Help The helpers ...

Hi again.
as you may have asserted i have new found respect for Microsoft with the new Windows 8. i have some "Air Time" with it too, i installed a machine for every preview version available (developer, consumer and release previews). in anticipation for the official release, and been an MSDN subscriber, i went ahead and assumed this will profit me in the long run.
I assumed that i will be able to upgrade my edition, and keep the hours of work put in to customize my machine.

guess what ..... i was WRONG !!!

after trying everything except for installing a fresh install (on a formatted partition), i was referred to this post and followed it. At first it looked promising (may i quote from the post: "Keep in mind that this is not supported, and could end up with a catastrophic failure if some bits are not properly upgraded,")

an of course after the third re-start, i was forced to to what i didn't want to do in the first place

Re-install (at least restoring from the web is fast).

why oh why do i like to help out ?

see you soon.

G.

מדריך לבניית אתרי אינטרנט או המוסד לביטוח לאומי - שרות ונגישות מעל הכל

בעוונותיי אני נאלץ לשלם לביטוח לאומי, עד כאן הכל בסדר. יש אפילו אתר אינטרנט אשר בו אזרחי המדינה (הריעו לריבון) יכולים בנוחות ובצורה מאובטחת לשלם את מסיהם

אצתי, רצתי למחשב הקרוב למקום מגורי (פשוט שלפתי את הלפטופ מהתיק) ופתחתי את הדפדפן החביב עלי (בלי לנקוב בשמות) והפלא ופלא ... כלום, פשוט כלום

מוטב מראה עיניים

  כפי שוודאי אתם שמים לב... כך קשה במידה מסוימת לשלם מיסים, אך, לא לי

הנחתי שמדובר בבעית תאימות ולכן ניסיתי (ללא הצלחה) עוד מספר דפדפנים (שהציגו תמונה דומה) ומספר אמולטורים (מדמי תצורה) לפני שניגשתי ל"דבר האמיתי" הדפדפן האימתני של מיקרוסופט ... אינטרנט אקספלורר 10

הוא בטח יציל אותי ... הכל בנוי להתאים לו, ובטח אתרי האינטרנט של הרשויות אשר בחרו במיקרוסופט (בצדק) כספק התשתיות מס 1 שלהם ... את ההפתעה שציפתה לי ניתן להראות רק בתמונות

עכשיו ... אתם מתבוננים בתמונה ואומרים לעצמכם ... "על מה הוא מדבר?" הכל עובד ... אני אמרתי אותו דבר, ואז גיליתי שאין באתר כפי שהוא נראה שאף לא אפשרות פעולה אחת

לכן הפעלתי מחדש דפדפן אחר (פיירפוקס 14.0) וניסיתי דבר שלא היה עולה על דעתי לנסות אלמלא הוא עבד

הפעלתי תוסף*  שמפעיל את אקספלורר דרך פיירפוקס, לא לא, זה לא עוד מדמה או אמולטור זה ממש להריץ דפדפן אחד דרך ממשק משתמש של דפדפן אחר. וכפי שציינתי התוצאות היו מעבר לכל דמיון

כעת אני (וכל בני ישראל אשר מבינים "מעט" כמוני במחשבים) לשלם את חובותיי (אשר הלכו ותפחו מול עייני בזמן הנסיונות לשלמן) בנוחות וביעילות

אה... ועוד משהו קטן ... בעת הכניסה לאתר, משיקולי אבטחה, מוצגת שאלה אשר מבקשת מהאזרח להקליד את האותיות שבתמונה, לא תאמינו באיזה צירוף מקרים נתקלתי, כשראיתי את זה חשבתי שפשוט יש מישהו בביטוח הלאומי שפשוט צוחק עלי

לזה אני קורא צדק חברתי

עד הפעם הבאה

 (IETab לתוסף קוראים)*

Painstaking tasks (recursive archives)

Hi all ... this is another example of how to apply the "longer path" approach

isn't it annoying to unzip an archive only to find out that it contains another archive ?

here is a sipmle shell script that will help you unzip archives recursively...

I called it "rezip", it carries the same functionallity of originall "zip" command

ToDo: make it indifferent to type of archives (people tend to get clever and switch archiving methods)

'till nex time 

G.

Taking the longer path

As I am the "computer guy" in the family, I was appointed to be incharge of the presentation for my father-in-law 70th birthday.
Well, at least ,in charge of getting 200 picture images into a powerpoint presentation file (in deed a job worthy of my experties).

As i was starting this tedious task i looked online for an automatic solution for my problem that will save me some time, and found this nice post in msdn.

The task, of course, was a small battle of it's own (the code and my machines configuration needed some modifications due to it beeing a sample and not intended to work out of the box).
but, 3 houers (and 5 seconds of runtime) later, after showing the outcome to the "client", she said: "I would had done it faster manually".

well. I think I still like the longer path ... and I'll see what happens on his 80th (assuming I can find the code)

'till next time.

G.

Are you ready ???

make Windows 8 CP look native in Virtualbox

Hi all.

I recently encountered another hassle in attempting to perfect my Window 8 machine. setting the virtual machine's screen resolution to fit my laptop screen (16:9) dimensions and resolution (1600X900X32bit) proved to be challenging.

I'm not the guy to run away from such a challenge.

Due to the Beta nature of the OS it was not surprising that Virtualbox's guest addition (Ver. 4.1.8), dose not yet support display dimensions that differ from 4:3

although there is the option of using the "scale mode" <host key+> it doesn't quite cut it.

 Disregarding the annoying host top window bar, the font looks stretched and it's just not it :( no worries, there is a solution:

Shut down all of your Virtual machines and VirtualBox too (not mandatory for linux or Mac hosts).

for windows hosts:
open the command line interface type the following line:

in c:\Program Files\Oracle\virtualBox>

...>VBoxManage.exe setextradata "MachinName" CustomVideoMode1 1600x900x32

for Linux hosts:
open terminal and type

:~$VBoxManage setextradata "MachineName" CustomVideoMode1 1600x900x32

 * replace MachineName with the name of your Virtual machine
Lo and behold ... it works (you can obviously use your favorite screen settings [Hight]x[Width]x[Depth]).

  

so now i can actually use the full extent of my screen.

 ... Oh Joy

G. 

A winning Combination

I have been working with Vim "text editor" for some time now. I found a few helpful entries I'd like to share. These helpful tips and tricks helps me be more efficient, code faster and makes the very powerful Vim even stronger.

First of all - install Vim and learn how to work with it (took me a while, but totally worth it).
 
The first cool add-on: snipMate (super easy to install) check it out

a short feature that show just the tip of the iceberg

Than i found some cool new features that actually transforms Vim editor in to an IDE altogether.

basically you need to run these commands:

$ git clone https://github.com/sontek/dotfiles.git
$ cd dotfiles
$ ./install.sh vim 

unfortunately the both (snipMate and Pathogen) don't work well together, this is just a challenge for me, there is no way I'll give up and just choose one. 
So I looked for a way to combine the two.
The trick was, installing them in the right order, snipMate then Pathogen (although you can mess around with it to find your way).
and then follow this little patch, to fix this small twitch, regarding mapping a different key <Ctrl+j> to activate snippet instead of <tab> to allow the both to co-exist.

Any way, the real cool thing about these features is that you can easily modify and adapt them to your needs. writing new code snippets, changing text highlighting, customizing auto-completions and syntax checking can be super helpful and is super easy to do.
 you can create your very own customized, "free of Charge",flexible and "free spirited" IDE.

For example:
writing a new code snippet for "*.xml" filetype:
simply write a new file named "xml.snippets" and place it in "~/.vim/snippets/"
(or equivalent, e.g. $HOME\vimfiles on Windows), edit the file and add (for the example sake) this code:

snippet version
            <?xml version="${1:*.*}"?>

snippet <>
            <${1:TagName}>
            </${2:TagName}>

this is what it does (I'll let you do the simple revers engineering):
but the guidelines are "${1:text}" - the first variable the marker will enter when snippet key  (in my case <Ctrl+j>) is hit.

* the video is a bit fuzzy but ... you'll get the picture :)
In future entries I'll try summarizing all of my insights in customizing Vim.
let me know what you think ... i feel this work was life changing (seeing that i suck in getting syntax correct the first time).

- Cool fact: "*.snippets" filetype has snippets (recursive ?) -

G.

Are you a team player ?

Do you take care of your own S#!T, or do you expect someone else to do it for you ?
Do you lead ? Do you follow ? Do you feel obliged to do your best for the "greater good" ?
Or do you only take care of no. 1 ?

In order to make it as a team every one needs to pitch in, buck up, give it his best effort and "take one for the team".

Following the rules of the community you live / work in, is the foundation of team work. all you have to do as a team is set the standards and live by them.

Here is an example of a set of rules that puts logic and order into potential chaos.

http://kde.org/code-of-conduct/ 



A global community moving in unison towards a common goal ... on what logically would seem lead to total anarchy ... is driven by the common goal and basic set of rules.

What do you think ?

G.

Its a small world after all

Recent technological advances allow us to do unthinkable things. if you would have told someone 30 years ago, that he would be talking to his friends halfway accros the world for free, i doubt he would have believed.
this upcoming revolution promisses to leave no one behind. soon, everyone will straighten up and learn how to digitalize there lives.

it raizes sevral major privecy issues.
but it am glad to be a part and try to lead this new, borderlind sci-fi, era.
it is a small world.
and it seems it is just going to get smaller.

leaving a digital footprint...

G.

It's on ...

Can it be ? Is it really happening ?
Can the people who allowed this to happen:

 actually have a standing chance competing head to head with Apple and Google ?

looks like it. it's hard for me to say a good word about Microsoft. But i find my self baffled. Even iPad fanatics will have to admit that that there is a reason to be concerned. I caught a movie published by iPhones.col.il documenting a feature by feature review of windows 8 tablet vs. iPad iOS5 and the end result was more than surprising.

so ... any way ... it seems like the world's biggest PC provider has stepped into the Post PC era.
To that i can only say ...

It's on ...

G.     

Grawcho's BlogPost (ver. 1.0 Beta)

Hi all, instead of saying how exited i am about my first post, I'll get right to business.
Two major companies in the industry launched their OS beta versions yesterday. and as a cutting edge enthusiast “techie” I of course rushed to get both of them.

the first is Microsoft's Windows 8 consumer preview (...or should i say time consumer, and if this is the preview, I wasn't sure I wanted to see the full feature, but my patience level is high).
the process started with the unfortunate fact that it took me half a day to find out how to install this OS version on a virtual or physical machine from scratch (not an upgrade or an 'along side' installation).
at this stage i want to point out ,my hardware and band-width are nothing to be embarrassed about (even the virtual ones).

the download process is enabled only from windows machines (doesn't run on any windows emulator i have) takes about 30 minutes, and right when you think you are done, the wizard starts "checking your files..." for ten more minutes followed by "getting the files ready ...". (what were you doing 'till now, just get on with it ... will ya).
It doesn't end there though, then started the process of calculating "thing you have to do ..." and told me i have low on disk space (only 3GB free left),16GB free space, it needed (my virtual-box windows 7 runs on almost all of a 30GB disk so ... no go there). went on to make more space by unistalling some unimportant stuff (2 more hours) and 5 more minutes to find out how to go back to write the disk image for a fresh Virtual machine.
i didn't give up though (up till now there is about 16 hours of working on this venture).

i finally got around to installing the new VM, and here is my initial take on the bran-new windows 8:
i like the fish image and the background (solid blue) color, the first use setup wizard was a bit unfamiliar and confusing for me, but very looks fitting for tablets the metro style desktop looks excellent for tablets, switching back to regular desktop mode is easy at first, but tend to be tricky and elusive latter.
All in all, it looks like the future... kudos Microsoft.

getting back to my starting point, the second OS beta is Canonical's Ubuntu 12.04 precise pangolin. which in order to get i simply clicked apply changes on the package manager, waited 15 minutes, and started working.
OK ... i admit ... i installed the alpha version on a new machine two days ago (after my wife surprised me with a much anticipated new lap-top), so 15 minutes more. Plus I'll add an hour for hardware patches and another one for correcting syntax errors in those patches (being a code contributor and an alpha tester I'm quite used to it).

finally, by the time i was done, there was little time left for testing or developing anything. so i went to sleep :(
but, tomorrow is a new day and I'll get right to the business of finding more cool stuff.

so, apart from wanting to try a new (and dare i say, very nice) Microsoft product, did i do anything wrong ?
just to clarify: this entry is not meant as a dis but rather as constructive criticism, bottom line is, windows 8 i quite cool.
I'm just saying, the process of getting the Beta version to work could be shorter, i'm sure.
or could it, ...i wonder ...

well, it is, like this blog entry, only a beta version
Any Thoughts (Oh wait .... "hang on while we get a few things ready ...") ?



G.