The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category

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tools for iPad as second screen, or show iPad screen on your computer

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/06/24

While Watching the CodeRage Mobile conference last week, I noticed Bruno Fierens showing his iPad on a PC.

I also thought about the other way around: show your PC or Mac on your iPad or using your iPad as a second (third?) monitor to your regular machine.

So here are some links to tools I want to look into further:

I’ve not done comparisons yet. These sites have compared some of the products though:

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, Hardware, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Typing Special Characters on Mac OS X and Windows

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/06/13

I always wonder how people can remember the character combinations to type special characters from a regular US international keyboard on a Mac with OS X, or Windows computer.

When having to type a lot of international text, I often use the United States-International keyboard layout in Windows 7, in Windows Vista, and in Windows XP.

When not, I often use Character Map. Too bad there is no shortcut for it.

Choosing the U.S International – PC  on a Mac OS X (as it behaves exactly like the PC counterpart on Windows) however introduces problems when using Remote Desktop Connection or virtualization software like VMware Fusion or Parallels.

So I sometimes revert to “Special Charters” (option-command-T) under the Edit menu (also called Character Viewer), but usually take advantage that ApplePressAndHoldEnabled by default is enabled: that allows the press-and-hold feature for vowel keys, and then either use the digit keys or arrows to select the target accented character.

On both systems, there are other ways to type special characters using keyboard shortcuts that I find very hard to remember. For people with a good memory, you can try these:

–jeroen

via: Macintosh OSX Keyboards (Penn State).

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Move Around in paragraphs – Microsoft Word keyboard shortcuts

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/05/26

Boy, wish I had known these two Word keyboard shortcuts a long time ago:

  • Ctrl + Up: Go To the start of the previous paragraph
  • Ctrl + Down: Go To the start of the next paragraph

–jeroen

via: Move Around – Microsoft Word.

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

Fix by Christian S. – Moers for “KB2686509 repeatedly fails with Error code 0x8007F0F4” (via: Microsoft Community)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/05/07

Thanks Christian S. – Moers for the fix for KB2686509 repeatedly failing and the answer below.

I’ve used it as the Microsof FixIt offered at You may receive a “0x8007F0F4” error code when you try to install updates from the Windows Update Web site or from the Microsoft Update Web site did not work on several systems. The fix by Christian did work on all those systems.

Note: it is possible you get the same error for KB2676562: MS12-034: Description of the security update for Windows kernel-mode drivers: May 8, 2012, as it is related to KB2686509: MS12-034: Description of the security update for CVE-2012-0181 in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003: May 8, 2012.

One of the symptoms is that your system contains the file %windor%\faultykeyboard.log containing a list of  missing keyboard layout DLL files or KBD files (one of my machines had these missing: kbdjpn.dll and kbdkor.dll).

The cause is that KB2686509 can have problems with registry keys stored here:

  • HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
  • HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts

Christian wrote a batch file to fix it (named BatchFixKB2686509.cmd) which works splendid on the systems I had this error.

The batch file uses regedit /e to export parts of the registry, then writes a small .reg file to clear the keys and imports them with regedit /S, waits for you so you can install the update, then writes back the saved registry data.
So basically, it automatically performs the manual steps described at KB2686509 – Failure Due to Upgrade from Windows ME or 98 to Windows XP – TechNet Articles – United States (English) – TechNet Wiki.

His answer: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Batch-Files, Development, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Scripting, Software Development, Windows, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Fonera Simpl Wireless Settings : Fon Support

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/21

Somehow my Fonera insisted that WiFi channel 2 was a good choice.

It isn’t so I forced it to be on one of the good 1/6/11 channel choices.

This links describes where those settings are: Fonera Simpl Wireless Settings : Fon Support.

–jeroen

Posted in Fonera FON2100A, Network-and-equipment, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Cut and Paste Files & Folders in Mac OS X

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/18

Boy, I wish I had found this far earlier:

  • in Windows Explorer this is called cut & paste:
    Ctrl+X & Ctrl+V
  • in Mac OS X Finder this is called copy & move items here:
    Command+C & Command+Option+V

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User | 3 Comments »

MacBook Fn/Option/Ctrl keyboard shortcuts

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/11

I know that Apple likes “design”, but boy their desing resulted into Mac OS X having lots of Fn/Option/Ctrl/Shift keyboard shortcuts.

Being a keyboard person (before the DOS era), I love to learn new keyboard shortcuts to make my life easier, while vendors are step by step hiding information about them.

I will update this table over time to reflect even better the ones I use most regularly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, SpotLight | Leave a Comment »

Mac OS X: Tools that enable keyboard shortcuts to move a window from one monitor to another (via: Ask Different)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/04/10

One of the frustrating things about using a Mac, is the pain to find keyboard shortcuts for everyday tasks.

Having had RSI in the early 1990s, I’ve learned to use the keyboard for virtually everything. So I’m used to find keyboard shortcuts on most operating systems, or write scripts to make common tasks easier.

On most *nix or Windows systems, those shortcuts are either there, easy to enable or tools are there to enable them.

For OS X, somehow this seems much harder, so I’m always glad to bumped into answers to questions like

Is there a keyboard shortcut to move a window from one monitor to another? – OSX/Ask Different.

From the answers in that question it is clear this is not built-in behaviour in OS X.

Also the answers show a few tools that can (some free, some paid). So those are on my research list.

But I’m already glad to know that these tools are available.

I’m also going to dig a bit more into Hands-on with OS X Mavericks: Multiple-display support | Macworld, as I’m sure there are some subtle things with multi-monitor setups that I’ve  not yet found myself.

–jeroen

via: osx – Is there a keyboard shortcut to move a window from one monitor to another? – Ask Different.

Posted in Apple, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, Power User | 3 Comments »

ECC vs non-ECC RAM: The Great Debate (via: Nex7’s Blog). Use the ECC dude.

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/30

Read this very nice post on Nex7’s Blog: ECC vs non-ECC RAM: The Great Debate.

There is no debate. Use ECC dude.

Use ECC especially for server side things (storage, virtualization, databases, etc) where you employ some kind of redundancy/correction in the storage (ZFS, RAID, etc) side of things.

And think about using ECC for the rest of your stuff, especially when things stay in memory for a longer period of time (in-memory processing of data can speed up things a lot, but also increase the risk).

Summary:

There is no debate here. None.

[…]

if you think non-ECC RAM can compete with ECC RAM, you are mistaken. If you think there’s a risk/reward analysis here, you’re correct. The risk is not gigantic, and there’s a real cost to alleviating that risk. You have to decide if that cost is worth alleviating that risk.

[…]

If you believe there’s a risk/reward plan where you can take the reward and apply to to mitigate the risk, you are back to being mistaken. The only benefit of non-ECC RAM (and thus the only reward in its choice over ECC RAM) is it will make the solution cheaper. There is not, however, any way (that I’ve heard of, yet) you can use the cost savings to mitigate the risk using non-ECC RAM will introduce.

[…]

If you choose to use non-ECC RAM, you open yourself up to a new vector for data corruption/loss/downtime/errors/etc,

one that could (rarely) even cause you to lose your entire filesystem, and one ZFS does not (cannot) resolve for you. Indeed, one it likely can’t even see at all. If you choose to employ non-ECC RAM, or are forced to do so because of circumstance or environmental constraint, that’s potentially understandable (and even acceptable) – but do not then attempt to validate or explain away that choice with pseudoscience or downplaying the risk you’ve added. You are using an inferior solution with an extra vector for data corruption/loss that ECC RAM solutions simply do not have. It is that simple.

[…]

Hint 3: There’s a reason we’re so gung-ho about using ECC RAM for ZFS, and it’s not just because we’re paranoid about data loss (which goes hand in hand with being a ZFS zealot, really). It is because you likely don’t realize how at risk you are. Due to the nature of how ZFS handles writes, your incoming (write) data is at risk of RAM-related bit errors for likely significantly longer than traditional storage solutions or alternative filesystems. 5, 10, 30, 60 or more seconds in a state where it is at risk.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, ECC memory, Endian, ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Hardware, Hyper-V, Linux, Memory, Power User, SuSE Linux, VMware, VMware ESXi, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Some Mikrotik and RouterOS Links to get it running on ESXi for experimental purposes.

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/03/27

RouterOS runs on many kinds of hardware. Of course on the MikroTik hardware itself (which always comes with a license), but also on x86 hardware, even virtualized systems.

In that respect, it looks a bit like pfSense, or Endian, but on steroids and closed source.

Here are some links focused on MikroTik  on ESXi (which is great for experimental purposes):

WOL (Wake ON LAN)

–jeroen

via: Routers.

Posted in ESXi4, ESXi5, ESXi5.1, ESXi5.5, Ethernet, Internet, Network-and-equipment, Power User, routers, Virtualization, VMware, VMware ESXi, Wake-on-LAN (WoL) | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

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