Lee.org

As I said I would, I cancelled my Godaddy.com DNS hosting because I found out about their long string of misogynistic advertisements. See my conversation with Godaddy folks about this. While they don’t run such ads any more, it is important to not encourage any company to benefit from such practices. They got big because of their negative publicity and that is not right.

Here is the Godaddy ad that broke the camel’s back.

My web hosting is through Dreamhost so I switched to Dreamhost DNS.

I had a printer configuration problem so I had to delete and then reinstall my printer. The trouble was, I would delete the printer and then it would magically come back.

This solved my problem:

look in this folder:

C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS

Is it empty?

If not delete everything in the folder

Restart your computer

I got these really nice illuminated switches from Sparkfun to control the Rubens’ Tube I built with a friend. Wiring them up was strangely non-obvious so I figured I’d post a schematic here.

Here is how to edit the Google Chrome autocorrect dictionary. Just go to this web page:

chrome://settings/editDictionary

(you have to copy-paste that line into your browser)

Pasting text that already has formatting in it can be a bother.

The homebrew fix to strip formatting is: Copy the text, paste it into Notepad, Copy it again, paste it wherever.

There is a great program for it: Puretext http://www.stevemiller.net/puretext/
With the program: copy the text, hit WINDOWS+V (instead of the normal CTRL+V and the text is pasted with the formatting stripped out :-)

I use it all the time and it is a huge lifesaver.

Short form: don’t buy Norton Antivirus. They are almost as ruthless about extracting money from people as the Russian scammers they are protecting you against. Instead get Microsoft Security Essentials and don’t click on offers that sound too good to be true.

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Long form:
Years ago, having an antivirus program on your computer was an important part of keeping bad people off your computer. Today this generally is not generally the case. Here is why:

– Bad people don’t use “frontal attacks” to get onto your computer any more. Instead, they use social engineering. They won’t try to hack your IP address, instead, they will sneak their way into a product you will download willingly and when the antivirus program asks “Are you sure?” You’ll naively say “Sure!”
– Norton and Symantec, the two biggest antivirus companies, make products that do 1 thing well, scare you into thinking you need them. They are almost as bad as the scammers they are protecting you against, really.
– By far the best antivirus program out there is YOU. If an offer seems too good to be true and all you need to do is install a piece of free software, IT IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. It is a scam and you will get what you deserve.
– Remember, on the internet, you are literally 1 click away from the world’s best, highly paid, amoral Russian scammer professionals!
– There are FREE antivirus programs out there that work very well. Namely Microsoft Security Essentials or AVG Antivirus. Yes Microsoft Security Essentials is from Microsoft and yes it’s free.

If you have several users on a Windows 7 computer, it is good to have several user accounts. But it is a bother switching between those accounts. You need to click Start | the tiny arrow next to the shutdown button | Switch user.

This program makes switching users a snap.
Fast User Switch

Here is a suggestion I just sent the Android Gmail team:

If an email sender has been previously approved to display images, the images should be loaded when the email is downloaded to my phone.

Right now the images are loaded when the email is viewed for the first time. This means I have to wait for the images to download and depending on my internet connection that could be a while. If I’m checking my email where there is no service (on subways, elevators, about 1/2 of Berkeley CA) the experience totally sucks.

If images are pre-downloaded, it will break “web bug” functionality built into email images. But web bugs have never been a web standard, just a clever, if unreliable hack at gaining metrics. If you’re totally excited about it, you could build a new web standard for when web bugs get viewed. Also, nowadays, if a user cares enough to have emails go to their inbox (and not unsubscribing, or marking it as spam), they are probably interested in reading the email, so web bugs aren’t that important any more.

Thanks for your consideration!

It’s so easy… once you know how!

In the image above, my laptop computer is running everything. Screen number 2 is plugged into my laptop. Screen number 3 is on my desktop computer. I made another “display” on my laptop and I’m showing that 3rd display using Teamviewer!

How I made it work: On the laptop, go to Windows 7’s “Screen Resolution” screen. Click “Detect” and Windows 7 will claim “Another display not detected”. That’s ok. On the properties for that display, under Multiple Displays click “try to connect anyway on: VGA”, and click Apply. Then under Multiple Displays click “Extend desktop to this display” and click Apply. You are done on your laptop!

Now go to your desktop computer. Connect to your laptop with Teamviewer (this will probably work with other VNC-like programs). Choose to view the 3rd display.

Tada! You now have multiple monitors on one computer, with the help of your other computers.

I have also used Synergy to connect two nearby computers to one another. You can use both Synergy and this Teamviewer trick at the same time. The mouse movements get a bit confusing but it works!

Short form: I changed from the excellent Tomato firmware on my Linksys WRT54GL to Toastman Tomato in order to get IP based bandwidth monitoring. It works great!

Long form:
I’ve been using the excellent Tomato firmware on my Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 router since 2009. It was easy to install and has worked flawlessly. My router now provides service for about 30 devices, many are not under my direct control. I wanted to get IP bandwidth stats so I could tell, on those infrequent occasions when the internet was running slow, who was sucking up all the bandwidth.

I looked around a lot, comparing the open source router firmware: DD-WRT, OpenWRT, TomatoUSB, EasyTomato, Shibby, Toastman, pfsense,

I bought a new router, a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v 1.10. I installed OpenWRT (version: Attitude Adjustment 12.09-beta2). I had a little trouble with it. I tried installing the bandwidthd mod and I had a little trouble with the wifi on the router locking up every few minutes.

How I installed OpenWRT

After spending an hour reading the manuals, installation was way simple
* fetch the firmware mentioned in the hardware-specific documentation
* install the firmware by “upgrading” the router from Tomato. 3 clicks total
* tada, the router mostly “just works”
* enable wifi (the documentation clearly mentions that wifi is turned off by default), 3 clicks “enable wifi on the LAN, on the WAN, Submit!)
* tada, the router is totally working

To install Bandwidthd
* I tried using the web interface something wasn’t working right. I tried to jump-start Bandwidthd from within the ssh interfce but nuthun doin. So I uninstalled it from the web interface and the couple commands mentioned at the top of the Bandwidthd documentation from the ssh interface
* I then went to http://192.168.1.1/bandwidthd and darn if stats weren’t magically showing up!
* I noticed there was trouble with my wifi dying unexpectedly. I uninstalled bandwidthd and the wifi seemed more stable. I got bored trying to fiddle with it and switched to trying to install another router firmware. I’m glad I now had a backup router in the TP-Link, just in case.

Having given up on OpenWRT, I looked to mods of the Tomato firmware. Here’s what I found:
* Tomato hasn’t been updated since around 2009
* TomatoUSB hasn’t been updated since around 2011. And it doesn’t have the bandwidth monitoring I wanted anyway
* pfsense is far too complex to install and run
* Toastman Tomato looked good so I gave it a go

Having Temporarily Given Up On OpenWRT, I Tried Toastman Tomato

Toastman Tomato has the built in IP bandwidth stats I was looking for. It was confusing trying to find the right firmware to download. But I found Toastman answering my exact question online, “I have a WRT54GL v1.1, what version do I want to install?” His answer, “You have a Linksys WRT54GL which does not have a USB port. It is a MIPSR1 router. You should load 1.28.7626.1 BETA. Use the std build. 7628.1 is also good, but has a more complex interface for setting up VLAN’s, which you probably don’t need.” I took that and went to Toastman’s 4shared.com site and downloaded tomato-WRT54G_WRT54GL-1.28.7634Toastman-IPT-ND-Std.bin. I upgraded my router with that firmware and BAM!! It all just worked! It even imported all my old Tomato settings!

Here is a local copy of the Toastman Tomato that I use.
http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/tomato-WRT54G_WRT54GL-1.28.7634Toastman-IPT-ND-Std.bin