FlipsideReality

I use windows and linux on my HTPC - linux for XBMC, and windows for wintendo.

I have a python script that can be run from xbmc’s menu that (using grub’s grub-set-default ) reboots the machine into windows for game playing for one boot only. when I quit wintendo, the machine reboots into linux again, yay.

I found a completely undocumented trick recently though. If you create a new DWORD registry key in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\
named PowerPolicySimulate, and assign this key the hex value 0×1000. When you hibernate the system reboots afterwards instead of shutting down. This reduces the time to switch between OS’s dramatically.

• connect remote registry
• browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server.
• change fDenyTSConnections to 0
• reboot remote machine with shutdown -r -t 00 -m \\[computername]
• connect: mstsc /{admin or console} /v:[computername]

So i had fun with aspell on a win2003 IIS PHP eAccelerator fastCGI PSPELL Aspell setup today.

I was getting a 500 error from fastcgi. phpinfo() showed that pspell was loaded correctly. After pushing a test script through php.exe, and getting an error telling me that a file in the aspell data folder was in the wrong format, i tried DOS2UNIX ing the files in the progra~1\aspell\data folder and all was good!

When it comes to remote logins, SSH is a wonderful tool. Not only is it
secure, it supports public/private key logins. Depending on public and
private keys mean even if someone gets your password, without your
private key it won’t do them any good (and vice versa).

see full article here

It appears that there is a bug with the latest version of PHP (5.2.5)(nts on windows) in the ntwdblib.dll file. It ships with version 2000.2.8.0, which won’t connect to SQL 2005.

The solution is to replace the file with version 2000.80.194.0, which can be downloaded from here

Did you know that all CD ripping software was not created equal? Or that DVD drives were not made to make bit for bit copies of audio cd’s? Seriously. Try rippingthe same track twice with your software and see if the two PCM files have the same CRC… You may be suprised.

Anyroad, I happened over a really good ripping/burning guide for windoze boxen. it’s at xs.vc, but they don’t link to it from the front page (i think it’s part of the waffles community docs). You can see what’s on the site with google though.

I’m looking into setting up a High Availibility (HA) MSSQL2005 cluster/mirror.

I know clustering is designed for large deployments, and mirroring can only support two mirrors, I am looking for a solution that will provide HA with the minimum fuss, for a situation where the second server will be providing redundancy only.

(Server) Clustering is more common and as such is supposed to be the least expensive in operational overhead. It enables running the same application on two or more servers providing a HA solution if one of the servers fails. Cluster software
(Cluster Service) natively handles the failover process.

Database mirroring replays transaction log records on a standby server (log shipping) and as a result can failover more rapidly in most cases than a traditional SQL cluster with no loss of committed data. A database mirroring partnership can failover automatically through the implementation of a witness server (high availability/synchronous).A witness is not a single point of failure. If one partner server thinks that there has been a problem with the other partner, the partner servers contact the witness and ask the witness what it sees. There are no specific restrictions on the network for mirroring, but the network connection between the servers is critical. The network should generally be dedicated, and be of high quality and high bandwidth. As a rough guideline, the network bandwidth should be three times the maximum log generation rate. There is a requirement to duplicate storage across the principal and mirror servers, although this requirement can be offset by a DAS or SAN

You can use clustering and mirroring at the same time:

Yes, you can mirror a database from one virtual server to another virtual server in a different cluster. You can even mirror from one virtual server to another virtual server in the same cluster. However, Microsoft does not recommend mirroring to another virtual server in the same cluster. When you use both mirroring and clustering, understand that mirroring and clustering work independently of each other. Mirroring knows nothing about clusters, and clusters know nothing about mirroring. If a node fails, mirroring will probably fail over before the clusters do. Therefore, when the other node in the cluster comes online, this node will be in the mirror role.

I have decided on Mirroring for this operation.

further reading:
http://blogs.technet.com/wbaer/archive/2007/08/15/cluster-or-mirror.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/dbmirfaq.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/dbmirror.mspx

just run “control userpasswords2″

OK, OK, everyone is going mad for this.

Anyone that works with mutliple putty windows will appreciate it.

I agree with Luke Maciak’s post about windows software. I use 90 % of the stuff he recommends for new installs, but he did open my eyes to a couple of cool new bits of software. This is his list:

Web Browser: Firefox
Text Editor: Vim
Video Player: VLC
Music Player: Foobar 2000
IM: Pidgin
Launcher Program: Launchy
Compression: WinRar
SSH + SCP: SSH Secure Shell Client
LaTex IDE: TeXnicCenter
Java IDE: Eclipse
Perl/Python/PHP IDE: Komodo Edit
Twitter Client: Snitter
Screen Shot App: Cropper
IRC Client: Xchat
POSIX Compliant Shell on Windows: Cygwin
Calculator: Windows Power Calculator
Remote Assistance Tool: CrossLoop
Misc: Tclock2

The new ones to me are Launchy, which is amazing. Komodo edit, which looks really good, and CrossLoop, which i havn’t tried yet, but looks really useful. I have to admit that i don’t use latex, so i don’t know about TeXnicCenter, but pretty much everthing else i use, with a couple of exceptions:

Instead of Foobar 2000 I settled on mediamonkey because of it’s advanced tagging functionality (it can download art and racknames from amazon, then autotag your tunes.) as well as talking to y ipod too.

At the moment i am using Miranda IM for IRC and IM, as it does everything, & it’s, main window can be onfigured to autoscale, have no title or status bar, and just contain ontacts, so it uses virtually no real estate.

I use PuTTY and WinSCP for ssh & scp, instead of SSH Secure Shell Client.

I would also add to the list:

FileZilla for ftp (although i tend to use FireFTP firefox plugin more now),
AstroGrep for windows grepping,
Beyond Compare (commercial) for visual diffing
WireShark for network sniffing
Thunderbird for email (with lightning add in for calendar)
PStools for remote admin stuff.
Avast for free antivirus, although clamwin si supposed to be really good now.
Comodo firewall
innotek virtualbox for virtual machines
imageburn for writing iso’s to disk
poweriso (commercial) for making them, and mounting them (like daemon tools, but far better, and no spyware)
ColorPic for web design stuff, along with
JR Screen Ruler