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Fixing Samba network-share change notifications

Today a problem came up where the files on my Samba fileshare did not indicate to my Windows system that they were changed. Software that relies on this information such as TortoiseHG and SimpleLESS would not know that the file had changed. This was especially obvious with SimpleLESS which should take the .less file and process it, but wouldn’t.

It turns out that the cause of this is that on the linux system the system time was off by a large margin. Using Arbab Nazar’s article on setting up time synchronization fixed the issue and prevents it from reoccurring.

 

I Won The Windows Phone Challenge, But Lost 'Just Because'

This sounds like a situation where I hope some rep from Microsoft will intervene and offer the guy his reward.

via I Won The Windows Phone Challenge, But Lost “Just Because”

 

Combining multiple Subversion repositories

This post describes a step by step guide on how to combine multiple Subversion repositories whilst keeping individual history (and commit messages).

Dumping

Exporting from pagefeedbacktool repository the /trunk/public folder and integrating that into the services repository under /trunk/public/pagefeedback:

Dump the repository including only /trunk/public as follows:

E:\\Repositories\\pagefeedbacktool>svnadmin dump .| svndumpfilter include --drop-empty-revs --renumber-revs trunk/public > ..\\services\\filtered.dump

Loading

However as pathnames are stored as part of the dump (and replacing the path with a texteditor corrupts the dump), we have to include the full path under a different parent directory:

In VisualSVN create a /trunk/public/pagefeedback/trunk/public folder structure (try without the final public if import fails) then load the dump as follows:

E:\\Repositories\\services>svnadmin load . --parent-dir "trunk/public/pagefeedback" < filtered.dump

The dump is successful but at the wrong path:

currently: /trunk/public/pagefeedback/trunk/public
should be: /trunk/public/pagefeedback/

Post-correction

Open two Windows Explorer windows with both paths side by side, select all the files that should be moved, then RIGHT click drag them to the destination folder and choose SVN Move versioned files here...

Commit from the repository root.

It is now safe to remove the trunk/public folders under /trunk/public/pagefeedback/

Commit again.

 

Modified Files - Windows 7 Productivity Tip

To quickly access the files you've been working on today, create a new Favorites item for these files.

To do this, open Windows Explorer and select your Libraries link on the left. Then in the search box, enter modified:today and click the Save Search toolbar button.

Enter a name, such as Libraries Today, and press enter. You will now see the new item appear in your Favorites menu.

You can select this item whenever you need to access recently worked on files.

 

 

 

PuTTY updated after four years

When you press Win + left/right it will now correctly occupy half the screen, which was annoying me for a while. Essential app.

2011-07-12 PuTTY 0.61 is released

PuTTY 0.61 is out, after over four years (sorry!), with new features, bug fixes, and compatibility updates for Windows 7 and various SSH server software.

via PuTTY: a free telnet/ssh client.

 

Host Editor 7 - Hassle free host editing for Win7-XP

I was fedup with the poor experience of editing my host file, which is often needed when developing websites. So I quickly created an AutoHotkey script for the purpose.

15:03:50 - me: anyone knows a host editor app that works under windows 7
15:04:51 - me: fed up trying to first find the hosts file, then not being able to save because I again forgot to run notepad with admin privileges.

Download @ Host Editor 7 - Hassle free host editing for Win7-XP - DonationCoder.com.

 

WindowsPager

WindowsPager: One of the more accomplished virtual desktop solutions that work well with Windows 7

 

Smart Podcast Playlist

Create a smart playlist with all unplayed podcasts. By using this playlist you no longer have to find the next podcast on your iPhone whilst driving back home. Make sure that you include the smart playlist on the Podcast tab of your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

Update:
Although this seemed a great solution in theory, there are some issues with this approach in practice. As diskspace on the iPhone is at a premium you will have to limit the amount of podcast data stored on your device. However, because there is not an option to keep 1 unplayed episode per podcast in the smart playlist editor you have to set the amount of diskspace used. When you have several podcasts and some are updated more frequently then others you will end up for some podcasts not being on your device and others that are continuously listened to. Therefore I opted for http://vemedio.com:80/products/instacast">InstaCast which caches 1 episode per podcast and comes with continuous playback in its latest update.

 

Bard 0.3.0.3 Released

Updated again (version 0.3.0.3) - I have fixed all known bugs.

Changes since 0.3.0.0:

  • instructions updated
  • Fixed problems remembering what directory we're working on.
  • Fix: now lists samples with mixed case or uppercase extensions
  • Removed tray icon
  • Menu item to AudioLibraryFolders now works correctly
  • Resizing now works as expected
  • Remember windows position and size between sessions

Download the latest version

 

How To Search for Asterisk in Excel

A while ago I had to normalize values in an Excel sheet where some of the values contained an asterisk (*) and some did not. However it's not immediately clear how to search for a asterisk. It turns out the escape character is a tilde so searching for ~* is the correct way to do this.

[caption id="attachment_247" align="alignleft" width="300"]Searching for ~* to search for an asterisk in excel Searching for ~* to search for an asterisk in excel[/caption]

 

iTunes App Updates Sync

Wouldn't it be useful if iTunes would (have at least the option to) sync app updates to your device automatically after downloading them? How often I have forgot to sync and find out later in the day that my apps are still out of date.

 

Hear no iPad, see no iPad

What's the Deal With These Windows PC Guys Saying Stupid Things in Australia About the iPad?

Microsoft cannot get a tablet out so it's best to marginalise the whole market.

Via Daring Fireball.

 

InstaPlay 1.0

As a hobbyist music producer, I have a lot of samples of sounds. As I have decided to start organising these, I needed a quick way to fire off samples in wav and mp3 format through Windows Explorer.

So I created InstaPlay. This is a simple sound player. To install it simply unzip it in a directory that's in the path, and then associate wav and mp3 files (and whatever else you want to use) with it.  It also has a few features:

  1. Just double click or run a soundfile to hear it play.
  2. Nice speaker icon in system tray while a sound is playing. Double click it to quit InstaPlay and stop playback.
  3. Run  another sound file to switch playback to that instead.

This program will help you categorize more efficiently as you can move the sound that's being played without pesky 'file in use' prompts.

Download Info
Download the latest version (v1.0 - updated 14/oct/2010)

 

Windows Integration Authentication Scheduled Web Page

This is a problem I have been trying to solve for some time on and off. Under Windows/IIS I need to periodically run a webpage that uses Windows Integrated Authentication. This rules out most of the VBS scripts and WGet solutions. I got it to work today using a batch file like below. Just add it as a scheduled task.

start /min "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" http://domain.com/webpage
PING 1.1.1.1 -n 60 -w 60000 > NUL
taskkill /F /IM iexplore.exe

The two most important parts is starting the application with the 'start' command (windows 2003 server in this case) so that the batch file will continue while the program is running. We then use a trick by pinging every second for 60 seconds (1 minutes) to wait for the webpage to finish what it's doing. Finally we kill off the original program.

 

Getting started with Powershell

PowerShell is a complete replacement for any of Microsoft's DOS or Windows command line interpreters. It is a full fledged object oriented system administration scripting language. With PowerShell knowledge you would run circles around any sysadmin that works predominantly from through the GUI, as well as be able to get Windows to do things that you just can't do through a GUI alone.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/msh/cmdlets/index.mspx

 

Games for Windows Live Marketplace likely

From Eurogamer: Unangst said Microsoft would "continue to invest" in Games for Windows, which apart from giving its games an Xbox Live-style service layer with friends lists, Achievements and the like, also insists that games be easy to install, support widescreen displays and include parental controls.

It all sounds promising. The one thing I was most impressed with on Xbox 360 is the whole integration and lack of configuration for games, if they can bring that to Windows Vista then a lot of people will be very happy.

Some ideas:
You can see how they could potentially take the experience index benchmarking framework and develop that into something that can adjust games visual quality, automatic updating and applying of patching without user intervention, matchmaking and the community features could all be very useful and add value to PC gaming. Even some sort of integrated anti piracy tool developed for Microsoft that doesn't rootkit your machine which would be less painful to consumers would also be an improvement over the current situation.

 

Facts from Microsoft

Apparently they have not processed my 200+ logs I sent to them:

  • Windows Vista users generally experience 20 percent fewer application “hangs” than those running Windows XP.

Source (Microsoft)

 

AltTabFingertips

What it does
I made a small AHK script I thought you might want to use: AltTab Fingertips. Press a configurable hotkey (F10 by default), and get a menu at the mouse with all the current windows on it. You can exclude processes using the tray menu.

Many thanks to ak_ for creating "menu at cursor" idea with FileDraft, which inspired this. It's like alt-tab but quicker. A lot of code comes from my PutAside script.


Small screencast:

Changelog:
v1.3 - Recompile, shiny new icon, INI in the same folder as the script for portability!
v1.2 - startup message is now only shown once. Added "show desktop|restore programs" option to menu, (windows-d)
v1.1 - allows to exclude processes via system tray menu.

Download the latest version

Comments are welcome either here or on the related Donationcoder thread.

 

Avoid spyware by running applications with SetSAFER

Everybody who's ever tried it knows the problem. Life as a regular user on Windows is a pain: who wants to switch users just to install software, sometimes even to run it? However running software as a non-admin increases security. It's impossible for spyware to install itself into the system when it is not allowed to.

Using SetSAFER, a program created by Microsoft employee Michael Howard we can run just any applications as a regular or limited user, while still using an administrator account. After testing for side effects, which I explain below, I recommend you give this a try. I no longer have to run a realtime spyware scanner, and now just schedule routine scans.

As one of the articles Michael has written on the subject is not available anymore I'll quote the nonadmin site for an complete explanation of the program:

SetSAFER is a policy-setting tool written by Michael Howard that can force applications to always run with lower privileges. You can download it and read about it in his MSDN article "Browsing the Web and Reading E-mail Safely as an Administrator, Part 2".

For example, you could mark you favourite  browser to always run as a user, regardless of whether it starts by invoking an URL on the desktop, a link in email, a newly spawned browser and so on.

SetSAFER uses the SetSAFER.xml file to configure the applications that should be run with lower privileges. You can edit this with any text editor such as notepad to add applications and even folders. My configuration can be found below. This way I run my browsers, e-mail software and messengers without worrying about spyware:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<safer>
<app comment="Internet Explorer" path="c:\program files\internet explorer" user="true" />
<app comment="Mozilla Firefox" path="c:\program files\mozilla firefox" user="true" />
<app comment="Opera 9.5 Alpha" path="c:\program files\opera 9.5 alpha\opera.exe" user="true" />
<app comment="Outlook" path="c:\program files\microsoft office\office12\outlook.exe " user="false" />
<app comment="Outlook Express" path="c:\program files\outlook express" user="true" />
<app comment="Windows Messenger" path="c:\program files\messenger" user="true" />
<app comment="Windows Live Messenger" path="c:\program files\windows live\messenger" user="true" />
</safer>

Side Effects

Some applications are not built to run in a mixed privileges environment and seem to cause issues when run like this. However, this is not SetSAFERs fault as it just uses the built-in windows policy settings!

Google Desktop and Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer monitor the browser history for pages that are visited and add them to their database. I assume this is not allowed as a regular user. Whatever the reason, it causes the browser to freeze whenever you go to a webpage. I've uninstalled Google Toolbar and Google Desktop until I have found a solution. Any help would be appreciated.

The website for Windows Update and Microsoft Update and certain Java applets will not  function if the user is not an administrator. This can be a pain if you want to manually check for updates. The solution: navigate to the installation folder for Internet Explorer (c:\program files\internet explorer ) and copy the iexplore.exe program to another location. The copy will run with full rights.

Finally, any program started from another application inherits the security settings from the parent program. This means that installations run directly from the browser will run with lower privileges. They'll let you know you do not have enough rights to install it. This is intended and exactly what we want: a secure browsing environment. However, it might prove a slight annoyance at first. Just browse to the file yourself and run it yourself.

Downloads and Resources