John's Blog and Stuff

I have a program for recovering deleted files from a Windows-based PC, but it only runs when you can boot into Windows. This works pretty well, but if you're trying to recover files from the drive Windows is mounted on, you risk losing over-writing files (while booting into the OS) before you get a chance to recover them. Plus, it cost money to license it, so there has to be a better way...

If you've been browsing the Internet for long, you're probably familiar with Internet Explorer, the web browser bundled with every Microsoft Windows installation. IE, as it's called, is a very popular browser, though some would argue it's popular only because of that bundling.

Did you know there are plenty of other web browsers out there, and that many of them can beat IE in important areas like security, speed, and features? The most popular browsers are free for you to download and install, and will integrate into your Windows computer seamlessly.

Hey, if your web browser is going to crash anyway, it might as well have a little personality. This is better than the cold messages you normally get from applications.

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In a previous post, I wrote about setting up a tethered dial-up connection using a Palm Treo 755p and an eeePC.

It seems that during the upgrade process from Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) to 8.10 (Intrepid), something changed in the networking modules and broke this...a little bit.

I just had an opportunity to install a new APC (Model BN1250LCD) UPS to support an Ubuntu Linux server. Configuration was really easy thanks to this post on the Ubuntu forums and this post in Ubuntu's Community Help documentation.

The only oddity I noticed was that after starting apcupsd, there was no notice in the /var/log/apcupsd.events of the successful start. No big deal, I guess...it still responds to /etc/init.d/apcupsd status with all the happy details of the UPS' condition.

I already love OpenOffice for all the typical reasons (functionality, freedom, etc.), but it's always been a little slow to load. It might take 15 seconds or so to initially open writer or calc...once they're open, everything is fine...it's just that load time that's a little annoying.

My first, second and third tries at posting to this Drupal site from a cell phone have taught me a lot about the MailHandler module. They've also left me with a few questions.

Sometimes, a Windows printer will print multi-page documents in the 'wrong' order...so you end up with a stack of papers with the last page on top. One possible reason is a configuration problem in the Printer Settings:

1. Open the Printer Settings dialog for the printer:
   • Click Start>Printers and Faxes, or Start>Control Panel>Printers and Faxes
   • Right-click the printer's icon, then click 'Properties' from the bottom of the context menu
2. Open the Printing Preferences dialog window:

I recently set up a Linux (Ubuntu) based network to allow VPN connectivity, and to avoid headaches1 I wanted to modify the internal IP address scheme from the default (192.168.1.0) scheme.

1. 1. FWIW, the potential headache there is that if I'm on a friend's network, I've probably already been assigned an IP address from that segment (192.168.1.20, perhaps), so connecting to the VPN would cause problems with routing (because I'd have two IP addresses from the same segment, but from separate networks).

I wish I could remember which airport this was in...it just struck me as funny that EVERYONE has trouble with Windows and the 'help' it offers: