If you have
seriously played with Ubuntu lately, you might have seen the real fancy 3D desktop effect you can do. Here is a piece of software that does the same thing on Windows:
DeskSpace And here is a free alternative:
YODM.
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After a few hours of frustration trying to get the Dell Wireless 3300 Print Server to hop onto my wireless network, I finally figured out the problem. I was using WPA-PSK in AES mode on my wireless router. Apparently, this little gem (if you have a compatible printer) only likes TKIP. After I made this change it connected without a problem.
This print server works very well, but you have to have a compatible printer. In fact, if you have one of the printers this was intended for, I would recommend using this to anything else. I know for a fact it works great on a Dell 1710 and a 962 (Photo All-in-One).
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For this blog I like to use a plugin called WP-DBManager. It's a great tool for easily maintaining your blog's database right from the administration console. Unfortunately, being on a Windows host, sometimes plugins don't work as intended, so you have to make some adjustments.
For this plugin I kept getting this error whenever I tried to run the backup script:
Warning: filesize(): Stat failed for (blah, blah)
Warning: unlink(blah, blah) no such file or directory
To fix it I had to do a few things:
1. The actual command to create the backup needs to be fixed, so it can run properly on the command prompt. Find the file named database-backup.php in the plugin's directory. Place double quotes around the path part of the command and remove all others. Lines 47 and 51.
$backup['command'] =
'"' .
$backup['mysqldumppath'].
'" --host='.DB_HOST.
' --user='.DB_USER.
' --password='.DB_PASSWORD.
' --add-drop-table --skip-lock-tables '.DB_NAME.
' | gzip > '.
$backup['filepath'];
$backup['command'] = '"' . $backup['mysqldumppath'] . '" --host='.DB_HOST.' --user='.DB_USER.' --password='.DB_PASSWORD.' --add-drop-table --skip-lock-tables '.DB_NAME.' > '.$backup['filepath'];
2. The function that runs the command is called execute_packup(). This function is located in a file named wp-dbmanager.php in the plugin's directory. Find this function (line 205) and remove the if statement and leave only the passthru() command. Similar to this:
function execute_backup
($command) {
$backup_options = get_option
('dbmanager_options');
check_backup_files
();
/*if(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3) == 'WIN') {
$writable_dir = $backup_options['path'];
$tmpnam = $writable_dir.'/wp-dbmanager.bat';
$fp = fopen($tmpnam, 'w');
fwrite($fp, $command);
fclose($fp);
system($tmpnam.' > NUL', $error);
unlink($tmpnam);
} else {*/
passthru($command,
$error);
//}
return $error;
}
3. If you want to have the gzip functionality you will need to download and place gzip.exe in the system32 folder of the server. You can download gzip from here.
NOTES:
- Make sure the the Internet Guest Account has write permissions to the backup-db directory.
- There is probably a better way to do this, perhaps using the exec() command in the if statement, but this one seems to work just fine.
- Not necessary - On my server I had to put @ symbols in front of the filesize() and unlink() functions in the database-backup.php file, so that the they would not throw the php warning message and continue through to show the actual error message on the plugin page.
RegToy is a free program for tweaking settings in Windows. It will pretty much let you change any setting there is to change. It works very well and the install is very straight forward and simple. I've only tested it on Windows XP, but it should also work with Vista and Windows Server 2003. It also comes with a bunch of other utilities like SecureDelete, MemoryCleaner, and FileEncryptor to name a few. (For a complete list click here.)
Download Link
Last week we went down to Florida for a little R&R. On the last day there, we got a good storm. This panoramic photo was taken a few hours before we left and was taken looking east over the Atlantic ocean. The clouds were moving over the beach from the west going east (top of image moving down) and the rain appeared to be coming from the south going north (right of image going left towards us).
Click on the image below to see a larger view.
Cloud Cover On Amelia Island
Took a day of vacation yesterday to spend some time outdoors, so my brother-in-law and I went canoeing. Since we've had quite a rainy seasons this spring the water level of the river was great. One of the coolest places to stop along this particular river trip is Pattison Forge, otherwise known as the Montgomery Bell Tunnel...
Click on the image below to see a larger view. The larger view may take some time to download as the files are about 2MB each.
Tunnel Panorama
Tunnel Top View Panorama
The "Holy Grail" of wireless flash triggers are the Pocket Wizards - they are fast, reliable, and have an amazing range. This of course comes a quite a heafty price and many new photographers simply can't afford them. For this reason many people use the Cactus V2's from Gadget Infinity, otherwise known as the "Ebay" triggers.
There are many features that the PW have that the V2's don't have, but as far as cheap wireless triggers go, the V2's are quite good. The main problem of the V2's is in their range, but with a small modification this can be remedied fairly easily. Basically, by adding an external antenna the signal is "louder and clearer" for the receivers to pick up.
More »
At my office I have three monitors on my desk. Two are for my pc and one is for my backup server. I was thinking about how convenient it would be to simply move the mouse over to the backup server like an extended desktop. I started searching around and found Maxivista.com. One can always use remote desktop, but this is good if you want to control multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse, and it also gives you more screen real estate since you are using the added monitor of the other computer.
The company's main thing is that you can use old notebooks as extended monitors, which is cool and a good marketing angle, but what I like is the ability to remote control as in a KVM setup. I can move the mouse over to the right of the screen on my desktop and it seamlessly moves into the other computer's desktop. The mouse on the remote screen isn’t as smooth as far as the refresh rate, probably because the mouse movement information is going through the network, but it is still very good.
Check out their page for more information!
When I search the internet I very often get results from the popular site www.experts-exchange.com. This is a forum type site where you have to be a paying member to participate. While there is nothing wrong with this, the site is setup to allow anyone to read member questions, so that their site comes up in your search results in the hopes that if you visit their site you will pay to see the answer. I, for one, am not willing to pay, therefor search results that take me to their site are completely useless.
I've created a search provider for your browser that omits results that would take you to their site.
Click the link to install:
Search Without Experts-Exchange
BojanM gave me a good idea for a photo I could use for my company's new website. In order to fit in the site's theme I needed the black and white image, so here is the original. Since the trees have not fully bloomed the color version is not very good, but the B&W version is more effective as it emphasizes the structure. I will have to go back and shoot this one again later this year.
Natchez Trace Arch Bridge in Color
Natchez Trace Arch Bridge
