Merry Christmas 2009

It’s Christmas eve and I just wanted to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy new year…

For more go here;

http://holdman.com/christmas/video2008.asp

Avatar 3D

I have just been at the movies to see the movie Avatar in 3D, WOW, it is as simple as that…  this was my first 3D movie in a cinema and both the technical part and the movie itself rocked..  The 3D glasses are a bit annoying but fitted quite fine on top of my own glasses but still they made the experience slightly darkish (I tried removing the glasses a coupple of times and the screen appeared much brighter without)..

Don’t miss out on a great movie, both technically and plotwise (it’s even got romance so you can bring your girlfriend ).. 

Thumbs all the way up..  I love it…

PortForward

Just stumbled across a cool site, it offers quite detailed instructions for port setup for a bunch of routers (all kind of brands and all sorts of applications, games etc).

Now you can just refer your friends here instead of having to write them detailed instructions neat..

Give it a spin at; http://portforward.com/

an example for a netgear router can be found here;
http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Netgear/CG814W/CG814Windex.htm

KatMouse – scrolling made simple

Now this is a difficult one to describe, so my best advice is simply to download and try it – you’ll either think this is engenius how could I ever live without that or you’ll think what!? I don’t get it!?

Ok what it does is to optimize wheel scrolling, lets say you have 5 windows open and you have to scroll a lot in these different windows, now the way windows works is that the window you want to scroll need to have focus – so you have to click the window you want to scroll! Well not if you have KatMouse installed, it is quite clever, KatMouse will let you scroll the window under your mouse focus or not, as I said you’ll either think this is immensely clever or not get it.. Try it out and see what you think. (it’s free )..

Http://kickme.to/katmouse

Thunderbird 3 – released

The free Thunderbird email client has been released in a version 3, it offers some interesting new features eg. emails now open in tabs like in browsers and a whole lot more.

Setup was a breeze as the guide is pretty good and even capable of guessing/testing many settings by itself (server settings like which server and what encryption is supported).

It looks very promising and interesting.

Get it here

WGET – download files/definitions via a script

We have a few servers that for some reason refuse to update their antimalware definitions automatically, the procedure is then to download the definition update manually and apply it, not rocket science but annoying as hell.

We use Microsoft Forefront Client Security and Microsoft is kind enough to offer a link where you can download a complete definition update file as an exe file, this will then update your antivirus – all you do is download and execute.

So I came up with the idea that if I could download this file via a script then I could apply it via a schedule during the night on the affected servers.  But how do you download a file via a schedule/script?  At first I leaned towards a VBS script, I even found a few but either they did no longer work (due to added security over the years to IE) or was painfully slow (the latter is not good when downloading a file of 45mb).  Further Googeling let me to WGET a simple commandline utility that can be scripted, and sure enough it worked like a charm

Should anyone have a similar problem then the batch/script file I made looks like this;
(Just modify the parts in red)

cls
Echo *************************************************************************
Echo  This script will download the latest forefront antimalware def
Echo  once a day for servers with update problems
Echo *************************************************************************
Echo  The file downloaded is;
Echo.
Echo  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=87342&clcid=0×409
Echo.
echo.

del D:\Appl\msdefinitions\Definitions\mpam-fe.exe

D:\Appl\msdefinitions\wget.exe -t9 -O D:\Appl\msdefinitions\Definitions\mpam-fe.exe http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=87342&clcid=0×409

More on downloading MS-Forefront definition files look here;
http://www.kanmandet.dk/?p=84

Dropbox a ‘virtual usb disk’

Drop your USB stick, stop carrying around that dumb USB stick in order to syncronize data from your work pc and your laptop.  When you install Dropbox you get a ‘cloud-folder’ in which you can copy data to, a second later this is also available on your laptop..  easy as pie..

Well this is nothing ‘new’ or original, but it seem quite easy and its free so why not throw it at you.  If you like it you can upgrade from the free 2gb version to a paid 50 or 100gb solution.

Get it here;
https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTMzODAwODY5

Bitlocker “broken/cracked” well sort of!?

According to the Danish online newsletter/magazine www.newz.dk (via link) Bitlocker encryption has been broken/cracked, or at least it has become possible to discover the passwords rather quickly using a third party tool Passware Password Recovery –  http://www.lostpassword.com/kit-forensic.htm

And sure enough if you visit their website you will find this statement;
“Recovers encryption keys for hard drives protected with BitLocker in minutes ^New”

Although this indeed sounds very interesting there seem to ba a catch, you need a memory image on which to apply the Passware Password Recovery utility.  Read more here

Opera in Cinema – Carmen

 .

Tonight I am going for something new, I am going to the “Teatro alla scala” in Milano or rather I am going to watch the opera Carmen in the local THX certified cinema via a live transmission from Milano.  I am very exicted and looking forward to this, quite an interesting approach and besides the technical aspect this will also be my first opera, all very exicting.

More info here; http://www.operaincinema.com

Update Dec 8th 2009.
So it was yesterday I was at the Opera, my first, what is the verdict?  Well the technical part was ok, transmission was fine both sound and picture was excellent, furthermore it was not a ’stillshoot’ – thus the cameras was operated all through the show so focus was always at the actors, both good and bad I’d say (it ended up looking too much like a TV show).  As for the opera part I think it was ok, guess I am just more a musical kindoff guy (give me Mamma Mia anytime) but interesting never the less.  All in all an ok experience, nothing more nothing less, for opera lovers I think the experience would have been quite good.

Proxy bypass basic URL filtering etc.

Imagine this; You are at a public wifi spot, and they have locked down what pages you may visit by simple DNS or URL filtering, and you just have to visit Rapidshare.com where one of your friends have send you this important file!?  What to do?  Well actually you have to do this before you wind up in this mess, but once it’s done you can use it anywhere anytime to combat situations like this.

The thing you are looking for is PHProxy and the link is;
http://sourceforge.net/projects/poxy/

Basically what this will do is to setup a proxy website that you can browse through, easy as pie.

You need a server or webhotel that supports PHP, you upload the PHProxy files (about 3 files is all it takes), and once you connect to the site where these files are hosted you get your own Proxy start page. It works like this, once you enter the URL on the PHProxy start page then the server on where the PHProxy php files are stored will go get your page for you and display it, from your end it looks like you are just visiting www.YOURSITE.com (the name of the site where you uploaded the PHProxy files) while the content on this site is actually Rapidshare, Facebook or whatever is blocked.

It is utterly simple to setup and use, mind you though not all pages work perfectly with this solution but what can you expect from 3 php files   never the less it is simple, free and work for your basic pages.