Just in case you wonder if there is a way to log in without typing your password. Yes – there is. Either you buy a Lenovo with fingerprint scanner (that does not work very well from what I have heard) – or you can finally use that webcam you bought for something useful: Install Luxand Blink! and log in using your face.

Here is the link: http://www.luxand.com/blink/

Synergy (the original) and Synergy+ (the error-correcting fork) is in essential the same application, so in the below Synergy and Synergy+ mostly refers to the same product. If in doubt, assume I am talking about Synergy+.

The Synergy application is an ingenious piece of work that make it easy to swap between different computers, as long as the involved PCs have their own monitor. From one keyboard and one mouse you can control an entire range of PCs – spanning operating systems and networks. There are packages available for Linux, (BSD), Mac OS-X and Windows.

When setting up for the first time, dedicate one PC to be the “server” and install the rest as “clients”. The “server” is typically the one PC with mouse and keyboard connected. On this PC you must describe your environment, either by hand-editing your synergy.sgc or by (on Windows and some flavours of Linux) using a graphical tool. Note that you must configure both the way in and the way out of a computer. If you have computers A, B and C and they are ordered in that order on your desk, you must both say that A is left of B and B is right of A for the mouse to return to your original screen.

As the configuration language is in a well-thought-through structure, you can among other things decide if screensavers should be turned on simultaneously on all computers or not. You can also map keys if needed.

For a syntax highlighter for the Notepad++ highlighter, go here.

I got the following problem handed over to me today: “When right-clicking the sheet itself to do operations on a cell, Excel suddenly fails to show the menu.” Some desperate minutes later (about 40 of them) I found at least a workaround:

Close Excel if it is running. Delete the following key in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Options

Reopen Excel and test if it works now. The Options folder recreates itself with a minimum set of contents, and Excel seems to be working well after this.

I’ve got this idea that I should set up backups of everything on my computers. Everything worth saving, that is. So, next on my mental list was My places in Google Earth. But where the heck are the files for this feature?? Here they are:

• WinXP:   C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\Google\GoogleEarth\myplaces.kml
• VISTA:   C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Google\GoogleEarth\myplaces.kml
• Win7:     C:\users\<User>\appData\LocalLow\Google\GoogleEarth\myplaces.kml

If you cannot get that d@mn log file to shrink, here’s a neat trick I learned from Christian Arheim:

1. Make a backup of the files. MS Backup will do if you do not have anything else or if you are in a hurry.
2. Open MS SQL Enterprise Manager
3. Open the tree on the left hand side to reveal the database owning the offending log file
4. Right-click it and select Properties
5. In the left-hand-side of the window appearing, select Options
6. To the right, locate Recovery model and select Simple (and – important – make a note of what it was)
7. Select OK
8. Right-click the database again and this time select Tasks – Shrink – Files
9. In the window appearing select File type to be Log and select OK
10. After shinking finishes, you must now reset the recovery model. Do this:
11. Right-click database and select Properties
12. In the left-hand-side of the window appearing, select Options
13. To the right, locate Recovery model and select what noted it to be in #5 above. You forgot to write it down? You FAIL!
14. Select OK

The log should now be down to an absolute minimum for this database.

To be able to play music on one PC and to control the very same PC from another using HTTP, you need to set up the HTTP interface properly.

Open

C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\http\.hosts

and either add a new or uncomment an existing range and do not forget to adjust the netmask if yours deviate from the norm:

#
# Access-list for VLC HTTP interface
# $Id$
#

# localhost
::1
127.0.0.1

# link-local addresses
#fe80::/64

# private addresses
#fc00::/7
#fec0::/10
#10.0.0.0/8
#172.16.0.0/12
#192.168.0.0/16
#169.254.0.0/16

# The world (uncommenting these 2 lines is not quite safe)
#::/0
#0.0.0.0/0

Localhost is already uncommented, meaning you always have access to the web interface from localhost. Save the file.

Open VLC, go to Tools:Preferences, Click Show settings:All at the bottom, so VLC shows you – well – all its settings. Hence the name, I guess…

Now, click Interface:Main interfaces:HTTP and in Host address enter 0.0.0.0:80 to enable broadcast to everything on port 80. The default is everything on port 8080. If you want it on port 8080 you do not need to enter anything. In Source directory, enter the path to VLC’s HTTP directory: C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\http on my system.

Save and restart VLC. As long as VLC is started, you should now have it receiving control input from the web.

Since I have a PC dedicated to the TV, I took the next logical step and hooked the very same PC up to the living room stereo. One cable at our local equivalence of “Radio Shack” solved that matter.

Enter stage left – VLC: A free media player that need no codecs (built-in) and a ton of features. One of the things it can do that caught my eye: An http interface, making it possible to control the player via any web browser within allowed IP range. Not all browsers can handle everything, but in essence: I have successfully used my mobile phone connected to my local network to adjust the volume…!

What I did: Media:Services Discovery:Shoutcast radio listings and thenI went into the playlist (Ctrl+L) and just clocked something. Seems to be a bug somewhere, because unless I do this, nothing show up elsewhere. In another posting I’ll describe how to prepare VLC for http before this actually works. The playlist contains a lot of radio stations – all free. So, I selected one and then tried controlling from another PC. Yep, works.

Note! Needs setup of http interface first.

If you want to resize the disk under VMware, you have to do some of the steps in a command window on your computer (the host), some of it in the VMware GUI, some in gparted – and finally observe the results in your guest OS to see if everything went as planned.

Step 1: Remove any snapshots you might have. This will take time. It does not take a long time to create a snapshot, but removing them is slow. Press Ctrl+M on your powered-down machine and mark the snapshots you want to remove and then click remove. Go for a cup of coffee.

Step 2: Resize the disk using the supplied vmware-vdiskmanager tool:

vmware-vdisktool -x 20GB YourVMdisk.vmdk

where disk size is the new, absolute, size you want. Add appropriate paths to the above, of course.

The resizing will take time, so go for another cup of coffee. When this finishes, go into the VM and observe that you in Disk Manager now have a raw disk corresponding to the difference between your old disk and the size you requested. To put this new size to use, you must use a partition manager, for instance GParted. Downoad the ISO file.

Step 3: Mount the GParted file you downloaded in Step 3 and start your VM. Be quick and press Esc on the POST to enter the boot menu. Select the CD player.

Step 4: Answer all the boot questions.

Step 5: I had problems controlling the mouse, so be prepared to use the keyboard. Experiment… Select the partition you wish to expand and select Resize/Move. I changed the new Size to be the max allowed – and had to try twice to get this working. You might want to leave one MB after the resized partition, to avoid problems later. Accept changes and ask it to process this.

Step 6: Restart the VM and log into Windows. Windows may ask for you to reboot after it has applied changes to the hardware. Do that and then log in again and go into Disk Manager (MMC snap-in) to check the size. if the Windows report corresponds to the one reported from Disk Manager and this again corresponds to what you expected, you’re done. If not …

Step 7: Restart GParted and confirm that Free Space following is indeed 1MB and not 0. If so, do a resize – and accept its complaint that you do not really contribute any changes.

Step 8: Reboot. When Windows starts, it may ask for a file check. Let it. Then, when fully restarted and logged in, you mayfinally see the numbers add up in Disk Manager.

Funny how Microsoft decided to select for you what you want to install of the Office package. They decided to have “Custom”, “Typical” and “Full” as the main attractions in that department. Now, of these I’d say only “Custom” and “Full” are the interesting ones. Why? Because a “Typical” installation will give you and installation that will – as you explore the application – a number of “Please insert your CD” so you can install the never-used options.

In my opinion, always do a full installation. Hard disk space is inexpensive and time is. Install it all and you do not have to waste time searching for the CD every time.

I am lazy – extremely lazy – and fortunately it is the lazy ones that normaly advance the world. In addition I am probably a nerd; it is a heckuva lot more fun using an hour making something I can use five minutes executing, than using half an hour doing the job manually…

Therefore – the file listings below are bootlist.cmd and bootlist.txt respectively. bootlist.cmd reads a list of IP addresses or host names and calls up radmin sequentially. The only thing you have to do is to enter the user name and password for each server and pressing OK to boot. You can probably automate that too using AutoHotKey or a similar keystroke application. And – no – there are no parameters to pass the username and password on Remote Admin.

If all computers are logged in using the same user and pass and are not locked you can also use the native shutdown command supplied with Windows XP and up.

For loops always use %character ecept when you have to write %%character. Go figure…

bootlist.cmd
@echo off
for /F %%a in ("c:\program files\bin\bootlist.txt") do call :SUB1 %%a
goto :EOF
:SUB1
@echo off
echo Calliong %1...
"C:\Program Files\Radmin\Radmin.exe" /connect:%1 /shutdown
echo Done!
goto :EOF

bootlist.txt
10.11.12.1
10.11.12.2
10.11.12.3
10.11.12.4
10.11.12.5