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Happy 2010
by lunarg on January 3rd 2010, at 20:35
Happy New Year to all!

2010 promises to be a year full of promises. Although the financial crisis rages on, this year should be a year of opportunities, and plain neat things.
Like a lot of people, I have a few objectives set out for the next year, in various categories.

One of the more important aspects in my life at the moment is of course my hobby: soaring at soaring club Albatros (EBZH, Hasselt Belgium).
This year's objectives are:

Obtaining a radio license (required to officially operate a radio). I'm currently following a course at the soaring club; one of the instruct  ...
 
New ways to copying bank cards
by lunarg on December 26th 2009, at 11:37

Beware when you go shopping with your credit card or bank card.
Apparently there are some new and very clever ways to copy your cards, and steal your PIN.

It shows how Eastern-European gangs use the latest technologies to copy cards, and steal PIN codes, without the victim's knowledge.
It's actually a bit scary to see how far they have developed.

 
Merry Christmas!
by lunarg on December 25th 2009, at 11:41

Merry Christmas to all!

Here in Belgium, it may not be the fairytale Christmas we were expecting (it's raining, and snow is melting fast), but that doesn't spoil the fun of unwrapping presents, having a nice meal, and gathering with family.

 
Building blocks
by lunarg on December 24th 2009, at 21:38

A quick update on the build of the computer. So far, not all components have arrived yet, but the ones that were present already allowed me to start building the system.

 

The case, motherboard, CPU, PSU have arrived and are built in. See the attached screens for a shot on these, and take a look at the attachment list to see descriptions with each pictures.

A few important things are still missing: RAM, video card and disks. Oh yeah, and the BD-drive.

 
Colibri, the Quicksilver alternative for Windows
by lunarg on December 21st 2009, at 16:37

Colibri, the Quicksilver alternative for Windows...

http://colibri.leetspeak.org/

 
First snow of the winter 2009-2010
by lunarg on December 20th 2009, at 21:32
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DSRM password on an SBS 2008
by lunarg on December 20th 2009, at 20:54
When you have a working SBS 2008 server, and don't know the password to get into Directory Services Restore Mode, you might want to reset it to something you do know.
You will need this when for instance, the AD gets screwed up, or, in case of SBS, you get locked out (even though you're an Administrator).

Related posts

The Horror of SBS 2008: part 1Resetting domain password on a SBS 2008With the installation of the SBS, the DSRM password will be the same as the password you enter for the Administrator account. So, if the password hasn't changed, or you still remember it, try that one first.
  ...
 
Resetting domain password on a SBS 2008
by lunarg on December 17th 2009, at 22:40
If you ever happen to get locked out of a SBS 2008 system, with no way to get back in as Administrator (it's easier than you might think), use the instructions in this blog should get you back up and running.
Note that you will have to have physical access to the server, or else it will be very challenging to solve the problem.
The content of this has been tested for real on an SBS 2008 which had this problem. Check out the bottom of the page for the sources I used to compile this post.

For a background story, read this post.

In order to get in the server, we need some way of an account and   ...
 
The Horror of SBS 2008: part 1
by lunarg on December 17th 2009, at 22:39
Microsoft has invented Windows Small Business Server for small to medium businesses. This, in itself, is not a bad idea. It allows small businesses to enjoy the capabilities and functions of a Windows Server with Exchange and more, for a fraction of the price it would be when buying standard editions of the components.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's idea is that small businesses probably don't have IT outsourcing, so they wizard everything up, and basically add a whole bunch of constraints and this-is-how-you-should-do-it's. Although Microsoft isn't all that wrong about this policy, they forgot a  ...
 
Sync databases with Outlook/Exchange
by lunarg on December 16th 2009, at 14:58

I came across this application when I was looking into software that does just that:

http://www.geniusconnect.com/geniusconnect.asp

It enables synchronization of Outlook/Exchange folders with a relational database; anything with an ODBC driver is supported (MS-SQL, MySQL, ...).

 
Next-gen gaming
by lunarg on December 15th 2009, at 21:08
Going forward with plans for a new gaming computer, I've ordered the components. I didn't really have a specific budget in mind, other than the fact that I'm going for quality and performance, rather than selecting components based on their price.

Case: the case is an Antec Twelve Hundred gaming case. I always wanted to select a gaming case for the next one, but a nine hundred would have been just fine. The only reason why it's a twelve hundred is because of a wrong delivery a few months back, where the Antec PSU being delivered was an EC one (thus only fits in a select few cases of Antec).
T  ...
 
8800GTX broken
by lunarg on December 14th 2009, at 23:26

Crap! Looks like my 8800GTX video card is broken. That's a serious bummer.

The card does some very serious funny things: as soon as going in-game, the card doesn't really freeze up, but has some sort of memory corruption problem, which remains throughout reboots.

Very coincidentally, I just ordered new hardware for my new gaming computer. The only thing not being replaced was the video card, because I thought it would be better to just wait a while until the next generation of cards from nVidia were available.
Apparently, Fate has decided otherwise.

 
Welcome to Black Manticore v3
by lunarg on December 8th 2009, at 17:36
Welcome to the next (and hopefully final) edition of Black Manticore.

Black Manticore is basically my personal webspace. It contains my blogs, galleries and projects I wish to share with the world.
Additionally, as a ICT engineer, I often come across some things that which to have archived somewhere (problems and their solutions, nifty tips and tricks, etc.). So why not use a blog of sorts, so that this information is available for everyone.

This is the third installment of the website, and there are some very big differences between the previous editions and this one. Those that have se  ...
 
Albatros, recommended by SFA
by lunarg on December 8th 2009, at 16:19
Soaring club Albatros received the unique opportunity to present its beloved sport of soaring at the open house day of Sabena Flight Academy on December 5th.

Albatros was already recommended by SFA as one of two clubs where future candidates for ATPL/CPL training would be able to follow a pre-entry training course of soaring. This would allow candidates to learn the basics of flying before actually starting the complete training.

 

To recommend this training course to all interested candidates, we were present with a full professional booth. And we can honestly say soaring got quite   ...
 
Albatros @ SFA
by lunarg on December 8th 2009, at 00:02
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Creating ISO's on a Mac
by lunarg on December 6th 2009, at 22:28

Create a folder with the contents you want on your ISO.

Open Disk Utility and use the New Image from Folder menu item to create an image. Ensure it is uncompressed and use the CD/DVD master option.

In my experience this creates HFS+ masters which are no good in Windows.

Open the Terminal

Assuming your new image is called ~/Desktop/Master.cdr (the file is on your desktop and called Master.cdr) type:

cd ~/Desktop
hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -o Master.iso Master.cdr

This will create an ISO/Joliet .iso file.

 
WET54G-EU (v3.1) with WPA or WPA2 locks up
by lunarg on December 6th 2009, at 20:30
For all those who recently acquired a WET54G (rev 3.1), or are planning on acquiring one, should read the problem I had with it.
The problem only affects EU versions of the product, as the US version has a more recent firmware available which fixes the problem.

Update: there's still no new firmware. I've updated the links so they are correct again.
And here's a direct link is here.

Anyway, the main symptom is the lock up of the device as soon as a connection with a wireless network has been made, and that network uses WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK. I've tested this out extensively  ...
 
[MyHW] Tsuruya
by lunarg on November 23rd 2009, at 14:56
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Using TWAIN with Word 2007 in Vista/7
by lunarg on October 30th 2009, at 13:26
Since Office 2007 (and Vista), TWAIN has been kicked out in favour of WIA. As a result, it is no longer possible to use your favourite and robust TWAIN based scanner with Office 2007.
Most scanners come with the necessary software, and thus, you can circumvent the issue by using their software. However, there are various scanners - notably, office network scanners, like those on copiers, do not have such a tool. They have their driver's internal system which is callable in other software (like Office-applications). In the event that the driver is only supporting TWAIN interface for image acqui  ...
 
MacOSX: unlocking locked files
by lunarg on October 28th 2009, at 15:50
Ran into an issue where I could not unlock files that were copied from a network location to local disk. The files were marked as being locked, but I was unable to unlock them (through Finder), even though I had all proper rights. Additionally, chmod as root (= user with the highest privileges) did not work either.

The solution to my issue was to manually override the locked flag of those files, from within a Terminal.

sudo chflags -R nouchg my-problem-file-or-dir

Additionally, I found that it sometimes is easier to completely reset/clear an ACL, and start over, rather than trying to fix th  ...
 
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