Archive for category Quick Tips
Noteworthy software
Posted by Harv in Quick Tips, Troubleshooting, Utilities, Windows on December 30, 2009
Here’s some of the software I use on a day to day basis.
Just because I love these tools, doesn’t mean you will. I’ll discuss what I use and why.
Originally posted 2009-03-10 14:31:32.
Editing remote files, locally. (Useful, I promise!)
Posted by Harv in Development, Quick Tips, Windows on December 30, 2009
Okay, I’ve done it! I’ve uploaded a screencast to YouTube for everyone to see.
Quick textual recap:
1) Install WinSCP. Get it at WinSCP.net.
2) Copy remote files to local drive or vice versa.
4) Locate “Keep remote directory up to date” in the commands menu. Set the local and remote directories.
3) Fire up your favorite editor.
4) Edit away. Changes will be reflected almost immediately. Yay!
5) Comments appreciated. 
Originally posted 2009-05-12 22:27:11.
Basic inline bash
Posted by Harv in Linux, Quick Tips on December 30, 2009
Another quick tip which saves me quite a bit of time.
If I’m downloading say, themes or plugins, I like to select a bunch, download them all, upload them to the webhost, and unzip them there. But I like to retain the zips. Here’s a quick way to do it neatly.
mkdir ../zipped-plugins; for i in *.zip; do unzip $i; mv $i ../unzipped-plugins; done
This creates a zipped-plugins folder outside of your current directory, cycles through each zip, unzips it, and then moves the zip file into your newly-create folder. Add the -q flag to unzip to supress output, which makes it (seem) faster.
It’s not actually unzipping any faster, it just doesn’t have to output the unzipping of every file to you.
Originally posted 2008-12-25 02:47:44.
Swapping domain name registrars
Posted by Harv in Misc, Quick Tips on December 30, 2009
1) Login to your current registrar’s control panel.
2) Change the A record to reflect your new registrar’s IP address.
3) Change any other A or MX records. For MX, I recommend setting the record to the domain itself, if your web host supports email. For example, if you’re switching SomeDomain.com, set the MX records to mx1.somedomain.com, and if two are required, mx2.somedomain.com.
4) Log out of that control panel and log in to the new registrar.
5) Set up a “site”, if it’s also your web host, using the new domain name.
6) Set up email addresses (admin@, abuse@, etc)
7) Edit the zone file to reflect mx1, mx2 etc as MX records.
That’s it! Wait
Originally posted 2009-05-01 14:01:59.
iTunes has detected a problem with your audio configuration.
Posted by Harv in Quick Tips, Troubleshooting, Windows on December 30, 2009
Ever get the message, “iTunes has detected a problem with your audio configuration. Audio/Video playback may not operate properly.”?
Here’s one possible fix.
Read the rest of this entry »
Originally posted 2009-03-19 18:23:30.
keepass
Posted by Harv in Quick Tips on December 30, 2009
If you’re like me (and probably even if you’re not) – you have lots of usernames and passwords. Some sites want any old password to sign up. Some want 5 characters. Some want 10 characters, including an uppercase, lowercase, a symbol, and at least one number! Aaargh.
Keepass is a great (and free) tool for you. It basically is a database of your passwords, but is locked with one master password. The theory being, you can remember one password right?! Well then, you can unlock all your others. Easy!
Get it at http://keepass.info/download.html
There’s an iPhone version in development at http://ikeepass.de/ and a MacOS X/Linux version at http://www.keepassx.org/
Enjoy.
Originally posted 2009-04-10 12:51:39.
My window got lost! Help!
Posted by Harv in Quick Tips, Troubleshooting, Windows on December 30, 2009
Ever “lost” an application or window someplace off-screen?
See it in the task bar? Right click it and select “Move”. Tap any arrow key. This “locks” your mouse cursor to the windows’ top draggy bar thing. Move your mouse cursor back onto the screen somewhere, the window will be attached. Left click once to ‘detach’ the window from your cursor. That’s it!
Alternatively, if you don’t have a mouse plugged in, instead of tapping an arrow key and moving the mouse, press and hold an arrow key to (slowly) move the window in that direction. This requires an idea as to which side/sides of the screen the window has dissapeared off of. For example, if it’s way off to the left somewhere, tap and hold the right arrow to ‘drag’ the window back.
Originally posted 2009-03-20 13:21:59.
On uniq and sort
Posted by Harv in Linux, Quick Tips, Scripting on December 30, 2009
Here’s a quick tip for anyone using linux.
I ran into a situation tonight where I needed to consolidate a list of URL’s. The URL’s were from different sources but served the same purpose, so it was quite likely that duplicates were present. Assuming you’ve pasted the URL’s, one on each line, into the file list
cat list | sort | uniq > list-unique
Uniq returns only the unique entries, but requires a sorted list going in.
Alternately, if you want to see how many occurances of each URL:
cat list | sort | uniq | sort
Originally posted 2008-12-25 02:37:49.
Finding drivers for unknown devices
Posted by Harv in Quick Tips, Troubleshooting, Windows on December 30, 2009
My work laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1420.
Dell saw fit to send it with a disk of drivers. How nice. Dell didn’t, to my great displeasure, include any XP drivers. Hmm, I’m certain this is the most widely-used OS on the planet. Oops.
Originally posted 2009-03-24 22:04:39.
Setting up a Cisco Access Server
Posted by Harv in Cisco, Networking, Quick Tips on December 30, 2009
I recently bought my first two cisco devices. A 2509, and a 2520.
I’ll get into why I chose these two in another post. For now, I want to focus on the 2509.
The 2509 has a special port that allows us to use it as an access server.
Originally posted 2009-03-09 22:16:31.
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