blog.eddsn.com

How to clean up your Facebook

eddsn — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:55:34 +0000

I like minimalistic designs that are pure and simple. The layout of Facebook is just like that, but there are however still some annoyances that I wanted to get rid off. First there are those Farmville and Texas HoldEm posts that are just spamming up your News Feed. You can easily get rid of those by the provided remove option. But then there are the Events, Featured, Requests and Get Connected (and others) sections in the right column that you cannot control from the given options. Since I never use them, they are just a waste of space. I tried to remove/hide it with AdBlock Plus and RIP plug-ins (in Firefox ofcourse), but with no success. These plug-ins are usually just enough to hide/block certain parts of websites that you are not interested in. But it seems that Facebook did a little more trouble into protecting these fields from being hidden.

For this problem and many other Facebook fixes I used the Greasemonkey script FFixer in Firefox, which does a pretty good job in adjusting Facebook just as I wanted.

Now the world looks even more beautiful than before.

FFixer is easily accessible via the Account menu, and provides various options to tweak your Facebook.

Enable transfers/sharing of files with potentially unsafe file types in Windows Live Messenger

eddsn — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:06:17 +0000

Windows Live Messenger possesses some very unique “features” which can also bring a lot of frustration to its users. One of those features that I’ll cover here is the ability of WLM to block the so called “unsafe file types”.

This is actually a good step towards a more secure platform, since those blocked file types can indeed be misused to spread viruses. The point I want to make here however, and also provide a solution to the proposed problem, is that there is no clear option for the user to just disable this file blocking behavior.

Now you can imagine the situation where you want to send a file to your friend that has a file extension that is blocked by default. The frustrating thing is that not only executable files with for example an EXE file extension are blocked but also the frequently used ZIP and RAR files. In that situation you will probably get the following warning notification:

The options that Windows Live Messenger provides is to install Windows Live OneCare safety scanner, which might raise some security doubts. Or, to provide a self-defined virus scanner.

Now it is possible that you just do not have a virus scanner for some reason and then you might think that the story is over, but fortunately WLM does actually allow the transfer of files even if no valid virus scanner is provided. So you can for example provide Notepad as your wonderful and very secure antivirus software.

Actually, providing any string should get the job done. So the steps that you would need to perform are as follows:

Go to Tools >> Options >> File Transfer
Check the box Scan files for viruses using:
Now put any string into this field, click OK and you should be able to send any file from now on.

When sending a file from now on you will still get a warning dialog, but at least you can now send your “unsafe” files over.

Note that when you receive a file from someone you will get a message that the Virus scan has failed and

The virus scan could not be completed. Please check your settings in Tools > Options > File Transfer

Nevertheless, the file is received and you can open it by manually navigating to the folder where you receive your files.

Zyxel P-2602HW-D1A VoIP Instellingen Telfort

eddsn — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 23:24:07 +0000

Vandaag was ik mijn router aan het configureren en bij de firewall settings heb ik “per ongeluk” een drop packets regel opgezet voor LAN naar WAN. Toen ik uitlogde en opnieuw probeerde in te loggen, kreeg ik pas door dat ik de router niet meer binnenkwam omdat alle packets gedropt werden.

Dit was dus zeker niet handig, en ik werd gedwongen de router te resetten. Het internet deed het zoals altijd direct, maar de thuis telefoon niet. De SIP instellingen voor de VoIP moesten ingesteld worden in de modem. Het grote probleem was dat ik het SIP wachtwoord niet meer wist en nergens meer kon terugvinden.

Na heel wat gezoek op het internet en de Telfort website heb ik het uiteindelijk opgelost, maar het heeft heel wat tijd gekost om uit te vinden hoe ik het SIP wachtwoord kon wijzigen. Telfort’s FAQ was in ieder geval niet behulpzaam omdat er hierover niets te vinden is (ik heb er niets over kunnen vinden in ieder geval).

Het probleem is op te lossen door simpelweg

naar de pagina Instellingen voor vast bellen te gaan en daar in te loggen met je telfort inloggegevens
vervolgens kiezen voor Ik wil mijn instellingen wijzigen
en tot slot het wachtwoord wijzigen onder Toegangscode wijzigen

Nu is datzelfde wachtwoord direct te gebruiken in de SIP instellingen van je router. Zie hier ook een handleiding van Telfort voor meer informatie.

Mijn internet lijkt nu ook sneller te werken, dus ik heb met dit avontuur toch iets positiefs bereikt naast het fixen van mijn telefoon.

Quote Nelson Mandela

eddsn — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 10:01:16 +0000

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again!”- Nelson Mandela

Windows Live Essentials Offline Installer

eddsn — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:47:07 +0000

Introduction
The current Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8117.0416 you can get by downloading the online installer from the official website. The installation files of all the components are downloaded during this setup. You might want to store these component files like Windows Live Messenger for offline installations for some reason. In this post I will describe my short analysis on how you can retrieve these installations for offline usage and maybe automate this information retrieval. Finally I will provide actual download links of both WLE and WLM from the official download site.

Analysis
After analyzing the setup log of the online installer of Windows Live Essentials (version 14.0.8117.0416) I managed to extract some interesting information about the whole procedure the installer uses to download all the components. The location of the setup logs is dependent on the operating system you are on. The paths per operating system should normally be:

On XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\WLSetup\Logs

On Vista/7:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\WLSetup\Logs

Furthermore, all the components that are downloaded by the setup are read from a XML catalog file. See here the catalog file for the current English version 14.0.8117.0416 that is used.

The downloaded components have the following link structure

http://wl.dlservice.microsoft.com/download/../../../ID/LANG/FILE

which is generally used for all the language versions.

If you want to backup your current and/or future versions of Windows Live, then you can find the downloaded files after the installation is done in the following cache directory:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Windows Live\.cache

Official Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8117.0416 offline setup

Download Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8117.0416 (134MB)

Size: 141.399.376 bytes (134 MB)
MD5 hash: 4f079107f0d6fa1921f8a2f989864ac4

Download Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8117.0416 (23.9 MB)

Size: 25.148.416 bytes (23.9 MB)
MD5 hash: 819ff00b35959f5100ff787ef9484936 (MSI file inside the downloaded cab)

Official Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8089.726 offline setup

Download Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8089.726 (135MB)

Size: 141.402.440 bytes (135 MB)
MD5 hash: 0ff7f12bb44f91cad117632e3edd13ae

I also found out that there exists the same version of this full setup but with another file size from the official website. It seems older, and it is very strange that the version is exactly the same. Anyway, you can find it here (Size: 141.394.760 bytes – MD5 hash: 7a9f0e19f9d7ac193c8efd9d7f351b4a). The WLM cab is not downloadable from the same folder.

Download Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8089.726 (24.0 MB)

Size: 25.240.576 bytes (24.0 MB)
MD5 hash: 500e43ce39cede387e263ed886d24a74 (MSI file inside the downloaded cab)

Requirements:
Download .NET Framework
Download DirectX (x86)
Download DirectX (x64)
Download Windows Imaging Component
Download Windows Imaging Component Hotfix (Vista – x86)
Download Windows Imaging Component Hotfix (Vista – x86)
Download Windows Imaging Component Hotfix (Vista – x64)
Download Microsoft Visual Studio Runtime (MSVCRT)
Download Microsoft SQL Server Compact Edition 3.1
Download Microsoft Silverlight
Download Segoe Font

Update
The most recent full Windows Live Essentials Standalone Installer can also be downloaded from the link below. I also provided the Windows Live Essentials 2010 Beta link.

Windows Live Essentials 2009 – Wave 3 (most recent version)
Windows Live Essentials 2010 Beta – Wave 4 (most recent version)

http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/en/wlsetup-all.exe

Remove Google background image

eddsn — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:18:19 +0000

Today I was surprised by the Google background image when I launched my browser. After I figured out that this was a permanent change, I immediately wanted to get rid of it and get to the minimalist style that I liked so much. Anyway, here are a few quick solutions to get the style back:

Change your home page to: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all (if the image still apears then click in the left bottom corner on Remove Background image) or you can also try just http://www.google.com/.

Or, change your home page to the SSL page: https://www.google.com

Update (14:30):

You can also disable javascript on the Google page.
Firefox users can use a Greasemonkey script that is nicely removing the background image. If you don’t heave Greasemonkey get it here.
In last case, you can just wait a few more hours since Google announced this is only a 24-hour promotion of their wallpaper future.

Update (19:09):

You can also block images on Google. In Firefox open the Google page: Right click on the background >> View page info >> Permissions >> Uncheck Use default and select Block. Et vóila.
Firefox users (yes, again), can try to block the image with AdBlock Plus.

Update (19:24):

You can also use the Google IP address: http://74.125.77.147/

Update (19:30):

The Google background image is removed and everything is back to normal.

Printing to Adobe PDF problem – “Invalid Adobe PDF printer properties: Do not change spooler settings”

eddsn — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:40:16 +0000

Description
SPOOLing stands for Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On Line. The principle is rather simple: The process sends the data to a buffer that a device like a printer can later on access instead of sending it directly. This is useful when for example the application sends the data more quickly than the device can receive and process. This way, the application can send the data at its own rate without having to wait for the device to send more data.

Adjusting Adobe PDF printer properties
Returning to the problem where this spooling does not work in case of printing with Adobe PDF, you might get a message like

"Invalid Adobe PDF printer properties: Do not change spooler settings."

The next part in the error message really explains how to get this problem fixed. You can adjust the settings of the Adobe PDF printer by choosing to print directly as showed below.

Adjusting the registry
Another option is to manually or programmatically make changes to the registry. In key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft
\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Printers\Adobe PDF\DsSpooler

you can change the string with value

printSpooling = "PrintAfterSpooled"

into

printSpooling = "PrintDirect".

which should have the same effect.

“Show my webcam” not available and grey webcam during video call problems in Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8117.416

eddsn — Thu, 27 May 2010 21:15:28 +0000

Introduction
A minor update to Windows Live Essentials was recently released with some bug fixes and “minor changes”, while introducing new bugs and having people not very liking at least some of these “minor changes” like the one option that is left out where you could choose to only show your webcam instead of making a full video call.

Grey box when making a video call
In the recent version 14.0.8117.416 of Windows Live Messenger there exists some type of bug through which one might get a grey box when making a video call. I’m not sure which webcam’s this problems concerns, but I came across one laptop model where this was the case. I also found that there are also other people having this same problem.

“Show my webcam” not available
In this new version, the option to only show the webcam without having to start a video call is left out. Again, there are some people complaining about leaving out this used future.

Solution
The solution for any of the two problems is rather simple. You have to remove your current version (currently newest 14.0.8117.416) and install the older version 14.0.8089.726.

It seems as Microsoft does its best to not provide any downloads for the older (working) versions. Trying to keep your installers of your older versions for later use gets complicated as you can only download the online installer that always downloads the necessary files from the internet of the latest version. It is probably possible to get and save these installer files somehow, but for “normal” people I suppose this would be a hell of a struggle.

Anyway, I felt that I should provide the offline installer files for this older version. There is a full Windows Live installer that contains

Windows Live Family Safety
Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Messenger
Windows Live Movie Maker (Windows Vista and Windows 7 only)
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Sync (integrated with Toolbar and Photo Gallery)
Windows Live Toolbar
Windows Live Writer
Microsoft Office Outlook Connector
Microsoft Office Live Add-in
Microsoft Silverlight

but also a seperate Windows Live Messanger setup. You can download them both below.

Official Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8089.726 offline setup

Download Windows Live Essentials 14.0.8089.726 (135MB)

Size: 141.402.440 bytes (135 MB)
MD5 hash: 0ff7f12bb44f91cad117632e3edd13ae

Download Windows Live Messenger 14.0.8089.726 (24.0 MB)

Size: 25.240.576 bytes (24.0 MB)
MD5 hash: 500e43ce39cede387e263ed886d24a74 (MSI file inside the downloaded cab)

Update
* As FuGu pointed out in the comments, the other party you’re communicating with should probably also have the same or older version to get this to work. If the other party has the newer version 14.0.8117.416 it will simply block the request if you just want to show the webcam instead of making a video call.

How to use cookies with CherryPy

eddsn — Wed, 26 May 2010 22:29:00 +0000

Introduction

CherryPy uses the Cookie module from Python and in particular the SimpleCookie object type to handle cookies.

Sending a cookie to a browser is accomplished by using cherrypy.response.cookie and receiving a cookie from the browser by cherrypy.request.cookie.

Example

This is demonstrated in the following example code where we use a login and logout procedure :

import cherrypy

class Root(object):
@cherrypy.expose
def index(self):
return """

@cherrypy.expose
def doLogin(self, username, password):
# Set cookie to send
cookie = cherrypy.response.cookie

cookie[‘user’] = username
cookie[‘user’][‘path’] = ‘/’
cookie[‘user’][‘max-age’] = 3600

cookie[‘pass’] = password
cookie[‘pass’][‘path’] = ‘/’
cookie[‘pass’][‘max-age’] = 3600

return ‘Cookie set. You can now logout.’

@cherrypy.expose
def doLogout(self):
# Request cookie that is already set
reqcookie = cherrypy.request.cookie

# Response cookie that overwrites the old one and expires
rescookie = cherrypy.response.cookie
for name in reqcookie.keys():
rescookie[name] = name
rescookie[name][‘path’] = ‘/’
rescookie[name][‘max-age’] = 0 # or: rescookie[name]['expires'] = 0

return ‘Logged out succesfully. You can now login again.’

cherrypy.quickstart(Root())

Download source code

Creating a cookie

It is important to note that

cookie[name]
cookie[name]['path']
cookie[name]['max-age']

are a bare minimum of attributes that you have to set in order to get this working. If you do not set one of these three attributes, the cookie will simply not be set.

Deleting a cookie

Instead of cookie[name]['max-age']=0 you can also use cookie[name]['expires']=0, which results in the same effect of deleting the cookie.

Quote – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

eddsn — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:30:51 +0000

“Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen, and thinking what nobody has thought.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi