Avi :)

  • Why I like plain text email

    Firstly, this isn’t an attempt at conversion. It’s here becaue I keep getting asked why I tend to send and prefer to read mail in plain text. I don’t really mind what you send mail in, so long as you accept that I’m not near an html-capable mail reader very often and if there’s no…

  • Making Outlook 2007 see signatures from Outlook 2003

    Outlook 2003 will accept html signatures named .html or .htm, Outlook 2007 apparently only likes them named .html. The following bat file (which is also a handy example of a batch for loop) fixes this. Outlook only looks for signatures on startup generally, we’ve certainly only had consistent success through running it before opening Outlook.…

  • mknod

    mknod has eluded me for a while. I’ve had to use it a couple of times, in rushed following of tutorials, and I know it’s used to create the device files under /dev. It’s not the preferred way of doing it (which is mkdev), and it’s not the normal way (udev and/or devfs tend to…

  • Moving WinXP’s My Documents

    The My Documents directory location is stored in the registry at HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders in a key called personal. The following script is what I use to remap this to u:/documents: ;; create some dirs: u: mkdir documents mkdir outlook ;; Move My Documents folder: ;; delete current setting reg.exe delete “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders” /v Personal /f…

  • Why I use Linux

    This is one of those things that’s always difficult to explain. The bits of Linux that I miss on other platforms are not things that you immediately see as being of particular importance. The best example of this is the freedom – why would I care that I’m free to do as I please with…

  • Using Synergy to share a keyboard and mouse across PCs

    Synergy is a really neat way of using multiple computers at the same time, like a more convenient KVM switch (you do need to be physically close to all of them). It basically allows you to have a monitor for each PC on your desk, and one keyboard and mouse with which to monitor them.…

  • Cheating at LDAP in MS Active Directory

    adsiedit.exe allows you to click your way through the AD directory tree and view and edit attributes, in short. It’s pretty handy for quickly getting the dn of an object when you’re not entirely sure of the directory structure to begin with. It’s all rather self-explanatory and clicky friendly:

  • UI Fail: Windows XP font importing

    Sometimes, you’re replacing a PC for someone, and they notice afterwards that a bunch of cool fonts, the names for which they’ve forgotten ((quite understandably. font names are never sensible)). “No bother”, one thinks, “I’ll just copy and paste the contents of c:/Windows/fonts across from one PC to the other”. “And then I’ll click ‘OK’…

  • Stop OSX writing .DS_Store and ._ files on network shares

    All our fileservers are Windows. Most of the files are manipulated in OSX. This isn’t likely to change soon since, irrespective of who is accountable for most of the bytes, Windows are far and away the most populous in terms of hosts. .DS_Store files are apple’s way of storing the finder preferences for a particular…

  • sudo for windows. Sort-of

    Windows (XP) has a pretty basic users system, and switching between users is pretty convoluted. Also, msi binaries don’t have the Run As… option in their right click menu by default. There’re two ways of doing it: First, the runas command, which is sort-of sudo for Win32. There’s no /etc/sudoers, it uses the AD/NTFS ACLs.…

  • Making Outlook Quote Properly

    By default, Outlook replies to messages in that way that only outlook can (at the top, with the signature at the bottom). The ‘fix’ for this depends on Outlook versions. 2003- Jain’s Outlook Quotefix 2007+ Quotefix Macro

  • mfehidk.sys BSoD with McAfee TotalProtection

    Is the fault of McAfee, whatever they tell you about Daemon Tools. Reinstall the McAfee client.

  • GAL/LDAP for Entourage/OSX

    We’ve a problem whereby Entourage cannot access the GAL, since it can’t find an LDAP server, with Entourage configured assuming the LDAP server is the same box as the DC for the site (which is also the Exchange box). It isn’t. By default, MS puts the LDAP server for a site on the same machine…