tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19538223989619798492024-03-05T13:46:15.203+02:00Nothing fancy, Just blogging.A mix of how-tos, notes, and gotchas that I might need again sometime in the future.abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-49426927567617029952014-07-02T14:58:00.001+03:002014-07-02T14:58:12.291+03:00Starting Skype in invisible modeI recently installed Audio Recorder which has a very cool feature: to automatically start recording Skype calls. So that I don't waste time or forget about it, I set Audio Recorder to automatically start when I log in. There is one downside: when Audio Recorder starts, it automatically starts Skype, which starts with its last online status. This is very annoying, as it shows me online in Skype abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-41328149752421865122014-04-17T11:00:00.001+03:002014-04-19T23:01:50.786+03:00Udev tricks - How to toggle built-in wi-fi on/offMy Toshiba Satellite laptop has a RTL8192CE built-in wifi, which is a total joke. It only works if I'm within a few meters range of the router and without any big obstacles between. For example, if I'm in my home office I can't even use the router that is in the next room. All other devices in our house can connect and mark it as strong signal. If by any luck my laptop manages to connect, the abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-18379180013686273222014-01-30T23:24:00.000+02:002014-01-30T23:26:35.487+02:00How to create ASCII armored signatures/encrypted files with Seahorse pluginRecently I played looked into various Linux (Ubuntu) software that can digitally sign documents. After testing various software (open source and proprietary) and various signature options, I decided that Ubuntu's Seahorse best fits my needs. After installing the seahorse-plugins package, I was thrilled with the results with respect to flexibility, ease of use, and end results.
Only one thing was abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-67764308850185484582013-11-09T14:45:00.000+02:002013-11-19T09:21:06.678+02:00Openssl - setting up a custom CA certificate, requesting and approving certificates with Subject Alternative Name (SAN)I spent last couple of hours reading web resources, man pages and config files to get what I need: a custom CA setup that allows me to sign certificate request which include Subject Alternative Name (SAN) extensions.
Setup custom CA certificate
I started with the Ubuntu certificates guide. It explains how to setup the custom CA. I used the instructions in there, but I decided to use the abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-51826126538792756182013-07-06T23:44:00.001+03:002013-07-06T23:45:52.705+03:00Improving OpenVPN thoughputI recently faced an unusual problem (for me): an OpenVPN connection going via TCP over a fast network, which had transfered speeds of less than 2KB/s. Although I tested some other options (compression on/off, UDP, etc), none of them proved significantly faster. Moreover, I has hoping to fix the problem with as few as possible changes to clients.
Some time ago, I red about optimizing OpenVPN over abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-5172440554686058122013-01-09T23:33:00.002+02:002013-01-09T23:33:37.457+02:00Is there any design behind Python language?I gave Python another try (fourth or so). In the past I found it to be a terrible designed language. Lots of things in the language itself felt like they were scraped from all other existing programming languages. And the worst part, that it didn't feel familiar at all, even if you know those languages.
This time I tried Python 3. I went with the Dive Into Python 3 book (ofcourse).
Some of the abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-59453840327771006852012-11-11T00:10:00.000+02:002012-11-11T00:40:04.141+02:00Using WebScarab with existing SSL certificateI needed to monitor/debug some HTTP and HTTPS traffic to a site from a closed source software. I had access to the real SSL certificates and via some quick DNS rewrites I was able to fool the application that the site's IP is my local address. At this point all I needed was some kind of reverse proxy that allows me to log requests as they are forwarded to the real site. I can't use Wireshark abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-21908896136115721402012-11-02T00:41:00.003+02:002012-11-02T00:43:02.313+02:00Solr replication monitoringI am using Solr replication on some projects for load balancing (not that Solr really needs that ;) ) and high-availability. Recently, due to a network problem, replication was stalled on one of the slave without me noticing it, so I wrote a small script to check the index version difference between master and slave and which admins can integrate with current monitoring system (nagios, zenoss, abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-33416376899604319902012-10-28T11:42:00.000+02:002012-10-28T11:44:17.753+02:00Speed up Ubuntu Quantal QuetzalI recently upgraded my Ubuntu 12.04 Precise to Ubuntu 12.10. Overall, I didn't see much difference, probably because I didn't run/notice the bugs/limitations that were fixed in this new release. One thing that I (subjectively) noticed is that boot up and application startup is slower, with the UI experiencing occasional freezes. I guess these slowness/freezes were already in 12.04, but they abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-14761523926904380222011-11-29T11:17:00.001+02:002011-11-30T07:51:01.097+02:00Setup GeoIP for PHP5 on Ubuntu ServerI lost a few hours on this, although I done it sometime ago. To make sure I don't forget it again, here it is:
Install geoip packages:
sudo apt-get install geoip-bin php5-geoip
Download GeoIP Lite version:
wget http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz -O /tmp/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz
Unzip GeoIP Lite to /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIPCity.dat (this is what I forgot: to rename abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-65277064113011531392010-08-05T18:59:00.000+03:002010-08-05T18:59:31.741+03:00Elegant SEF columns layoutI found this somewhere (I can't remember where). I'm not using it now, but it's good to know.
The CSS is
/* @begin columns/sidebars (fixed L,R; liquid C) */
.columns-both, .columns-left {
padding-left: 200px; /* LC width */
}
.columns-both, .columns-right {
padding-right: 150px; /* RC fullwidth + CC padding */
}
.columns-container .column-main, .columns-container .column-left, .abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-75835266470574088572010-07-06T23:17:00.001+03:002010-08-03T19:24:26.383+03:00Working out OpenVPN with Network Manager in Lucid LynxFor two years now, I've used OpenVPN to connect to a server where I upload some of the stuff I work on. Until now I always started OpenVPN from the terminal, because I didn't manage to get it working from the Network Manager in the last 4 Ubuntu versions.
Last weekend, I had some spare time and I installed Lucid Lynx on my laptop. I tried (again) to get OpenVPN working with Network Manager. As abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-54486402068273938552010-05-24T11:38:00.000+03:002010-05-24T11:38:04.193+03:00Matlab 7 startup problemRecently I had to install Matlab 7 on a Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop running Windows XP SP3. Everything went OK during installation. However, Matlab failed to start: it started, showed the splash screen, show the full application window, and as soon as the prompt was about to appear, all windows closes.
After some googleing I found out that this is caused by Matlab 7 using the wrong version of the abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-62734288813083377032010-05-04T17:06:00.000+03:002010-05-04T17:06:13.572+03:00Manually setup the Broadcom wireless card firmware on Dell Inspiron 1501These steps summarize the information presented here: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware.
Download and extract the b43-fwcutter.
Download and extract the Broadcom drivers.
Compile the b43-fwcutter
Run the b43-fwcutter to extract the firmware
Run the following commands as root and then restart the network service:
cd /tmp wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-74889776622757398802010-05-03T16:46:00.001+03:002010-05-03T17:00:28.258+03:00Customizing Moodle login instructions on a per language basisToday I installed another language in one of my Moodle sites. On this occasion I noticed that the login instructions that I setup in the Moodle admin settings are being displayed in Romanian whatever language the user selects.
More precisely, in order to tell users to check their spam/bulk folder for the registration email that the site sends, I frequently customize the auth_instructions setting abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-60052270824174611052010-04-29T09:15:00.001+03:002010-04-29T10:21:49.092+03:00Sharing Powerpoint course contentIn the last couple of months I looked into solutions for sharing my course presentations (PowerPoint files) with others. My main goal would be to provide an experience as close as possible to the actual in-class courses for people that missed courses. This means that I would like the course content to be available to others as a full-length presentation with an audio narration.
The easiest way toabautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-4723550526918114592010-03-21T00:45:00.001+02:002010-03-21T00:46:54.926+02:00Click-to-translate feature for MoodleLately I tried to improve the quality of my university's Moodle platform. Among other things (i.e. upgrades, new backup setups, new theme, etc) I also wanted to improve the quality of the Romanian translations. The Romanian language pack of Moodle 1.9 its quite good from the student/user point of view, but it still has some problems:
the string for administrator/teacher views, reports, forms are abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-89096170009011385242010-02-14T23:17:00.003+02:002010-02-19T08:13:56.566+02:00Automatic translation for Moodle UI strings with Google Translation APIToday I installed a fresh copy of Moodle 1.9. I'm reviewing it in order to upgrade our university's site (from Moodle 1.8) and another site (using Moodle 1.6). As always, I started going through all it's settings, looking for new features or things that changed. When I reached the Language section, I installed the Romanian language, just to make sure installation is working. However, I noticed abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-33998825878120715472010-01-28T10:37:00.000+02:002010-01-28T10:37:30.878+02:00Thunderbird beats EvolutionI recently decided to get my email stored locally in case my internet connection fails and I need them. I used to have them save in Outlook Express (for backup purposes), but I dropped this habbit when I start forwarding everything to Gmail.
I decided to give Evolution a shot and see how it's doing these days. This is mainly because of it's "great integration with Gnome". The overall interface abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-75523588466968736202010-01-22T16:08:00.000+02:002010-01-22T16:08:37.232+02:00Hiding Tight VNC tray iconAs stated in the TightVNC FAQ, in order to hide the tray icon of the server, you need to add/set in the registry the DWORD DisableTrayIcon entry to 1 inside the HKLM\SOFTWARE\ORL\WinVNC3 container.
A .reg file that does this automatically is this:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORL\WinVNC3]
"DisableTrayIcon"=dword:00000001
abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-82022298878794351992010-01-21T11:24:00.002+02:002013-01-12T21:51:59.005+02:00Setting up Synctex for Sumatra PDF and TexnicCenterEverytime I need this information I have to search for it on forums, then filter out the broken solutions in order to find out the corect one. So, I'm posting it here to have it for future reference:
Install & setup SumatraPDF and Texniccenter (including the output profiles of TexnicCenter).
Open the Output profiles window (Alt+F7).
Select the Latex => PDF output profile.
In the Latex abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-52337457777832723432009-12-24T23:41:00.000+02:002009-12-24T23:41:38.363+02:00The power behind GMailHave you ever wondered how does GMail manage to give us all these nice features? How about what makes it so fast? If you did, you'll find the answer in the following movie. It's a bit technical, but you should understand it even with basic computer skills.
Let me know if you did find the answer!abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-69010346106611277832009-12-17T10:55:00.001+02:002009-12-17T10:59:49.456+02:00Wikipedia Forever
Today I was reading a few lines about Python and I stumbled upon this text:
the language is named after the BBC show "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and has nothing to do with nasty reptiles
I red that before a couple of times, but I never understood the relation between the programming language and the show. I googled up the shows name and (obviously) the first two results were Wikipedia pages. abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-57090958870004826812009-12-07T16:36:00.000+02:002009-12-07T16:36:01.350+02:00National Geographic WallpapersNational Geographic is offering wallpaper-sized variants of many of their beautiful photo collections. One of the collections that I follow in iGoogle is the Photo of the day. I like it mostly because it doesn't have a particular theme and includes photos from many places around the world.
From time to time, I like some picture so much that I "go through all the trouble" (a 5-clicks process) and abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1953822398961979849.post-67865444951805818452009-11-20T21:22:00.001+02:002009-11-20T21:22:35.542+02:00Catfight
These are some old photos of my cats. The gray tabby is no longer with us. It simply disappeared one day. Hopefully, he's doing alright.abautuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02216967074251727387noreply@blogger.com0