich user desktop experience in virtual desktop and remote workstation environments.
To ensure a responsive desktop, the PCoIP protocol must be deployed across a properly architected virtual desktop network infrastructure that meets bandwidth, QoS, latency, jitter, and packet loss requirements.
CheckPoint VPN sometimes can be a dork combined with PCoIP. and at least make sure UDP works well over your VPN.
–jeroen
via: ”PCoIP Protocol Virtual Desktop Network Design Checklist“
(Some more backgorund reading and even more)
(fixed typo: one of the PCoIP occurances was PCiOP, luckily, Google knows better 
Posted in Power User, View, VMware | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/23
When routing networks, one of the important things to get right is your IP subnets.
Doing the math from your head is hard, and I usually used some subnet calculator web pages, but recently stumbled over the great Bitcricket IP Subnet Calculator.
IP Subnet Calculators … pioneered byby Bitcricket founder J. Scott Haugdahl … rewrite of this tool, improving upon the precedent set by the original with a refreshed GUI, native Windows or Mac operation, and support for IPv6.
As the quote tells, it is running on both Windows and Mac, so I took a quick look and found that the underlying technology is Qt with a C++ application layer. That reminds me of the old Kylix days
–jeroen
via: IP Subnet Calculator – Overview.
Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/20
Funny how Google Search tries to interpret number sequences as dates:
Download: DirectX Redist (June 2010) – Microsoft Download Center …
www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8109
29 Sep 1974 – The DirectX redist installation includes all the latest and previous released DirectX runtime. This includes D3DX, XInput, and Managed DirectX …
I almost skipped that search result, as the date was from 1974, but since back then DirectX didn’t even exist, I became curious.
This is the original text from the page that Google tried to interpret: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Google, GoogleSearch, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/16
Lately I’m finding more and more false positives in my Google Mail Spam folder.
I’ve manually catched mails from these domains:
- ns.nl
- barnsten.com
- malwarebytes.org
- apple.com
- linkedin.com
So: if you are awaiting mail from me, please send me an SMS or tweet me.
Note I am still glad with the Google Mail SPAM filtering, as it catched very authentic looking fake messages from ING Bank, ABN AMRO Bank, xs4all internet, and numerous others.
–jeroen
Posted in About, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/16
Somewhere the last couple of days, Google or Google Chrome has changed the default search URL.
I thought I had a webhp rootkit issue, possibly related to Avast, but it wasn’t (I posted at the Avast forums, and later replied the issue had solved itself, but I still wonder about the real cause).
What happened was that some page I had open in Google Chrome (all other web browsers were fine) forced the redirect.
I can only reproduce this on one system (that has both Avast! Antivirus installed, and Chrome open with the page http://www.eggheadcafe.com/searchform.aspx?search=Cross+Join+Excel) but not on other machines.
So far, it took me about a day of work (quarantining the machine, investigating if it was a virus, rootkit or otherwise, trying to verify this is a one off), and I still feel I don’t have the complete answer yet.
I still wonder if others have seen similar issues.
This is how it redirected
The defaults have a truckload of junk around them, but come down to the URLs below (lmgtfy is the search phrase)
It used to be of this form (which now again works, after I closed all Google Chrome pages)
The redirect made it into a longer webhp form:
The fun thing is, that if you enter the form
then you will end at the Google Search home page with the search phrase pre-filled in.
Now that is a pretty nifty “let me Google that for you”
–jeroen
via: Google.
Posted in Google, GoogleSearch, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/13
From the English Philips HMP7001 User manual page 25:
Install Philips SimplyShare on the Android device
- Make sure that you have connected the Android device to the Internet. EN 25
[ Consult the user manual of your Android device for information.
- On the Android device, install SimplyShare:
a Go to the Android Market;
b Search for, download, and install SimplyShare.
Play media from the Android device
- Make sure that you have connected the player to the same Wi-Fi network as your Android device.
- On the Android device, go to SimplyShare from the Home screen:
SimplyShare, enter the activation code 74963893 as prompted.
Thanks Toengel for this info.
–jeroen
via: Philips HMP7001 User manual
Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/10
Helaas is het computercollectief in de oude vorm failliet, maar ik heb wel warme herinneringen aan hun gloriedagen in de jaren ’80 en ’90 van vorige eeuw.
Opgericht in 1979, is er nu alleen nog een door Mensys gerunde webshop (op dit moment nog steeds in houde stijl, zou dat ooit gaan wijzigen)
Dit is een stukje van me uit hun nieuwsbrief van september 1997, toen het “internet” zoals we nu kennen net een paar jaar begonnen waren en de eerste zoekmachines nog in de kinderschoenen stonden.
Toen was ik al een power user en life hacker, en zaten er meer taalvauwdten in mijn teksten dan nu
Even een paar puntjes die ik bij mijn zoektochten op het internet gebruik:
- zoeken valt vaak tegen; het duurt meestal vrij lang en het is niet eenvoudig te vinden wat je zoekt
- de ‘traditionele’ zoek-engines (yahoo, alta-vista, etc) zijn goed voor het vinden van bedrijven en dergelijke, maar niet voor het vinden van personen, technische vraagstukken, etc
- www.dejanews.com is een zoek-engine op (bijna) alle newsgroups. Deze werkt vaak veel beter dan de traditionele zoek engines. Je zoekt hier een paar threads die over je onderwerp gaan. Vaak staan hier al genoeg verwijzingen naar sites/personen/informatie die je zoekt.
- hou een goede favourites list bij van sites waarvan je weet dat ze voor jou waardevolle informatie hebben. Loop de lijst af en toe door om te kijken of de sites niet verhuisd zijn en zo.
- neem een abonnement op een paar goede nieuwsbrieven en kijk eens rond op news-sites (ik heb zelf een abonnement op onder meer de nieuwsbrieven comcol, broekhuis update, web-wereld nieuws, dutchmedia, daily planet en news-sites www.webwereld.nl, www.news.com, www.techweb.com, www.pcweek.com).
- er zijn informatieleveranciers (bijvoorbeeld Encyclopedia Britannica) waar je een abonnement op kunt nemen. Kan erg handig zijn.
De praktijk leert dat het je zo een paar uur tijd kost om iets te vinden wat je zoekt. Vraag je van te voren af of het je die tijd wel waard is en alternatieven niet beter zijn (telefoontje naar iemand waarvan je weet dat ie het weet doet ook vaak wonderen).
Niet alle bovenstaande links bestaan meer, en ook niet alle bedrijven bestaan nog in hun oude vorm. Zo heet PC Week tegenwoordig eWeek, Deja news is tegenwoordig Google Groups, en Alta Vista is van Yahoo.
–jeroen
via: Tips en commentaar 290997.
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Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/09
Lets start post 800 by mentioning it took quite a bit of time to solve the connection problem to VDI. I hope it will help others, and if I ever run into this again myself: now I know where to look
Some clients make heavy use of VMware VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) which moves the desktop into the VMs in the data center.
A while ago I spent most of the day tracking down a “Connect Desktop Failed” error with VMware View Client running on a Windows 7 x64 workstation to connect to a VDI VM. It would connect to the VDI server, authenticate, start the Desktop, but could not connect to the Desktop.
The amazing thing is that the VMware view client worked fine on an XP VM workstation (with and without SNX) XP physical machine with SNX, and another Windows 7 x64 VM workstation (also with and without SNX) and Windows 7 x64 physical machine with SNX.
Clearly something was wrong with this particular Windows 7 x64 workstation that is host of most of my development VMs so I didn’t want to do a re-install.
I tried many obvious things on the Windows 7 x64 workstation:
- reboot
- disable firewall
(that would have indicated some of the ports required by VMware view were not open: in practice not all ports mentioned in the list are used)
- uninstall software from various vendors that might interfere with network activity
- disabled virus scanner
- step down from VMware View Manager 5 client to VMware View Manager 4.6 client
- circumvented SNX (CheckPoint SSL VPN extender) making sure I was on the same WAN and later LAN of the VDI
- verified twice I had indeed Windows 7 SP1 applied
- laughed about the SSE support required by VMware view client
Since the “Connect desktop failed” does not return many English search results, I started browsing the Russian ones. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Power User, View, VMware | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/08
Most Batch files for detecting Windows versions try to parse the either the output from VER or the output from SYSTEMINFO, but forget that there many Windows installations are not English. Some even use WMIC, but WMIC is only available for administrators and not available some flavours like XP Home.
Languages issues are always important to watch for. The Dutch Windows XP returns Microsoft Windows XP [versie 5.1.2600] which is just one word different from the English Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]. Other languages may differ even more.
This batch file tries to circumvent the language differences, uses VER and works at least with Dutch and English Windows versions of XP and 7, most likely with many other languages and versions as well.
On a Windows XP SP3 machine, it lists WindowsVersion=5.1.2600 and on a Windows 7 SP1 machine it lists WindowsVersion=6.1.7601.
One possible addition would be to detect x64 or x86.
The detection assumes that VER will emit the version in [angle] brackets, and uses two batch file for loops to get the text in between them using the tokens and delims for loop parameters in the first for loop right behind the begin label and the second for loop right after the parse1 label.
Then it splits the remaining text using spaces at the parse2 label, and takes the right most portion using the shift command at the parse3 label.
Many thanks to Rob van der Woude for a lot of interesting batch file documentation. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Software Development, Power User, Windows 7, Windows XP, Scripting, Batch-Files, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/07
When Google searching, most results for the Outlook 2003 Signature Folder Location AppData give you the wrong folder.
They mix environment keys like UserName, UserProfile, but should use AppData as that has been the base since at least Windows XP.
This is the correct folder for any Outlook version (2003, 2010, etc): %appdata%\Microsoft\Signatures
Making sure you use the right environment variable is very important, especially in large Windows based environments that often use roaming profiles and a mix of Windows environments.
For instance, at a client they have a mixed environment of Windows XP and Windows 7, with separate AppData locations for the two on a LAN:
- Windows XP:
\\server\DFS\share\Application Data
- Windows 7:
\\server\DFS\share\Application Data.v2
There is a very nice Wikipedia article on the Windows Environment variable that explains this situation in the synopsis.
–jeroen
Posted in Software Development, Development, Power User, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Scripting, Batch-Files, Windows | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/06
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Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/03
Interesting observation at IronGeek on using hooking a Dell XPS L502X laptop to a VGA beamer:
After doing some playing around, I figured out it would not connect to a monitor or projector that did not send EDID or DDC2 info.
Lesson learned: if you run a Windows 7 laptop other than a Mac, and the laptop has a Mini DisplayPort adapter (like a Dell XPS L502X) and want it to connect to a VGA monitor, then get the StarTech model MDP2VGA adapter. It just always works, whereas a Mac Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter won’t work on systems not providing EDID or DDC2 info.
–jeroen
via Mini-DisplayPort on New Dells: Resolving issues with output to projectors in Windows 7.
Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/02
Handy when copy-pasting stuff from the Web or Word Processor and your tools keep too much formatting:
HTML Tags Stripper is designed to strip HTML tags from the text. It will also strip embedded JavaScript code, style information (style sheets), as well as code inside php/asp tags ()
Edit:
John Kaster indicated that http://ckeditor.com/demo works nicely too, but I could not get their “paste from word” to emit nice clean un-styled HTML for me.
WordOff does work, and cleans away all the HTML tags (I with it didn’t clean structure tags and anchor tags, which you can keep with HTML Tags Stripper).
–jeroen
via :: Strip HTML Tags :: Online Tools.
Posted in Development, HTML, Power User, Software Development, Web Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/02/01
Net een mail van de NS gehad:
Wij hebben in de nieuwsbrief van 19 januari j.l. aan Jaarkaarthouders en contactpersonen van NS Zakelijk onjuiste informatie vermeld over in- en uitchecken in bus, tram en metro.
Hierdoor is verwarring ontstaan. Onze excuses hiervoor.
U treft in deze nieuwsbrief de correcte informatie aan over in- en uitchecken in bus, tram en metro.
Tevens hebben wij deze juiste informatie op onze site gezet.
Wanneer niet in- en uitchecken maar uw abonnement tonen
Veel vervoerders (bus, tram en metro) hebben het reizen via in- en uitchecken ingevoerd. Het kan echter zijn dat de OV-Chipkaartlezer het aanvullende stad- en streekabonnement bij het Jaartrajectabonnement of het OV-deel bij het OV-Jaarabonnement, niet herkent. Daardoor kan mogelijk onterecht saldo afgeschreven worden.
In dat geval kan de vervoerder het in- en uitchecken niet verplicht stellen en moet het NS-abonnement als zichtkaart worden gebruikt (dus tonen aan de bestuurder of controleur en niet in- en uitchecken via de kaartlezer).
Bij de volgende vervoerders is in- en uitchecken met een Jaartraject-abonnement, OV-Jaarabonnement nog niet mogelijk zonder dat er saldo wordt afgeschreven. U dient hier uw kaart te tonen aan de bestuurder of controleur:
- Limburg, gehele provincie / Veolia Transport
- Brabant, gehele provincie / Veolia Transport (Brabantliner)
- Gelderland “Achterhoek” / Arriva
- Gelderland “Rivierenland” / Arriva
- Gelderland “Veluwe” / Syntus
- Overijssel “Twente” / Syntus
- Overijssel “Midden Overijssel” / Syntus
- Zuid-Holland “Drechtsteden en Alblasserwaard” / Arriva
- Zuid-Holland “Hoekse Waard” / Arriva
- Stadsregio Amsterdam “Waterland” / EBS
Indien er een negatief saldo ontstaat, kan het NS-abonnement niet gebruikt worden in bus, tram en metro. Reizen met de trein blijft echter wel gewoon mogelijk. Door het saldo aan te vullen tot een positieve geldwaarde wordt een mogelijke blokkade voor reizen in bus, tram en metro weer opgeheven.
Het gamek van de OV Chipkaart wordt weer eens teniet gedaan doordat een aantal use cases van te voren niet bedacht, ontwikkeld en getest zijn.
Dit nog afgezien van het omslachtige bijboeken van een incidentele Fyra toeslag.
Stel je voor dat het leven er met de OV Chipkaart echt makkelijk op was geworden, dan hadden we hier niets meer over te klagen, en dat kan toch niet
–jeroen
Posted in LifeHacker, Opinions | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/30
Not long before our Antarctic trip about 10 weeks ago, I bought myself a waterproof expedition grade backpack: the LowePro DryZone 100 through the Kamera Express Super Store in Rotterdam.
It is a great bag, and the DryZone works really well, provided you lubricated the TIZIP watertight zipper before you use the bag a couple of times, and keep doing that regularly.
The little piece of paper that guides you through it is not that well written, but luckily there are a few on-line guides how to do this properly.
Make sure you always close the TIZIP zipper to the end, that is the only way it will be completely watertight.
There are many reviews of this bag (for instance here and here), so I will keep it short:
- It is watertight
- Carrying it by hand and on your back for a full day is a breeze, even when it is completely full
- Grabbing your stuff is a bit time consuming: opening the TIZIP takes a while
- It fits an awful lot of equipment
- It won’t tip over when you put on the ground in the upright position
My recommendation is to buy the yellow/black color combination, not the grey/black color combination.
Yellow is easier to find when you drop it in the water.
Though on our antarctic trip, anything other than white was easy to find
This is what Nikon stuff I took to the Antarctic in this bag:
(Thanks Ken Rockwell for all the nice reviews of all these bodies and lenses.
Yes I know there are better lenses and better bodies, and an easier Easytag bluetooth GPS module that pairs with receivers on multiple cameras, but this is what I wanted to afford when I bought them piece by piece).
At the time I bought the DZ100 backpack, you could not get the DZ200 in The Netherlands. The DZ200 is about 30% bigger (volume wise).
–jeroen
via: An expedition camera backpack, the LowePro DZ100 « Stephen’s Stuff.
Posted in About, LifeHacker, Personal, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/27
At a client that still runs Windows Server 2003 (despite the fact that it is in the extended support phase now), I needed to enable automatic logon (one of the tools they run sometimes fails when nobody is logged on).
This was a bit more tricky than just reading How to turn on automatic logon in Windows and following these steps:
To use Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe) to turn on automatic lsogon, follow these steps:
- Click Start, and then click Run.
- In the Open box, type Regedt32.exe, and then press ENTER.
- Locate the following subkey in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
- Double-click the DefaultUserName entry, type your user name, and then click OK.
- Double-click the DefaultPassword entry, type your password, and then click OK.NOTE: If the DefaultPasswordvalue does not exist, it must be added. To add the value, follow these steps:
- On the Edit menu, click New, and then point to String Value.
- Type DefaultPassword, and then press ENTER.
- Double-click DefaultPassword.
- In the Edit String dialog, type your password and then click OK.
NOTE: If no DefaultPassword string is specified, Windows automatically changes the value of the AutoAdminLogon key from 1 (true) to 0 (false), disabling the AutoAdminLogon feature.
- On the Edit menu, click New, and then point to String Value.
- Type AutoAdminLogon, and then press ENTER.
- Double-click AutoAdminLogon.
- In the Edit String dialog box, type 1 and then click OK.
- Quit Registry Editor.
- Click Start, click Shutdown, and then type a reason in the Comment text box.
- Click OK to turn off your computer.
- Restart your computer. You can now log on automatically.
Since this depends on some registry settings, you need to make sure they are actually set.
And logging on as someone else will reset the DefaultUserName registry setting.
The article points to another article on “AutoAdminLogon looses DefaultUserName” to solve this using REGINI (and optionally REGDMP which can provide sample output for REGINI), but there is a much easier solution using RegEdit which – as Rob van der Woude points out – can be used unattended as well (besides: REGDMP cannot be downloaded any more, and REGINI requires an additional download).
This is how to do force the DefaultUserName to be reset after logon using RegEdit:
- Open an explorer Window in “%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Startup”
- Create a batch file “run-RegEdit-DefaultUserName.bat” there with this content:
regedit /s Administrator-DefaultUserName.bat
- Create a text file “Administrator-DefaultUserName.reg” in the same directory with content like this:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"DefaultUserName"="Administrator"
Replace “Administrator” with the username you are acutally using.
–jeroen
Via: How to turn on automatic logon in Windows.
Posted in Power User | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/20
I usually get at least one step wrong when doing ssh-keygen and transferring they public key by hand, so here is a nice script that helps you install a private/public keypair for remote SSH login without having to type a remote password.
Note: it is always a good idea to have a local passphrase for protecting the private key.
–jeroen
ssh-keygen: password-less SSH login script | Novell User Communities.
Posted in *nix, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/16
Will start playing with Trello checking if it is indeed GTD on steroids.
–jeroen
Via: Organize anything, together. | Trello.
Posted in LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/15
Today it is the 15th anniversary of my xs4all membership.
Even though (see some history below) xs4all was not my first provider, it has been the provider of choice ever since:
- Technically very knowledgeable
- Very stable connection
- Highly much aware of privacy
Back in December 1998, when xs4all was sold sold to the Dutch Telcom (KPN), lots of people were afraid that xs4all would start scoring less points one ore more of the above points.
They didn’t, and that is the main reason I’m still client with them.
This despite the fact that I can get faster internet where I live.
My ADSL connection is quite a long distance from the telco DSLAM, so I can’t get a very high ADSL speed.
As some of the ADSL versus distance speed graphs show, your ADSL connection needs to be close to the telco’s DSLAM.
I’m not, so my maximum ADSL1 speed is slightly less than 8 megabit, and my current ADSL2+ speed is less than 16 megabit, so xs4all light is the best I can get.
BTW: If you live in The Netherlands, here you can calculate that distance (which is called “afstand tot de centrale” in Dutch).
I wish they ran the telco cables under the canal to the neighboaring village: I’m about 500 meter away from their DSLAM, in stead of the 2700 meters I’m from my own DSLAM.
Oh well
For high speed things, I now also have a cable connection.
Even though they are deregulating that part of the broadband market, currently cable internet is bound to your cable TV provider.
In my case, that is UPC, and their high speed internet is marketed as Fiber Power.
I started with a 60 over 6 megabit service, that they increased to 120 over 10 megabit about a year ago while reducing the price (because they were merging their packages and wanted to increase their competetiveness).
While writing this, I’m still searching for a good dual gigabit WAN router to combine the two connections in one.
Over time, xs4all increased the ADSL bandwidth from a meager 1 megabit over 256 kilobit to 8 megabit over 1 megabit.
They increased mailbox and storage sizes too.
And finally, they were among the first to support IPv6.
So all in all, I’m still very happy for staying with xs4all.
A bit of history
xs4all was not where the internet started for me. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in About, Personal, Power User | 15 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/13
A big drawback from a MacBook Air is that it only have wireless LAN/WiFi (in the form of Integrated AirPort Extreme 802.11 a/b/n/n), no physical ethernet.
Transferring large amounts of data over any WiFi is can be a pain (being slow, suffer from signal quality) and for the MacBook Air: it makes the built-in fan swirl like crazy.
Since the MacBook Air does not have USB 3.0, I went looking for a 100 Mbps USB Ethernet dongle for it, and fone the DealExtreme product #34691: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle.
At a price of about USD 7 including shipping, it comes in an Apple compatible shiny white color too, nicely fitting the 4 port USB hub (DealExtreme # 45773) on the right :)
Even better: it works like a charm!
Note that first need to download and install the ASIX AX88772B drivers first. Choose the Apple Mac OSX 10.4 to 10.7 Driver for x86 and Power PC download package labelled “For Apple x86/Power PC, 32-bit/64-bit platforms”.
The install tells you to reboot at the end, but no need for that: as soon as the install finishes, the USB Ethernet dongle works. And it is fast too: 12 megabyte/second over a 100 megabit cable is fast!
In the readme of those drivers, it also mentions the AX88178, which is capable of gigabit (there is a separate AX88178 driver download page and Mac OS X download package).
NB: the cool thing about both these ASIX chipsets is that they are supported on a broad range of platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows CE, Windows 7/Vista/XP/2003/2000) and bit sizes (32-bit and 64-bit).
For even faster transfers, I might try the DealExtreme product #15336: Arkview USB 2.0 1000Mbs Gigabit Ethernet LAN Network Adapter.
It is slightly less than USD 20, and user Janipro indicates it is based on the ASIX AX88178 chip at the DealExtreme forum.
On the other hand: I might not, as for more than twice the price, user cyberic mentions in the same forum thread it is only about twice as fast: 23 megabytes per second, about half the maximum USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps. And it is not Apple white
–jeroen
Via: USB 2.0 10/100Mbps RJ45 LAN Ethernet Network Adapter Dongle – Free Shipping – DealExtreme.
Posted in -Air, LifeHacker, Mac, MacBook, OS X Leopard, OS X Lion, OS X Snow Leopard, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/09
This might have been caused by my MacBook Air haning itself one time during resume: I manually turned it off keeping the on/off switch pressed for 5+ seconds, then rebooted.
Anyway: over time I observed that the fan was running fast without much CPU/GPU/memory/disk activity.
Resetting the SMC like the answer below, followed by resetting the PRAM and NVRAM solved my issue.
I had exactly these issues with my new Macbook Air 13. Having read this forum I downloaded istat pro and discovered that my fan was always running at over 4000 rpm and the top left part of my case was quite warm. I then followed the instructions here…resetting the SMC and after this the problem was fixed!
–jeroen
via MacBook Air Fan Noise With Lion: Apple Support Communities.
Posted in -Air, LifeHacker, Mac, MacBook, OS X Lion, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/06
Currently most software installers have a small bootstrap and during the actuall install will download only the files that are actually needed.
Often that is not convenient: slow or no network connection, repeated installs in a test environment, etc.
Luckily, a lot of software does have an offline installer (a.k.a. standalone installer).
Being no exception Google Chrome has two offline installers: one single user install, and one for all users on the same Windows machine.
–jeroen
via: Alternate (offline) Google Chrome installer (Windows) – Google Help.
Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/04
Great stuff: http://expandurl.appspot.com/
Especially when a shortened URL breaks, and you want to find out if the underlying URL got moved to a different place.
–jeroen
via: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6500721/find-where-a-t-co-link-goes-to
Posted in Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/02
When old skool is modern again
The last few months, I observe more and more ASCII art, especially on social media like FaceBook, Twitter, etc.
The most recent was this one from our neighbours - thanks guys – (it doesn’t do very good justice to the original, as it needs less linespacing, and works best with an Arial font):
°.˛*.˛.°★。˛°.★**Fijne Kerstdagen en *★* *˛.
˛ °_██_*。*./ ♥ \ .˛* .˛.*.★een geweldig 2012**★ 。
˛. (´• ̮•)*˛°*/.♫.♫\*˛.* ˛_Π_____. ***★toegewenst 。
.°( . • . ) ˛°./• ‘♫ ‘ •\.˛*./______/~＼.˛* .。˛* *★* Some &
*(…’•’.. ) *˛╬╬╬╬╬˛°.｜田田 ｜門｜╬╬╬╬╬*★★*★ ★ Someone
¯˜”*°••°*”˜¯`´¯˜”*°••°*”˜¯ ` ´¯˜”*°´¯˜”*°••°*”˜¯`´¯˜” *
Since many chacaters are not ASCII at all, maybe Typewriter Art fits better.
Anyway: I like the new revival of these kinds of arts.
They remind being a lot younger and playing around with characters to see what graphical information I could put in a limited space. You can use this to present information too, as this progress bar shows how busy the public traffic is.
They also remind me how much real artists can do in little space. Given the limited space especially on Twitter and Mobile Systems, and the common feature among those is still text, ASCII art makes a lot of sense again
Some references to give you an idea how bad I was at it, and how good others
Check out http://cd.textfiles.com/hackchronii/VIRUSL4/VIRUSL4.46 and search for “Pluimers” (sitenote: I was nicknamed by the chinese cook in the restaurant kitchen I worked a few years before that, though the cook pronounced “Charlie” as “Cha-li”, and I nicked it to Charly to avoid conflicts).
A bit later I condensed it a bit (look for “rulfc1″ at http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/msdos/Info/info-ibmpc). Others were way better at Email Art and Signature Art than I was.
Those were days where you would mostly communicate with text. And even that wasn’t a long time ago when you imagine that the oldest known form of Typewriter Art is from 1898!
–jeroen
Posted in About, Personal, Power User | 2 Comments »
Posted by jpluimers on 2012/01/02
My Mac Mini Server had its’ primary HDD failure. It got replaced by the iAmStore service center, but contrary to what they promised, they didn’t put the Snow Leopard Server image on it.
So I grabbed an external USB DVD player, booted from the Snow Leopard Server install DVD, and restored the Time Machine backup from my external USB HDD.
Somehow, after the restore, Spotlight wouldn’t work: only the search bar was visible, but nothing else.
I tried various tips all having to do with erasing Spotlight for my root volume (so it would be automatically be reindexed), or many-part steps including killing SystemUIServer, Clearing Caches and Rebooting.
In the end the most simple one worked: just “turn Spotlight indexing on”.
My assumption is that Spotlight information is not backed up, and during restore Spotlight is turned off because continuously reindexing during restore will make the restore slower.
If someone can confirm this (or deny and explain the real reason), please post a comment.
This was what user nkt00 had posted as solution on the Apple forum:
I figured it out. In the man page for “mdutil” (type: “man mdutil” at the terminal shell prompt), it describes the option “-i”, which turns indexing on or off for the specified volume. I just typed:
sudo mdutil -i on /
and away it went
This was the screen output:
Last login: Mon Oct 31 19:31:01 on ttys000
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ mdutil -s /
/:
No index.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$ sudo mdutil -i on /
Password:
/:
Indexing enabled.
macminiserver01:~ jeroenp$
Now I’m happily using my Mac Mini Server again.
–jeroen
via No results from Spotlight: Apple Support Communities.
Posted in LifeHacker, Mac, MacBook, OS X Leopard, OS X Lion, OS X Snow Leopard, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/30
It took me a bit of searching to find this out, as the Windows RDP clients switched over to “/admin” for this a long time ago:
with the Mac RDC client, you can connect to a servers console by adding “/CONSOLE” to the end of the computer name
–jeroen
via MacUpdate: Member Profile – Nate Silva.
Posted in Mac, OS X Leopard, OS X Lion, OS X Snow Leopard, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/29
Sometimes you want to parse commandline arguments in batch files starting at the last one.
For parsing them left to right, the shift command comes in handy.
But there is no “shift-reverse” command, so you need some trick.
StackOverflow to the rescue: user Joey provides this really nice answer:
The easiest and perhaps most reliable way would be to just use cmds own parsing for arguments and shift then until no more are there.Since this destroys the use of %1, etc. you can do it in a subroutine
@echo off
call :lastarg %*
echo Last argument: %LAST_ARG%
goto :eof
:lastarg
set "LAST_ARG=%~1"
shift if not "%~1"=="" goto :lastarg
goto :eof
:eof
–jeroen
via: Get last command line argument in windows batch file – Stack Overflow.
Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Power User, Scripting, Software Development | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/27
Eerder schreef ik over De NS en UserExperience: er valt nog veel te leren over ondermeer het nieuwe Station Sassenheim en het gebrek aan ondersteuning in Apps omdat de NS webservice na (inmiddels) ruim 2 weken nog steeds niet in haar webservice heeft opgenomen.
Daarmee geeft de NS haar eigen site dus een concurrentievoordeel tegen apps.
Inmiddels is er voor de Sneltrein Android app een update geweest en kun je daar toch Station Sassenheim kiezen. Dank Jouke!
Nu nog een iOS versie van de Sneltrein App
–jeroen
via: De NS en UserExperience: er valt nog veel te leren, ook door @NS_Online en @NS_Stations #UX « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of Wiert stuff.
Posted in Android, HTC, HTC Sensation, iOS, LifeHacker, Power User | Leave a Comment »
Posted by jpluimers on 2011/12/27
It would be so cool if Google re-added this feature:
- Deselect all calendars but one
- Quick Add an event
- The event gets added to this one selected calendar
Now all events always get added to your default calendar. I remember this worked somewhere in 2010. But now it fails when adding about 200 events by hand on a secondary calendar 
See this discussion thread:
tiburon200; 3/21/09
When using quick add, is it possible to place the new event on a specific calendar (ie, home, work) or is that only an option through the regular “Create Event” method?
Thanks for any insight… seems like it should be pretty easy, but I can’t find the right syntax.
rmorales2005; 8/17/11
This used to be possible by just hiding all other calendars, but this got broken some time ago…
–jeroen
via Quick Add to specific calendar? – Calendar Help.
Posted in Google, GoogleCalendar, Opinions, Power User | Leave a Comment »
