Apparently there is an evil bug in the Samba implementation of Ubuntu Server that can cause segmentation faults on all logon attempts. This will affect email, ssh, secured web logins and console logins. Read More...

Tags: ubuntu

Apparently the remote management will fail to install on the latest Ubuntu 8.10 image. This is too bad since it is the recommended remote management tool for Ubuntu 8.10. Read More...

Tags: ubuntu

I need to make some cutout graphics of houses and so I took a run through the available software. Here are the ones that I considered. Read More...

Tags: 3d

With everyone worried about being sucked into a black hole by CERN I tried to imagine what it might be like once we were there. Here are my 10 ideas of how to tell if it has happened. Read More...

Tags: black hole

Having recently had to convert an Indesign project to the ope source Scribus format I found the process a little time consuming but workable once I dug into the Scribus documentation. Sometimes the styles would be forgotten or incorrectly applied for text and adding CMYK text colors was a little complex but overall it worked well and I was able to create a Scribus version of my Indesign file. Read More...

Tags: Open source

Maybe some people link Dell to being easy and efficient but in almost every case I have found them to be unable to deliver in either of those two categories. Read More...

Tags: dell

Now that I’ve finally gotten my hands on my own iphone I thought I would give some of my negative comments (there are certainly a lot of positive marketing so good points should be easy to find. Read More...

Tags: iphone

Although the Apple iPhone is coming out this Friday it seems that the overseas release might still have some hiccups. When I went to a local Swisscom vendor (Manor in Geneva) to ask about it they seemed to be thoroughly confused on all points except the release date. Read More...

Tags: iphone

If you are looking for some manual puzzles for a gift or to while away the time, and you come across puzzles from the Japanese company Hanayama, keep looking. Read More...

Tags: quality

Wow, now that's some advertisment... catchy tune, surreal landscape, cute characters, great story progression. I do not think I have ever watched a publicity 4 times just to catch new tidbits I'd missed. Read More...

Tags: coke, trapcode, Advertisement

Although I still do not know the source of this error (essentially my exchange store stopped being able to mount) the fix was rather obvious. Searching the web did not help though. Microsoft said it was a problem in Exchange 2003 SP1 and Googling showed me many people who gave up and restored their last backup (which of course would be the best solution).

ESEUTIL by itself kept throwing the same JET_errFileIOBeyondEOF error except for eseutil /k "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv.1.edb" This showed that my .edb data was fine but it stopped at the .stm file.

Microsoft(R) Exchange Server Database Utilities
Version 6.5
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Initiating CHECKSUM mode...
Database: C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb
Streaming File: C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.STM
Temp. Database: TEMPCHKSUM5352.EDB


File: C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb

Checksum Status (% complete)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
...................................................


29186 pages seen
0 bad checksums
0 correctable checksums
316 uninitialized pages
0 wrong page numbers
0x42c067 highest dbtime (pgno 0xd4)

1825 reads performed
114 MB read
2 seconds taken
57 MB/second
1809651 milliseconds used
991 milliseconds per read
1516 milliseconds for the slowest read
63 milliseconds for the fastest read

File: C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.STM


So I simply deleted my .stm file and rebuilt it with C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin>eseutil /p /createstm "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb". Voila, it worked and I could mount my Exchange Store! CAUTION: there may be user information in this file. If your users are all Outlook clients it is probably not much used but if your users are IMAP/POP3 users then they may have a lot of information there which will be lost. Q555146. Always make a backup of any file that you are recreating.

Microsoft(R) Exchange Server Database Utilities
Version 6.5
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Initiating REPAIR mode...
Database: C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb
Streaming File: C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\MDBDATA\priv1.STM
Temp. Database: TEMPREPAIR4596.EDB

Checking database integrity.

Scanning Status (% complete)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
...................................................


Scanning the database.

Scanning Status (% complete)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
...................................................


Repairing damaged tables.

Scanning Status (% complete)

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|----|
.........................
Deleting unicode fixup table.
..........................


Repair completed. Database corruption has been repaired!

Note:
It is recommended that you immediately perform a full backup
of this database. If you restore a backup made before the
repair, the database will be rolled back to the state
it was in at the time of that backup.

Operation completed successfully with 595 (JET_wrnDatabaseRepaired, Database cor
ruption has been repaired) after 116.391 seconds.

Below are some additional links to Microsoft support write-ups.
Q313184
Q555146

I thought I would list some of the cool shops for online neat stuff.

• http://www.fatbraintoys.com/


• http://www.rctoys.com


• http://www.thinkgeek.com/


• http://www.powerskip.de


• http://www.physlink.com


• http://www.fascinations.com/


• http://www.timewarptoys.com/

The software raid solutions of Windows 2003 is designed to only allow access to your mirrored data. For example you can install the mirrored disk into another working system to access the folders. It is not designed to be a bootable recovery solution in case the primary disk fails. Simply taking the good working drive and trying to boot from it will fail. You should be able to boot from a boot disk but not boot the mirrored drive itself.

The first most likely problem is that the mirrored drive does not have a MBR. This can be fixed using your Windows Server CD and booting to the recovery console. There you can use the FIXMBR command to write a Master Boot Record to your mirrored drive. Using the Recovery Console will also verify if the mirrored drive has a working system as it will show up as a Windows installation and you will be asked for your Windows Admin password to get access to the console.

You also might not have a proper boot.ini file. You can check this using the recovery console's bootcfg command. For me it worked but I would not rely on this in an emergency. I had simply wanted to move my Windows 2003 installation to a bigger disk so I always had a good backup to fall back on. Normally I would use Acronis workstation to clone my drive but for some reason it would just restart (when booting from the CDROM) everytime I tried to clone my Windows Server's dynamic disk partition.

NOTE: If you are tying to simply duplicate your drive, be sure to not break the mirror with both drives connected. If you do so then one of the drives will receive a new drive letter and probably not be able to boot with it. You should always break the mirror with one of the drives already removed.

Tags: windows, mirror

Usually, using a software package's help system is pretty safe. You can normally rest assured that your work is safe and untouched while you browse different help options. However with MacOSX, some of the help subjects under the main menu launch the menuitem you are researching. This means that if you have a bunch of text selected in Pages and search for how to do a Table of Contents, the first item that shows up will actually insert a Table of Contents where the text selection is... essentially overwriting your text if you are not careful.

Fortunately, these autostart items are marked "Menu Items" in their heading to give you a hint that they are not in fact help text.

Tags: Software

Passing by a local Payot book store in Geneva I was about to purchase a paperback from the States when I took a second look at the price tag. An 8 USD book was selling for 15.80CHF. I remember in the past when the dollar was worth more that this was a common price but now that the dollar has dropped so much in value I was wondering where my savings was with this imported book. Seeing that I was paying almost twice the value of the book I finally put it back and called a friend in the States to order it for me. Even with shipping to Switzerland it would be cheaper than buying it at Payot.

Assuming that iWeb 08 templates for MacOSX have not been pre-tested with major browsers will save you a lot of headaches. If your only visitors will be MacOSX Safari users than you are going to be okay. If you wish other browsers to view and print your website than be ready to do some grueling tests and dig into the source code. For example, using the Comic template and visiting the site with Internet Explorer 7 gives you graphics that are not correctly aligned, printing that does not work and in some cases jammed or inaccessible web pages.

After may hours swimming through the source code and trying different things (not helped by my MacOSX Leopard upgrade making websharing disfunctional) I finally discovered that it was the shadows in this template that were causing all of the problems in their DIV containers. After deactivating shadows in the inspector for every object and text box for every page the site could suddenly print in Internet Explorer. There were a couple of objects (some arrows) that I could not disable the shadows for so I simply took screenshots and saved those objects as jpgs to replace the objects with shadows.

So it is possible to have a compatible website with at least the Comic template but be prepared to test and test and test since it appears that Apple did not.

Note, since I am not a Apple employee I cannot guarantee that tests were not made on other browsers but if they were they must have been subcontracted to Microsoft.

Tags: compatibility, microsoft

This camera has definitely been a disappointment. Below are a few of the problems that we have experienced.

• Pictures are often out of focus
• Indoor lightning is not detected causing poorly colored photos
• the USB connection is USB 1 so it is horribly slow transferring images or video
• instructions for "High ISO" setting say the pictures may come out grainy... yes they do, unusable
• battery indicator only appears when the battery is about to fail... very useful. Otherwise it is hidden
• you cannot use date stamping and the anti-shake feature at the same time
• the anti-shake feature does not work on most of the photos
• low quality view finder (the image are very grainy)

There were 2 pluses for us however.

• it does accept AA batteries
• the video that it does is okay (well okay if you are used to 8mm film quality but that is fine for our home movies)

So, in general, if you can avoid this camera, do so. If you receive it as a gift, just smile and thank the giver.

We picked it up at our local Manor store where they refuse to let you try anything in advance, it is all by recommendation only. That was obviously a mistake.

Tags: coolpix, nikon

Since I have had a long time problem with access to my website (often failed database or webserver connections) I have decided to move everything from my old blog to RapidWeaver for the MacOSX. This allows me faster access to my blog. Since RapidWeaver can only import the Movable Type blog format I needed a way to convert the WordPress information. Fortunately a PHP script already exists to make this work - wp-export-mt.php.

Simply downloading this to your WordPress root directory and then opening it in a web browser will allow you to convert all of your posts into a 1 page text file which uses the Movable Type format. After that you can simply use the import feature of RapidWeaver and voila, a working blog of all of your old posts.

Note: I do not know how this works with comments but it worked great with the posts themselves.

Tags: wordpress