Useful hack for running scheduled tasks at a higher frequency than daily in windows xp

http://www.randomtree.org/eric/techblog/archives/2004/09/the_windows_task_scheduler_is_not_a_secondclass_citizen.html

uni2ascii

If you are ever having issues with g++ compiling code cut and pasted from a website, specifically stuff like "stray \200 on line" or other similar errors, then uni2ascii is for you.

Just take the problem file, and do the following

cat problem.cpp | uni2ascii -B > problem_clean.cpp

The uni2ascii program will do it's very best to convert unicode to ascii where possible.

The new file should compile okay. Remember the -B, if you forget it, you will have lots of random unicode escapes in your output.

cifs mount in centos

Trying to follow the "Better Method" steps in this guide http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/WindowsShares

Not going so well. The mount completes properly, but the directory is always empty when I do an ls.

Not quite sure what could cause this.

Update: This was an artifact of an incorrectly configured DFS setup. The instructions work perfectly.

SSH Login times taking forever

this article saved me a lot of hastle.

I log into a lot of hosts by IP with SSH for embedded linux development, and for some reason it seems like my SSH login times had become unbelievably slow. It could take around 60 seconds to get a password prompt, which I find unbearable.

The article above details how to use ssh -v to watch what is going on during a login, and indicates that if you are getting GSSAPI errors, you should consider disabling it or fixing the root cause of such errors.

Disabling it sped my logins right back up.

Thanks again random internet person.

Gamestop has xbox 1's for $39, it's xbox media center time!

With Xbox 1's now at rock bottom prices, it's time to grab an xbox 1, man up, and softmod that xbox into an ass kicking media center.

All you need is a simple PC, a cd burner, and an extra IDE cable.

Read this excellent guide carefully, and get going!

XBMC - Xbox Media Center on Mac OSX Rules!

XBMC is such a perfect fit for the Mac Mini. It's completely incredible.

The mac mini's remote can do quite a bit under XBMC, especially once you get used to it. It will feel very natural after only a short time.

I'm currently watching 28 days later on the mac mini's vga output to my LCD TV. It looks great and it's easy to control.

The iTunes integration with the iTunes library on the Mac Mini is pretty decent. I havent quite figured out if I can use library mode or not, but at the very least I can play back music without issue.

Great news as well, it works on Linux and Windows too.

Download XBox Media Center Here - It's not just for the xbox anymore!

Laptops as Development Workstations

I've tried off and on over the years to maintain a laptop with a copy of my development tools, but time and time again I am disappointed by the horrific I/O performance. Hopefully down the road solid state disks will help, but at the current time i'm just a little bit depressed about how long my installation of FC8 updates is taking.

And if you are wondering why I'm running this now outdated distro, it's because it matches up well with a particular compiler kit I'm using at the moment.

Soon I will finish rebuilding my development network, which generally includes a WIndows XP Professional PC, an FC8 Tower Workstation, a file server (terrastation) and a laptop. The laptop is ONLY used to remote desktop into the other two systems when I'm working remotely.

I miss Zimbra

Exchange is overly complicated. It's a system designed by committee. It's not that bad, and it has tons of great features, and when it works it's amazing. But when it goes wrong, it goes very VERY wrong.

I miss Zimbra and it's ability to run from a single box and support hundreds of users with zero issue.

If it hadn't been for the crazy timezone issues that were affecting every major calendaring system at the time, we probably would have stayed with it.

I'd definitely use Zimbra again though, and encourage anyone setting up a new startup to give it a shot.

Another tivo updated

I was really bored on Sunday, so I decided to upgrade one of the Tivo units to make it that much easier to record ALL of the Olympics.

Added a 320GB drive to the existing 120GB. Now rolling with approx 512 estimated hours of recording capacity.

I had done this once before with mixed results. I now think that my new bracket system is going to be better, as it offsets the placement of the second hard drive above the first, so that they are not completely flush, hopefully providing some additional room for air to get between them for cooling.

The last time I did this I had problems with stability when both drives were really spinning. Way too much heat. We'll see how the new setup proceeds.

MFSTools is an awesome package, and so easy to use.