Lorem Ipsum

Once in a while you need to fill in some dummy-text. Usually this is done, by leveraging the “lorem ipsum” text.

While there are a couple of websites, that can create this text (like http://www.lipsum.com/), this is actually unnecessary while working with Micorsoft Word 2007. Just type in =lorem(10,5) and you’ll get about 10 paragraphs with up to 5 lines of text per paragraph.

This is kinda neat.

Foxit Reader update forces UAC

After updating my recently installed Foxit Reader to most recent version lead to an unexpected behavior: whenever I start Foxit Reader I get the UAC-dialog in Vista. This is more than just annoying.

Well, looking at the settings dialog of Foxit didn’t reveal anything unusual. But then it strikes me: I looked at the settings using my regular user account! Switching to the all-user settings of the link revealed, that administrative privileges where being required in order to start Foxit! Bummer!!

Sizing the console

OK, so once in a while I have to work just on a plain old console on one of my linux machines. But since there is this neat 22″ monitor on my desk it hurts to see to see the default-resolution of 640×480 pixels.

So how to alter the default resolution, when you’re not using any graphic window manager thingy?

I have a recent version of Debian running, so I use grub for managing my boot-menu.

To change the resolution the easiest way is to go the /etc/default/grub and edit the commandline settings:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="vga=0x0305"

This will give you at least 1024×768 with 256 colors! (A decent list of codes to use can be found at www.pendrivelinux.com).

BSOD: Logon Process

I haven’t had a real nasty blue screen of death for the longest time – so I was long overdue.

During some housekeeping of my laptop I decided to get rid of some apps and then to my surprise I got a nice BSOD as a reward for cleaning out my harddisk.

I took me quite some time to get my head around this. Turned out, that one app was a little too eager to clean out stuff and removed some DLLs that where essentially needed by the logon-process.

BSOD

Thank goodness I recently made a virtual image of my machine and still had an old copy of a BartPE image around. So just fire up BartPE, compare the contents of c:\windows\system32\ with the contents of my virtual image – and there were about a dozen DLLs missing.

A couple of hours later I had the missing DLLs back in place and … my machine is running again. I think this will put me advance for quite a while as far as BSOD are concerned.

Installing Bluetooth Peripheral Device

I thought, that I had my HTC Touch Pro, Vista x64 SP2 and Outlook 2007 all set up – and then come some stupid update and everythings seems to be back to start.

After switching on bluetooth on my laptop I get a nice looking Vista dialog stating “Installing Bluetooth Peripheral Device” – NOT! I mean, Vista couldn’t find an apropriate driver 🙁

OK, so there is help; you just have to do it yourself.

  • ignore the failing “Installing Bluetooth Peripheral Device” dialog
  • open the device manager and open the properties for the not corret installed bluetooth device
  • select “reinstall driver” and select to manually supply the driver
  • browse to “Microsoft Corporation” as the manufacturer (beware: there is also just “Microsoft”, which doesn’t do!) and the select either Windows Mobile 6.0 or 6.1

that all – why can’t Vista do all this on his own?

Live Writer is language sensitive

So I though I take a look at Windows Live Writer (since it’s called Essentials it sound as you gotta have some). But vanilla is just not my style I immediately looked at the Live Writer Gallery.

But just to figure that there are no plugins available?! I just couldn’t believe my eyes!!

OK – so switching the language-preference of my browser from german to english helped a lot – seems like Microsoft doesn’t want them germans to get any plugins 🙁

Show 'em all

When you’re working with Sharepoint workspace you might notice that you can create several instances in an meeting-workspace – one for each appointment.

Depending on the template you choose for your workspace, you can upload documents to a document-library in your workspace. These are manage individually for each appointment (aka instance).

Even though it seems as if there would be an individual document library per instance, this isn’t the case. Instead there is only one document library, which is being “filtered” according to the currently visible instance.

To get the content of all instance, all you have to do is to append &InstanceID=ALL to the URL of the list (or document library) and off you go!

When "save" feels like lockdown

So Microsoft really got down to business with this security thing – after installing PowerShell on my new machine I figured, that it’s configured in restricted mode.

This is not some kind of limited mode of operation, but rather this denies the execution of all scripts whatsoever – the term restricted suggested something else, at least in my mindset.

The four PowerShell execution policies include the following:

  • Restricted: No scripts can run.
  • AllSigned: Ps1 and .Ps1xml files must be digitally signed.
  • RemoteSigned: Ps1 and .Ps1xml files from the internet must be digitally signed.
  • Unrestricted: No digital signatures are required and all scripts can be executed.

To find your current policy-setting just use Get-ExecutionPolicy.