danny’s space

Taking a laptop to and from work can be useful (it’s good exercise lugging a 3kg beast on your back) but changing the proxy server settings twice a day can quickly become an annoyance.

If your workplace uses an automatic proxy configuration script, you can create two .reg files to set and unset this for you.

For example, to set up the proxy configuration, have the following inside a file, e.g. proxyON.reg:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
“AutoConfigURL”=”http://www.company.com/proxy.pac”

Obviously you need to replace the URL with one appropriate for your circumstances. To unset the automatic proxy, have the following inside another file, e.g. proxyOFF.reg:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]
“AutoConfigURL”=-

To ‘use’ the .reg files, just double click them. Tested and works fine with XP and Vista. Not sure where I found this tweak so I can’t reference it unfortunately.

For Firefox, I use the QuickProxy add-on. It’s much leaner than the FoxyProxy tool, which refused to save proxy settings for me.

Crunch. Matt, Nate, Calvin and I turned around awkwardly in our seats to see a red Ford hatchback frighteningly close to the rear window. Foot finally pressed firmly on the brake, the flatline-like tone of the reverse sensors reverberating around the car’s cabin, my heart sunk. Not again! My second three-point-turn accident in North Epping. What a wonderful way to end the morning. After dropping off Calvin, Matt and Nate, I drove back to the scene and surveyed the damage more closely.

The crunch wasn’t wrong. A large furrow in the rear right door of the red hatch, 15cm long, 10cm wide and a few deep. I got out a Post-It pad and pen from the car, took a few deep breaths, and walked up to the house where it was parked. A doorbell and a barking dog later, a man came to the door. I asked if the car belonged to him, and he indicated towards his neighbour. Another few deep breaths and a doorbell. No dog, just a tall friendly-looking guy around my age.

“Hi, sorry to disturb you, but is that red car outside yours? I bumped into it doing a three-point-turn. I’m really sorry.”

Unfazed, the guy replied, “Hang on, I’ll get my shoes and come take a look.”

After more profuse apologising, we inspected the damage together. He leaned down to take a closer look, brushed the bruised door with a few fingers, and stood back up. He managed to get a few words past my blurts of “insurance” and “sorry”:

“It should be fine. Don’t worry.”

The relief. We exchanged names and mobile numbers, and shook hands. I waved to him as I drove past a few minutes later while he was getting into the car, probably just to check it still worked fine.

Forgiveness. Grace. Mercy. I know it’s only a very minor incident, but it highlights these well.

I especially didn’t expect it after my last three-point-turn encounter, that time with a car belonging to a man from the Chinese congregation at church. We’ll call him Peter. That time, there wasn’t even a crunch. Not a sound. The only sound came from Peter’s mouth after he stormed into service, demanding to speak to the person who drove the blue Volvo that one of his friends saw reversing into his car. We inspected the damage, and it was a mere 2cm paint scratch on the bottom bumper. I’ve had grazes deeper and larger than that. Peter, quietly and calmly fuming, demanded insurance and license details and kept emphasising that the bumper looked highly indented while pressing on it determinedly with his hand. He kept repeating what an inconvenience it would be to him to have the car in for servicing, and said that he would contact me with the quote from the repair shop because some internal damage may have occurred.

What a difference! What a shocker was the reaction from the ‘mature Christian’, and what an embodiment of mercy was the reaction from that friendly young man behind the screen door.

Makes you think.

I post this here in the hope that it might help someone else who is having the same issues as me with making Vista work with an old printer like the HP Deskjet 930C. It’s a lovely printer, quite the workhorse. But when Vista came, printing to the 930C through a networked XP computer connected to the Vista laptop didn’t work, at all.

After a bit of googling, came up with a few websites:

http://thevistaforums.com/lofiversion/index.php/t29452.html, which suggested having the most up to date drivers on the ’server’ machine.

http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/vista/vista_printer_install_problem.htm, which had general suggestions for making network printers work with Vista.

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1464064&page=5, which contained the solution that worked for me.

Basically, you need to make sure that the server machine (the networked computer to which the printer is connected) has the most up-to-date drivers for that printer. Then, instead of adding a network printer in Vista, use the Add a local printer option in the Add Printer dialog, and then Create a new port of type Local Port, and as the Port Name, use \\computername\printername, where computername is the network name of the server computer, and printername is the shared name of the printer.

Vista should then pick the correct driver - if not, select it from the list. Then install the printer, and print a test page - hopefully successfully!

A great thing about digital SLR cameras is that their lenses have threads on them so you can attach various filters to enhance picture quality. Problem is, DSLRs are expensive.

Solution: build an adaptor that fits onto the retractable lens of a digital compact camera that allows the use of a threaded polarizing filter. Found this solution through Google, but I can’t track it down now.

Basically, take one of those old 35mm plastic film canisters (or tube with appropriate diameter for your digital compact lens) and hacksaw (hax0r, ha ha) the end off to form a plastic ring. One end will fit around the retractable lens, and the other end will serve to hold the circular polarizing filter in place. The pictures give a better idea.

An important thing to note: Saw off the end of the tube bit by bit, leaving the appropriate amount of tubing so that when the filter is attached and the assembly is plugged onto the retractable lens, (1) the image is not blocked by part of the tube or filter, and (2) the tube and filter do not block the movement of the lens (e.g. when zooming). When taking photos with this makeshift assembly, there may be a bit of reflection of the lens onto the polarizer - just block the incoming light with your hand.

Usage is simple - just twist, and observe! Some suggest setting the polarizer after locking the exposure (i.e. half-way press on a compact) but I found setting it before works well.

As you can see, the polarizer makes a tasty difference, deepening the blues and greens in this photo from Echo Point, Katoomba.

The woe when Sydney University central IT decided to migrate everyone to the Microsoft Exchange server! Migrate is too kind a word - it was more of an uprooting. As Angela put it, it was a case of outright computer molestation!

We like using Thunderbird for email. It’s open source, free, and flexible. But unfortunately, Thunderbird only manages to talk to email servers using POP or IMAP, and not Exchange. ICT said that we had to use Outlook. HAD TO. The line was basically, “Tough luck, everyone’s migrating, you have to do it as well”. Read: “We love Microsoft and have no idea how to work with other software. The university has decided to install buggy proprietary software so that the vice-chancellor can read your email and share your calendar and personal contacts so bananas to you”. So kicking and screaming, my email was migrated from the good ol’ POP3 system to the dreaded Exchange. I fought it as long as I could, even ignored the emails reminding us to contact the IT team responsible for migration.

But last Friday they came.

And after my email bounced for a few hours while the ‘migration’ happened, I was on the new system. Another case of if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I must say the Outlook web interface was half decent compared to the mediocre horde interface, although it rendered much better in Internet Explorer (bleh, Microsoft) than in Firefox. But the issue was how to get mail onto my computer to read offline, amongst other concerns?

To cut a very long story short, I spent 5 hours this morning trying to make Exchange work with Thunderbird, so that it was as if I was back to the old system of email. I hope the instructions posted here will help others in similar positions. For Thunderbird to be able to read Exchange emails using this method, your Exchange administrator must have Web Access enabled and you need to be able to access it. For me, thankfully this was enabled as POP and IMAP for Exchange were both disabled by the very kind admins.

First, you need to download and install the WebMail extension for Thunderbird. Restart Thunderbird, and install the helper extension OWA Webmail, which stands for Outlook Web Access. Basically this method hinges on an extremely useful Thunderbird extension that logs in to Web Access for you and downloads mail from there. After the two extensions are installed, restart Thunderbird again.

Before continuing, you need a few pieces of information: (1) the username that you use to log into Web Access (e.g. jsmith1234), (2) your password (e.g. outlooksucks), (3) your complete email address (not aliases!) (e.g. jsmith1234@mail.company.com) and (4) the URI of the Web Access interface (e.g. http://www.mcws.company.com/exchange).

Start Thunderbird and create a New Account (Tools -> Account Settings -> Add Account). The account type is Web mail, and the Incoming User Name is jsmith1234@mail.company.com, for example. Hit Finish when done.

Then get to the settings for the WebMail extension. Go to Tools -> Add-ons, and click the Options button for the WebMail extension. Make sure the POP server is running (green light showing). Close this dialog, then go to the Options for the WebMail - OWA extension. Access the Domains tab, and click Add. For Domain, enter the part of your email address after the @, e.g. mail.company.com in John Smith’s case. For Uri, enter the URI of the Outlook Web Access interface (e.g. http://www.mcws.company.com/exchange). Click Ok, and select the Accounts tab, and you should be able to see the Web Mail account you created in a drop-down box. You need to fiddle with these settings depending on your Exchange set-up. The Screen Ripper option works for me, as does unchecking Use domain in login request.

Oh, and another thing. Windows Vista doesn’t seem to recognise the alias ‘localhost’. This means that in Account Settings, in the Server Settings for your newly created account, you need to use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost as the Server Name.

After all this is set up, try getting your mail. If all is working, your password should be requested, and your mail should start being downloaded. It was an immense relief that 5 hours of ‘work’ finally paid off.

If this method doesn’t work for you, you may be interested in other methods to access Outlook Web Access. These other methods are, in my opinion, a bit convoluted, besides the fact that they didn’t work for me on Exchange Server 2007.

I wonder if there is any intended similarity between the Cityrail Beasts Campaign, you know those hard-to-read cartoon posters plastered on stations around Sydney with catchy (and somewhat creative…) titles like ‘The Hogger’, ‘The Blocker’, and ‘The Yeller’, and this SMH Heckler article earlier this year?

I like to think it’s making a difference, but the evidence on trains says otherwise.

What does $700 buy you these days? Adobe CS3 Master Collection student edition that can’t be activated. And what happens if you try to activate via telephone and stay on the line after the computer voice with an English accent tells you that you’ll be transferred to a customer service representative because your activation was unsuccessful? Yes, you get transferred to India, home to all the customer service representatives in the world.

I spoke with someone named “Jade” (obviously not her real name) who couldn’t help much and had to “escalate” this issue and gave me a reference number. In fact, she insisted that my serial number didn’t need activating, until I finally convinced her that I was looking at an activation screen. Nothing happened for a while, and I called back and spoke to “Gracie” who more helpfully informed me that many CS3 Master Collections were experiencing this problem, and told me to use the 30-day activation grace period until Adobe figures things out.

Not the worst experience with Indian call centres I must say. The time when I had to ring HP support (transferred to India) was relatively pleasant as well.

Hopefully Adobe pulls its fingers out from where the sun don’t shine and fixes this issue before the grace period expires and many users are left with a 25gb lead weight on the hard disks. You’d expect more from a company that sells this kind of software to professionals.

Was talking to Sara a few days ago about Christian hypocrites (for some reason…) and we came to the interesting conclusion that to be a Christian necessitates being a hypocrite. Let me explain.

People who know Christians are often put off by the hypocritical nature of their friends. My dad turned away from Christianity when he was a teenager because of the hypocrisy he saw in his ‘Christian’ friends. For a Christian, being tagged as a hypocrite usually means talking the talk but not walking the walk - professing faith in Jesus but acting no different from the world.

But the current proposition says that Christians are necessarily hypocrites, to some extent at least. Hypocrites need something to be hypocritical about - for example, Christian beliefs and a resultant ‘expected way of life’. The problem for Christians is that we aspire to an (in this life) unattainable standard, who is Jesus Christ himself. So no matter how much ‘good’ we do in our lives, at some level we will be hypocrites because we do not, and indeed cannot, wholly walk the life of Jesus who we proclaim.

Non-Christians don’t have this problem. They don’t have this standard to compare to, and therefore can’t technically be described as hypocritical in this sense. Of course, if they have their own values to adhere to and don’t adhere to them, then the hypocrite label would necessarily apply.

So perhaps being a Christian means being a hypocrite. We just have to make sure that even though we know we can’t attain perfection this side of the second coming, we don’t become complacent and become like the world.

I wonder if there are differing levels of fobbiness. There are those who blatantly refuse to assimilate into Australian society, those who assimilate some aspects, and those who look foreign and may even sound a bit foreign but totally embrace Aussie culture. Surely they can’t all be defined under one umbrella of ‘FOB’. A friend and I were talking about this (of all things…) and we reckon there are FOBs (fresh off the boat) and OFOBs (one foot on boat). FOBs assimilate to varying degrees, but OFOBs refuse to, hanging onto their parent culture for dear life, choosing to talk their native tongue, hang exclusively around fellow OFOBs, and turn people around them into FOBs. While I recognise the importance of parent culture (albeit not as much as some), and that people feel more comfortable around similar kinds (I’m more comfortable around Asians and am given the freak-out by ocker Aussies sporting wife beaters, hairy limbs and beer breath), I think when in Rome, do as the Romans. As much as you can bear. And if you can’t bear it at all, don’t be offended when people label you as a FOB, or indeed an OFOB. Yes, according to Wikipedia, there are non-offensive ways to use this classification.

When is fruit not a fruit? When it’s an apple.

After watching Border Security a few days ago (painful though it is - the pace is slower than Grey’s Anatomy) I thought the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service was actually doing Australia some good.

But after trying to legitimately import some biological material from the US, AQIS is more of a disservice than a service. Protecting what matters my butt. If I had tried to import the material illegally, it would have made it through fine. But no, I had to go the legal path, and declare everything. And just because there isn’t a word perfect match between “Arabidopsis clones” and “Genetic material” (scientists out there would understand that they are the same thing), my import permit was rejected and my parcel is scheduled to be destroyed tomorrow.

Great. Now my research will be further delayed, trying to communicate with the sender in the US to convince them to write the correct thing on the packing slip so that AQIS doesn’t chuck a spaz and reject the import of apples when the import permit allows all fruits. Some knowledge would come in handy, instead of “duhhhh, I tink dis isn’t same same”.