Joshua McKinnon

gpg

Fix for Unable to verify GPG Signatures

I've used GPG in some capacity for many years, but not enough to ever really be comfortable with it at the command line. Recently, I've had a rough time getting trust configured properly so I could  verify some file signatures, and found the solution to an

hyper-v

Enabling Remote Volume Management with PowerShell

I run a build server that's fully virtualized using Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 Standalone, and I'm in the process of upgrading to Hyper-V 2012 R2. One step I've always had to do is to enable Remote Volume Management. I could probably do this in

exchange

PowerShell script for finding iOS 6.1 devices using ActiveSync your Exchange server

NOTE: I originally wrote but never finished this entry back in February, when iOS 6.1 came out. iOS 6.1, released earlier this month (in February) (and also 6.1.1), had a fairly severe bug in how it interacts with Exchange 2010 SP1 and later.This is documented

doh

A quick openvpn "oops" moment

I learned a quick, silly lesson today. I run some servers that tunnel using openvpn to facilitate our single sign on. I've migrated one before, and at the time, I foolishly did not create a new certificate/key pair for the new server and re-used the old one.

timezones

World Time Buddy - an awesome timezone website

As the company I work for grows and has more users in remote areas of the globe, knowing what time it is for everyone gets tricky. We're in the US on the East Coast, but have employees in California, Hawaii, Germany, France, India, Ukraine, and other locations. A

Uncategorized

How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Evening

Open your brand new SSD (Samsung 830 series 128GB) Marvel with excitement at the iPhone-like packaging and eagerly image your old drive (Intel 80GB G1 SSD) onto the new one with Clonezilla - 15 mins and booted into Windows 7 on the new SSD. This is where I should have

editors

20 Years of VIM

VIM has now been out for 20 years. Ars has a nice article on it [http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/11/two-decades-of-productivity-vims-20th-anniversary.ars] . It is my editor of choice on *nix based systems, but things weren't always that way. I remember when I first used vim (it

nanowrimo

It's PragProWriMo again

It's November 1st. That means it's Pragmatic Programmer Writing Month [http://forums.pragprog.com/forums/235] (PragProWriMo) time again. Itself a spin off of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) [http://www.nanowrimo.org/] .This will be my third year trying to participate in my own way.

gui

A Proper Emphasis on User Experience in Software: Example 1

I found myself thrilled the other week by how awesome and helpful the messages in ImgBurn [http://www.imgburn.com/] are. I was slipstreaming some files on a Windows 7 DVD and wanted to keep it bootable, obviously. I figured I probably should do something but wasn't really

eclipse

Don't Use "Duplicate" button to add a new JRE/JDK in Eclipse

You may be tempted to use the "Duplicate..." button to add a new version of a JRE/JDK in Eclipse. Save yourself some potential hassle and use the "Add..." button instead. Manually copy and paste any Default VM Arguments you may have set afterwards. The problem

useful-tips

Creating a Multi-boot USB drive

Creating a bootable USB thumb drive from a single ISO is handy, but not on its own any big advantage over a bootable CD. A multi-boot USB thumb drive with every bootable ISO you want? That's something that is extremely useful, if you tend to need that kind

useful-tips

Easily create an ISO image of a CD/DVD

I occasionally find myself needing to create an ISO from a CD/DVD at work. Whether it's of some volume media, a diagnostics CD, or other CD that is created by a vendor. Today I found myself searching for a simple, free tool that does this. In particular,

browser uxfail

Browser Behavior Audit: Mailto: links

I don't run a desktop mail client any more at home. I'm sure most users don't. It's because of this that I have no default mail client installed. Occasionally I click a mailto: link. Maybe I want to email someone from their

Uncategorized

Port test websites rock

So you're at home, and you want to connect with a friend online. Maybe it's some Minecraft [http://www.minecraft.net/] and you start your own server. Maybe it's an XMPP server [http://www.igniterealtime.org/index.jsp] for a little pair programming with

hyper-v

Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Remote Disk Management from Windows 7 on a Domain

I'm in the process of migrating a build machine to a Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 setup. I'm relatively new to Hyper-V, and may also be comparing with other options. The Hyper-V Server is joined to the domain, all standard remote management options from the console

musings

Why add-ons suck

This dialog, that's why: [ ](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-87jxS2iZjYs/TYkV6G8IrwI/AAAAAAAAAMA/Va3qaDmB_j8/s1600/firefox4_incompatible_addons.png) Firefox 4.0 is officially out. I think it's great that Firefox has such

Uncategorized

Trogdor login screen

I think in general, it is bad security practice to display a lot of identifiable information at an SSH login prompt. If there's a known exploit for distro X version XYZ, you don't want to give someone a fast path to utilizing it. I was setting

iPad

Solution to a slow syncing iPad

I noticed sometimes my iPad takes FOREVER to sync. Specifically, my ipad takes forever to backup before it starts syncing. I recently stopped syncing it to my macbook pro and began syncing it on a windows 7 system - iTunes has been behaving awesome for me on Windows, contrary to

oracle

Oracle: How to find the service name of a database instance (SID)

At work I ran into a surprising issue. It's hard to find a service name for an Oracle database when all you know is the SID if you don't know exactly where to look. Hard, even for large, corporate Oracle deployments with DBAs you can ask.

Uncategorized

Booklist updated, no Tuesday post

No Tuesday post, but I did spend time working on a longer post that just isn't quite ready yet. Sleep is more important... I did update my bookshelf [http://codecampfire.blogspot.com/p/bookshelf.html] the other night though. Eventually I'll better separate it into a

rambling

Stumbleupon is neat

A coworker recently told me he finds some really cool stuff using Stumbleupon [http://www.stumbleupon.com/]. Now, I had heard of Stumbleupon before, but I had never tried it. I'm not sure why. The concept is cool. I gave it a spin today, and here's

goals

November month in Writing: Week 2 summary

I was able to broadly stick to my writing plan last week, as well as converted a couple of my drafts into finished posts. I read just shy of the first 50 pages of "Release It!", and I am enjoying it so far. Every weekday post was scheduled

java

muCommander - the ultimate cross platform utility

Despite NTFS supporting very long path names, Windows frequently has issues [http://codecampfire.blogspot.com/2009/11/windows-file-path-fail.html] with long filepaths. Sometimes you need to bring in another tool for the job. My favorite tool for dealing with long filepaths is muCommander [http://www.mucommander.com/]. It is a

editors

Replacing Notepad with Notepad2

I've been using Notepad2 [http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html] as a light-weight replacement for the notepad.exe that comes with Windows for several years. Let's face it, the original notepad.exe falls short on many levels - no auto-tab, no multi-line tabbing/untabbing, poor line

java

Desktop Java Apps - to bundle or not to bundle a JRE?

First - here is my definition of bundling the JRE. Shipping your application with a JRE, such that it is the one used by default from your application startup scripts, regardless of the environment on the target system. The bundled JRE is not registered with the system, so it should