Archives

Archives / 2005

  • Added support for Monad scripts to CodeHTMLer

    1 Comment

    For all those people posting Monad scripts to their blogs you might be interested in making your scripts look better by using CodeHTMLer. Just paste in your code script and select MSH as the language and it will output some stylized HTML that can easily be copied into your blog post. Of course you can use it to post code for most languages. Its what I use to colorize all my code samples.

    Read more...

  • Monad script to convert your doskey macros to Monad functions

    No Comments

    Last week I talked about how I wanted to write a script to convert my doskey macros into Monad functions. I used this opportunity to learn about writing scripts in Monad. I must say I'm impressed so far, it has been pretty easy to pickup. The one thing that I kept getting burned by and that I don't care for much is the comparison operators. I don't like using -lt, -gt, etc, I'm too used to <, >. At anyrate here is the code (keep in mind that I'm new to Monad scripting so if I did something wrong go easy on me ;) with that said I'm open to suggestions).

    Read more...

  • Substrings in Batch Files

    1 Comment

    In my last post I stated that batch files need better string support, that was before I realized that you could actually get substrings from variables. Here is an excerpt from the set command documentation (i.e. set /?):

    Read more...

  • Parsing Date in a Batch File

    39 Comments

    Today I was trying to generate a filename based on the current date in a batch file. After doing some searching here is what I came up with:

    Read more...

  • Offically opening my new Community Server site

    No Comments

    I decided to create this blog so that I didn't have to feel guilty about posting non-technical stuff on my weblogs.asp.net blog. I still plan to primarily post technical stuff on this blog but I reserve the right to post whatever I like. I intend to re-post some of my better posts (if you have a post in mind please let me know) from my weblogs.asp.net blog on this blog.

    Read more...

  • Should I move my old posts?

    3 Comments

    Sorry I have not been posting much lately but I have been very busy with moving and my new job. With the little bit of extra time I have had I've been working on setting up my new CS 1.1 site (to be released very soon I hope).

    Read more...

  • My new Job

    3 Comments

    Well I'm made the move to Redmond now. My wife and I have found a townhome near Redmond Town Center and we got all of our stuff delivered last Friday. We are still in the process of getting things in order but I now have my computer setup with internet. I really find it amazing how hard it is to live without internet.

    Read more...

  • Masters Done!

    1 Comment

    I have finally finished my schooling! I thought I was done once I finished my BS but then I ended up going for my MS after a year. Now I'm done with my MS in Computer Science. I just turned in my last assignment (a take home final exam). It feels good.

    Read more...

  • Harddrive Failure...

    5 Comments

    Yesterday when I got home all I saw on my screen was the standard "Failed to find Harddrive 0 No boot device found Press F1 to retry or F2 to enter setup" (something like that you get the point) and all I heard was CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, ..., CLICK. My hard drive had failed. Just great!! Luckily most of my data was stored on my file server so I didn't lose everything. Just my email for the past few months (so if you have emailed me in the last couple days an are expecting a reply please kindly resend your message) and my programing settings. I used to actually setup my profile to run from my server but I got lazy the last time I installed my system. Needless to say I won't make that mistake this time.

    Read more...

  • Moving to Community Server

    2 Comments

    I have decided that I want to move my blog to my own site and I'm going to be running Community Server as the backend. Currently I'm working on skinning the site. I have finished skinning the blog but I'm working on the forum and other parts right now. I wish everything within Community Server had a similar structure as the blog skinning, i.e. a layout template. I really hate duplicating stuff I want Master Pages! That is why I decided to use Paul Wilson's version of Master Pages. The only thing is doing that causes me to change every .aspx page in Community Server to use the Master Page Template. I guess that is better than changing them all everytime I want a structural change in my site.

    Read more...

  • ObjectDock

    15 Comments

    Who else out there likes a dock better than the standard windows taskbar? I have been using StarDock's ObjectDock for a few weeks now and I think I'm sold. I have hidden my taskbar and I only run a single visible dock at the bottom center of my screen.

    Read more...

  • TopDesk - Awesome task switcher

    1 Comment

    After playing around with TopDesk for a little while I'm about ready to pay my $9.95 to buy it. I just want to use it a couple days to make sure it works properly on my machine configuration. If you don't like the standard Alt-Tab task switcher you should definitely give this a trail run.

    Read more...

  • Open with Notepad - Context Menu option for all files

    5 Comments

    If you are like me then a lot of times you want to use notepad to quickly open and look at files. Some files you can choose the Open With > Notepad but not all file and particularly not for files with no extension. My solution is to add a context menu option "Open with Notepad" to all file types including files with no extension.

    Read more...

  • Passed my thesis defense

    2 Comments

    Well I made it! As I posted last week I had my thesis defense last Monday and I passed Yeaaaaaaaa! I just submitted my final thesis draft to my advisor and assuming he approves it I will be done with my thesis. At which point I will post it to my blog for all those who are interested. I will also eventually post summaries of it. So for those of you who are interested in nContract just hang in there a little longer the content will be coming soon.

    Read more...

  • Answers.com

    No Comments

    I just happened to run across answers.com today and I must say I'm impressed. I also installed their 1-click Answers program which allows you to ALT-Click any word in any program on your screen for information about that word. It also suggests word spellings which comes in handy for bad spellers like me. If you haven't already tried this out I recommend taking a look.

    Read more...

  • What do you use to analyze your IIS log files?

    No Comments

    Currently I'm using awstats which is a very nice free log analyzer. It has a lot of nice statistics. One stat is the referrers however I would like to see which page that the referrer linked too. It is also nice that you can see the search phrases used to get to your site, but I would also like to know which page is associated with a particular search phrase. As far as I can tell these are not available in awstats.

    Read more...

  • Mounting ISO files as non-admin

    9 Comments

    Well a long time ago I posted about using Virtual CDRom Control Panel to create a Virtual CDRom Drive (i.e. mount ISO files). I use this quite often however now that I have switched to being a non-administrator on my system I can't use it anymore. I keep getting the error message "Cannot Open SCM : Access is denied". I tried to figure out how to setup the correct permissions and got as far as attempting to change the Security Descriptor via the sc command, but no luck. Eventually I gave up and looked for another way to mount ISO files.

    Read more...

  • Running as non-admin

    No Comments

    After setting up my new domain recently I decided I would finally try to run as non-admin. Currently I'm a normal user.

    Read more...

  • Re-associating Compressed Folders with .zip files

    13 Comments

    Once upon a time I installed WinZip and so the .zip file association got switched to WinZip. I really like selecting files and then right clicking and selecting Send To > Compressed (zipped) Folder in XP/2003. However you cannot do that unless Compressed Folder is the program associated with .zip files. It will usually ask you "Do you want to designate Compressed (zipped) Folders as the application for handling ZIP files?" and I always click yes but it never re-associates. Anyways I found a registry fix on Doug Knox's page Windows XP File Association Fixes. If you import the ZIP Folder Association Fix into the registry it will restore the default .zip file association. Now I can use the Send To > Compressed Folder again. Thanks Doug.

    Read more...

  • Creative Commons License

    No Comments

    Today my advisor pointed me to Creative Commons to create a license for my Thesis work. I never knew about this. You can very easily create licenses for anything by answering a few questions. It gives you an icon (like the one below) to put on your website or text to put into text files (i.e. source code files). I hate trying to figure out licensing stuff so this will make it very easy to license my stuff.

    Read more...

  • Disable Windows 2003 Shutdown Event Tracker

    1 Comment

    Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 7:53 AM
    Okay the right name for the “Enter Reason” dialog is - “Shutdown Event Tracker”.

    If you're like me, and use Windows 2003 on your desktop, chances are that you may find that dialog box that pops up after every hardboot or at every restart/shutdown only slightly annoying.

    Here is how to disable that.

    Start->Run type “gpedit.msc” .. hit Enter.

    Go to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System ->

    In there find “Display Shutdown Event Tracker”, double click and choose “Disabled”.

    WALLA !! :-)

    And oh yeah, there's tonnes of other stuff there too.
    [SAHIL MALIK]
     
    Thanks Sahil.
     
    I once knew how to do this but I forgot. So this time I'm posting it on my blog for future reference.

    Read more...

  • Moving XP User Profile

    7 Comments

    I just got done setting up my new Windows 2003 server at home. I had another server before which was running as my domain controller. This was causing DNS issues because I stupidly named my local domain the same as my web domain name. I couldn't visit my website using the base domain name because that IP resolved to my local DNS server and when I tried to delete that entry on my DNS server and point it to the correct IP it somehow magically reappears after sometime. At any rate I decided to setup a new Windows 2003 server as my new domain controller for a different domain.

    Read more...

  • FireFox Setup

    1 Comment

    I used to use an link to a checklist of things that I used to setup firefox from scratch but that link no longer works so I'm going to create my own checklist for my future benefit and maybe to the benefit of others.

    Read more...

  • Get Directory Path of an executing Batch file

    66 Comments

    Most people probably know that can use the variable %0 in a batch file to get the name of the executing batch file. However if you use that in conjunction with some batch parameter modifiers you can easily split that into a drive, directory or filename. Therefore to get the location of an executing batch file from within that batch file you can use the variable %~dp0. Where d is the drive, p is the path and 0 is of course the name of the executing batch file.

    Read more...

  • Over 100,000 hits

    No Comments

    Wow I just looked at my hit counter on my blog this weekend and I have just passed 100,000 hits. This is since May 2003. That is pretty cool.

    Read more...

  • Empty Email Messages

    21 Comments

    Lately I have been noticing an increase of completely blank email messages in my inbox. I get anywhere from 1-5 empty emails a day. The messages have nothing but a relatively small truncated internet header. Some of the internet headers are truncated in the middle of a header message. My guess is they are spam that gets stripped by some mail server but I really don't know. I have started keeping them in separate folder to see if I can maybe figure out a pattern.

    Read more...

  • I'm back

    1 Comment

    It has been a long christmas break. I have been from Blacksburg to DC to Cincinnati to Detroit back to DC and now finally back to Blacksburg. My wife just graduated in Dec and moved to DC to start her new job. I stayed with her until my last semester at Virginia Tech started which was today.

    Read more...