Global Toad News

For many years I have thought that LaTeX is a good way to create nice documents, it doesn’t cost anything, but it can be a pain to setup and use compared to some other systems.

Here are some good resources for LaTex

• http://www.miktex.org/Default.aspx
• http://symphony.arch.rpi.edu/~hendep2/publications/latex/
• http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/

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There are several different image editing tools out there. Of course the king of the hill is Adobe Photoshop, but for those who just want to dither there are several free tools.

• Paint.Net which is written on the .Net framework and only works under windows.
• The Gimp, which is a cross platform solution
• Picassa from Google which has some quick and easy to use tools.

I’ve used the Gimp for years, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best, just that it’s been around a long time (and it’s cross platform so it runs under Linux). Picassa has some nice features, and I am still reviewing Paint.Net.

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Microsoft has decided to release the source code for their Mech Commander 2 product (available here) as part of their shared source initiative, and to introduce a new method of compressing data for games.

Of course it also requires Visual C++ 2005 and some other tools from Microsoft, hopefully I will have time for a more complete assessment in the not to distant future.

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One of the challenges with developing software is maintaining a history of your work. There are a lot of different options available for version control, from the Microsoft Visual Source Safe product (VSS) to open source products such as CVS and Subversion.

Due to firewall restrictions, I use a version control system that can work via WebDAV (see previous post about that) when I am not forced to use something else. At the moment I am using Subversion with TortiseSVN and RapidSVN to manage it. But I like working inside TotalCommander for managing files.

Unfortunately it seems that TortiseSVN (which plugs into explorer) has the best interface, so I have to create a “button” in Totalcommander that will open the directory in explorer to manage the checkin/checkout of code.

That button has the syntax of

Command:C:\windows\explorer

Parameters:/n,/e,/root,%P%N

Now I can just select the file/folder to manage, explorer opens up with that folder as the root, and I can use TortiseSVN to manage the code.

(For more information on explorer command line switches go here)

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Sometimes you want might want windows to do certain prep work or clean up work, things that might have been handled by Autoexec.bat in the past, or just tweak your security settings.

A little known part of Windows is the Group Policy editor, to run it go to run and then type

gpedit.msc

Here you can put scripts to run on startup/shutdown, logoff/logon and adjust a variety of other settings.

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Sometimes you either can’t get to some site, or you want to not let everyone know who you are there are several different ways to access the internet and keep your identity somewhat more concealed.

There is pseudoanonymous.com, this is a nice web service that is free, fast and seems to offer a decent selection of features. Good for the quick test.

Another method that can be used to set up a proxy server. Tor is my prefered method for this, it provides a high degree of anonymity and seems to be the most flexible option out there, of course it also requires a good deal of tweaking to get it running . Of course I think Tor is the best method, but if you just want something quick pseudoanonymous.com will probably do.

I used to like Anonymizer but they never really got any better than they were 5 years ago, I think that they, like most commericial products, answer to the government quick a lot, so I doubt their ability to provide a complete package.

UPDATE:

pseudoanonymous.com  appears  to no longer be available.

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Accessing Microsoft Sql Server over a virtual private network (vpn) sometimes presents certain challenges.

Here are the steps I use:

1. Create a seperate group for storing the vpn connection sql server

2. Create a new server with the address 127.0.0.1,1433 (or whatever port that is used over the vpn)

3. Set the server to use Sql credentials and prompt for them.

That’s it.  Pretty simple once you know how.

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Recently, I’ve noticed that sometimes things I want to get done over the internet are a little slower than I thought they should be, but I didn’t really do much about it, because there is always something to do.

In any case, imagine my surprise when I was looking in the eventlog and saw the message:
TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.

I had patched my tcp/ip stack before (using a patch which can be found here) so I was surprised to see it again.

Microsoft claims they put the limit in (it limits you to opening only 10 ip connections at a time) to slow the spread of worms, my take on it is different.

I use Firefox with Session Saver .2d (the one at Mozilla is outdated, I use the version that can be found here) so when Firefox starts it wants to open a lot of different connections. The problem is that Windows won’t let it. It blocks the connections and makes them open one at a time. Slow, slow slow Firefox.

But it’s not Firefox’s fault. Microsoft purposely put in this block, and it slows down people with fast connections.

Unless you use Linux.

Microsoft, giving you more reasons to go somewhere else every day.

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An interesting way to share information on the internet (actually close to the original design of the WorldWideWeb) is something called WebDAV (which is somehow short for Distributed Authoring).

WebDAV is a system for reading and WRITING over an HTTP (i.e. browser based) connection. This allows for a web site to be a shared repository (think of it as a drive system that can be used by people throughout the world). Obviously it can do more than just that a list of some of the cool things can be found here though there is another product called WebDrive that isn’t mentioned that allows for the use of a WebDAV share as a virtual drive.

I think that WebDAV is definitely a useful methodology and find it very useful for sharing data across different systems.

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Despite what DreamHost states (in big letters on their web site) their real policy is at http://www.dreamhost.com/tos.html which states:

…

DreamHost Webhosting makes no warranties or representations of any kind, whether expressed or implied for the service it is providing.

…
Yep, that’s right. Dreamhost doesn’t make any representations of any kind. Err, uh, so what the heck is all that stuff on their home page? Obviously not any representation of what you are going to get, because DH didn’t make any, it was just a joke.

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There is an interesting new idea from EMC storage, free virtual appliances. Using VMWare player (or VMWare Server Beta) you can run these in a sandbox (i.e. isolated memory from your base operating system) under a wide variety of different operation systems.

Some really great appliances are here. Also VMware is offering $200,000 for the best network appliance.

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A good collection of Windows tools can be found here.

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For the times when you need to use Linux, it’s nice to have a program similar to Total Commander. For Linux that is Midnight Commander (MC).
One of the things that most people who use MC find challenging is the inability to use the function keys in a telnet or ssh session. The workaround for this is to use esc + number , i.e. to use F1 you would press escape and then the number 1.
If you want to know more about MC go to Linux.com
.

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