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Seamless compression with Squeeze
by lunarg on March 1st 2010, at 22:45
Seamless file compression has found its way to Mac OSX 10.6 with Squeeze.
The application is a system applet, implementing the new HFS compression technology to transparently compress folders you configure to be compressed. Each folder added with Squeeze will be compressed in the background. To the user, they are just regular files, but they will take up less disk space.

Using Squeeze is easy: just select the folders you want to get compressed, and it will silently work in the background to compress the contents of those folders. Whenever you use any of the files, it will be read like any other file, just like that. Compression occurs completely transparently.
Additionally, Squeeze keep  ...
 
Raptors finally arrived
by lunarg on February 24th 2010, at 19:26

Finally got the final parts of my computer: the HD's.

Currently, I was using an old HD (a Maxtor 500GB) from my previous system. The idea with the new disks is to set up two Raptors in a RAID0 configuration. As Raptors are already fairly fast, the additional RAID0 - I've been using this method a few years already - should give it an extra edge.
I'm keeping the old HD in to have additional 500 GB of pure storage (like downloads and such, things that don't need the speed).

 
Albatros organizes Condor Soaring competition
by lunarg on February 19th 2010, at 16:52

Soaring club Albatros (EBZH) has organized an online competition in the soaring flightsim Condor. In this competition, participants have to fly a set of tasks where they have to try and get the highest score by obtaining the highest average speed.

There are seven tasks in the Provence, set out of Vinon. The other seven tasks are all based in Slovenia (the default scenery of Condor). The tasks prove to be a mix of flying by thermals, and a good deal of ridge flying. For each task, up to three tries are possible. The best of three count as the final result for a given task.

Results of the competition can be found here: http://www.zweefvliegen-hasselt.be/Condorcup.

 
Installing Windows XP alongside Vista or 7
by lunarg on February 13th 2010, at 15:25
If you come across a problem where you can't do anything but install a Windows XP alongside a Vista or Windows 7, don't despair, as it is quite easily done.

First you have to repartition your HD. If you have a second HD you're not using, you can ignore this step. If not, you probably have to resize one of the present partitions. But in order to get the maximum out of the resizing, make sure the partition you're about to resize, is defragmented properly. Note that you cannot resize FAT32 partitions (but who uses that nowadays, anyway).
The resizing can be done through Disk Management. Select the system or another partition, right-click and select Shrink volume. Windows   ...
 
Telenet applies Fair Use Policy
by lunarg on February 11th 2010, at 13:23
In Belgium, internet provider Telenet announced the application of fair use policy on a number of their internet subscriptions. Additionally, two new subscriptions have been launched under the common name FiberNet, which will be using the new EuroDOCSIS 3.0 specification to obtain the higher speeds.
After Belgacom, Telenet is the second provider in Belgium to apply fair use policy.

The fair use policies will be applied to the TurboNet and FiberNet subscription at the beginning of July this year. ExpressNet and TurboNet will also benefit from a speed increase (30Mbps instead of 25Mbps). The first of the two will not be upgraded to fair use but its traffic limit will be increased multiple   ...
 
Terminal Server 2008 setup fails with 0x8004005 in SBS 2008 domain
by lunarg on February 3rd 2010, at 11:10
When installing the Terminal Services role on a 2008 member server in a SBS 2008 domain, you may run into the following error:

Quote
Attempt to configure Terminal Server failed with the error code 0x8004005.
Error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component.

The problem surfaces when the 2008 member server was added to the domain, it was misplaced in the SBSComputers OU, rather than the SBSServers OU. As a result, a certain client group policy, which is linked with the SBSComputers OU, interferes with the installation of Terminal Services.

To solve this problem, follow these steps:

Uninstall the Terminal Services role (entirely, including all sub roles).

In Active Di  ...
 
Direct download links to Adobe products through FTP
by lunarg on February 2nd 2010, at 17:53

Adobe has an FTP site available where you can directly download installers and updates of their products, without going through the site, license agreements and download managers.

Adobe Acrobat Reader & Adobe Reader

For PDF reading, the direct links are:

Links to other products will follow. Keep an eye on this post on the site.

 
Remote Desktop Manager 5.7.1 released
by lunarg on February 2nd 2010, at 14:30
Devolutions has come up with a new release of their Remote Desktop Manager: a software tool allowing management of all your remote connections (like VNC, RDP, SSH) and so much more. Its latest version is a vast improvement over their previous stable releases, and is a must-have tool for all ICT employees out there with a lot of remote connections to manage (such as myself).

It comes in two flavours:

The Standard Edition is freeware and houses the majority of the features. It allows the storage to various datasources, including MS Access (containing shared access if you will).

The Enterprise Edition is not free, but has some advanced features, such as password saving to a shared datasource  ...
 
Incoming PPTP VPN passthrough on OpenWRT
by lunarg on February 1st 2010, at 16:46
To set up a Windows PPTP VPN server behind your OpenWRT enabled router, you need to forward the necessary ports and protocols, and install the proper modules.

Finding information about how to do this was a lengthy process. I never actually found the necessary info (although I noticed there are quite a few people which are rather clueless about networking; makes me wonder why they're bothering with OpenWRT in the first place, it's not the easiest firmware out there).
But I've managed to compile the bits and pieces of various sources into a coherent mass. It's not a guide in the literal sense, but will tell you want you need, assuming you do know your way around OpenWRT.

The setup was tested  ...
 
Change SmartHost outgoing port in Exchange 2007
by lunarg on January 28th 2010, at 17:28
I've written an article before on how to change the outgoing SMTP port for SmartHost in Exchange 2003. Now, I have to do this again for Exchange 2007 as they've changed this procedure.

When you're unable to send e-mail directly to the internet (using MX), you probably have to set up a SmartHost to relay the e-mail for you. This is basically your ISP's SMTP server, but can be another server as well.
In certain cases, the default SMTP port (port 25) cannot be used to connect to the SmartHost, so you have to change this to something else. Gmail for instance, uses port 587 for SMTP. Other 3rd party mail services use this (or another port) as well to circumvent spam protection initiated by a lot  ...
 
Obtain MAC address of the wireless access point connected to
by lunarg on January 27th 2010, at 11:28
In Windows, it is possible to obtain the MAC address of the wireless access point you're connected to. This is handy when you have multiple access points with the same ESSID (i.e. "roaming") and want to know which one you're connected to. This is done with the netsh CLI tool, available since Windows XP.

To do this, start a command prompt, and type in:

netsh wlan show interfaces

This shows all wireless interfaces on your system. When your wireless is active and connected to an AP, you get output similar to this:

Name : Wireless Network Connection Description : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN GUID : f5ad6606-3b9d-41b  ...
 
Take screenshots on Mac OSX
by lunarg on January 19th 2010, at 21:16
Taking screenshots in Mac OSX uses Preview.
Inside Preview, you can use the menu to capture screens, but that's not very handy when you're working in other programs.

Luckily, there are some global shortcuts available that implement every way of capturing. As I always forget what they are, and I'm sure others forget this all the time as well, here's a short list.

Cmd + Shift + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and save in on the desktop as PNG. Cmd + Shift + Control + 3 Capture the entire desktop, and place it on the clipboard (instead of saved to the desktop). Cmd + Shift + 4 Captures a portion of the desktop  ...
 
Configure Exchange Server Auto-Discovery
by lunarg on January 18th 2010, at 13:30
When you are running an Exchange server, and have your users access the server from outside the company network, you usually have to open up access to OWA. This enables users to access their mail, contacts and appointments by using an internet browser. Occassionally, someone also has a ActiveSync enabled phone that they would like to use. This protocol also uses OWA for syncing data. And very rarely, there's also a guy (usually the CEO) who simply wants to use its Outlook to connect - this is possible through web as well using RPC-over-HTTP(S), but that's information for another blog post (on another day in the far far future...) .

One of the hassles when configuring this, is the fact that   ...
 
Updating your Blackberry OS
by lunarg on January 15th 2010, at 12:00
Once in a while, it may become necessary to update the Blackberry OS to a newer version. I've noticed with the service providers in Belgium that they are usually some versions behind. If whenever you need to run an application that requires a more sane (recent) version of the BB OS, you get stuck because you cannot install and/or run it.

Now you may wonder what the problem is?
Indeed, one can download the latest version from the Blackberry site, but doing so may actually break your setup, as there are quite a few things to consider:

Does your device support the new OS?

Does your service provider support the new OS?

If you are running BES, is it new enough to support the new OS?

Luckily,  ...
 
Blackberry Enterprise sync mysteriously stops working
by lunarg on January 14th 2010, at 16:07
Had a problem with a client of ours, running Blackberry Enterprise Manager. One of the devices, a Blackberry 8820, stopped receiving any sync messages. Internet on the device kept working, and the internet e-mail account worked as well, but all communication between the BES and the device failed.

The first thing I did was to completely wipe the device, as I assumed there was a problem with the pairing between the server and the thing. But when I tried to reactivate it, it indefinitely hung on the first phase:

Quote
user@domain activating

As I was troubleshooting using the support site of Blackberry (where they explain the steps that occur when activating), I noticed that the activation e-  ...
 
The truth about...
by lunarg on January 12th 2010, at 23:46
 
The tooth brush trick
by lunarg on January 9th 2010, at 19:13

Having a bit of a problem with our toilet at home lately: the flushing mechanism gave out. Apparently, the thing was a bit exotic, as we had to wait for about 6 weeks for a replacement part. Luckily, my father is not all uninventive...

So we actually have to pull the toothbrush in order to flush the toilet. It's actually funny every time we have guests over, and are explaining the quick-start usage guide on our toilet. Their faces are just priceless!

 
Delivery trouble
by lunarg on January 8th 2010, at 11:49

Still no luck with my new computer. With the holidays (or so I'd like to believe), I still haven't received the memory, videocard, and disks. Guess I'll have to be training my patience some more.
But it's not all hopeless: the BD/DVD-combo drive did arrive last week, so at least I'll be able to build in that. Joy!

 
SpamAssassin and 2010
by lunarg on January 6th 2010, at 10:18
Versions 3.2 of SpamAssassin have (until very recently) a bug in their rules which would mark mails dated 2010 (this year) as being spam.

The reason for this is that a rule exists which would add an additional score of 3.2 to mails with a date set to 2010, because when the rule was created, the date would be in the very far future. Of course, this is no longer the case.

The bug was already discovered in 2008, and resolved in the SpamAssassin repositories, but was not backported to 3.2 until 2010-01-01, when the issue was discovered by Mike Cardwell, a developer in the UK.

Users with this problem can easily resolve it by updating the rules:

sa-update

This changes the regexp so it exclude  ...
 
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 instructors works at the traffic control for the Belgian Army on the Pampa Shooting Range (a shooting range   ...
 
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