Blognote

How long until my Windows password expires?

// July 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Digital Life

I was wondering how long before I have to change my password at a client-site. Scripting to the rescue, scroll down to the bottom of this page, copy the code into a expiration.vbs file and start it from the commandline using start expiration.vbs

FAST ESP 5.3 – Disable daylight savings in a timezone without daylight savings

// April 27th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I’m installing a FAST ESP 5.3 sp3 setup in India. No I’m not there physically, via a remote desktop. As you might know, FAST doesn’t like Daylight Savings Time Adjustment. The Indian Timezone used by the server does not obey Daylight Savings, but the FAST ESP 5.3 sp3 installer still blocked on it’s check of Daylight Savings. To disable this correctly I opened up the timezone-adjustment dialog, switched to Amsterdam Timezone, unchecked Daylight Savings Support, switched back to the Indian timezone and pressed ok. FAST ESP 5.3 sp3 Installer is happy again :$

Citrix SA Client for Mac OSX

// March 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // OSX, Uncategorized

Some time ago for a specific client I needed to connect to some protected infrastructure using some proprietary Citrix client. The firewall protecting the infrastructure only allowed access via VPN technology as implemented in the Citrix SA Client. At the time I couldn’t find a Mac OSX client, and the Administrator of the firewall protected environment also told me that no such software was available. So I ended up using parallels with a windows OS and running the client on that platform. Today I had some serious connection problems from windows to the aforementioned firewall, the connection would drop and reestablish every 15 seconds, not workable. I suspect there is something wrong with the parallels network driver within windows in combination with the Airport wireless network I’m using since a couple of days.
This let me to search for the Citrix SA Client once more, and guess what; I found it! Installed like a charm, and now Remote Desktop-ing to the servers from OSX. I hate it when I need specific software for setting up a VPN, but I love it when it works like a charm.

Snow Leopard with Ruby 1.9 and Rails 2.3.5

// December 24th, 2009 // No Comments » // Dev, OSX, Ruby

I’m working my way through “Agile Web Development with Rails – Third Edition” and the latest version of the PickAxe “Programming Ruby – Third Edition” books of the Pragmatic Programmers.
As Snow Leopard is my OS I need to update the default shipped Ruby and Rails versions to get to Ruby 1.9 and Rails on top of that.

I’ve been installing and uninstalling multiple things before finally settling on my ultimate recipe for installing the correct Ruby version and Gems:
(Within Terminal and already running the latest version of macports )

sudo port install ruby19 +nosuffix
sudo port install sqlite3
sudo gem update --system
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby
sudo gem install rails

Great Visual Diff/Merge tool for OSX

// December 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Dev, OSX

Back when my primary dev-environment was Microsoft I would use the open-source tool WinMerge for all my Diff/Merge needs. Great tool, good performance, does the job.
Now that I’ve switched to the Mac I had to find a new visual Diff/Merge tool, and I want it cheap, or better free
Searches in the past didn’t turn up any satisfying results, but I think I’ve found the tool to do the job. Sourcegear, a company I knew from the past for their Vault product, which is a compelling replacement of Visual SourceSafe, has been so kind to distribute their Diff/Merge tool as a standalone and free cross-platform tool.
Downloaded, used it for comparing and merging FAST indexprofile files (which are plain XML), loving it.
Oh, I’m not affiliated to Sourcegear in any way, just like their Diff/Merge tool on OSX.

Restoring MacBook Pro using Time Capsule

// October 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Life

To my horror suddenly my MacBook Pro wouldn’t display anything anymore, a blank screen was all I got. Hooked up an external monitor, no success. Searched the internet and concluded that I might have a broken Nvidia graphics “card” (it’s soldered on the board so it’s not really a card) as the batch my MBP is from contains a faulty Nvidia card http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377
So I went to an Apple Service Center where they concluded that indeed my graphics card is broken and that repair is covered by the extended warranty. The ASC had a MBP for rent for the duration of the repair, but as I was late on the day they weren’t able to swap the harddisks.
So I took the MBP home and ventured out to restore a Time Machine backup. I have a Time Capsule so there should be a recent backup available.
The MBP booted into the installation of Leopard, after the introduction video (couldn’t bypass watching the whole video) I was give the option to do a restore from a backup. Selected the option, the MBP found my Time Capsule but after I selected a backup-set got the Spinning Beachball and nothing happening for more than an hour, I uttered a small curse.
What the heck, let’s boot into Leopard and start the Migration Assistant. Hmm, the same experience, found my Time Capsule but after selecting the backup-set a Beachball. Damn.
Read something about restoring a backup by starting the restore tool off from the OSX installation CD. So started the utilities, selected the restore, hmm it can’t find my Time Capsule. Looked up a knowledgebase article on the Apple site and found that I had to start the Wireless network by clicking the WIFI icon in the upper right corner of the utilities screen. Ok, so the backup-set can be selected, but you guessed it, a Beachball.
Than it dawned me that the backup was made with Time Machine running Snow Leopard not Leopard, so I put in the Snow Leopard DVD, started the Utilities, selected restore from Time Capsule, saw the backupset, and now was able to select exactly which backup I wanted to restore. Selected the most recent (which was from just before the screen problems started) and went to bed.
The next morning I was greeted with my trusted login-screen and everything was installed in such a way that I couldn’t tell that I was working on another machine. Great, love automatic backups. Note to Apple, a meaningful message along the lines of “Backup was created with a newer version of Time Machine” would have saved me a couple of hours.

Switching to Git

// August 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Life

I’ve been using subversion for a very long time. During that period I’ve got several people and one company hooked on this version control system after I got frustrated with SourceSafe. SourceSafe was the only version control software developers on the Microsoft platform knew, if they did any. For those people subversion was a giant leap, but once they saw it in action on they’re large .net projects they were sold.
Once I moved to the Mac OS X platform subversion happily travelled along for my local version control.
I’ve always had two main frustrations with subversion:

1. In a local situation you are stuck with a directory on your system which doesn’t contain anything sensible: your local repository
2. It is not easy to convert a local directory to a working copy under version control (add/commit/checkout)

Now I’ve switched to Git and I will undoubtly find issues using it, but so far my two main frustrations are solved with three lines of code

git init
git add .
git commit -m "First commit"

iCal problem CalDAVDeleteEntityQueueableOperation

// August 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Digital Life

Just one result in Google, but exactly the problem I was experiencing
Changed the preference and restarted iCal. Problem solved.
Thanks Matt.

Are you still listening?

// July 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // blog

Yeah I know, it’s been a while. I’ve been putting this off for a very, very long time.

I used to blog on tech-stuff I ran into in my job, I don’t think that will come back. We’ll see where this is going.

Searching the Java RunTime for Vista 64-bit

// August 31st, 2007 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

I had a hard time finding the correct JRE for my Vista 64-bit installation. Apparantly it’s not on the Www.Java.Com site, at least I couldn’t find it on the downloads page, and don’t get me started on the automated detection/installation procedure at that site. I had more luck on the Sun-site, follow the path of downloads, category, Java, Java 2 Platform Standard Edition, Latest Release (in the top blue header part) for some reason it redirects me first to the Java 5 downloads, Java Runtime 6 update X and there on the bottom the 64-bit for Windows AMD.