tinyapps.org / blog

Deduping files in Mac OS X #

$ IFS=$'\n'
$ for i in $(fdupes -f ./); do echo deleting: $i; rm $i; done

$ fdupes -rf1 ./ | xargs rm

$ find ./ -size -128k -exec mv {} ../small/ \;
$ find ./ -size -1024k -exec mv {} ../medium/ \;

/mac | Dec 24, 2010

LAN instant messaging #

• IP Messenger (free & open source) In continual development since 1996, this tiny (164k), serverless LAN messenger offers file/folder transfer, RSA/Blowfish encryption, and more. *nix, OS X, iOS, and Java ports also available.
• Softros LAN Messenger (shareware) Interface is similar to (but much cleaner than) Internet messaging apps like Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, and Windows Live Messenger. Features include file transfer, AES encryption, offline messaging, message logging, and serverless operation.

/windows | Dec 12, 2010

nweb: a tiny, safe Web server (static pages only) #

"Have you ever wanted to run a tiny, safe Web server without worrying about using a fully blown Web server that could cause security issues? Do you wonder how to write a program that accepts incoming messages with a network socket? Have you ever just wanted your own Web server to experiment and learn with?

Well, look no further -- nweb is what you need. This is a simple Web server that has only 200 lines of C source code. It runs as a regular user and can't run any server-side scripts or programs, so it can't open up any special privileges or security holes."

/nix | Dec 12, 2010

Kindle Terminal #

/eink | Dec 11, 2010

Recover Internet Explorer autocomplete form strings and more from offline systems #

/windows | Dec 08, 2010

Over 2,000 years later, science catches up with the Stoics #

Radiation Rings Hint Universe Was Recycled Over and Over:

"Most cosmologists trace the birth of the universe to the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. But a new analysis of the relic radiation generated by that explosive event suggests the universe got its start eons earlier and has cycled through myriad episodes of birth and death, with the Big Bang merely the most recent in a series of starting guns."

The Stoics by John M. Rist:

"Each of the early Stoics taught that the universe, after certain definite periods of time (whose duration is never specified), dissolves into fire and so 'purifies' itself ... We can see how this process would have been outlined by Zeno: the universe originally generated from creative fire (pyr technikon); after a period of time it resolved itself once again into pure fire, whence another universe was in turn generated from the pure creative fire. The cosmic process is therefore an infinite series of finite phases of alternate diakosmesis and ekpyrosis."

/misc | Nov 30, 2010

Editing or deleting file metadata in OS X #

$ mdls file.flv
kMDItemContentCreationDate     = 2009-07-30 17:48:06 -1000
kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2009-07-30 17:48:06 -1000
kMDItemContentType             = "com.adobe.flash.video"
...
kMDItemWhereFroms              = (
 "http://s1sdlod053.bcst.cdn.s1s.yimg.com//s1snfs06r05/005/videosearch/90522577.flv..."
)

but cannot edit them. For editing, we need xattr:

$ xattr -l file.flv
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms:
00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 A1 01 5F 11 01 7F 68 74  |bplist00.._...ht|
00000010  74 70 3A 2F 2F 73 31 73 64 6C 6F 64 30 35 33 2E  |tp://s1sdlod053.|
00000020  62 63 73 74 2E 63 64 6E 2E 73 31 73 2E 79 69 6D  |bcst.cdn.s1s.yim|
00000030  67 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 2F 73 31 73 6E 66 73 30 36 72  |g.com//s1snfs06r|
00000040  30 35 2F 30 30 35 2F 76 69 64 65 6F 73 65 61 72  |05/005/videosear|
00000050  63 68 2F 39 30 35 32 32 35 37 37 2E 66 6C 76 3F  |ch/90522577.flv?|
00000060  53 74 72 65 61 6D 49 44 3D 39 30 35 32 32 35 37  |StreamID=9052257|
...

$ xattr -w "com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms"
  "http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/journey-edge-universe/" file.flv

/mac | Nov 30, 2010

Cracking OS X keychain files #

/mac | Nov 25, 2010

Installing Microsoft Office 2011 / uninstalling Office 2008 #

/mac | Nov 24, 2010

Newly added to OS X page #

ThumbsUp 4.5 [512k] Batch create thumbnails via drag-and-drop  📺

(via CyberNet News)

/mac | Nov 24, 2010

Delete temp files for all users #

Windows XP:
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files

Windows Vista/7:
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

/windows | Oct 24, 2010

Coworking spaces continue to grow #

As more and more people continue to follow their joy, leave unpleasant 9 to 5 jobs, and start their own businesses, cool spaces like theOffice and Paragraph will likely grow, providing clean, quiet environments to get work done outside of the home. Kinkos and Starbucks are swell, but they pale in comparison to the atmosphere which these places seem to offer. Rather reminiscent of the wonderful Diogenes Club.

/misc | Oct 17, 2010

Random Kindle notes #

• Instapaper is a must
• If you are using a terminal, make lynx readable by losing the black background: simply comment out the two lines below from /etc/lynx-cur/lynx.lss
  normal:  normal:  lightgray:black
  default:  normal:  white:black
• Google Reader's mobile site defaults to opening links in a new window, which the Kindle does not support. Fix this by heading to Feeds > Settings and uncheck "Open links in a new window". (Note to Jeff: instead of Web Browser could not open this link because opening multiple windows is not supported, why not just ignore the target option and open the link in the same window?)

/eink | Oct 17, 2010

Batch create Kindle collections from document folders #

/eink | Oct 17, 2010

Disable automatic restart after Windows 7 updates #

/windows | Oct 16, 2010

The definitive guide for Linux command line newbies #

/nix | Oct 10, 2010

An orrery for your pocket, projector, wrist, or table #

/misc | Oct 03, 2010

Import 3GP files into iMovie '08 #

Import File
The file will not be imported.
It is not compatible with iMovie.

/mac | Oct 02, 2010

Text editing / shell access on a Kindle 3 #

• Editing text on a Kindle 3
• Terminal / console access on a Kindle 3
• Ubuntu Linux on your Kindle 3
• K3 SSH client

• ed Wikipedia entry
• A few key ed commands explained in brief
• Ed Cheat Sheet
• ed man page
• Text Editing with ed
• Fast editing examples using cat, ed, and sed
• ex Wikipedia entry
• ex detailed guide
• Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly's excellent (and free) Unix Text Processing has a very detailed section on ex beginning on page 178.

Of course, on the system I administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!
...
When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!

/eink | Sep 30, 2010

Find total number of iCal events #

set myText to "Count of events in iCal's calendars." & return
tell application "iCal"
  repeat with myCal in calendars
    set myText to myText & return & (name of myCal) & ": " & (count events of myCal)
  end repeat
end tell
display dialog myText

/mac | Sep 01, 2010

Newly added to the Docs section: #

/nix | Aug 29, 2010

Running Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier in Ubuntu Linux #

1. Download the Linux version
2. Extract unstopcp from unstopcp.gz
3. chmod +x unstopcp or from the GUI: right click unstopcp > Properties > Permissions > check "Allow executing file as a program" > Close
4. Kubuntu users (or others running KDE) can simply double click unstopcp to launch it. GNOME users may find nothing happens after double clicking. Running unstopcp from the Terminal reveals: unstopcp: error while loading shared libraries: libqt-mt.so.3: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. libqt-mt is the Trolltech Qt library, necessary for running KDE3 apps.
5. Head to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager, do a quick search for "libqt3-mt" and install it.
6. Now GNOME users should be able to launch unstopcp successfully:
   
7. Notes:
   • Logging and auto skipping of damaged files can be enabled under the "Settings" tab.
   • Had to launch with sudo in order to copy user files from an OS X HFS+ volume (as permissions are maintained across platforms).
   • To copy directories instead of a single file, put a trailing asterisk in the Source path (see screenshot above), otherwise nothing will be copied.

/nix | Aug 24, 2010

Generate HTML index page of images or other HTML files #

• 🌱 Pich [7k] + Generates an HTML page of all images (JPG, GIF, PNG) in the current directory and (optionally) subdirectories.  📺
• 🌱 HTI (Hyper-Text Index) 0.5 [16k] {S}+ Generates an index page of HTML files. Includes titles, meta descriptions, and H1 - H6 headings. ANSI C source code available on request, on a "don't laugh" basis.  📺

/windows | Aug 23, 2010

Dwelling #

• "Small rooms or dwellings set the mind in the right path, large ones cause it to go astray."
  —Leonardo da Vinci, MS. 2038, Bib. Nat. 16 r.

• "For my part, as I grow older I am more and more inclined to reduce my baggage, to lop off superfluities. I become more and more in love with simple things and simple folk—a small house, a hut in the woods, a tent on the shore. The show and splendor of great houses, elaborate furnishings, stately halls, oppress me, impose upon me. They fix the attention upon false values, they set up a false standard of beauty; they stand between me and the real feeders of character and thought."
  —John Burroughs, The Gospel of Nature

• "Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement."
  —William Morris, The Prospects of Architecture

• "There is an old story about a famous rabbi living in Europe who was visited one day by a man who had traveled by ship from New York to see him. The man came to the great rabbi's dwelling, a large house on a street in a European city, and was directed to the rabbi's room, which was in the attic. He entered to find the master living in a room with a bed, a chair, and a few books. The man expected much more. After greetings, he asked, 'Rabbi, where are your things?' The rabbi asked in return, 'Well, where are yours?' His visitor replied, 'But, Rabbi, I'm only passing through,' and the master answered, 'So am I, so am I.'"
  —Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart

• "Turn yourself into gold and then live wherever you please."
  —Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

/misc | Aug 20, 2010

OS X: Mount disks as read only or block automounting altogether #

Aaron Burghardt's open source Disk Arbitrator provides a simple GUI for changing OS X's automount behavior. Automounting can be disabled completely (especially handy for drive imaging / data recovery via ddrescue, etc) or mounts can be forced as read-only (for forensics, etc, though a hardware write-blocker is still recommended).

This little app replaces the following hacks I've been using to prevent automounting of USB / Firewire drives in OS X:

• biovizier's sudo chflags uchg /Volumes

• Ryan Kubasiak's backup and removal of /etc/mach_init.d/diskarbitrationd.plist for Tiger. This one was new to me, and Ryan kindly informs us that it is the only way to disable Disk Arbitration under 10.4.

• Charles Edge's launchctl stop 0×10abe0.diskarbitrationd for Leopard

• Matt's sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.diskarbitrationd.plist for Snow Leopard. This method (and probably the one above) has the unfortunate side effect of disabling diskutil: "Unable to run because unable to use the DiskManagement framework. Common reasons include, but are not limited to, the DiskArbitration framework being unavailable due to being booted in single-user mode."

Updates

1. Aaron kindly replied to my email, pointing out that the "stop" command (since removed) isn't necessary in the fourth method above and that pausing/resuming diskarbitrationd with SIGSTOP and SIGCONT offers another option (though it too disables diskutil):

      $ sudo launchctl list | grep diskarbitrationd
      188 -   com.apple.diskarbitrationd
      $ sudo kill -SIGSTOP 188 # pauses diskarbitrationd, disabling automount
      $ sudo kill -SIGCONT 188 # resumes diskarbitrationd, reenabling automount
   

2. More on disabling Disk Arbitration from Apple Examiner.

3. Mount USB drives as read-only in Windows

4. As of mid 2024, Disk Arbitrator development has been stalled for a number of years; see Aaron Beckley's fork with patches to allow compiling under macOS 14.5 and Xcode 15.4.

/mac | Aug 17, 2010

Web browser security analysis #

• Windows OS support expiration
• Browser version (IE 6.0+, Firefox 3.0+, Chrome 4.0+)
• Adobe Flash Player
• Adobe Reader 5.x and above
• Adobe Shockwave Player
• Apple Quicktime
• BEA JRockit
• Microsoft Silverlight
• Microsoft Windows Media Player
• Real Player
• Sun Java
• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) plug-in for Mozilla browsers

/misc | Aug 14, 2010

OS X: Get OS version info in Terminal #

$ sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.6.4
BuildVersion:   10F569
$ sw_vers -productVersion
10.6.4

Especially handy when resetting a password in single user mode, since the method varies based on which version of OS X is running.

Update 1

Here's another way to check; great for use on offline OS X installs:

$ grep -2 ProductVersion /Volumes/OfflineVolumeName/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist
	<key>ProductUserVisibleVersion</key>
	<string>10.11.6</string>
	<key>ProductVersion</key>
	<string>10.11.6</string>

Update 2

• Get serial number: system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk '/Serial/ {print $4}'
• Get model identifier: sysctl -n hw.model

Update 3

system_profiler can query all sorts of hardware information, e.g., system_profiler SPSerialATADataType | grep "Medium" to check whether the internal drive is Rotational or Solid State. Run system_profiler -listDataTypes to list the available datatypes; see Get OS X System Info from the Command Line for more information.

Update 4

In Linux, find model identifier and serial number via dmidecode -t system.

Update 5

Under macOS 10.12 Sierra or higher, retrieve serial number via ioreg -l | grep IOPlatformSerialNumber.

/mac | Aug 14, 2010

Getting Google to index your Blosxom blog correctly #

I originally asked (and answered) this question on Doctype, and reproduce it here (with slight modifications) for other Blosxom users:

Blosxom creates multiple copies of the same entry in different directories. For example, a given entry would have:

• its own unique URL
• a place in the topic index
• a place in the month index
• a place in the year index

I wanted Google to prefer the first entry, since it makes finding content easier. I tried using robots.txt to exclude indexing of the topic and date indexes, but then Google ignores or cannot find the unique URLs either.

I ended up adding

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">

to the blog index pages via this one-liner

find -name index.html -print0 | xargs -0 perl -pi -e 's/<head>/<head>\n<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">/g'

at the end of my static publishing routine.

That way, search engines can find the canonical URLs, but will ignore all of the topic and date index pages.

UPDATE 1: Just found someone with the same issue who also solved it with "noindex, follow".

UPDATE 2: After a few weeks Google was properly indexing my site, and continues to do so after more than a month.

UPDATE 3: Another report of using robots meta tag to fix search engine indexing.

/blosxom | Aug 13, 2010

OS X: Printing in grayscale #

1. Paper Type/Quality
2. Color Options
3. Grayscale
4. Black Print Cartridge Only

/mac | Aug 07, 2010

Free web app vulnerability scanning #

/nix | Jul 14, 2010

Cross platform testing and benchmarking suite #

/nix | Jul 09, 2010

Skype Test Call contact missing #

"To test your sound set up in any version of Skype, use the Skype Test Call robot - find it in your contact list."

/misc | Jul 09, 2010

Malware analysis and forensic investigation environments #

• Mass Malware Analysis: A Do-It-Yourself Kit - "Theory, practice and a construction manual for an automated analysis station for malware using trivial and free instruments."
• Minibis - "Software and tips to easily build up an automated malware analysis station based on a concept introduced in the paper 'Mass Malware Analysis: A Do-It-Yourself Kit'".
• REMnux "is a lightweight Linux distribution for assisting malware analysts in reverse-engineering malicious software. The distribution is based on Ubuntu and is maintained by Lenny Zeltser."
• SANS Investigative Forensic Toolkit (SIFT) Workstation "is a VMware Appliance that is pre-configured with all the necessary tools to perform a detailed digital forensic examination. It is compatible with Expert Witness Format (E01), Advanced Forensic Format (AFF), and raw (dd) evidence formats. The brand new version has been completely rebuilt on an Ubuntu base with many additional tools and capabilities that can match any modern forensic tool suite."

/nix | Jul 09, 2010

Safari 5 hearts OpenDNS #

• The New Safari 5 is Too Slow
• Slow Browsing with Safari? Recent odd behavior?
• Safari 5.0 too slow
• Safari 5 slow to load pages and fails to resolve addresses

/mac | Jun 30, 2010

Flash Cookies #

/misc | Jun 29, 2010

Smartphone remote kill switches #

• Android: Android also gives Google remote app installation power
• iPhone: Apple's Jobs confirms iPhone 'kill switch'
• webOS: App Catalog 'kill switch' live in webOS 1.2
• Windows Mobile: Windows Mobile 6.5 joins the ranks of iPhone and Android with its own app kill switch

/misc | Jun 26, 2010

Convert raw disk image or physical disk to virtual machine #

"Live View is a Java-based graphical forensics tool that creates a VMware virtual machine out of a raw (dd-style) disk image or physical disk. This allows the forensic examiner to 'boot up' the image or disk and gain an interactive, user-level perspective of the environment, all without modifying the underlying image or disk. Because all changes made to the disk are written to a separate file, the examiner can instantly revert all of his or her changes back to the original pristine state of the disk. The end result is that one need not create extra 'throw away' copies of the disk or image to create the virtual machine.

Live View is capable of booting

• Full disk raw images
• Bootable partition raw images
• Physical Disks (attached via a USB or Firewire bridge)
• Specialized and closed image formats (using 3rd party image mounting software)

Containing the following operating systems

• Windows 2008, Vista, 2003, XP, 2000, NT, Me, 98
• Linux (limited support)

Behind the scenes, Live View automates a wide array of technical tasks. Some of these include: resolving hardware conflicts resulting from booting on hardware other than that on which the OS was originally installed; creating a customized MBR for partition-only images; and correctly specifying a virtual disk to match the original image or physical disk."

• raw2vmdk - Mount raw images as VMDK virtual disks
• xmount - Convert on-the-fly between multiple input and output harddisk image types
• mbrChunker - Converts raw dd images to vmdk files (as of 20100812, this is now dd2vmdk)

   A disk read error occurred
   Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

   ERROR>     Snapshot Creation Failed
   ERROR>     Problem preparing partition1 for launch
   VM Launch Failed

/windows | Jun 18, 2010

Generate wordlists with crunch #

/nix | Jun 13, 2010

The Peaceful Mind #

• Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company. -- Seneca
• A peaceful mind is your most precious capital. -- Sivananda
• A man is what he thinks about all day long. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
• He who always dwells within himself becomes possessed of very ample means. -- Henry Suso
• The man in contemplation is a free man. He needs nothing. Therefore nothing determines or distorts his thought. He does whatever he loves to do, and what he does is done for its own sake. -- Aristotle

/misc | Jun 05, 2010

POP, IMAP, and Exchange client for Android #

1. It works
2. Option to Bcc a copy of sent mail (ideal for POP accounts)

/misc | May 25, 2010

Newly listed full-screen text editors #

/windows | May 23, 2010

Windows Firewall alternative #

/windows | May 23, 2010

Ubuntu 10.04: Bypass minimum password length / complexity requirements #

/nix | May 18, 2010

Blosxom.com and Blosxom plugin registry listing mirror #

/blosxom | May 14, 2010

Send To SFTP for Mac OS X #

/mac | May 12, 2010

Free PDF to DOC converters #

/misc | May 10, 2010

Delete / remove blank pages from a PDF #

Removing Blank Pages from a PDF

Friday, January 28 2005 @ 09:27 AM PST
Contributed by: Admin

Here is an idea for how to remove blank pages from a PDF using pdftotext and pdftk. It is based on a recent posting to comp.text.pdf.

demunn@yahoo.com wrote:
> Hello all,

> Sorry if this is a recurrent question. I'm rendering/printing an HTML
>  document from a web-based program to a pdf file. The web-based
> program has minimal features to control pagination, etc. (I know
> web-based print control is relatively primitive) and the outcome is
> unwanted blank pages in the PDF output file.

> Anyway, I'm basically looking for a program that will allow me batch 
> process a folder of PDF files and strip out the blank pages. Is there
>  any programs or utilities that will do this? Any suggestions are
> greatly appreciated

> DM

Here is one simple idea that assumes that all non-blank pages have
(extractable) text on them.

1. Use pdftotext (from the xpdf project) to convert mydoc.pdf to
mydoc.txt. Pdftotext uses the formfeed character (0x0c) to mark page breaks.

2. Scan mydoc.txt looking for pages with no text. Record these page
indexes (start counting at page 1, not zero).

3. If you find blank pages, use pdftk to remove them. Construct the
pdftk command line using the page indexes you collected in step 2. For
example, to drop page 3, say:

   pdftk mydoc.pdf cat 1-2 4-end output mydoc.noblanks.pdf

It shouldn't be too hard to write such a shell script, eh?

Sid Steward
http://www.AccessPDF.com/pdftk/

---

The Script

Using bash (via MSYS) on my Win2k machine, I have strung some commands together that identify PDF pages with no extractable text on them. I don't say "blank pages," because sometimes a non-blank PDF page has no extractable text on it.

#!/bin/sh
#
# find_textless_pdf_pages.sh
# bash script for MSYS; also requires pdftotext (xpdf);
#
# identify PDF pages that have no extractable text on them;
# linux users might need to omit the -c sed option and then
# drop the 'R' from the sed script;
#
# invoke like so:
#  find_textless_pdf_pages.sh mydoc.pdf
#
pdftotext $1 - |
tr "FRfr" "frFR" |
sed -c -n '/^FR$/{ N; /^FRnFR$/a
PageNoText
/^FRnFR$/!a
Page
D; }'

Command Breakdown

pdftotext - converts the input PDF file into text. It uses the formfeed character (f) to mark page breaks.

tr - translates characters. Sed doesn't see non-printing ASCII characters such as f or r (carriage return). So, translate R->r, F->f, and f->F, r->R.

sed - the stream editor. I discuss sed here. If it finds a line that is just "FR", then it looks ahead to see if the next line is also "FR". If it is, then it prints "PageNoText". If it isn't, then it prints "Page". Finally, it uses the D command to continue processing with just the second line of text.

I'll continue working on this script as time permits.

/nix | May 10, 2010

Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 vs S1500 #

/misc | May 10, 2010

Display atime, ctime, and mtime for a file #

$ stat foo
  File: foo
  Size: 221       	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 801h/2049d	Inode: 540949      Links: 1
Access: (0700/-rwx------)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2006-12-04 07:00:00.000000000 -1000
Modify: 2006-12-04 07:00:00.000000000 -1000
Change: 2010-05-08 10:01:29.000000000 -1000

stat also accepts wildcards: $ stat *.txt

/nix | May 08, 2010

Boot any and all ISO images from USB drive #

• How to install Windows from USB: WinSetupFromUSB with GUI - Supports multiple Windows XP/2Kx sources in the same partition; BartPE/WinBulder/UBCD4Win/WinFLPC (NOT ramdisk versions) to any primary partition; Vista/Windows 7/Server 2008 setup to different primary partitions; PartedMagic; other grub4dos CD emulation compatible ISOs; SyLinux bootsector as a file, and optionally a directory, containing a Linux distro booting off SysLinux.
• The Multipass USB Project - Uses PeToUSB, grubinst and grubfordos to boot: Trinity Rescue Kit, Kon-Boot, Ophcrack, DBAN, Hiren's 9.9, Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD, Windows 7 Install DVD, BackTrack 4, and Macrium Reflect from a single USB drive.
• Creating a multiboot USB drive (PDF) - Tested with Acronis True Image, FreeDOS, MemTest86+, Ultimate Boot CD, and WinPE.
• Shardana Antivirus Rescue Disk - Supports bootable antivirus utilities, Linux LiveCDs, and Windows PE discs.
• Guide for Multi-booting from a USB Drive
• Guide for MultiBoot USB-stick with boot.ini Menu
• Aeroboot 2010 - Scriptable Graphic Multiboot Menu System. Multiboot DVD by Aero step by step | Run AeroStudio ISO from USB Flash Drive
• miniPE, BackTrack and Knoppix in an USB pen
• How to set up a USB Flash key to boot to WinPE+BartPE+MS-DOS+FreeDOS, Using RMPrepUSB
• Multi Multi Multi Boot USB HD, Backtrack 3, XP SP3 Installation, Ultimate Boot CD
• Use ISOEmu boot installation ISO image from hard disk
• Creating Multiboot USB flash drive step by step
• Multiboot USB (PE, Linux And DOS) using Syslinux, GRUB4DOS and/or multiple partitions
• WinBuilder - A script engine that will run projects developed by several authors which produce very efficient boot disks available for several Windows platforms.
• Mk-boot-usb: a Script to Create Multiple-Bootable USB Keys
• Guide to Create a multi-boot rescue USB flash drive
• Roll Your Own Multiboot Usb Flash Drive
• MultiBoot USB with Grub2 (boot directly from iso files)
• multicd.sh - Combine several CDs into one multicd.sh is a shell script designed to build a multiboot CD image containing many different Linux distributions and/or utilities.
• Billix: Multi-Boot USB Key distribution
• UNetbootin - Allows for installation of Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, and various other Linux distributions from Windows or Linux without a CD
• liveusb-creator - Cross-platform tool for easily installing live operating systems on to USB flash drives.

The more robust solutions were generally quite tedious, and none of them worked for all ISO images, as explained here: Boot "any" ISO image or boot "all" ISO images.

Having recently stumbled upon a floppy drive emulator, I started looking for a USB CD/DVD drive emulator and finally found a way to boot any ISO image from USB drive: the iodd 2501 (newer Zalman models available - see update 5 below). It is a 2.5" SATA drive enclosure with an LED display to select the desired ISO image. Simply create a "_ISO" directory in the drive root and dump your ISO images inside. That's it! The enclosure also has a write protect switch and eSATA support.

The iodd 2501 has booted every ISO image I have thrown at it, on both PC and Mac hardware. When I first tried using the device, the LED would only report "NO-_ISO", despite having followed the instructions exactly. It turns out that formatting as FAT32 in OS X's Disk Utility was the problem; I simply used fat32format under Windows and the problem was solved (NTFS and exFAT are supported with a firmware upgrade).

I purchased mine from LinITX; they've got detailed instructions, videos, and great customer service.

UPDATES:

1. John Rothlisberger wrote in to ask if ISO images can be changed on the fly during an install. After testing with a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2 disc set I am happy to report that they can.
2. Curtis Reno has started a neat project to build an open source USB CD emulator using inexpensive components. Announcement | Fourm
3. isostick is a similar CD emulator that uses microSD cards and a USB Flash drive adapter. Sadly, it only supports FAT32, though large ISO files can be split.
4. Finally got around to updating the firmware on my original iodd 2501. Since the English support site is gone now, here are the necessary files and instructions in case anyone else needs them (current as of May 2013).
5. Zalman (which took over iodd development) continues to improve the hardware, recently adding hardware encryption and more. Current models include the ZM-VE400, ZM-VE300, ZM-VE200 SE, and ZM-VE200.
6. The only problem I've encountered with these virtual ODDs is booting some Dell models when a physical ODD is present; simply unplug the physical ODD to circumvent.
7. iodd (branded now as IODD) is back in the game with a number of products including the diminutive IODD MINI.
8. Ventoy "is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/EFI files." Over 470 ISO images have been successfully tested, but OS X/macOS images are not supported.

/misc | May 08, 2010

Knoppix 6: Mount NTFS drive as writable #

1. If you've already clicked on the NTFS device icon within PCMan File Manager, right click the icon again and select "Unmount File System" (since Knoppix mounts the drive as read-only from the GUI).
2. Launch Terminal Emulator and run fdisk to identify the NTFS partition:
   $ sudo fdisk -l
3. Mount the device (/dev/sda1 in this example) as writable:
   $ sudo ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
4. When finished, be sure to unmount:
   $ sudo umount /mnt/sda1

/nix | May 01, 2010

Safari 4: Bookmark all tabs in all windows #

/mac | May 01, 2010

Randomize lines with custom delimiter #

%

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Seneca

%

There is an old story about a famous rabbi living in Europe who was visited one day by a man who had traveled by ship from New York to see him. The man came to the great rabbi's dwelling, a large house on a street in a European city, and was directed to the rabbi's room, which was in the attic. He entered to find the master living in a room with a bed, a chair, and a few books. The man expected much more. After greetings, he asked, "Rabbi, where are your things?" The rabbi asked in return, "Well, where are yours?" His visitor replied, "But, Rabbi, I'm only passing though," and the master answered, "So am I, so am I."

Jack Kornfield

%

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.

William Morris

%

$ rl -d% quotes.txt > randomized_quotes.txt

/nix | Apr 29, 2010

Transfer large files directly between computers on the Net #

• Gigatribe - "allows you to share all your documents, movies, pictures, directly from your hard drive with your friends over the Internet"
• Hamachi - "a hosted VPN service that securely connects devices and networks"
• Opera Unite - "share content directly with friends, without having to upload anything to a Web site"

• You and your fellow sharers must trust the service provider
• You and your fellow sharers must download and install the appropriate client software
• You and your fellow sharers must sign up for accounts with the service provider

1. On server: System Preferences > Sharing > check "Remote Login"
2. On server router: Forward port 22 to server
3. On client: Use a SFTP client (either the included CLI sftp or a GUI-based app like Transmit, CyberDuck, YummyFTP, etc) to connect to the external IP address of the server - instant file sharing!

/mac | Apr 28, 2010

Shrink PDF file sizes with ShrinkIt #

/mac | Apr 27, 2010

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved. #

The disk cannot be partitioned because some files cannot be moved.
Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again.

You've got some big file(s) I can't move. Find 'em (find ./ -size +100M) and get 'em off the disk, or just use iDefrag instead.

You need to move big_file.iso to another disk before Boot Camp setup can continue.

/mac | Apr 27, 2010

Hard drive enclosure with write protect switch #

/misc | Apr 26, 2010

Newly-added hex editor #

🌱 HxD 1.7.7.0 [789k] + Hex editor / disk editor / RAM editor with support for huge file sizes ("if it fits on a disk/drive you can open it"). Features include: fast find and replace, checksum calculation, file shredding, concatenation or splitting of files, statistics, and more.  📺

/windows | Apr 24, 2010

Oh, you didn't need that boot loader, did you? #

Unfortunately, these "reserved" sectors of the hard drive aren't necessarily a safe place for data. And they're an especially dicey place to keep licensing information ... Data compression utilities, "multiboot" utilities, password protection and encryption software, and sector translation software (which allows older computer systems to accept today's huge hard drives) may also reside in this area.

/windows | Apr 24, 2010

Open source hex editor for OS X #

/mac | Apr 22, 2010

Full-screen, portable text editor #

/windows | Apr 22, 2010

Excellent freeware firewall for Vista and Windows 7 #

/windows | Apr 21, 2010

Changing / spoofing your MAC address in Windows and OS X #

• Windows: Expand HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Check "DriverDesc" in each of the four-digit subkeys to find the desired network interface. Add or edit the string value "NetworkAddress" and make its value the desired MAC address (no colons or dashes necessary). Disable and enable the network adapter - it is now assigned the new MAC address.
• OS X Ethernet: $ ifconfig en0 lladdr 02:01:02:03:04:05  or  $ ifconfig en0 ether 02:01:02:03:04:05
• OS X Airport Extreme 2.0:
  $ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -z
$ sudo ifconfig en1 lladdr 00:11:22:33:44:55

/misc | Apr 21, 2010

4DOS > 4NT > TCC LE #

/windows | Apr 21, 2010

OS X Address Book contacts not syncing with iPhone #

1. Backup. Backup. Backup.
2. Export all contacts from the OS X Address Book as a vCard (attempting to use an Address Book Archive instead did not resolve the sync issue). Note that groups are lost during this process.
3. Delete all contacts and groups from the OS X Address Book and then quit Address Book.
4. Delete ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Address Book
5. Delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.*
6. Delete all files and folders inside of ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook. Note that images are lost during this process. See mont3's original post for information on saving them first.
7. Open /Applications/iSync.app and click iSync > Preferences > Reset Sync History... Reset Sync History.
8. Import the vCard containing all of your contacts into Address Book.
9. While holding the Command and Option keys (to prevent auto sync), plug in your iPhone. If "iTunes is running in safe mode" message appears, click "Continue" while continuing to hold the Command and Option keys.
10. Click the iPhone icon under "Devices" and then click the "Info" tab.
11. Make sure "Sync Address Book contacts" is set to sync "All contacts". For good measure you may want to select "Contacts" under "Replace information on this iPod:" if you don't mind having the Mac overwrite the iPhone on the next sync only.
12. Click "Sync".

/mac | Apr 21, 2010

Migrate from Windows Mail to Apple Mail #

UPDATE: See eml to mbx converters

/windows | Apr 21, 2010

Extract strings from raw disk device or image #

$ sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk2 bs=512 | strings -a
QpQp
EFI PART
BSD  4.4
pEFI        FAT32   
Non-system disk
Press any key to reboot
RRaA
rrAaA'
...

$ sudo dcfldd if=/dev/rdisk2 bs=512 | strings -a
QpQp
EFI PART
...
6144 blocks (3Mb) written.EFI        (
124928 blocks (61Mb) written.
...

$ hexdump /dev/rdisk2
0000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*

$ od -v /dev/rdisk2
0000000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000010 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000020 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
...

/mac | Apr 14, 2010

Computer simulators and assembly language learning tools #

6502 is an integrated macro assembler, simulator and debugger for 650x microprocessor family. Lets you write, test and run 6502/65c02 programs

Assembler Visual Builder is a web-based Java applet that allows you to create an assembly language program and to simulate running the program. The simulator shows you the machine cycle - the fetch, decode, execute steps - as each assembly instruction is executed.

CPU Sim is an interactive Java-based CPU simulator for use in introductory computer organization classes. It allows users to design simple computer CPU's at the microcode level and to run machine-language or assembly-language programs on those CPU's through simulation. It can be used to simulate a variety of architectures, including accumulator-based, RISC-like, or stack-based (such as the JVM) architectures.

EASy68K is a 68000 Structured Assembly Language IDE. EASy68K allows you to edit, assemble and run 68000 programs on a Windows PC or Wine.

emu8086 is an 8086 microprocessor emulator with integrated assembler and tutorials for beginners. The emulator runs programs like the real microprocessor in step-by-step mode. It shows registers, memory, stack, variables and flags. All memory values can be investigated and edited by a double click. The instructions can be executed back and forward. emu8086 can create a tiny operating system and write its binary code to a bootable floppy disk. The software package includes several external virtual devices: robot, stepper motor, led display, and traffic lights intersection. Additional devices can be created.

Lia is a simple computer simulator and assembly editor written in pure Java. It enables you to write/edit/save your "assembly" files and then execute the code using the built-in simulator. A list representing the memory contents is available at all times so the programmer can see what is really happening. Full source code included.

LogicSim allows you to design and simulate digital logic circuits with logic gates like AND, OR, FlipFlop, etc.

Logisim is an educational tool for designing and simulating digital logic circuits. Circuit layouts can be used as "subcircuits" of other circuits, allowing for hierarchical circuit design. (via David Gould)

MARS (MIPS Assembler and Runtime Simulator) is a lightweight interactive development environment (IDE) for programming in MIPS assembly language, intended for educational-level use with Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design.

SPIM is a self-contained simulator that will run MIPS32 assembly language programs. It reads and executes assembly language programs written for this processor. SPIM also provides a simple debugger and minimal set of operating system services. SPIM does not execute binary (compiled) programs.

TOM Computer Simulator is designed for computer architecture and programming courses. TOM stands for Thoroughly Obedient Moron, and consists of a number of components each designed to teach the fundamentals of computing via simple interactions.

/misc | Apr 14, 2010

Memory lane #

/misc | Apr 12, 2010

Grep is greedy; make it less so #

<span class="a">text</span>

\<span class=\"a\"\>.*\<\/span\>

<span class="a">text</span><span class="b">more text</span>

\<span class=\"a\"\>.*?\<\/span\>

UPDATE 1: Wikipedia has more on lazy quantification: "... modern regular expression tools allow a quantifier to be specified as lazy (also known as non-greedy, reluctant, minimal, or ungreedy) by putting a question mark after the quantifier (e.g., <.*?>) ..."

UPDATE 2: To match multiline patterns in TextWrangler's grep, start the expression with (?s). According to the BBEdit-TextWrangler Regular Expression Cheat-Sheet m (multiline) "allows the grep engine to match at ^ and $ after and before at \r or \n" and s (magic dot) "allows . to match \r and \n".

/mac | Apr 11, 2010

Batch download YouTube videos from the command line #

youtube-dl 2010.04.04: Written in Python; public domain license; excellent documentation; runs under *nix, OS X, Windows; works with latest YouTube changes. First attempt to batch download in bash returned an error:

$ youtube-dl.sh -o %(title)s.%(ext)s --batch-file urls.txt --best-quality --no-overwrites
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

$ youtube-dl.sh -o '%(title)s.%(ext)s' --batch-file urls.txt --best-quality --no-overwrites

$ grep -o '/watch?v=.\{11\}' source.htm | sed 's/^/http:\/\/youtube.com/' | uniq > urls.txt

UPDATE 1: To specify the desired quality format, use -f #, where # is one of the format values shown in the first row below:

(Above table is from Wikipedia's YouTube entry)

UPDATE 2: Video Backup Fusion offers an easy way to save all upload or playlist URLs to a text file (the download function seems to have broken as of May 2014). Source code and binaries available for Windows, Linux, and Haiku. You may want to uncheck "Show video thumbnails" in Settings and change the "Max. videos in list" value to 5000 (the maximum it will accept). Highlight all results, right click, select "Copy url(s)", and paste into your favorite text editor.

UPDATE 3: It's been almost 5 years since this post, but youtube-dl is still going strong, having just been updated yesterday (2015-03-28). Here are two more neat ideas from a HN thread:

• Download just the audio portion of a video: $ youtube-dl --extract-audio --ffmpeg-location /path/to/ffmpeg&ffprobe $URL
• Watch live streams without Adobe Flash Player: $ youtube-dl -o- $URL | mplayer -

/nix | Apr 11, 2010

Unpack / extract .MSI file contents #

1. Downloaded dbg_x86_6.7.05.1.exe
2. Dropped dbg_x86_6.7.05.1.exe onto UniExtract.exe, which extracted dbg_x86.msi
3. Dropped dbg_x86.msi onto MSIUnPack.vbs, which extracted the entire Debugging Tools for Windows directory

/windows | Apr 07, 2010

Best organic Japanese tea source on the Net #

/misc | Apr 01, 2010

Tiny command-line disk/partition apps for DOS/Windows #

• Findpart - Searches for lost FAT, NTFS, HPFS, BeOS and Linux ext2, ext3 and swap partitions. To search for reiserfs partitions, add "reiser" to the command line.
• FindNTFS - NTFS data recovery tool. Lists the content of an NTFS partition, or copies files.
• FindExt2 - Searches for Linux ext2 and ext3 superblocks and calculates possible partition location.
• ReadExt2 - ext2/ext3 recovery tool. Lists the content of an Ext2/3 partition, or copies files.
• Findword - Searches a disk for occurrences of a word or sentence.
• FindJPG - Attempts to copy JPG files without file system usage.
• FindDoc - Attempts to copy DOC and XLS files without file system usage.

/windows | Mar 31, 2010

Fix your Kindle's tiny fonts #

/eink | Mar 31, 2010

Cropping PDFs #

Three scripts for cropping PDFs (especially useful for making PDFs easier to read on a Kindle):

• Bash: Crop PDFs

• Perl: pdfcrop | pdfcrop 2 (download)

• Python: PDFCrop

Before and after screenshots via PDFCrop:

Before	After

Updates

• Just stumbled onto soPDF, a Windows app (Linux port available) that is very fast and effective at removing white space: $ sopdf -i input.pdf -o output.pdf -m 2.

• Optimizing PDFs for E Ink displays

• Tips and examples on combining briss with soPdf or K2pdfopt.

• Delete content cropped from PDFs in Preview

/nix | Mar 31, 2010

Remove PDF copy/print restrictions #

/misc | Mar 30, 2010

Store and read HTML files on the Kindle 2 #

1. Copy .html files to a new top level directory, e.g., "html"
2. Launch Basic Web (wireless must be enabled) and enter URL like file:///mnt/us/html/file.html

1. Change file extension from .html to .txt before copying to "documents" on the Kindle
2. That's it! Just open your file from the Kindle home screen - basic formatting (h1, p, i, etc) is preserved.

/eink | Mar 27, 2010

Rob Reed builds a better Blosxom with Ode #

• a single Perl script
• with content generated from plain text files
• and look/layout determined by standard (X)HTML and CSS.

• On Blosxom: I'm a big believer in (the vision of) blosxom. In fact, as crazy as it may sound, blosxom played a part in my decision to go back to school to get a masters in computer science. Of course there was more to it than just blosxom, and it's certainly not necessary to get a degree in CS to understand blosxom, but I think blosxom is an important project, and I wanted to explore that idea. So, long story short, it's fair to say that Ode owes a lot to blosxom. Anyone who understands the why of blosxom will almost certainly get what Ode is all about.
  
  
• On Ode: The project's motto is "Ode is simple" with the qualification that "Simple means you know how it works". I wanted to do something that blurred the line between end user and developer by making Ode accessible to anyone who was interested. To that end in addition to the normal sort of documentation there's a narrative walk-through of the source code similar to what I did with blosxom but with more discussion about not just what the code is doing, but why. I put together a lot of other resources as well, including diagrams related to the flow of execution, and a bunch of other stuff.
  
  
• On Twitter: ... like inventing the telegraph after the telephone and insisting that its limitations somehow represent unique value.
  
  
• On Facebook: Ask yourself if you're comfortable handing over all of your content to a service that you have no control over for the luxury of wading through ads, and then hoping that they don't change the terms of service at a moment's notice in such a way that you're no longer comfortable with their policies ... Perhaps more important is the fact that we already have a web. If you're like me, you don't see the need to build a web on top of the web and put it in the hands of a single commercial entity. Something about that just doesn't feel like a step in the right direction.
  
  
• On hiring developers: I don't agree with most of what [name removed] has to say about what it takes to be a successful software developer (and what to look for when hiring developers). In fact, if I could invent a machine into which I could feed everything he's written about hiring developers and have it spit out the exact opposite, that advice is probably closer to how I'd do it. I'm a believer in loyalty, potential, personal responsibility, and shared ownership of projects, even in a professional setting. I also don't believe in tricking people into revealing to you whether they'll be good at the job you're interviewing them for; or testing as a substitute for getting to know people. I'm surprised at how invested companies are in hiring people who are good at getting hired, not people who will be good at the job they're being hired to do (and also who will be pleasant to be around for the next 1-10 years).
  
  
• On "social networking": The web has been social from the very beginning :) ... that gets to the heart of what ode is about. I wanted to put together a simple platform that would allow a user to experience the web as it was intended to be - a distributed, collaborative space where everyone is able to contribute (as well as consume). A "more than the sum of its parts" platform that plays well out on the open web. A tool for anyone who believes that permanence and substance are of primary importance.
  
  

/blosxom | Mar 25, 2010

Computing like it's 1989 #

The AEIN is now transitioning to a free service. Members who purchased paid memberships will retain the benefits promised at the time they signed up. New users can click here to download the AEIN software. All extra benefits have been eliminated for new members, but users can still access a wide range of ad-free content; news, weather, recipes, reviews, computer tips, world time, technical information, etc. New development has come to an end, although news and weather updates will continue.

/windows | Mar 22, 2010

iText Express 3.4: TextEdit on steroids #

/mac | Mar 20, 2010

Automatically adjust color temperature of display based on time of day #

/misc | Mar 12, 2010

Random Data File Creator #

/windows | Mar 07, 2010

An embarrassment of riches #

These binaries are compiled with the free version of Microsoft Visual C++. They are not linked with the standard C or C++ libraries that comes with this compiler, instead they are linked with a dynamic library I call minwcrt (Minimal Windows C Run-Time Library) linking them to crtdll.dll instead of msvcrt.dll. This makes them run in all versions of Win32 without additional dll files. This is also the reason why the exe files are very small. Source for this library is available as part of the source archive mentioned in the top of this document.

• joindomain [1.44K] Join a computer to a domain from the command line
• popdump [5.09K] Retrieves all messages from a POP3 mailbox and dumps them as eml files
• popman [5.34K] List/delete messages directly on POP server
• strarc [23.2K] Backup/archive tool that uses the same backup methods as the ntbackup or robocopy programs and thus backs up all information and meta data on an NTFS volume.
• synctime [2.8K] Synchronizes local computer time with nist.gov time servers
• regrepl [6.79K] Batch replace text in local or remote registry

/windows | Mar 07, 2010

OS X's popup Dictionary panel and Japanese #

/mac | Mar 07, 2010

Automatically insert furigana / ruby / rubi readings in Firefox #

/misc | Mar 07, 2010

Gitso (remote support for Windows, Linux, OS X) updated to 0.6 #

• Complete rewrite of processes
• Stop VNC Processes (Windows)
• Support loading remote hosts file
• Command line switches
  • --dev
  • --listen
  • --connect IP
  • --list list_file
  • --version
  • --help
• Man page (Linux)
• Support for .rpms
• Native VNC listener (OS X)
• Better process management, user gets notified if connection is broken
• Licensing updates (across the board)
• Many bug fixes

/misc | Feb 21, 2010

Tiny HDD activity monitors #

• hdactmon.exe
  • 8k
  • Includes ASM source code
  • Also available with 5-step animated icon:
• HDDMon.exe
  • 16k
  • Includes ASM source code
  • Later version includes additional options and new icons:
• DriveGLEAM
  • 88k
  • Written in C, but does not include source code
  • Optionally send output to parallel port or Scroll Lock LED on keyboard. Includes CPU and memory monitors.

/windows | Feb 21, 2010

Batch crop images with GIMP and ImageMagick #

1. Backup your images!
2. With GIMP's Rectangle Select tool, highlight area to crop and note values for Position and Size:
   
   Position: 940, 645 | Size: 93, 30
3. $ mogrify -crop 93x30+940+645 *.png

/nix | Feb 21, 2010

Connecting to Time Capsule from Windows 7 #

/windows | Feb 16, 2010

Using HFSExplorer under Windows 7 x64 #

/windows | Feb 16, 2010

Back4Sure #

Ulrich Krebs, author of DbxConv (featured back in 2008), has crafted a simple backup program with one key feature missing from so many others: the ability to specify a target volume label instead of drive letter. Those who have struggled with trying to assign the same static drive letter to multiple devices in Windows will understand how helpful this is. My only suggestion for version 2 would be enabling backup of in-use files. Freeware for personal or business use, though there is an occasional donation nag screen.

🌱 Back4Sure v1 [694k] + Simple backup with optional filtering, compression, logging, desktop links for jobs, orphan file removal, and selection of destination based on volume label instead of drive letter.  📺

/windows | Feb 15, 2010

Delete multiple pages in a DjVu document with djvm #

• Delete pages 1-42
  for i in $(jot 42 1) ; do djvm -d file.djvu 1 ; done
• Delete pages 441-449
  count=441 ; until [ $count -gt 449 ] ; do djvm -d file.djvu 441 ; count=`expr $count + 1` ; done
• Delete even pages 204 to 2
  for (( COUNTER=204; COUNTER>=2; COUNTER-=2 )) ; do djvm -d file.djvu $COUNTER ; done
• Delete odd pages 329 to 105
  for (( COUNTER=329; COUNTER>=105; COUNTER-=2 )) ; do djvm -d file.djvu $COUNTER ; done

/nix | Feb 15, 2010

Mojikyo Character Map #

• =~ 20,000 Chinese characters defined by Unicode (ISO 10646)
• =~ 50,000 Chinese characters from Morohashi Tetsuji's Dai Kan-Wa Jiten ("Comprehensive Chinese-Japanese Dictionary")
• Oracle bone script
• Siddham (North Indian script used for writing Sanskrit during the period ca 600 - 1200 CE)
• Japanese kana
• Chu Nom (an obsolete Vietnamese writing system that was used almost exclusively by the elites)
• Sui script (a pictographic writing system of the Sui language)
• Tangut script (a logographic writing system used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia Dynasty)
• Symbols and more

1. Downloaded the compressed application, MOCM400.EXE, located in the CMAP subdirectory
2. Batch downloaded (via Orbit Downloader) the 33 compressed fonts found in WINTTF
3. MOJIKM5E.EXE was the only file not available, but I found a copy on the Chinese GNU/Linux Extensions website (which turns out to host all of the necessary files).
4. I now had 34 files totaling =~ 52MB:

     MOCM400.EXE   1,572,268  04/02/2002  09:46 AM  3180072780
     MOJIKM01.EXE  2,250,455  07/19/2002  01:49 PM  2318009370
     MOJIKM02.EXE  2,348,019  07/19/2002  01:49 PM  3277625571
     MOJIKM03.EXE  2,323,762  07/19/2002  01:49 PM  4265428117
     MOJIKM04.EXE  2,371,299  07/19/2002  01:49 PM  3923032980
     MOJIKM05.EXE  2,384,680  07/19/2002  01:49 PM  2234262401
     MOJIKM06.EXE  2,482,608  07/19/2002  01:49 PM  3820311365
     MOJIKM07.EXE  2,316,520  07/19/2002  01:49 PM  226176670
     MOJIKM08.EXE  2,531,450  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  2244807325
     MOJIKM09.EXE  2,775,561  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  2001805475
     MOJIKM0A.EXE  2,063,528  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  3828274974
     MOJIKM0B.EXE  2,074,818  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  178146578
     MOJIKM0C.EXE  1,770,878  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  2974162806
     MOJIKM0D.EXE  1,986,658  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  2084838314
     MOJIKM0E.EXE  2,153,982  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  3849468493
     MOJIKM0F.EXE  2,715,471  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  2125653168
     MOJIKM10.EXE  1,603,651  07/19/2002  01:50 PM  1683753854
     MOJIKM11.EXE    376,114  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  3419606807
     MOJIKM12.EXE  1,675,983  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  3778053224
     MOJIKM13.EXE    683,293  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  2249996894
     MOJIKM14.EXE    292,419  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  1234093088
     MOJIKM15.EXE    253,070  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  2318227551
     MOJIKM55.EXE    194,289  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  399366025
     MOJIKM56.EXE    810,418  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  1533657018
     MOJIKM57.EXE  1,706,312  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  2802977783
     MOJIKM58.EXE  1,686,681  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  255553839
     MOJIKM59.EXE  1,226,551  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  221434629
     MOJIKM5A.EXE    473,245  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  2926850122
     MOJIKM5B.EXE  1,603,179  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  3163789964
     MOJIKM5C.EXE  1,648,109  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  137386859
     MOJIKM5D.EXE    978,290  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  4273653570
     MOJIKM5E.EXE    358,966  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  1539610454
     MOJIKM66.EXE  2,197,871  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  4218732064
     MOJIKM67.EXE    591,716  04/02/2002  10:06 AM  251927137

5. Batch uncompressed with 7-Zip and removed unnecessary files, leaving 34 totaling =~ 94.4MB:

     MOCHRMAP.exe    532,480  02/08/2002  04:00 AM  458313828
     Mojikm01.TTF  3,815,992  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  2387683204
     Mojikm02.TTF  4,112,612  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  2117129841
     Mojikm03.TTF  4,127,344  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  1634353783
     Mojikm04.TTF  4,234,524  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  4286314746
     Mojikm05.TTF  4,426,808  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  845998767
     Mojikm06.TTF  4,430,780  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  4162377448
     Mojikm07.TTF  4,431,964  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  3159972071
     Mojikm08.TTF  4,999,792  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  4102742411
     Mojikm09.TTF  5,415,780  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  3747794663
     Mojikm0A.TTF  3,707,676  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  3723578800
     Mojikm0B.TTF  4,177,592  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  2228260563
     Mojikm0C.TTF  4,080,532  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  3033408358
     Mojikm0D.TTF  3,519,976  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  2079183546
     Mojikm0E.TTF  3,496,484  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  2932782927
     Mojikm0F.TTF  4,482,840  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  3892262837
     Mojikm10.TTF  2,551,176  06/20/2002  12:00 AM  875814641
     Mojikm11.TTF    694,136  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  931566581
     Mojikm12.TTF  2,482,876  10/24/2001  02:02 AM  1225778174
     Mojikm13.TTF  1,163,308  10/24/2001  02:02 AM  3841779345
     Mojikm14.TTF    591,264  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  2458869305
     Mojikm15.TTF    530,880  10/24/2001  02:02 AM  2522906767
     Mojikm55.TTF    410,636  02/14/2002  02:10 AM  3210542770
     Mojikm56.TTF  1,474,892  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  3142615718
     Mojikm57.TTF  3,426,016  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  2234440663
     Mojikm58.TTF  3,520,136  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  3854002523
     Mojikm59.TTF  2,361,240  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  3428091862
     Mojikm5A.TTF    981,012  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  1099258963
     Mojikm5B.TTF  3,301,032  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  3743177567
     Mojikm5C.TTF  3,705,536  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  3218894549
     Mojikm5D.TTF  1,940,452  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  4040218154
     Mojikm5E.TTF    752,000  10/24/2001  02:01 AM  1420675346
     Mojikm66.TTF  3,951,240  02/14/2002  02:11 AM  4149409031
     Mojikm67.TTF  1,141,180  02/14/2002  02:11 AM  2422714417

6. Copied the TTF files to %WinDir%\Fonts
7. Launched MOCHRMAP.exe

/windows | Feb 13, 2010

Using a local printer with Remote Desktop #

• Successfully tested the above instructions with the following setup: OpenVPN tunnel from home to remote office, Windows 7 32-bit running on remote office computer with RDP enabled, Windows Vista 32-bit running on home laptop connected via USB to a Dell 1235cn color laser printer.
• Remote Desktop printing to network printer - RobWill breaks down the basics and also proposes a workaround for recalcitrant printers: connect the local printer to another computer at the local site, share it, and connect the Remote Desktop client machine to the shared printer.
• Finding Printer Server Properties In Windows 7 - Where did "File > Server Properties" go?
• Using Your Local Printers While Using A Remote Desktop Connection - Does not address the need to install necessary printer drivers on the remote machine.
• How To Make a Local Printer Available During a Connection to a Remote Desktop in Windows XP Professional - This article also fails to address the printer driver issue.
• Printers that use ports that do not begin with COM, LPT, or USB are not redirected in a remote desktop or a terminal services session - Fix for printer ports like DOT4, etc.

/windows | Feb 10, 2010

Restore tab autocompletion in cmd.exe #

/windows | Feb 07, 2010

Determine Windows XP Service Pack level from registry #

/windows | Feb 06, 2010

Outlook Express opens PDF attachments with wrong version of Adobe Acrobat #

/windows | Feb 06, 2010

Linux Mint 8 (Helena) - Add Firefox shortcut / launcher to Desktop #

1. Right click on Desktop and select "Create Launcher"
2. Click the springboard icon at top left
3. Enter the following path: /usr/share/pixmaps and then double click the Firefox icon
4. Enter the values below:
   • Type: Application
   • Name: Firefox
   • Command: firefox %u
   • Comment: blank
5. Click OK

/nix | Feb 06, 2010

Keynes is whack, yo. #

• Fear the Boom and Bust - Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem
• Big Government Is Not Stimulus: Why Keynes Was Wrong (The Condensed Version)
• Some Problems With Keynes

/misc | Jan 30, 2010

Batch convert HTML to PDF in OS X #

/mac | Jan 24, 2010

HTML Tidy: Batch processing files #

  for f in *.html;do tidy -m -i $f;done

/nix | Jan 24, 2010

Dell MFP 3115cn network scanning error: Network Not Ready 016-790 #

• 3115cn Scan To Network Error
• Dell 3115cn Scanning to Computer Setup Issue
• Error 016-767 on Dell 3115cn
• Dell 3115cn - ERROR 116-396 with Network scan to computer
• 3115 Printer
• Dell MFP Laser 3115cn Scan to Network Folder Problems

1. Address Book > Server Address > Create
2. Name: enter a short, friendly name
3. Server Type: SMB
4. Server Address: use static IP of SMB server
5. Server Port Number: 139
6. Login Name and Login Password: account which exists on SMB server and has access to the shared directory
7. Share Name: name of shared directory
8. Server Path: blank

/misc | Jan 23, 2010

Two newly-listed Palm OS apps #

• chmod v2.1 [8k] Calculates octal notation of *nix file system permissions  📺
• DiddleBug 2.90.7 [155k] {S} Sticky notes / sketch pad app with built-in alarm  📺

/palm | Jan 23, 2010

Hide desktop icons #

• Camouflage 1.25 [1126k] Hides desktop icons, leaving nothing visible but the wallpaper.  📺
• Screenshot Helper 2.0 [76k] Shows a full screen window with a solid color or a desktop picture so that you can take clean screenshots.  📺

/mac | Jan 17, 2010

Quick contact sheets in OS X #

/mac | Jan 13, 2010

Google does the right thing #

/misc | Jan 13, 2010

Cannot uninstall ZoneAlarm: "missing a necessary root certificate" #

/windows | Jan 12, 2010

Newly added icon editor for OS X #

/mac | Jan 04, 2010

Detect the character encoding of a file #

$ file foo
foo: UTF-8 Unicode text, with no line terminators

$ ujguess foo
sjis

$ file bar
bar: ISO-8859 text, with CRLF line terminators

$ ujguess bar
euc

/nix | Jan 03, 2010

Create a universal Windows 7 install disc #

UPDATE: See Slipstream Windows 7 SP1 convenience rollup into a universal x86/x64 installer.

Setting aside the absurdity of offering a confusing array of editions, Microsoft made technicians' jobs slightly easier by including all editions of Vista (Home Premium, Ultimate, etc) on a single 32 or 64 bit disc (though both versions can apparently be combined with a bit of effort). This allowed techs to carry one or two discs at most and still be able to install whatever edition was required. Windows 7 changes all that; while the various and sundry editions are all tantalizingly included on the disc, a tiny configuration file (ei.cfg) forces a specific edition to be installed. Thankfully, Kai Liu has created win7utils to circumvent this irritation:

• "The Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher is a set of small binary patches (and a tool to apply these patches) that will convert an official Windows 7 ISO disc image into an official Windows 7 ISO disc image of another edition. The resulting ISO images are bit-for-bit identical with those posted on MSDN or TechNet, and their SHA-1 hashes should match the official hashes posted by Microsoft."
• "The ei.cfg Removal Utility is a simple tool that will remove the ei.cfg from any Windows 7 ISO disc image, thereby converting the image into a 'universal disc' that will prompt the user to select an edition during setup. This tool works by toggling the deletion bit in the UDF file table, eliminating the need for unpacking and rebuilding the ISO, which means that this is extremely fast (the process of patching the ISO to remove ei.cfg takes only a fraction of a second), and the process is easily reversible (running the utility on a disc image patched by this utility will restore the disc image to its original state)."

/windows | Jan 03, 2010

Convert numbers and spaces from full-width (double-byte) to half-width (single-byte) #

1. $sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell
2. cpan> install Unicode::Japanese
3. Save the following script (adapted largely from togdon's example) as full2half.sh and make it executable (chmod u+x):
   #!/bin/bash
   for file in *;do
   newfile=$(echo $file | perl -MUnicode::Japanese -e'print Unicode::Japanese->new(<>)->z2h->get;')
   test "$file" != "$newfile" && mv "$file" "$newfile"
   done
4. cd to desired directory and run script:
   $ /path/to/full2half.sh
   

1. Tools > Options... (in OS X it's OpenOffice.org > Preferences...)
2. Language Settings > Languages > check "Enabled for Asian languages" > OK
3. Highlight text > Format > Change Case > Full-width or Half-width

/nix | Jan 02, 2010

Blue screen when booting into Safe Mode on malware-infected machine #

may be resolved by restoring the SafeBoot registry keys. You may need to create the SafeBoot registry key with special permissions protecting it from deletion.

See also: Change msconfig boot options from command prompt via boot disc.

Tags: BSOD, Safe Mode, STOP 0x0000007B

/windows | Jan 01, 2010

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