Nov 12

Creating a Log File in Notepad

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on September 08, 2011 by CyberNet.

Notepad log file

Notepad (in Windows) has a unique feature that a lot of people don’t know about. If you open a file in Notepad where the first line contains “.LOG” you will automatically see the current time and date appended to the end of the file. Here is how it works:

  1. Open Notepad.
  2. Type .LOG on the first line, and press ENTER to go to the next line.
  3. Save the file (you can save it with any file extension).
  4. Each time you open the file you’ll see the time/date appended on a new line, and your cursor will automatically be placed on the line following the time/date.

Why would something like this be useful? I’ve used it in the past when I’ve need to keep a running log of events that I had to manually track. That way whenever something would happen that I needed to log I’d just open the text file, type what I needed, save it, and close it. It may not necessarily be the most elegant solution for something like this, but it works without the need for any third-party apps.

Microsoft Support: How to Use Notepad to Create a Log File

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Nov 08

PriceBlink Does Automatic Price Comparison for Items You’re About to Buy

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on November 29, 2011 by CyberNet.

Price comparison extension

With the holidays right around the corner it is important to make sure you’re getting the best deal for the gifts you are picking up. There are all kinds of browser extensions out there that can help you save a few dollars, but PriceBlink is one I always use.

PriceBlink is available for Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari and does price comparison shopping as you browse around some online stores. If it sees that someone else is selling the item cheaper or that there is a coupon available the extension will display a popup bar along the top of the webpage just like in the screenshot above. In my demonstration Newegg is selling a pair of headphones that I can get for half the price somewhere else. That is a pretty big savings.

By my count the service supports upwards of about 5,000 online merchants which means it should work with most of the retailers you shop. If you tend to shop around yourself then you may not need something like this, but if you’re more of an impulse buyer this can save a lot of dough.

PriceBlink Homepage (Chrome, Firefox, IE, and Safari Extension Available)

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Nov 08

​How to Use Amazon Glacier as a Dirt Cheap Backup Solution

Posted in: Today's Chili

​How to Use Amazon Glacier as a Dirt Cheap Backup Solution

Not too long ago, Amazon introduced Glacier, an online storage/archiving solution that starts at just a penny per GB per month. Depending on your storage needs, Amazon Glacier could be the most cost-efficient way to back up your data for a lifetime. Here’s what you need to know about it and how to set it up.

Read more…


    

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Nov 07

Real-time Online CSS Editor

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on October 27, 2011 by CyberNet.

Realtime css editor

If you’re a web developer there is a good chance that you’ve had to mess around with a lot of CSS code. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to work with, but there are tools out there that try to guide you along the way. CSSDesk.com doesn’t provide any direct guidance, but it can help you quickly test out CSS expressions to see if they are doing what you expect them to be without constantly having to reload a page to have your change take effect.

You probably wouldn’t want to do an entire website design using CSSDesk, but it is great for fine-tuning individual objects. Things like buttons, boxes, and small sections of sites would definitely be the ideal uses of CSSDesk. There also isn’t anything on the site to distract you from what you’re working on, which means no ads and no unnecessary buttons or links. It’s just you and your code.

The other cool thing is that in a single click you can generate a URL that you can use to share the code with someone else. If you need help with your CSS code that feature could be extremely useful since there isn’t the hassle involved of having to create an account to share the code.

CSSDesk.com Homepage

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Nov 06

Create Panoramic Photos with Hugin

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on August 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

hugin.jpg

Panoramic photos seem to be becoming more common these days as people carry cameras with them wherever they go. In the past we’ve shown you tools like AutoStitch and Windows Live Photo Gallery that make assembling panoramic photos effortless, but the free Hugin program is much more customizable.

Hugin will attempt to find points on the images that match up with each other, or you can manually specify control points. It can take some time to get used to because of all the manual settings available to configure, but with these tutorials and a little spare time this weekend you should be all set.

There are over 8,000 images on Flickr that have used Hugin for assembling some amazing panoramic shots. Once you get the hang of using the program you’ll be able to create shots using Hugin like this that started out with this typical panoramic.

Get Hugin for Windows, Mac, or Linux

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Nov 05

Save a Webpage to a Single HTML File in Chrome

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on January 14, 2011 by CyberNet.

singlefile.pngHow many times have you wanted to archive a webpage or save its current state for one reason or another? I know this has happened to me, and I’ve almost always turned to a scrolling screenshot to snap an image of the entire page or I’ve used a print-to-PDF app. These methods aren’t bad for most purposes, but I know very few people who try to save a webpage using the “save as” option that is built-in to most browsers. If you do go that route you’ll normally end up with a bunch of helper files (images, CSS, scripts, etc…) that also get saved in order to fully reproduce the site.

There is an awesome Google Chrome extension called SingleFile that will actually make modifications to a page so that everything (except videos/Flash) are stored in-line and can therefore be saved to just one HTML file. It encodes images and embeds CSS so that there are no helper files needed, and since it is a standard HTML file it can easily be shared with other people without worrying whether they’ll be able to open the file.

There are several different “SingleFile” extensions available for Chrome and I want to point out the differences:

  • SingleFile – This is the stable version of the extension that is recommended for most users. There are some nice new options and features in the Beta version which is a little further down this list.
  • Scrapbook for SingleFile – Creates a browsable archive of all the pages you save. It’s a great way to manage saved pages if you don’t feel like organizing them yourself on your hard drive.
  • SingleFile Beta – Has some great new features including options to remove elements from a page before saving, background processing, and more. The options are all pictured in the screenshot above.
  • SingleFile Core Beta – You’ll need this if you’re using the SingleFile Beta, and has been broken out into a separate extension so that other extension developers can take advantage of the work that has been put into this library.

After installing the extension a new button will be added to the toolbar, and what happens from there depends on the settings you have configured. If you enable the “save processed page” option it will automatically save the file in an obscure directory within your Google Chrome profile. You can create a shortcut to this folder (which is listed in the help section for the various operating systems), but I recommend just enabling the “display processed page” option. Then all you have to do is click the button, wait for it to finish processing the page, and then use Control+S (or Command+S on Mac) to save it to your hard drive.

I highly recommend checking out this extension if you’ve ever found yourself snapping a screenshot of a page or saving it as a PDF for later reference. At least this way you can still fully interact with the page and click on any of the links.

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Nov 04

XBMC: IR Receiver and Remote (Harmony, Xbox 360, and More)

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 24, 2012 by CyberNet.

If you’re trying to treat your XBMC install like a settop box there is no doubt that you’ll want to get a remote control working with it. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases it’s not as simple as just plugging in a USB IR receiver and using a remote that was made for the computer. There is a rather extensive wiki page that lists many of the remotes that have been tested and found working, but I wanted to focus on the two that I use.

Tip: Don’t Test Over Remote Desktop

One thing I wanted to point out right away is that you don’t want to test whether a remote control is working through a Remote Desktop (RDP) session. That may be tempting if you are trying to remotely configure a box, but the output of the remote won’t be reflected on the screen when using RDP.

This makes sense if you think about it. With RDP, any locally attached input devices (keyboard, mouse, etc…) are all rendered useless. A remote control is just considered another input device, and trying to troubleshoot through RDP may leave you frustrated and wondering why it’s not working.

IR Receiver:

I’m not going to go too in-depth about the receiver since I already covered it in my hardware guide, but the important thing is for you to have an RC6-compatible IR receiver to have the best chance of getting a remote control working in Windows. You can take a look at the HP IR Receiver I chose back in my hardware guide.

Quickly Get Remotes Working in XBMC:

Generally getting your remote to work can take quite a bit of time, but one developer has really tried to streamline the whole process. Jump on over to the XBMCCustomregis page to see what I’m talking about. From there you can grab the setup file which will make a specific change to the Registry, and will then copy over a lengthy pre-configured Keyboard.xml file to your XBMC profile.

If you don’t trust what the script is doing you can go ahead and run through the settings manually as well. It’s not that hard, but the setup utility is just there to try and eliminate any potential errors.

After you’ve run through the setup you’ll have to switch to XBMC and go to Settings -> System -> Input Devices and turn on the Remote Control Sends Keyboard Presses option.

Xbox 360 Universal Media Remote:

Xbox 360 universal media remoteSince I previously used my Xbox 360 as a Windows Media Center Extender I already had one of the Xbox 360 Universal Media Remotes. It is a pretty nice remote, and since I was trying to save some money I wanted to get by with that. There is just a couple of minor Registry changes that need to be made that aren’t covered by running the XBMCCustomregis mentioned above.

In the Windows Registry navigate to the following section:

> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
>> SYSTEM
>>> CurrentControlSet
>>>> Services
>>>>> HidIr
>>>>>> Remotes
>>>>>>> 745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57da

And then make these changes:

  1. Change the value of CodeSetNum0 to 8
  2. Delete the CodeSetNum1, CodeSetNum2, and CodeSetNum3 values.

Just reboot your computer and you should be ready to go. Everything should work on the remote now, but the volume button will still be tied to the TV due to the way Microsoft designed the remote. Lucky for me that’s what I wanted anyway.

Logitech Harmony Remote:

Thanks to the XBMCCustomregis script, getting your Logitech Harmony Remote working with XBMC is pretty painless. All you have to do is add a new device from the Harmony Remote Software and select Computer for the type of device, Microsoft for the manufacturer, and type Media Center SE for the model.

Logitech harmony xbmc

From there you should be able to set this up and configure your activities to control the XBMC. You’ll be able to control all aspects of XBMC as well as sleeping/waking the PC.

Advanced Configuration:

Want to dig a little deeper? You can customize what happens when any keyboard shortcut is executed. The file you need to edit is the Keyboard.xml which is located in %appdata%\XBMC\userdata\keymaps\. If the file doesn’t exist you’ll want to create it, but if you ran through the XBMCCustomregis script that should have already added a very extensive keyboard configuration file.

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

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Nov 01

Setup Local/Internal DNS with a DD-WRT Router

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on May 25, 2011 by CyberNet.

I’ve talked about some features of the DD-WRT router before, and one of the things I’ve been playing around with lately is DNSMasq. There’s a good chance you haven’t noticed this setting in DD-WRT because it’s not something most people would ever think to use. Plus DNSMasq can be found in two different areas within DD-WRT since it can be used for both DHCP assignments as well as internal/local DNS management. What I will be focusing on is the local DNS aspect.

When is using DNSMasq useful for controlling DNS? Here are some examples as to why you may want to use it:

  • You have DNS pointing to something that is hosted on your home network and it is also accessible from outside your network. For example, you may have a security camera that has a domain attached to it (e.g. camera.example.com), and it’s accessed from both on and off your network. Using DNSMasq on your router you can make the domain, camera.example.com, point to the internal IP of the camera so that anyone who accesses that camera from within your network won’t have to rely on external DNS getting resolved. You should see at least a slight performance boost that way.
  • You want to override public DNS entries, such as google.com. You can obviously pull off some great pranks by directing traffic to sites like google.com or facebook.com to some custom site you create, but there are other reasons this is legitimately useful. Maybe you are testing a new version of your own website, but want to make sure it will work fine with the live domain. DNSMasq can help you accomplish that.
  • You want to create DNS for a site that is accessible using only a single word, such as intranet. Companies do this kind of thing all the time where an internal-only website can be reached without needing or wanting a publicly-accessible URL.

I know what you may be thinking… why wouldn’t you just update the HOSTS file on your local machine? Well, you could, but not all devices support that feature. By using DNSMasq the DNS change will work for anything connecting to your router, including mobile devices such as phones and tablets.

So what do you have to change in DD-WRT? Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Go to the Services tab once you’ve logged into the administration interface.
  2. Find the section labeled DNSMasq, and make sure the DNSMasq option is enabled.
  3. This is the fun part. In the Additional DNSMasq Options box type out your local DNS configurations in the format of one entry per line:
    • address=/machine_or_domain_name/ip_address – where machine_or_domain_name is what you want to create/change DNS for (e.g. camera.example.com, google.com, intranet) and ip_address is the new IP address you want it to point to.
  4. Apply the settings to DD-WRT, and you should be all set.

This is an example of what your DNSMasq settings may look like:

Ddwrt dnsmasq

If your devices don’t see the changes after they’ve been made you may need to try restarting them since that is often the simplest way to clear the DNS cache.

 

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Nov 01

XBMC: SMB on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion)

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on May 03, 2012 by CyberNet.

Mac lion smb samba

When setting up my XBMC instances, I wanted to have a central machine in my house serve up all my media, and for that I chose to use my Mac OS X Lion machine. Since my XBMC machines are being powered by Windows 7 I ran into a bit of a predicament. In Mac OS X Lion, Apple started using the SMB2 protocol that Microsoft introduced in Vista back in 2006. Naturally this would be a welcomed change since the original protocol has been around since the Windows 3.1 days, but XBMC doesn’t include support for SMB2.

There are some alternative protocols you can try using, such as AFP or FTP, but even those have their drawbacks. XBMC 11 added built-in support for AFP shares which is file sharing protocol that Apple prefers. In my case AFP isn’t even an option since Windows doesn’t natively support AFP, which means my XBMC machines don’t see the AFP shares. As far as the FTP goes Apple removed that functionality in Lion, but it can easily be restored. I didn’t want to go that route though because FTP connections limit some of what you can do with the media in XBMC, such as not being able to delete videos directly from the XBMC interface. So for me Samba/SMB was still my best option.

After some searching I came across a free app called SMBUp that restores the old-school SMB protocol compatibility in all its glory on your Mac OS X Lion install. You just have to download the app, open it up, and it will install a version of Samba that works beautifully with XBMC. As you can see in the screenshot above you’ll be provided a full interface for managing all of your shares, and you can even enable guest access to shares making it even easier to hook XBMC up to them.

A lot of geeky people will argue that using the older protocol will drastically limit your transfer speeds compared to other methods, but I have not found that to be the case. In fact before installing SMBUp I was able to transfer files at 92MB/s to a Windows machine, which was being done with the newer SMB2 protocol. After installing SMBUp I saw speeds to the same machine reach 98MB/s, and that was with the older protocol. Not bad, and that shows that my gigabit network is on par to my expectations.

Tip: Most people treat the Samba and SMB terms as one-in-the-same, but in reality they are not. SMB/CIFS is pretty much only found in Microsoft Windows, whereas Samba is the free and open source version that you’ll find in the Mac and Linux OS. Samba was originally developed by reverse engineering SMB.

SMBUp Homepage (Mac only; Freeware)

CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

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Oct 28

FileSeek: Use Regular Expressions to Search File Contents

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on November 04, 2010 by CyberNet.

search file contents-1.png

Most current operating systems include some sort of indexed file searching functionality, and with that you can often get instant results back on any query you perform. As I pointed out a few weeks ago those tools still leave some things to be desired… especially when dealing with searching the contents of files for some particular text.

FileSeek falls in line with the MariusSoft File Searcher in that it does a great job searching the contents of any file you desire. Both are free utilities that don’t require any files to be indexed prior to kicking off a search, and they are pretty fast at getting results. Both also let you use regular expressions to search for text in a file, but FileSeek is the only one that has Windows Explorer context menu integration. If you regularly perform file searches that can become quite useful.

Here are some of the features highlighted by the developer:

  • Search for text string matches inside any kind of file
  • Match Regular Expressions inside any kind of file
  • Search a folder and all of it’s sub-folders
  • Match 1 or more file patterns, like *.jpg, file?.txt or anything else you can imagine
  • Exclude 1 or more file patterns from your search, like *.exe or *.dll
  • Filter results by the last modified date
  • Never indexes files in the background

When you go to grab the download you may overlook the tiny text underneath the download button that offers a version without an installer. That’s the version I tend to lean towards, but you can always grab the installer version if you want all the shortcuts and stuff to be created for you. It’s free either way you decide to go.

FileSeek Homepage (Windows only; 32/64-bit compatible; Freeware)

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