A few weeks ago, I needed to change the password for the Gnome-Keyring, as I wanted to lend my computer to a friend. This can be done using either the command line or through the GUI, the latter being the one I prefer for its simplicity. Here’s how:
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Blog
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Clearing or Resetting the Gnome-Keyring
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Free Registry and Spyware utility
A while back, I was tipped off about an application called Glary Utilities, billed as “The #1 free, powerful and all-in-one utility in the world market!” This piqued my interest, and I installed it, deciding to try it out, as it has received favorable reviews from several places, including CNet.
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Top five Google apps
Spending as much time online as I do, Google is an integral part of my day to day routine. This is my top five list of Google apps:
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Windows 7 Download tool is back
Microsoft recently released, then withdrew a piece of software called Windows 7 download tool. Originally released under GPLv2, it was withdrawn as some of the code included had licensing problems, and as such could not be released under GPLv2.
Having fixed this problem, they have now re-released it, as free (as in freedom and beer), open source software, under the terms of GPLv2. The fixed tool is now available at Microsoft’s CodePlex open-source repository. -
Microsoft Internet Ballot screen candidates
After a long run of anti-trust suits, Microsoft has finally come to an agreement with the EU about how to solve the internet browser problem. The problem is that Microsoft delivers Windows bundled with Internet Explorer, which competing software developers claim is a breach of anti-trust laws. -
A better way to see trends
An old joke says that there are three kinds of lies; black lies, white lies and the internal polling data of political parties. The latter example is typically statistics, and while statistics can be presented in such a way as to prove almost anything, raw, unprocessed statistics are a great tool.
One of my habits when troubleshooting troubles is to have a look at the event viewer. While event viewer allows you to see specific events, it can sometimes be difficult to see trends. In Windows XP, we don’t really have a choice, we’ll have to look through the data, and parse it ourselves.
Enter Windows Vista, and Windows Reliability Monitor. As the screendump below shows, it will show you, as a graph, when things have started to deteriorate. You can look through the history, and see on what days there have been many errors. It also gives you a reliability index rating, from 10 to 1 (Ten being very good, 1 being exceedingly bad. Coupled with event viewer logs, Reliability Monitor makes it that much easier to read logs, and solve problems.
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Errors in week numbering – Lotus 8.*
In migrating many of our users to Lotus Notes 8, we have recently found that some of them have experienced problems with week numbering, as 2009 has 53 weeks. Week number 53 is shown as week 1. This error carries over to 2010, meaning that week 1 is shown as week 2, and so on. Users using Lotus Notes 6.* and 7.* are not experiencing the problem.
This is apparently caused by a setting in the operating system, but can be fixed in Lotus Notes. Here’s how:
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Signature is not autoinserted in Notes 8.0.2
I had a user call in recently, complaining that, even though she’d defined a signature to be added automatically. She got no error message, and had not changed anything about her setup.
Though she hadn’t changed anything, a change had been made. All the mailfiles’ design (for those who ran version 8.*) had been upgraded to version 8.5.1. As it turned out, there was a bug in that design, meaning that signature settings did not work for people running client 8.0.2.
The solution here is simple, and can be one out of two; either downgrade the mailfile design to version 8.0.2, or upgrade the client to version 8.5.1. -
Removing applications in Facebook
Like so many others, I am on Facebook. Unlike a lot of people, I have only a bare minimum of installed applications. The reason for this is simply that I have better things to spend my time on than Aquarium this, Zoo that and Mafia the other. Every so often, I add an app, and decide “naw”. However, removing apps isn’t very intutive to do, so I thought I’d make a neat little step-by-step guide. Here it is:
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Set default CapsLock, NumLock and ScrollLock state
Lately, I’ve been annoyed that a few of the computers I’ve set up have had NumLock on after each and every boot. The problem lies somewhere in the installation scripts, I’m sure, but as I have no power over those scripts, all I can do, is fix the problem whenever I spot it.
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ISO burning – as easy as it comes
From time to time, I come across having to burn an ISO onsite. I usually carry with me an external hard drive on which I have a few essential ISO’s, such as Ubuntu, UBCD or GParted. Now, while I have software to burn ISO’s on my computer, I don’t always bring my computer with me when going to see a customer. Luckily, there is a nifty little app to help me burn the discs I might need.
The program is called “Free ISO Burner“, and it does exactly what it is meant to do, no more, no less. There are two advantages to this program. The first is the fact that it takes up less than one megabyte of storage. The second is that it runs, simply and smoothly, without installation. These two features means it’s one of the many programs I always have with me on a memorystick.
A quick word on ISO’s. Wikipedia defines ISO’s as