File permissions may be fouled up on web server …

Sometimes it happens to me that after I have changed a CGI script and FTPed it over to my web server the script won’t run because it has lost its original permission settings, especially it has lost its “executable for all” file permission. The problem is: I can’t define “sometimes” more precisely. Sometimes I have to change the file permission after FTP has finished transferring the file, sometimes not. I can’t spot a pattern nor discover a fix for this. Somehow I got used to this problem and fixing file permissions became a default activity after I have transferred a file over to my web server. I even stopped wondering whether I am the only one having that problem and possibly overlooked some basic thing to avoid this, or whether this is a more common problem.

Today I have been reading this in chapter 15 of the book “Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition” by  Magnus Lie Hetland:

Tip: Sometimes, if you edit a script in Windows and it’s stored on a UNIX disk server (you may be accessing it through Samba or FTP, for example), the file permissions may be fouled up after you’ve made a change to your script. So if your script won’t run, make sure that the permissions are still correct.

It always feels good if you discover that you are not alone with a weird problem you have. Apparently this really seems to be a more common hiccup happening somewhere between Windows and Linux systems. Good to know.

My favorites for week 17, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about redundancy

One road to simplification leads through reducing redundancy. Redundant solutions or processes lead to confusion, expensive overhead and loss of productivity. Thus, it is important to not introduce more redundancy in the attempt to reduce it or to “simplify”. Simplification  should mean throwing things away instead of adding more. Nicely illustrated in this Dilbert comic strip !

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about the smallest computer in the world

How small can you make a computer ? Well, this version, nicely presented by John, has a keyboard with just one key. John show us how to use it in this funny video “THE FUTURE TECHNOLOGY!”.

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about Egypt

"Egypt" by NASA Goddard Photo and Video. This impressive photo from NASA shows Egypt in spring, where you can see the green Nile delta and vegetation zone following the river throughout the desert.  The photo was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite on April 11th. Where the Nile begins to broaden and form the delta, the city of Cairo can be seen as a gray oval smudge.

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about a nice little time saver for Lotus Notes

“Tired of typing the same thing again and again ? “ has been a question I recently asked in my blog when I introduced a little gadget I developed using AutoIt: TypeBot, a little tool letting you define phrases to be typed into windows with a particular title through a simple single click on that phrase. Meanwhile version 2 became available allowing you to add, change and delete your own phrases through the GUI, allowing to handle multiple INI-files and also coming with an executable so that you can use the tool without having to install AutoIt. Alan Lepofsky must have had a similar thought when he developed the Paste Information Application,  a little Lotus Notes database and tool to avoid re-typing the same things again and again, allowing you to paste pre-defined bits of information that you reuse often into Lotus Notes documents and mails with two simple clicks ( one to select that bit from a listbox, one to click OK ). In his blog he nicely describes the application and how to install it, and provides links to download the needed Lotus Notes database. I installed it on my Lotus Notes 8.5.1 client and it works like a charm.

Tired of typing the same thing again and again ?

Me too. If you find yourself re-typing the same thing again and again you are either doing something wrong or you are victim of a dump process, system or user interface. Part of working smarter to me is less typing.

I have been looking for a solution to auto-type particular strings for me I again and again need to input into some applications. Since a while I am using a tumblr blog to quickly collect photos, quotes, videos and links. Their gadget ( bookmarklet ) to post from a firefox or chrome browser works nicely more or less but requires me to type in my tags, and I found myself using always similar lengthy combination of tags, like e.g. “flickr, photo, bird, animal”.

My search for a solution was not successful, since I have very special requirements. I wanted it to work on any window on my Windows desktop and not only in a particular browser ( I tried some browser autotype gadget but it for instance ran into the problem to properly access the special type of dialog opened by this tumblr bookmarklet I am using ). I didn’t want a tool to replace short acronyms with longer strings like many do it  since I am too lazy to remember all those acronyms. I wanted the typing to be initiated with a single click and I wanted to organize to-be-typed items by categories, so that I quickly can find them in a GUI.

I thought AutoIt must be the perfect solution to implement this, a free gadget to automate tasks on a Windows desktop which however requires programming skill to make real use of it. It is very powerful, allows to develop GUIs and has a rich set of functions to handle arrays, ini-files, SQLite databases, Excel spreadsheets and you name it.

Thus I came up with a little tool I called TypeBot, which can be downloaded from here. The package contains the script code which can be run when having AutoIt installed, and an executable which should work without having AutoIt installed,

To-be-auto-typed entries can be specified in an ini-file for now ( TypeBot.ini ), see my example here, also caontained in that package:

   1: [Mail]

   2:     Count=2

   3:     WinTitle=New Message - IBM Lotus Notes

   4:     Phrase1=With best regards ...

   5:     Phrase2=Mit freundlichen Grüssen ... 

   6: [Tumblr]

   7:     WinTitle=Auf Tumblr posten

   8:     Count=3

   9:     Phrase1=flickr, photo, bird, animal            

  10:     Phrase2=flickr, photo, animal

  11:     Phrase3=flickr, photo, insect

Sections are defined through words in square brackets, for each section a proper count of entries has to be specified, entries for auto-typing are defined by using keywords “Phrase1”, “Phrase2” and so on. In addition a “WinTitle” has to be defined describing the window on your Windows desktop to which the auto-typing will be sent. Specifying a sub-string of the window title is sufficient. In this example here for instance the program checks for a window with title “Auf Tumblr posten” ( “Post on Tumblr” in German ) before typing in one of the strings below when clicked on in the GUI.

Here is how the program looks like when launched:

In order to auto-type an item simply click it. The program will find the desired target window and type in the text. If that window does not exist nothing happens.

A text editor can be used to create and update that ini-file, but meanwhile ( with version 2 of this tool ) it is also possible through the GUI to add, change or delete sections and phrases, also to clone an entire section, to save and open INI-files.

Cloning of phrases is planned as another new feature for version 2.1 coming soon.

How to repair Java Web Start for Internet Explorer

Somehow I ended up with an Internet Explorer not allowing me anymore to launch a java web application. Launching it did work with Firefox, but stopped working with Internet Explorer. Instead the browser showed me a prompt like this one:

Clicking on Browse… and navigating to the proper javaws.exe file ( the Java Web Start Launcher ) did not solve the problem, and this entire mechanism does not seem to work properly; after selecting the javaws.exe file it did not show up properly in the list of Recommended or Other programs and I could not fix my problem.

This article was very helpful to explain an alternate way: changing the assigned programs for JNLP files in Windows Explorer Folder Options –> File Types. Nevertheless, the behavior of the dialog to assign a program was as weird as when invoked from the IE browser.

Here is how I fixed it. It started with a brave step: clicking on the Restore button for JNLP files, then deleting this entry entirely. After this I clicked on New and specified “JNLP” as a extension to create a new file type entry. Now the Advanced button became available letting me assign an action (“Open”) and a program to files of type JNLP. This dialog doesn’t work very user friendly as well: after having specified an action this one does not show up in the list of actions. Nevertheless, at the end it worked. I picked a javaws.exe file I found on my computer, and key here is to put a “%1” behind the program name, something apparently not possible when trying to do the same thing from Internet Explorer ( Version 8 ).

 

After doing this Java Web Start worked again from Internet Explorer, but I bumped into another problem:

Another hurdle is to make sure that the Java Runtime of the version of javaws.exe you picked is enabled on the Windows System. This can be checked through Control Panel, clicking on the appropriate Java icon, then on the “Java” tab and “View” button.

If entries shown look like you see it in this screen shot then this version of Java is disabled on your computer ( and by the way you can use these Control Panel functions to decide which version of Java you like to enable / disable on your computer ). Anyway, two options available now: either enabling that version of Java or choosing a working javaws.exe file as the program for opening a JNLP file.

After I used the 2nd option my Internet Explorer happily launched my Java Web applications properly.

My favorites for week 1, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about change

Since I ended last year with a comic strip from Garfield, let’s start the New Year with Garfield as well:   Change is not always good, and change does not necessarily mean progress. Anyway, things are changing permanently, the entire world is changing all the time, whether we like it or not. So, why not better liking it ? Keep in mind that when you type a date into some document nowadays you have to write 2011 instead of 2010 ! Change is everywhere. And as soon as you got used to it it will … change. 2012 is not too far away.

Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about the automobile

Did you know that the motorcar will celebrate its 125th anniversary this year,   the first car built by Carl Friedrich Benz in 1886 came with 1 horse power, electrical ignition, water cooling and a crank shaft, many people attacked this vehicle and perceived it as violent and dangerous technology. If asked what they want, they said: “Faster horses”, according to Henry Ford, who started manufacturing cars in high volume using conveyors in 1913, 2.4 billion cars have been built since then on our planet. Source: “ADAC Motorwelt 1/2011”, a German motorcar magazine. Photo from wikipedia.

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about Windows XP

How would The Matrix run on Windows XP ? See by yourself in "Matrix Runs on Windows XP ". Embedding doesn’t work for this video ( and doesn’t work in WordPress anyway ), thus you need to head to this youtube page to watch it. I personally think that WIndows XP has been one of the best Windows releases. I wonder how The Matrix would run on WIndows Vista ?

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about Mantas in Bali

"Manta Point" by Francesc Balagué. Manta encounter in Bali. Lots of nice scuba diving and other photos from Bali in this photo stream under a CreativeCommons license by Francesc Balagué.

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about decisions

Any Decision is Better Than No Decision. ~ Lifehack Article "Resolved: Make Better Decisions in 2011" ~ Hmmm, I can’t decide whether this makes sense or not Anyway, have you decided upon your New Year Resolutions yet ? I haven’t, since I usually don’t come up with any. You can read here “Why Your New Year’s Resolutions Are Doomed to Fail”.

My favorites for week 42, 2010

Still in catch-up mode. 5 more weeks to go to sync with my corporate blog …

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about leadership

This comic strip from “B.C.” is about leadership, obviously. In animal kingdom the leader is called the “alpha” whatever. And he or she usually has to fight for that position to ensure he or she is the strongest one. Same principle in corporate kingdom ? Sort of, more or less. Anyway, the leader in this comic strip looks pretty relaxed. Leaders in our corporate world usually don’t. They are busy, active, always under pressure. I actually would think a good leader looks like the one shown here. He or she has everything under control – his in-box, her projects, his people, her own schedule. Shouldn’t a smart leader have sufficient time to relax and just observe his troops and only stand up when something unexpected happens to fix it ? Yeah, well, true, probably. It is just: so many unexpected things happen every day. And things of course are unexpected when you didn’t expect them. How obvious is that ? Wouldn’t the objective of smart work and planning be to reduce the unexpected and have plans available when they kick in, so that you still have time for a drink when dealing with it ?

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about the evolution

This little video on youtube takes us through the evolution of life, human culture, technology and finally software. The software evolution takes us through the several releases of Windows and ends with …. Linux of course. I am sure linux enthusiasts will love it ! http://www.youtube.com/v/x35AIGJaM5M?fs=1&hl=en_US

Something to learn: my favorite tip of the week – about Lotus Notes Hot Keys

Did you know that you can use F2 / Shift+F2 to quickly increase / decrease font size of a marked piece of text in Lotus Notes ?

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about a morning trip on the River Li

"The Li River" by Trey Ratcliff. Trey Ratcliff had to get up quiet early in the morning and overcome a few hurdles before he could start this trip while it still was dark – on a tiny little bamboo raft. The story behind this photo ( read the description in flickr ) is as interesting as the photo itself. A good photo, I think, deserves at least a meaningful title, and a good description can make it much more valuable.

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about knowledge management

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know. ~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, US author & satirist (1842 – 1914) ~ True ! If something is new it is just new to us, since we are the one who didn’t know it before.  And apparently I am good in saying obvious things in this blog posting.

Windows 95 under Windows Vista

After I had been able to get a Windows XP running under my Windows Vista using Sun’s Virtualbox I was still experimenting to get a Windows 95 running as well. I had been running into the problem that setup of Windows 95 failed at the point where it started to copy files to the disk. After I got myself the latest version of Virtualbox (3.1.2) I tried again and failed again. Nevertheless, this discussion thread in the Microsoft Server Forum made me a bit smarter so that I could overcome a few problems and finally got Windows 95 installed. The solution was to start the setup from c: root drive as "setup\setup.exe" instead of changing to the setup directory and starting it from there, and to apply the following virtualization configuration settings: 8 MB video memory, 128 MB RAM, 500 MB hard disk ( I actually used the 2 GByte initially recommended by Virtualbox, but configured my primary partition to be 500 MByte ), disabling VT-x/AMD-V and pae/nxBut. So far, so good. After a successful looking installation I attempted to boot it the first time it bumped into an “invalid or corrupted command.com” problem.

I discovered a newer version of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 which now runs on Windows Vista ( even during the install it told me it wouldn’t be supported on my home edition of Windows Vista ) and thus tried this one to setup a Windows 95 on my Vista box. Same result. Apparently something wrong with my installation media ? But why did the install succeed ?

Finally I got the idea to grab a copy of my virtual Windows 95 hard disk from my old XP machine where I had setup Windows95 under Windows XP using an older version of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. After I had copied this over my Windows 95 booted up nicely. At least the first time. During the second boot it ran into this problem. A patch is recommended in this discussion thread and it is assumed this error can be caused by the processor speed being too high. Before I tried the patch I disabled hardware virtualization and see: Windows 95 now boots without any problems.

Windows 95 running on Vista

Thus, time now to play Tomb Raider 3 and other good old games in a Windows 95 box on my Vista PC.

Update on February 10, 2010:

After fixing my command.com by copying it over into the root and windows directory from my working Win 95 computer I got Windows 95 also to run using Virtualbox. Network started to work after I manually added the TCP/IP protocol, sound works with Soundblaster 16 support, after I ran the hardware assistance.

Recording music from a web browser under Windows Vista

Among many things which did not work out of the box on my Windows Vista installation – like creating and burning to CD music playlists or displaying some web sites correctly – recording music from a web browser didn’t work either. On my Windows XP machine I am using Free Music Zilla to record music tracks especially from last.fm. It has a limitation of only 10 downloads per day but works nicely and easily with Firefox. Nevertheless: under Vista of course it doesn’t work at all: Free Music Zilla simply doesn’t seem to catch any audio stream from my browser.

One of my Christmas presents was a “Vinyl USB 1 Turn Table” from DJ-Tech allowing me to record my vinyl disks and store those as mp3 files on my computer. It comes with an Audacity CD as the recommended software to do the recording. Audacity is a free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. After I recorded my first discs successfully I was studying the documentation a bit and bumped into the chapter about Preferences and Audio I/O where I discovered that Audacity of course can capture from all kinds of audio input channels: The two drop-down list controls in this pane is where you configure which device Audacity should use for sound input and output. This basically means which sound card, USB sound device, etc you want to use. If your sound card support multiple sound inputs, e.g. has a microphone input and a line-in, then you select these on the mixer toolbar.

Von Software

Initially I wasn’t able to get the audio line-in from my soundcard to show up as a selectable input source. I headed to Windows System Settings – Sound and found an option “Stereomix” not enabled so far. After enabling it I now can select this additional option shown in screen shot below as an input source and now record audio from my browser or most probably any other type of application using Audacity – without any limitation .

Whether this works on anyone else’ computer certainly depends on what sound card and device drivers are installed. In my case it seems to be some Realtek Sound Device together with the corresponding drivers and software enabling me to do what I described above.

Important Hint: “Software Playthrough” should be disabled when recording from the line-in audio stream, since otherwise this will cause some very annoying audio feedbacks effects. The option is useful for recording from my USB turn table allowing me to listen to the tracks without needing an additional amplifier,, but as I said: when recording from line-in, which is played back through the speakers anyway this option definitely should be turned off.

Von Software

My odyssey to find a useful media player for Vista

What I mean by media player here basically is a music player with the capability

1. to create playlists
2. to burn audio CDs using these palylists
3. to create a listing of tracks including track number, title and duration of the track.

While most media player support my first two requirements most fail with the third.

And most media player I tried actually failed at all running properly under Windows Vista. itunes for WIndows, Winamp and a newer version of SonicStage all are pretty much unusable on my system: they respond very slowly and after a while don’t respond at all and freeze on my Vista system. I guess I have to blame Vista more for this than those tools, but anyway: no useful option for me.

I am using a very old version of SonicStage on my old Windows XP box successfully to do what I want. It stores playlists in a Microsoft Access Database (mdb) file and I used OpenOffice Database to connect to this database and query the list of tracks I need to produce the CD Cover sheets.

I also tried the native Windows Media Player on my Vista box. It doesn’t support my third requirement, there is no way to show the track number in the playlist and no way to get it printed or exported somehow. And I hate their design how to edit playlists. I never will grasp why I have to load it into the right sidebar in order to edit it and how to save my changes; I am always confused by this and have no idea what steps to perform in what sequence.

Then I re-discovered Media Jukebox 12 by J. River Inc., a free version of their awesome media software. I had installed it long ago on my computer but after an initial trial did not use it anymore and almost forgot about it. I had almost decided to uninstall it but luckily I didn’t and gave it another trial in these days.

It turned out to be the best choice for my requirements. Creating and managing playlists is very convenient with their easy to use user interface, I can burn audio CDs and most important: it provides a numbered track list and I can either print a CD Cover sheet right away ( and may be print it to a pdf file and then re-use the list of tracks through copy/paste with my graphics program I use to create my own CD Sheets ) or even copy the track list to a spreadsheet application and re-use it from there. That’s where most other media player fail – besides their usability under Vista in general: easy access and copying to clipboard or printing of the track list.

My odyssey came to a happy ending: Media Jukebox 12 rocks !

So you wanna install a little messenger application from Microsoft real quick ?

Haha ! Nice try. You wanna install Windows Messenger real quick and think you get a little application installed on your PC within a minute or two ?

Forget it, babe. It takes roughly 30 minutes and see what else is thrown on your poor little computer:

Windows Error Reporting …
Windows Visual Studio Runtime …
Windows Live Communications Platform …
Windows Live Call …
Windows Live-Updatetool …
Windows Live Logon Assistant …
Installer …
Choice Guard …
Messenger …. ( Yeah !! So far 31 % of the install is done. )
Junk Mail Filter Update …
Mail … ( It is updating my Live Mail now … 37 %. My screen saver becomes active at this time.)
Windows Imaging Component Hotfix …
Direct3D 9 …
Windows Live Sync …
Photo Gallery … ( we are at 49 % now )
Writer …

… and then the list comes up again as any component downloaded before now finally is installed.

I hope I captured everything and did not miss any while starring at the installation wizard and almost did not trust my eyes.

Bottom line: Window Live Messenger is not a little stand alone application anymore. Welcome to Windows Live !