Trioro Tech Blog

Great, free Outlook Exporter

2009-06-24T17:30:00.003-04:00

I just stumbled across a great little app which makes exporting data from Microsoft Outlook fast and easy.

The best part.... it's freeware! Thanks to the team at CodeTwo for that.

The app is called CodeTwo Outlook Export. You can download it here.

I was stuck without an easy way to export contact information from a public folder on an Exchange Server. With this little plug-in, exporting contact information from Microsoft Exchange is fast and user-friendly.

Skype AppleScript: Switching Audio

2009-05-03T11:29:00.009-04:00

I fiddled around today trying to figure out how to get Skype on the Mac to effectively switch from using the buit-in mic and speakers to using my bluetooth headset (and then back again).

I'm using a MacBook Pro and a Jabra BT530 bluetooth headset.

After starting Skype, through trial and error I figured out the right sequence of events to connect my bluetooth headset to the computer and then change both the Mac system preferences and the Skype preferences to make this work:

Establish the bluetooth connection to the headset
Open the system preferences and change the audio input and output to use the bluetooth headset
Open the Skype preferences and change the audio input and output to use the bluetooth headset

It took awhile to realize that going into the system preferences was necessary. Without doing this, the bluetooth headset connection would work, but the audio wouldn't flip over to the headset.

Once this sequence was established, the AppleScript could be written:
Audio%20-%20Bluetooth.scpt

tell application "System Preferences"

activate

set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.sound"

end tell

tell application "System Events"

if UI elements enabled then

try

tell application process "System Preferences"

tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"

click radio button "Output"

set selected of row 2 of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true

set deviceselected to "Jabra Headset"

set verbal_description to "Bluetooth Headset Now Active"

tell application "Finder"

set volume 7

end tell

end tell

end tell

tell application "System Preferences" to quit

on error

tell me to activate

display dialog "Please plug in the headset." buttons {"Whoops!"} default button 1

end try

else --GUI scripting is disabled

tell application "System Preferences"

activate

set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"

end tell

display dialog "Please check the box called \"Enable access for assistive devices.\"" buttons {"Okay"} with icon 1 default button 1

end if

end tell

tell application "Skype"

activate

send command "SET AUDIO_OUT IOBluetoothSCOAudioEngine_new:00-1d-82-18-ec-e6" script name "something"

send command "SET AUDIO_IN IOBluetoothSCOAudioEngine_new:00-1d-82-18-ec-e6" script name "something"

end tell

Here is the script to change back to using the built in audio: Audio%20-%20Mac.scpt

tell application "System Preferences"

activate

set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.sound"

end tell

tell application "System Events"

if UI elements enabled then

try

tell application process "System Preferences"

tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"

click radio button "Output"

set selected of row 1 of table 1 of scroll area 1 to true

set deviceselected to "Built-in Output"

set verbal_description to "Built-in Output Now Active"

tell application "Finder"

set volume 7

end tell

end tell

end tell

tell application "System Preferences" to quit

on error

tell me to activate

display dialog "Please plug in the headset." buttons {"Whoops!"} default button 1

end try

else --GUI scripting is disabled

tell application "System Preferences"

activate

set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"

end tell

display dialog "Please check the box called \"Enable access for assistive devices.\"" buttons {"Okay"} with icon 1 default button 1

end if

end tell

tell application "Skype"

activate

send command "SET AUDIO_OUT AppleHDAEngineOutput:0" script name "something"

send command "SET AUDIO_IN AppleHDAEngineInput:1" script name "something"

end tell

These scripts were adapted from: http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/07/applescript_audio_output_switc.html

The one trick in modifying this for your own use is to use the "get" script to find out the name of the audio device you want to switch to in Skype.

tell application "Skype"

activate

send command "GET AUDIO_IN" script name "something"

--send command "GET AUDIO_OUT" script name "something"

end tell

As you switch settings in Skype and run this script, change the commented lines to switch between reading the audio input and output settings. Take the output from this script and replace the similar lines in the earlier scripts.

Additionally, when you're in the System preferences you may need to pay attention to which rows in the table on the output screen your devices are listed on. That part of the above script is also highlighted in red.

SQL Reports and Firefox 3

2008-11-13T11:01:00.001-05:00

Want SQL Reports to render in your browser on the Mac or in any Firefox browser?

Without this fix you end up with a 2 inch frame containing the report contents.

Here's the fix I applied to get this to render properly:

Step 1 Was a CSS fix found on asp.net.
Add the following to the ReportingServices.css file (by default, it's found in "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportManager\Styles\"):

/* Fix report IFRAME height for Firefox */

.DocMapAndReportFrame
{
    min-height: 860px;
}

Step 2 Was an ASPX fix found on a TechNet Forum.

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer\Pages\ReportViewer.aspx

Add info to the <RS> tag style property

<RS:ReportViewerHost style="display:table; margin: 0px; overflow: auto" ID="ReportViewerControl" runat="server" />

Works like a charm!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

My First Google SketchUp

2008-11-01T18:46:00.005-04:00

I've just finished my first Google SketchUp animation!

Here's what was involved:

Download and install Google SketchUp (5 minutes)
Review the introduction and get acquainted enough to get going on my own (60 minutes)
Convert an Illustrator vector version of our logo to an AutoCAD file that could be imported by SketchUp (30 minutes).

Initially the paths weren't being imported properly.
I had to remove some groups and compound paths from the Illustrator logo file.

Searched the help files a bit and figured out I needed to go into the program preferences and enable some built in add-ons to help me finish my drawing (30 minutes).
Added some depth to the drawing in SketchUp (45 minutes)
Figured out how to add scenes and create an animation (45 minutes)
Fiddled around with the export settings to turn the animation in to a QuickTime video that was the right size and shape (40 minutes)

Total time from starting the download, to writing this post: 4 hours and 15 minutes.

SQL Reporting Services - 401 Error & rsLogonFailed

2008-09-23T15:13:00.001-04:00

We've been using SQL Reporting for awhile now.
Accessing the reports was done by going to http://localhost/ReportServer/

I recently wanted to delete an existing report and to do that needed to access the report server management at http://localhost/Reports/
At this point I was getting a 401 error and could not access the control panel.

This was resolved by adding a registry key to disable a loopback security check that had been implement by a Windows Server Service Pack.
Step by step instructions to fix this issue are available here:
http://aspadvice.com/blogs/ssmith/archive/2007/02/09/SQL-Reporting-Services-401-Error.aspx

One of my earlier troubleshooting steps had been to use Reporting Configuration Manager to update the Unattended Execution Account.
I entered a user with a high level access. That didn't do anything to fix by 401 issue (eventually solved using the instructions above). But I never went back to remove the service execution account.

Going back to run the reports that had previously been running fine, I was now getting this error...

Logon failed. (rsLogonFailed) Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007052E)

Other solutions offered that the username / account I was using to run the reports was wrong. However, these reports had been working fine prior to me fiddling that unattended execution account.

I got my rsLogonFailed issue resolved by completely disabling the Execution Account. This was fine for the reports that we need to run.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Getting Rid of a Large SQL Log File

2008-09-10T21:08:00.001-04:00

I comes up about once a year where I've come across a database with a log file that has grown too big and shrinking the database doesn't do anything.

To make sure I have a reference for what to do the next time this happens... Here's what's involved in emptying out a large SQL log file:

Go to the options of the database and change the recovery mode to Simple
Run a full database backup.
Run a database Shrink -> Files
Choose the transaction log to shrink
Check off the option to reorganize the file and then release the free space
Execute the Shrink command
Set the database back to Full recovery mode

In this case the database that had the large log file was the subscriber to a replicated database. Since the publisher was being backed-up there wasn't much need to set the database back to full recovery mode.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

vCard Splitter

2008-04-07T10:41:00.002-04:00

I recently wanted to export a group of contacts from Address Book on the Mac to Outlook in Windows.

The only way to export contacts from the Mac is to "Export Group as vCard". This creates one vCard file that has multiple contacts in it. It's a pretty straight-forward and easy process. The resulting file can be easily attached to an email and sent to someone else.

The tricky part is that Outlook doesn't recognize that there are multiple contacts in the one vCard.

Enter vCard Splitter. vCard Splitter is a Mac utility that will take the single vCard and split it into individual vCards which you can then drag and drop into Outlook.

Note: I found a Windows utility by the same name, but it crashed when I launched it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Wrong Computer Name (Host) in Terminal

2008-04-04T09:53:00.003-04:00

File this under "quick fix"...

For awhile now I've been noticing that the host name for my computer has been wrong when I open a new Terminal window in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Figuring this had something to do with DNS, I logged into the Windows 2003 Small Business Server that runs our network. The forward zone had my ipaddress and computer name correct, but the reverse zone had the wrong computer name for my ipaddress. The computer name that was listed was in fact the name that I saw in my Terminal window.

I modified the PTR record in the reverse zone for my ip address and gave it my NETBIOS name.

Closed my Terminal window back on the mac.
Problem solved.

I'm not sure what caused this issue to start with, but if it happens again I'll dig deeper into that.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Safari inline PDF files (Part 2)

2008-02-26T16:01:00.005-05:00

I originally blogged about this about 6 months ago.

Since then I've discovered a few things have changed.

This tag now works in Safari for displaying an inline PDF.

<object data="pdffile.pdf" type="application/pdf"></object>

If you care... here's the background:

I was using this code:

<object classid="clsid:CA8A9780-280D-11CF-A24D-444553540000">
<param name="src" value="pdffilename.pdf">
<embed src="pdffilename.pdf" width="200" height="300"></embed>
<noembed>PDFs are not supported by your browser.</noembed>
</object>

This was working almost across the board - provided that you had the Adobe PDF Viewer plugin installed on your Mac.
This was not working for Firefox on the Mac.

Recent tests show that this code doesn't work any more and the snippit I gave at the beginning of this post solves the problem.

Firefox on the Mac is still unhappy with trying to pull of inline PDF files.

Apparently this plugin will solve that issue. However, I haven't tested that myself.

My solution was to do some browser detection and give people a link to download the pdf if they are using Firefox on the Mac.

Printing on NSLU2 Unslung

2008-02-23T23:09:00.002-05:00

Using a Linksys NSLU2, I've got it unslung using v6.10.

Originally I got the NSLU2 because it seemed like a good, cheap way of getting a big networked data drive on my home network.
I quickly realized that the factory firmware from Linux was rather limited.

You get A LOT more functionality when you use Unslung.

The real bonus was that I was also going to get a home print server AND a more powerful shared network drive.

I started by carefully following the instructions to get the NSLU2 working with Unslung.
I chose to use a 250GB external USB drive connected to Port 1 for my Unslung install.
Once Unslung was installed, I was able to use the drive as an networked storage device.

The next step was to install CUPS and get the NSLU2 working as a print server.
I have an HP Photosmart 7350 that I wanted to use with the NSLU2.
All the instructions to add CUPS are available here.

The actual CUPS installation when pretty smoothly - according to plan.

However, I got stuck once CUPS was installed, trying to get the printer to do anything.
I connected the usb cable to port 2. The port 2 light on the NSLU2 never lights up.
The CUPS instructions say that you should "just try printing" once you get CUPS installed.
I did this by trying to click the "Print Test Page" button for the default hp990c printer.
I got garbage out on my page.

DON'T TRY CHANGING ANY SETTINGS ON THE NSLU2 AT THIS POINT.

I tried permissions changes, more software installs on the NSLU2... totally wrong approach.
Just leave the base CUPS install and config alone.

The hp990c should be setup as a RAW printer in CUPS on the NSLU2 at this point. If it isn't (because you messed with it) - click "modifiy printer" and change the driver to RAW.

From either a Mac or Windows machine on your network you now setup an Internet Printer.
Windows

Add Printer
Networked Printer
URL - the address should be the entire link to the CUPS address on your NSLU2

http://192.168.0.110:631/printers/hp990c
make sure to include the "http://"
also make sure to include the port ":631"

When prompted, select the print driver that matches your printer

In my case for the Photosmart 7350 I had to click "Have Disk"
This also required having ALREADY INSTALLED the printer as a local usb connected printer so that the drivers were installed by the HP software in the directory c:\program files\HP Photosmart 11\enu\drivers

Finish the Add Printer install and give it a try by printing a test page!

Mac

DO NOT USE THE SYSTEM PREFERENCES PANEL TO DO THIS
Open a web browser and go to http://localhost:631/admin

This is the local admin control panel for the CUPS system that is built in to your Mac

Use the Add Printer wizard
Install using Internet Printing (HTTP)
when you're asked for the printer location, use the entire CUPS address on your NSLU2

http://192.168.0.110:631/printers/hp990c

make sure to include the "http://"
also make sure to include the port ":631"

Finish the wizard and give it a try by clicking "print test page"

Connecting a Mac to Active Directory

2008-01-07T12:22:00.000-05:00

I'm using Leopard (OS X 10.5)...

The follwing outlines a few obstacles that I ran into while connecting my MacBook Pro to a Windows Small Business Server 2003. The obstacles were:

1. The Mac cannot find the Windows Server by name after connecting the Mac to the same network

2. Setting up Active Directory properly proved to be tricky

3. My existing local Mac admin account had the same username as my windows account which really messed things up without warning.

4. Network shares did not appear on the desktop.

Obstacle 1: Windows computer names are not resolving.

I'm not able to use a computer name access any windows resources when I start doing the Active Directory configuration. Ping tests from the terminal do not work when using computer names, but using IP Addresses is fine.

Solution: You need to add a "Search Domain" to your DNS settings

- Open System Preferences -> Network

- Click the Advanced... button

- go to the DNS tab and add a new Search Domain - use your Active Directory domain (ie:

mydomain.local) -- .local in our case because our AD server is not available on the Internet

- click OK

- don't for get to click "Apply" before you close the Network preferences window

Obstacle 2: Connect the Mac to Active Directory.

The main issue here is that the settings have to be very specific.

Solution: Open Directory Utility (Utilities folder).

- start by clicking on Services

- Select Active Directory and click the pencil icon to edit the settings (you probably have to unlock the settings first by clicking the lock icon)

- the Active Directory Domain needs to be the fully qualified domain name for your active directory server. This was tricky for me because we don't have a domain name pointing at this server. This is an AD server on our internal network. In this case you use the Active Directory domain name followed by .local (ie: mydomain.local)

- I changed the Computer ID to something shorter and easier than what was provided by default

- click the Bind... button - at this point you might be prompted for your Mac admin account information to authenticate - this window looks like the standard authentication window you get any time you need admin permissions. This has nothing to do with connecting to Active Directory yet.

- the next window that opens asks for your Active Directory credentials. The important thing here is the username. You have to include your Windows domain information with your username. In this case using the standard \ character to separate domain and username doesn't work! Use the format username@mydomain.local - again - .local - use the fully qualified name.

- See if this works - you'll be shown status - 5 steps in total as it connects to AD server. I had to retry this about 5 times - an unknown error kept happening at Step 5. I tried a few times without changing any of my info. Came back after lunch and tried it one more time and it worked! Go figure.

- check out the settings under the advanced options - some of them are useful options - especially if you're working on a laptop (create a mobile account). It's probably also a good idea to allow domain admins permission to login as administrators on your mac.

Obstacle 3: After logging in to the Mac with Active Directory credentials things ran really slowly and I got error messages about user folders that couldn't be created.

Solution: Well, to be honest I didn't solve this problem. My theory is that there was a conflict between the fact that I already had a local account with the name "scott" and that was the same as my active directory account name. I'm guessing there was some conflict or confusion when the Mac tried to create user settings with the same account name.

I tried deleting various cache files. I tried deleting my local account with the same name. I tried changing the username for my active directory account -- this should have worked, but I think there was some serious corruption that happened at the start of this obstacle. Googling and googling and googling provided various options, none which fixed this issue.

I reinstalled OS X at this point and started over. Made sure to create my local account with a different name than my windows account.

I'm now able to login to my Mac with my Active Directory account!

Obstacle 4: Network shares did not appear on the desktop

Solution: When I login with my Active Directory user everything works perfectly - including having my networked home directory available automatically. However, the share to this location was not showing up as an icon on my desktop. Looks like this is a new Finder feature (sorry, I'm not sure how new since I've just jumped a few OS version numbers here). The trick is to open the Finder Preferences and check off the option to show network drives on the desktop!

Safari inline PDF files

2007-09-13T16:16:00.001-04:00

There's a newer solution - click here!

With IE and FireFox, the best chunck of code to use to display an inline pdf is:

<object height="1200" width="780" classid="clsid:CA8A9780-280D-11CF-A24D-444553540000">
<param name="src" value="Filename.pdf"/>
<embed src="Filename.pdf" width="780" height="1200">
<noembed>Your browser does not support embedded PDF files.</noembed>
</embed>
</object>

However, Safari doesn't deal with this very well. :(

Safari will display a PDF file if you use an image tag instead!

<img src="http://www.blogger.com/Filename.pdf" />

Yes, use the PDF file extension. Since the Mac OS has native support for PDFs, this trick will work.

You're still stuck with the problem that you need to different tags depending on your browser. If IE or FireFox stumble across the image tag, they'll display a blank image area.
You can use some code to do a browser check and display the appropriate tag.

Having said ALL that......if you go to Adobe's site, download and install the lastest Acrobat Reader, Safari gets an udpate that allows it to work with the Object tag. Problem Solved. Make sure you stick the "Get Adobe Reader" icon on your page.

Ajax.net - AutocompleteExtender Formatting

2006-12-20T11:28:00.000-05:00

We've started using the Microsoft Ajax.net tools to add some dynamic functionality to our work lately. We met up with a problem involving the AutoCompleteExtender and Safari today. The functionality works fine with the webservice and list presentation, but the formatting was making the selected item disappear when the mouseover occurred.

Thanks to Tim Mackey's post, I was able to remember the css !important tag and override the formatting items that were otherwise eluding me.

I added this as my CompletionListElementID:

<div class="autocomplete_dropdown" id="AutoComplete" runat="server"></div>

I added this to my css

.autocomplete_dropdown{font-size:0.8em;}
.autocomplete_dropdown div:hover{color:Black !important;background-color:#EEEEEE !important;}
.autocomplete_dropdown div {color:Black !important;background-color:#FFFFFF !important;}

Using that markup, I was able to specify the color and background color for the autocomplete list as well as the hover properties for the list and happily the formatting appears the same across browsers. Why this isn't an easily modified option in the coding for this object is beyond me, but I assume that since this object got relegated to the AJAX CTP there must be other problems with it. Hopefully these will be resolved soon as this is a very useful extender.

Mailenable Spam Filtering - Catch-all Exclusion

2006-11-05T14:14:00.000-05:00

We use mailenable as our base email system with some plugins that help to catch the spam that is destined for our users. We use the bayesian filtering to flag emails that look like the most current spam techniques coming at us. For the honeypot addresses, I can use catch-all addresses on some of our domains that have obviously made their way onto many, many email lists for sale.

The catch-all addresses were initially catching the mail destined for employees that have long since departed the company. This provides a remarkably good source of spam email for sampling into the bayesian tools. To prevent them from being stopped by our existing spam filters, I created an exclusion list in the spam filters that allowed mail for these past employees to pass freely into the catch-all account. Recently this technique had become less effective as spammers had started to modify or alltogether ignore the specific addresses of the previous employees. Addresses would be modifed from myname@mydomain.com to mynamemyname@mydomain.com which would then get caught by the spam filters. We would also see messages coming in for iJustSentAnEmail@mydomain.com. All of these would then get stuck in the spam filters and would need to be verified by an admin to ensure that they weren't false positives.

I decided that I needed a filter in Mailenable that would stop these messages from even going to our spam tools. This would make the spam tools do less work and it would also stop these random addresses from getting caught in the spam traps. A few hours with google and forums had left me with a better knowledge of the parameters available to me in the Mailenable filter advanced scripting language. After much tweaking, I finally decided on the most consistent approach to catching and diverting the catch-all emails.

In the email headers, Mailenable happens to mention the fact that the email was caught by a catch-all and not specifically directed to a user. Because this header closely follows the email address that was used, it is possible to make this exclusion script specific to certain domains if necessary.

Here is the filter advanced criteria script:

FilterResult=0
If CriteriaMet([ME_HEADERS_CONTAIN],"*mydomain.com> with MailEnable Catch-All Filter*") Then
FilterResult=1
End If

I then set the action to "Stop Processing Filters" and put the filter at the top of the Mailenable filter list. Now those emails will go directly into the mailbox and will contribute towards my bayesian spam detection pool.

High-res images and the fight against DPI

2006-09-19T10:31:00.000-04:00

What is considered a high-resolution image?

You will often hear requests for "high-res" images to be 300 DPI. "DPI" stands for "dots per inch". A dot is just that - a single dot that makes up an image. This is the smallest bit of colour that can be used by the computer to paint a picture. A 300 DPI image will use 300 individual dots every inch to make up the picture. The more dots you have every inch, the higher the resolution. A 600 DPI image has a higher resolution than a 72 DPI image.

Just to confuse things a bit... these "dots" are more commonly called "pixles".

Magainzes and other printed material will often have a requirement that an image be provided at 300 DPI. What you also need to know is how big the image will be when it is printed.

Suppose an image will be printed at a size of 3 inches x 3 inches. If every inch has 300 dots and the image is 3 inches wide, then your image will have a total of 900 dots across. In this example our actual image dimensions would be 900 x 900 pixels.

3 inches * 300 dots (pixels) = 900 pixels total

If we use the same example, we start with an image that is 900 x 900 pixels. If the requirement is to provide a picture that is only 150 DPI, then the same image can be use to print a picture that is as large as 6 x 6 inches.

900 pixels / 150 DPI = 6 inches

So, the next time somone asks you for a "high-res" image make sure you find out what the printed or displayed size and resolution will be. Multiply these numbers together to find out how many pixels need to be in your image.

Sorry for the math lesson... programs like Photoshop will of course help you out with that part!

Spam and the logbook

2006-08-04T16:51:00.000-04:00

In an interesting and somewhat twisted endeavour, I am attempting to receive more spam. That's right -- I WANT MORE SPAM! Well, I obviously don't want it in my own inbox, but I want a good constant source of it to play with so that I can adjust our corporate spam filters.

One of the most common causes of excessive spam stems from the fact that people advertise their email addresses on their websites so that potential customers can easily find contact them. Spambots are programs that surf the internet much like search engine tools but the only information they save are the email addresses. They then use these email addresses to populate their email lists.

As I need source emails for my autotraining Bayesian filters, I decided to break my own rules regarding email addresses on website and leave a couple of addresses out in the open for spambots to harvest. I've chosen addresses and a domain that are brand new and not possibly tainted by any previous use on the internet to that I can be sure that any traffic that results is solely because of this logbook entry.

The first address will simply be logbook_simple@pleasedonotsend.com and this will be the one and only time that I enter that address anywhere. Any mail attracted to that address will be through spambots (or perhaps the occasional curious reader).

The second address will by logbook_reply@pleasedonetsend.com which will have an autoreply message tied to it that will automatically respond to any emails. This replicates the problem experienced by companies that utilize autoresponders on email accounts of employees who have left the company. They want to inform their clients that the user is no longer available but the spammers see the reply as a confirmation of a functioning email address.

When the opportunity arises for me to enter my email address into website forms, I will create a unique alias for pleasedonotsend.com and track any unrequested mail that I receive in return.

In the spirit of experimentation, I'll create 2 more entries that behave as above but with a different tld (three letter domain). What are the odds that spammers/spambots deal with market segmentation and concentrating their efforts on certain markets? Only one way to find out: logbook_simple@pleasedonotsend.ca and logbook_reply@pleasedonetsend.ca

I am aware that there are large scale projects on this topic (honeypot project etc.) but I don't put this experiment even in the same category as those. Those are mammoth projects that seek to put an end to spambots and the people that control them. I'm more curious about how one single logbook entry could balloon into a spam nightmare.

Once I have some data from this little experiment, I will post results in another logbook entry to show the differences between each of the addresses that I've used.

Desktop.ini hidden file attribute

2006-08-01T14:18:00.001-04:00

This blog posting gets decent traffic, so let me preface everything by saying that if you're dealing with a file named

_desktop.ini

instead of just

desktop.ini

then you likely have a virus. This posting deals with the scenario where you DO NOT HAVE A VIRUS.

I was recently faced with this confusing situation after doing some recent spyware & virus cleanup...

Two notepad windows would open at startup with desktop.ini files
ALL of the deskop.ini files on the entire computer were NOT hidden
The Hidden checkbox on the file properties was unavailable (greyed out)

You can fix the notepad startup problem by simply deleting the desktop.ini files that have landed in the startup directories.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=330132

The hidden attribute in the file properities is greyed out because desktop.ini is a "system" file.
So, you need to remove the system file attribute, then add the hidden file attribute. Here's what to do:

Open a command prompt (Start -> Run - "cmd")
Switch to the root of your C drive
```
cd c:\
```
type
```
attrib -s -h desktop.ini /s
```
this removes the "system" attribute (-s) and the "hidden" attribute (-h) and does that to all desktop.ini files it finds in all subdirectories (/s)

the hidden attribute is removed to avoid any error messages - we're going to add that attribute back to ALL files next.
now to make all those files hidden, type
```
attrib +s +h desktop.ini /s
```

This essentially restores the file attributes for all desktop.ini file to what they should be.

Online HTML Colour Picker

2006-07-26T13:48:00.000-04:00

I often want help finding the right HEX code for HTML colours.

Check this site out: http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
Not only does it help you identify hex colour, but it suggests other colours that match the one you've selected.

Quite handy for the web designer!

Safari JavaScript Page Load Issues

2006-07-04T19:52:00.000-04:00

In a couple of recent web projects I've run into difficulty dynamically generating JavaScript to be run when a web page loads. The added difficulty was figuring out a consistent behaviour that worked across various browsers: Explorer, FireFox, Safari. I found that Safari was the most temperamental. Here are the different approaches I took and how each approach turned out.

Through this exercise I had the following issues:

Entirely blank page in Safari when other browsers rendered the site perfectly
Random behaviour of the desired JavaScript working and not working

There are three approaches to creating dynamic JavaScript that you might be familiar with:

body onload="init();" - with the init function handling your startup script
.NET 2.0 has a method: ClientScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript Method (Type, Key, Script)
Runtime inline server-side variable (ie. %=ScriptVar% or {PARAMETER})

Approved Method:
Use the third option!
In your server-side code do the following...

Declare a Public variable as a string.
Fill that string with your JavaScript.
Output that variable to your html by adding in to your page where ever you want. For a startup script add the script right above the closing HTML tag. It should be the very last thing on your page before /html.

Frustrations Along the Way:

Using an onload function for the body tag still requires that you dynamically add a script block to your page by doing something similar to the approved method above. Also, various browsers behave differently in this case - if your function is triggered before the page loads entirely your JavaScript may reference elements that are not on the page yet.
The .NET 2.0 method... ClientScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript Method (Type, Key, Script) (MSDN for more info). This works great in IE, but that's about it. This method will collect all the script you want - including across master pages and user controls - and then write the script to the html output. The problem is that the script is written just before the /form tag. Safari basically ignores the code in this location.

Final Thoughts...

Adding your dynamically generated JavaScript to a server side variable is the way to go. Building your script as a server variable might be more cumbersome than the .NET methods that allow for easier creation of script blocks. However, the .NET methods do not give you any control over when and where the script blocks are rendered to the page.

Random Tech Tidbit

2006-06-10T23:11:00.000-04:00

I purchased a Belkin USB Anywhere last week with the intention of using it to connect a flash card reader to a USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure. It's a simple device that is basically designed to connect to portable storage devices and copy all of the data from one device to the other.

The USB attached card reader from belkin attached smoothly and worked happily. The USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure refused to communicate with properly with USB Anywhere device though. After many different configurations and reformatting the hard drive repeatedly, I determined that there is one important note that was left out of the user manual of the Belkin USB Anywhere -- it is only compatible with FAT32 drives. If you're attempting to use a drive that has been formatted as an NTFS drive, you'll need to reformat the disk.

Once the drive was formatted properly, it worked perfectly. I can now happily drop flash memory cards into the reader and with the press of a single button, download all of the files onto my hard drive.

Guidebook: Microsoft Office Tip #1 - Reducing File Size

2006-03-23T13:41:00.000-05:00

Got a Microsoft Word proposal with lots of photos in it?
Just finished preparing a PowerPoint slide deck with large product shots?
Trying to email your Excel workbook with embedded images but the file is just too big?

Here's a quick lesson on how to compress the photos and pictures in Microsoft Office programs. The same method works with Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook. The result will be a smaller file that is easier to share.

In this example I have inserted a WebEcho banner image into my document. The image is actually quite large because we use this banner on printed material. For this lesson, I start by resizing the image be half the original size.

This is the important thing to uderstand. The document still contains the large image and is just displaying it at half size. You can dramatically reduce the file size and memory required by compressing the images in your document.

To compress the images in your document right-click one of the images and choose Format Picture...

A new window will open. Click the Compress... button.

It is best to compress All pictures in document to get the smallest file size possible. Set the resolution to Web/Screen. Select Compress pictures and Delete cropped area of pictures.

Apply these settings by clicking OK and returning to the main document.
Save the file and you should see that the size of the file is much smaller.

Note: If the document is an important file that you want to print in the best quality possible, you should change your resolution to Print instead of Web/Screen. Your file size will not be quite as small, but you will see some improvement. Also be aware that you cannot increase the resolution of a picture once you have reduced it. You cannot take a picture that is already set to Web/Screen and then set it to Print.

Terminal Server, Remote Desktop and Local Printers

2006-03-10T13:35:00.000-05:00

this post is a quicky...

When using Remote Desktop to connect to a Terminal Server it is often convenient to have your local printers available to you on the Terminal Server.

From the Remote Desktop window, click options before you connect and go to the "Local Resources" tab. From there select "Printers".

Sounds easy, and I've done that a million times without my printer connecting to my terminal session... quite frustrating.

There are three more things that have to be setup for this to work:

The administrator of the Terminal Server has to allow local printers to be connected. If this privledge has been revoked there is nothing you can do except harass your admin.
The printer driver has to be available on the Terminal Server. Now, usually the connection process just grabs the driver from the local computer. BUT, if your printer driver does not work with Windows Server, you are again out of luck!
Only printer ports that start COM, LTP or USB are connected to Windows 2003. The good news here is that there is a workaround if your printer is connected to a port with a different name (like DOT4 or PDF). The workaround involves editing the registry on the local computer. Here's the Microsoft KB article.

Kinda sounds like one of those things where all the planets have to be in alignment, eh!? So, consider this next time you purchase a printer: Will it work with my operating system AND with Windows Server? If you ever want to connect to a Terminal Server you'll need a printer with a driver that works on Windows Server.

Thats a wrap!

Domain Names in a Nutshell

2006-03-02T12:06:00.000-05:00

Setting up a website can be a little confusing when you start talking about domain names, web hosting, IP Addresses and all the registration that has to go on in that process.

Here it is in a nutshell...

First your domain name gets registered - all this does is reserve the name and assign ownership to you. No one else can use that name now. The domain name is added to a directory of registered names so that no one else can use it.
When people type in your domain name they get taken to a web server that is hosting your website. Your website has an IP Address that computers use to uniquely find each other on the Internet. A Domain Name Server is used to associate your domain name with the IP Address.

So, you have a Domain Name Registrar, then a Domain Name Server - together these services provide the information that someone else needs to find your website on the Internet.

When a user types in your domain name this is the process:

A request is sent to the Domain Name Server to get the IP Address of the web server for your website.
The IP Address is sent back to the user.
The user can then find the web server with the IP Address and your website is loaded.

Click the flow chart for a larger view.

Guidebook: Excel Tip #2 - VLOOKUP

2006-02-21T19:12:00.000-05:00

Vlookup is the essential function for comparing data in one list to data in another list.

In this example our first table has a list of addresses but no postal codes. The second table has a list of addresses WITH postal codes. We'll use the VLOOKUP function to find the right postal code in the second table and add the postal code to the first table.

For the VLOOKUP function to work properly both lists must have some data in common. And both sets of data should be in the same Excel workbook. Otherwise we have nothing to use to make a match. In this example the Address column will be used to find a match.

Let's add the Postal Code to the first table...
1. Create a new column to store the postal code in our address table.
2. The function in this cell is
VLOOKUP(lookup, value_table_array, col_index_num,[range_lookup])
lookup = the cell containing the address to match
value_table_array = the entire range of columns containing the second table
- click and select the columns you want to search for a match and the columns containing the data to find.
col_index_num = the column number containing the data you want to find in the table you just selected
[range_lookup] = can be TRUE or FALSE - specifies whether or not the data should match exactly

In the figure below we're going to look for the Address in C2 by searching in table I:J.
In the table I:J, Column #1 contains the address and Column #2 contains the Postal Code.
We're happy returning the first match rather than an exact match.

The function returns the correct postal code so we use "Fill Down" to apply the same function to the rest of the cells in the same column.

Now that you've had an introduction to VLOOKUP you probably can't believe how much time you spent comparing lists of data in the past.

Have fun!

Click here for the VLOOKUP help article on the Microsoft Office website.

Windows SharePoint Services and ASP .NET 2.0!

2006-02-13T18:42:00.000-05:00

After a day of many, many server upgrades to our internal systems today I received a rather sad message from our internal sharepoint site when I went to post an announcement about the excitement of Windows Server 2003 SP1:

The Windows SharePoint Services virtual server has not been configured for use with ASP.NET 2.0.xxxxx.0. For more information, please refer to Knowledge Base article 894903 at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=42660

Although this seems to be an uncharacteristically helpful message in that it provides the Microsoft knowledge base ID number, the KB itself was less than straightforward.

The main solution offered by the KB is to run the command line command:
stsadm.exe -o upgrade -forceupgrade -url http://URLOftheVirtualServer

The problem is that the version of stsadm.exe that exists on our internal server (Windows Small Business Server 2003) does not support the "upgrade" command. It offers a great deal of helpful commands, but no upgrade.

If you find yourself in this same situation, you can manually adjust the web.config file for your SharePoint site.

You need to make 2 changes:

1. (old tag) <trust level="WSS_Minimal" originUrl="" />
(new tag) <trust level="WSS_Minimal" originUrl="" processRequestInApplicationTrust="false" />

2. (old tag) <pages enableSessionState="false" enableViewState="true" enableViewStateMac="true" validateRequest="false">
(new tag) <pages enableSessionState="false" enableViewState="true" enableViewStateMac="true" validateRequest="false" enableEventValidation="false"> <namespaces> <remove namespace="System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts" />

The KB does a good job of explaining why it wants you to run these updates so I'll leave that up to Microsoft. This post should hopefully just help you out in the event that you've spent the last 8 hours running the 14 steps to upgrade your Small Business Server to SP1 and you just want to go home.