Google Calendar sync with Outlook tool: Really great for keeping your Business/Private calendar in sync

http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98563

Using for a long time with almost no issues.

Checkpoint proxy arp and manual nat

In checkpoint if you have a manual NAT entry the firewall will not do proxy ARP, which means it will not answer to arp requests on the network where the NAT will take effect.


Solutions are:

- use automatic NAT rule
- there's article on Checkpoint support that describes on how to correctly add an entry to a file that the firewall will do the proxyARP, apparently different for single or Cluster XL
- define a static host route to the firewall from the other device.

In my case they forgot to that and the SYN traversed 2 firewalls but the SYN/ACK was lost due to one firewall not being able to find via ARP a MAC address to talk to.

Rant: Windows 8

I have just read a very nice piece on somebody's experience in regard to windows 8 and some parts feel like they are my thoughts.

image found on google images: http://i-dothink.com/index.php/windows-8-phone-functionality-spotted/

iOS and MacOSx are definitely advanced in many aspects, but the major improvements are still missing in regards to information connectivity.

The article talks about Dashboard that could have been the windows 8 tiles UI. And I think he's right. I never was able to really make use of the dashboard and today mostly land on it by error. I use the iPad daily between 1 to 5 hours over a 16 hour period, 99% consumption. And clearly the presentation of the information on the main screen is lacking, the integration between apps and data is lacking, best example is try to install a pinterest bookmark, i.e. it should just be natural to click on whatever to share with whatever that's out there.

The windows 8 UI will probably help me avoid going into my top 5 applications all the time. Also notification in iOS and OSx are less than optimal. I want to have all information on one big screen. I don't think the widgets of android are going to do the trick, since most of them take to much screen real estate and have a non identifiable form.

I will install the 90 days windows 8 evaluation version tonight and try to spend another few hours to try and see if I get the same productivity as the author said he does.

Maybe at one point some really good guy will develop an OS where all information can be used in whatever form we like and multiple times in different places but all linked to the same info. As an example the worst thing today is that a reminder is not really a note, not really appearing in the calendar, not really an alarm entry, not being editable by penultimate, not able to print using the papers app .....

Microsoft tried in some office version to actually put tasks onto the calendar at the bottom but not in the calendar. I still crave for this that the tasks will actually be put into the calendar and reflect the actual time spent or whatever I want it to be and if completed will change color, allow tagging and more.

Most probably we won't get most of this for another decade or so, as it took from the perfect Palm Pilot to a somewhat great iPhone. Is it really that people forget this so soon. Everything was here and it took 20 years to improve.

Well here is the link to the article:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3246185/this-is-my-next-windows-8

virtual cd rom: win cd emu

http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/

disk performance utilitiy: crystel disk mark

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html/

USB: Boot disk utilities - Rufus

http://rufus.akeo.ie/

Filezilla, Websense: Using ftp upload/download over websense proxy using filezilla client

http://www.websense.com/content/support/library/web/v75/wcg_help/conf_ftp_clients.aspx

The most important is the part:

FTP Proxy:
Custom:
USER %u@%h
PASS %p

proxy host: server:2121

user and password sometimes have to be defined and sometimes not, in my case the user was important but not the password.

Apple Wireless Keyboard mapping under Windows

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1171

Mac OS X: iTunes keep an extra copy in addition to time machine (Updated 2014-11-29)

Actually this was a good idea, but it takes a millennia to start to copy actually something.

rsync -avr --delete /Volumes/Toshiba/iPhoto\ Library/ /Volumes/LACIE/iPhoto\ Library/

Then I had to copy two backups and was fed up about the rsync never actually to start copying for hours.

I found this article

http://blog.brettalton.com/2013/08/05/how-to-speed-up-rsync-on-your-mac-and-stop-the-dreaded-building-file-list/

and installed homebrew and then the new rsync and am using the following command now:

rsync -a --info=progress2 /Volumes/WD_2TB/ /Volumes/Toshiba/

Now there is some action, but disappointingly it crawls and I don't know why. Is it because there are gazillions of small files or is something else broken?

Let's wait and see.

Don't know but I feel more comfortable with this command as it actually does go ahead for now (still don't understand enough about the processing):

rsync -aP /Volumes/WD_2TB/ /Volumes/Toshiba/

and this with rsync 3.1.1

FTP: Return codes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FTP_server_return_codes

Mac OS X: Lion install USB or Disk. Restore does not work anymore! 2nd attempt

Now using carbon copy cloner.

This works perfectly.


Download Carbon Copy Cloner
Install it as it says you should
Right Click Install Mac OS X Lion and select show package contents
Go to Contents->Shared Support and select InstallESD.dmg
Drag InstallESD.dmg out on your desktop or whereever you'll be able to select it from again in CCC .
Start disk utility and select USB stick or disk and select parition, choose 1 partition and under Options... select GUID. Then hit apply.
Start CCC and select as source InstallESD.dmg
Select USB stick (>4GB) or USB Disk and hit clone.

This worked fine for both (stick and disk) and you can still try to use the Lion Disk Installer for USB Sticks less than or equal 4GB. In the blog he removes some packages that are not critical.

Have fun.

Mac OS X: Lion install USB or Disk. Restore does not work anymore!

Trying to use Lion DiskMaker:

http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/

Update could not complete, because I had Zipeg installed and that interrupted the applescript Lion DiskMaker is using when trying to get some .png in a zip file.

Failed.

Pimp your Outlook 2010 incoming email alert with Star Trek sounds!

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/change-the-sound-played-when-an-email-message-arrives-HP010354979.aspx

http://www.franksradio.net/startrek/sounds/

Black Monday for the millions of iPad (first generation users)

Many people I know own an original iPad. The device might only be 2 1/2 years old or younger and it will most probably live on for another 3 to 5 years. The quality of the device is superb, it is even better at handling drops due to the rubber in between the frame and the glass. Just in our family most original iPads have suffered this and sport a bump in the side or at the corner and are still fully functional.

My iPad 2 died within 3 weeks due to the smart cover, which I was able to hold on to while my iPad2 slipped to the ground and the glass shattered. This would not have happened with the original cover and now Apple has introduced the new case that will prevent this from happening again.

Why is it such a bad day for millions of iPad owners? Schools, families etc. will not afford to upgrade just now to a newer version. Most of us run some computers at home that are 5 to 7 years old, even my geek companions that have all the latest gear still have some computers that is still used for some reason and is of old age. Now we won't benefit from the new safari browser, the new maps, the clock, iMessage improvements ...... It does not sound to bad to start with, but on almost all computers you can upgrade the applications to a certain level, i.e. chrome 19 on a windows xp machine that is 10 years old. Most problematic will be that Safari will not be updated and expose us to all sorts of issues and incompatibilities within one or 2 years. This is only one of the applications that will need continuous support for at least 3 years.

Maybe it will be the same as for the Dell Axim V61 and all other PDAs of the past, where some hackers have kept us up to date, so that we could use the devices long past their reasonable usage time.

And Jailbreak will be new way to go forward most likely, enabling us to enjoy some of the benefits and maybe more (app switching, user profiles, file access etc.).

Let's wait and see.

In the past this has happened with our old iMacs and iBooks and it will happen now with the MacBook (black), but the big difference was that most of the applications were continuously updated and could be installed and now some of the most critical features will be integrated into the basis which will not be updated separately.

The best will be if someone like GeoHot will provide us with an easy install of the official release on the iPad, since I really don't like to jailbreak.

Networking: View PMTUD cache on linux

ip route show cache

ip route show cache <ip>

Wireshark shows packets larger than MTU

TCP segment of a reassembled PDU

wireshark shows a frame with 2574 Bytes,
tcpdump shows the same frame as 2574 Bytes

A very good post:
http://sandilands.info/sgordon/segmentation-offloading-with-wireshark-and-ethtool

and you are sure that the MTU is 1500 or lower (no jumbo frames), since you saw the MSS in the SYN and SYN/ACK, so both sides are certainly below 1500.

Apparently this is because of the NIC doing tcp segmentation offloading:


 # ethtool -k eth0
Offload parameters for eth0:
rx-checksumming: on
tx-checksumming: on
scatter-gather: on
tcp-segmentation-offload: on
udp-fragmentation-offload: off
generic-segmentation-offload: on
generic-receive-offload: off
large-receive-offload: on

ethtool -K eth0 tso off
ethtool -K eth0 gso off

I turned off tcp first but the generic did prevail so I turned off gso and thought I saw only smaller packages but when enabling and disabling it again I did not see the small packets anymore, so maybe a restart is necessary.

Would be nice to see it working or not the 2nd time you disable it. But I won't restart the system.

Networking: MTU

http://www.elifulkerson.com/projects/mturoute.php

Networking: MTU MSS PMTUD

http://packetlife.net/blog/2008/aug/18/path-mtu-discovery/

http://www.nil.si/ipcorner/IP_Fragmentation

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk827/tk369/technologies_white_paper09186a00800d6979.shtml

Networking: Troubleshooting: MTU with ping -l 1472 -f

windows:
ping -f -l 1472 destIP


linux:
ping -M do -s 1472 -c 1 destIP

linux: fat32 bootable usb stick with ESXi

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.install.doc_50%2FGUID-33C3E7D5-20D0-4F84-B2E3-5CD33D32EAA8.html

linux: ubuntu: map c drive from a windows machine over the network

Start Nautilus, i.e. click on the home folder icon.

Press CTRL-L (for location) and enter smb://<ip or name>/share, e.g. smb://10.0.0.1/c$

It will then ask for domain, username and password

linux: ubuntu: change keyboard mapping from terminal

setxkbmap fr


http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Keyboard_Files

linux: multiple default gateways (even for aliases)

A really great blog entry, which solved all my issues in no time. The only thing is now that I have multiple distributions and have to find out where to place the commands so that after a reboot it will come back correctly.

http://kindlund.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/configuring-multiple-default-routes-in-linux/

linux: alias

ifconfig eth0:0 10.0.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

ifconfig eth0:0 10.0.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 down

iPad Pens: AluPen and/or Bamboo Stylus

Finally this week has my bamboo stylus arrived from Hong Kong, as it was cheaper to buy than local.

Cost $31 including shipping.

I have been using AluPen for almost a year and was carefully avoiding buying any other pens since I was extremely disappointed by almost all except AluPen.

Now I read a lot of rave reviews about bamboo stylus and decided to buy and after a few hours I can clearly say it is a good pen.

BUY.

(Make sure you had the chance to test the Pen because choosing between AluPen and Bamboo is not always easy. I like to use Faber Castell 0.7 thick thick wooden pencils and then I switch back to my wooden 0.5 Lamy pencil and then there is also the new 0.5 Faber Castell triangle rubber pencil which comes in handy.)

Will this mean I will be happy, no! The problem lies between the keyboard (or Pen) and the iPad; which means me. I just can not cope to really work efficiently with the iPad no matter how hard I try. Using about 10 note taking applications and going through iterations of versions but still fail. Most of them are used differently and don't give full flexibility, are slow, buggy etc.

The biggest issues are:

• With the pens you cannot write as small as on paper and if you try like I do then you'll probably end up missing always the initial stroke. All applications that automatically zoom or have a real manual gesture zoom are good but hard to work with.
• Some strokes get lost, especially the first ones of a Character etc.

I cannot use the iPad for note taking. I should stop trying.

 I failed to use Windows XP Tablet PC on Motion Computing around 2004, because XP Tablet and Windows 7 tablet is not really made for use with a Pen. They never made the applications behave the same and your arm had to cover distances that were by far more than inconvenient and inefficient. Compare what you can achieve with a perfect mouse like Logitech MX 1000 or the newer models.

Nothing beats a letter/a4 notepad with a Lamy or Faber Castell pencil.

Maybe the KNO Tablet or something else, an letter/A4 iPad anyone?

Interesting read: Why the iPad has to be made in China

http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/4/19/why-the-ipad-has-to-be-made-in-china--2

Interesting Read: Apple vs. SeattleRex

http://www.seattlerex.com/seattle-rex-vs-apple-the-verdict-is-in/

The quest for the ultimate keyboard for iPad is over: Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover

I would have loved something like the apple wireless keyboard to appear on the market attached to the iPad like a smart cover.

My wishes have almost come True.

Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover to the rescue:

http://www.logitech.com/de-ch/tablet-accessories/keyboards/devices/ultrathin-keyboard-cover?WT.ac=ps|9859|hp

If the keyboard is a bit better than the old zagg/logitech product it's a 100% BUY!

It's probably not as comfortable as the wireless keyboard from Apple but it might fit.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/18/2958455/logitech-ultrathin-keyboard-cover-ipad-impressions
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-news/logitech-ultrathin-keyboard-cover-for-the-ipad-smart-cover-meets-keyboard/7511

Interesting read: Early History of Jack Tramiel

http://www.commodore.ca/history/people/jack_tramiel_early_history.htm

Excel: All m acros for use in all excel files

• show developer ribbon
• Record Macro enter some dummy text as name and select personal workbook
• Stop Recording (you did nothing in between, right?)
• Press Visual Basic or ALT-F11
• Select Personal Workbook and Module1, click view code
• replace everything with a sub end sub, e.g. the highlight from a previous post

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/create-and-save-all-your-macros-in-a-single-workbook-HA102174076.aspx

Excel: filter rows based on cells that contain non-ascii characters

After running the script to highlight non-ascii characters you can use the autofilter of excel 2010 and filter on color!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/213923

Excel: Highlight non-ASCII characters in Excel

http://www.excelforum.com/excel-new-users/821220-need-help-finding-all-non-ascii-characters-in-spreadsheet.html

Kudos to  protonLeah, many thanks. As well as for MAP-Daniel.

This is what I used:

Sub NonAscii()
    Dim UsedCells   As Range, _
        TestCell    As Range, _
        Position    As Long, _
        StrLen      As Long, _
        CharCode    As Long
   
    Set UsedCells = ActiveSheet.Range("A1").CurrentRegion
    For Each TestCell In UsedCells
        StrLen = Len(TestCell.Value)
        For Position = 1 To StrLen
            CharCode = Asc(Mid(TestCell, Position, 1))
            ' If CharCode < 32 Or (CharCode > 32 And CharCode < 48) Or (CharCode > 57 And CharCode < 65) Or (CharCode > 90 And CharCode < 97) Or CharCode > 122 Then
            If CharCode > 127 Then
                TestCell.Interior.ColorIndex = 36
                Exit For
            End If
        Next Position
    Next TestCell
End Sub

Ascii: Ascii table

http://www.asciitable.com/

Excel: Add a VBA as a macro

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee814737.aspx

Interesting Read: Security: Author of Zeus jailed

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2124114/Computer-hacker-Edward-Pearson-Lendale-York-stole-million-people-s-personal-details-jailed-half-years.html

Interesting Read: Wired: Google, Amazon, and Microsoft Swarm China for Network Gear

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/google-microsoft-network-gear/

Interesting read: Article on Wired about linked.in founder

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/ff_hoffman/

OS X: Snow leopard - assign application to a specific desktop

I find myself working more and more with fullscreen applications on OS X and use the 4 finger gesture to switch between them. Some applications don't let themselves use in this mode and used to overlay all other applications.

Then you start again thinking, wouldn't it be nice to always have that application on it's on desktop, where you can just switch over?

Using missing control move the application to the desktop (drag and drop) of choice and then select the application from the dock and right click->Options->Assign to This Desktop and you're done.

Word 2010: Word Annoyances #1, paste that picture now!

Why sometimes easy things get extremely complicated and no real solution has been provided for 2 years. As an old fried would have said: Just past that picture you ....... How to copy/paste an image into word and have it automatically resized to the correct cell width? http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/nl/word/thread/82023079-f911-4e23-9ac5-f2e0ae120826

OpenGL: what version (on windows)?

Sometimes strange things pop up and you have no clue as how to get fast to a good answer.

What is the current version of OpenGL your machine has installed?

No answer yet.

Update:

There is a nice blog entry about OpenGL Extension viewer:

http://blogs.esri.com/esri/supportcenter/2012/03/15/what-version-of-opengl-do-i-have-and-do-i-have-the-latest-drivers-for-my-system/

2 tools, which tell you what version you have

•  GPU Caps viewer    http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/
• OpenGL Extension Viewer http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/

But some info from http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Getting_started

Without drivers, you will default to a software version of OpenGL 1.1 (on Win98, ME, and 2000), a Direct3D wrapper that supports OpenGL 1.1 (WinXP), or a Direct3D wrapper that supports OpenGL 1.1 (Windows Vista and Windows 7). None of these options are particularly fast, so installing drivers is always a good idea.

Which means if you have no drivers installed you end of with OpenGL 1.1 at least on Windows.

What tools could provide some answer? I mean from a standard Windows 7 installation (no additional software)?

System information 

On W7->Start->All programs->Accessories->System Tools->System Info

%windir%\system32\msinfo32.exe


Does not look like it.

Windows: Windows Event Collector, anyone?

Need to investigate Windows Event Collector, any good resources?

So far I have only 1 starting point:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb427443%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Webtools: HAR (HTTP online viewer) online viewer

http://www.softwareishard.com/har/viewer/

Internet Tech: Interesting read

http://httparchive.org/about.php
http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2009/10/19/http-archive-specification-firebug-and-httpwatch/

Blogs: to follow

http://www.bart-timmermans.nl/
http://stevesouders.com/
http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/

PDF: online PDF creation from webpages

Have used multiple services from the iPad and desktop but have not made use of them lately. Why?

Because on OS X this is built in. They made one of the most usable PDF viewer/modifier (no real editor) but they also crippled it's functionality again.


http://blog.nitropdf.com/2008/01/free-online-web-services-to-create-view-share-and-edit-pdf-files/

Google Chrome annoyances #2: PDF print and blogger.com data loss

It has been some time that I have been relying on features from Chrome to make life easier, since in the past some of the functionality caused me big headaches.

I still use google chrome and my number one feature is the Omnibar. Everything else just sucks. But there is hope as safari has announced that from 5.2 there will be as well the Omnibar. Horray!

OK here we go:

PDF print

Clever function, I need it all the time since I want to keep many webpages in PDF form for storage etc. But I couldn't get chrome to create a PDF I can use since it just slices through text and graphics. Something IE2 has done 99 years ago for web page printing.

Blogger.com

Everytime I work on blogger.com from google chrome I loose data, the publish and update sometimes works sometimes it doesn't. If I add some line and then maybe another I press publish and nothing happens. If I leave the page data is lost. If from the same machine I use firefox 11 to do the same I never ever have any issue. So I stop using it for this purpose.

General webpage compatibility

I use many different computer vendor systems and their web management software and about 90% of all don't work. With firefox it is about a 10% chance that some old IE page won't work. And with IE it is like 95% of the webpages work but only about 30% are really usable due to speed problems. Most of the extjs pages have big issues.

Syslog: RFC 3195 resources

http://blog.gerhards.net/2009/01/rfc-3195-back-in-game.html

http://www.adiscon.com/en/

http://www.rsyslog.com/

http://www.liblogging.org/

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3195

Windows: Event logs to syslog, alternative to snare?

You want to get windows event logs to another machine, maybe a central log server. Then usually you can use WMI (somewhat limited in eps and memory consumtion can be an issue) or you use some kind of agent. Snare is one of the available tools.

But I just came across another tool but I do not have heard about it and how it compares to snare. Do you?

http://code.google.com/p/eventlog-to-syslog/

Windows: Cool tool to solve uninstall issues on Windows Systems

Are you having an issue removing a software from your windows computer? Are you already frustrated enough and don't want to do some registry cleanup and fixing?

Why don't you give a Microsoft Fixit a try. They provide a tool that helps you install / uninstall software.

And as always send feedback about other solution you use.

Make sure you select the advanced download part and get a portable version, that you then can put on your MagicTool stick.

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall

Firefox: How to enable automatic authentication/login using ntlm (Sharepoint and others?)

If you don't like to use IE due to whatever reasons and hate to have to login to your business webpages, where IE just works but firefox always nags you with a login prompt.

Get rid of it now, this is how:

• Open firefox, type in the address bar about:config
• acknowledge that you are aware of loosing your warranty
• type in the search pane uris
• Change the value of the two ...trusted-uris Preference Names found (see screenshot below) to a comma separated list of the domains or hosts you want, e.g. mydomain.com,myotherdomain.com

If you access a server with only the hostname, e.g. you put in the address bar mysharepoint, you will get prompted with a login box. To avoid this add the hostname also to the comma separated list.

example:   ad.domain,companyweb.com,mysharepoint

If you access mysharepoint now it will not ask for the login credentials and also not if you try to access mysharepoint.ad.domain.

Have fun.