After installing Eclipse on Mac OS X, I was permanently told the app’s developer is not identifiers and the app can’t be started.
Better than turning off Gatekeeper and less annoying than CTRL-clicking the app all the time is simply to run
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /applications/eclipse/eclipse.app
No side effect on security settings at all…
Since Oracle’s Java SDK is not part of Ubuntu, there are some steps required to get Java set up on a Ubuntu system. Especially running a 64-bit version of Ubuntu requires one tiny additional step driving you crazy in case do not speak Ubuntu fluently.
There are quite some scripts and tutorials out there how to get Oracle’s Java working on a Ubuntu system, however, there are only a few steps necessary to do so:
Pick the bits from Oracle’s download site and extract the archive using tar. In my case we use the 32-bit version of the JDK
tar -xvf ~/Downloads/jdk-7u15-linux-i586.tar.g
Create a folder and move all the stuff over there
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0 sudo mv jdk1.7.0_15/* /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0/
Now set up the symbolic links for java, javac and javaws.
sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0/bin/java" 1 sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javac" "javac" "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0/bin/javac" 1 sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javaws" "javaws" "/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0/bin/javaws" 1
Now, create a Bourne script to set the JAVA_HOME variable and update the PATH variable. In case you haven’t used Vim yet, get it using
sudo apt-get install vim
and then create the file
sudo vim /etc/profile.d/java7.sh
edit the file file and add the following export statements
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0 export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
Finally execute the script
source /etc/profile
and try to call java. If you run a freshly set up Ubuntu such as mine, you probably will end up the system telling you
bash: /usr/bin/java: No such file or directory
What happened? Actually, we installed a 32-bit version of the JDK, however as mentioned at the beginning running a 64-bit version of Ubuntu and therefore we come back to this very tiny bit missing. One additional package is required to run the 32-bit version: libc6-i386.
“This package includes shared versions of the standard C library and the standard math library, as well as many others. This is the 32bit version of the library, meant for AMD64 systems.”
Said that, get it
sudo apt-get install libc6-i386
and try to run java one more time. It should work now fine.
As we are dealing quite a lot with mathematics in our current development and using Atlassian’s Confluence as our documentation system, we were looking for a elegant way to document our mathematics in any better way than E=mc^2.
We found the Math Formula macro originally written and tested against Confluence version 3.5, not playing well with the latest Confluence version, we are using.
After following the installation steps there it was, the incompatibility note:
“There are user macros without any metadata configured in their template. They have been highlighted below. For these macros to be available for use in content they require parameter information. See the Guide to User Macro Templates.”
Check out the highlighted macros, and click Edit.
In the Template field add the following as the very first line of the template:
## @param size:title=Font Size|type=int|default=150|desc=Font size for formulas in percentage
Within the template, the the font size is referred as $paramsize, however, in the metadata description you denote the param just as size.
Once these changes are made, you can use the macro to create your formulas…
Recently, I started to convert some of my old media files using Handbrake to be streamed using a TwonkyMedia Server to my Xbox 360. After converting some of the files, I realized my Xbox won’t play the files due to a status code 69-C00D10E0:
The Xbox support forum provides an entry exactly for this issue, however, the information given there is not quite helpful. That’s what they say (to be honest, that’s what I already had in mind):
Error code 69-c00D10E0 is preceded by the following message:
Unplayable Content
Status Code: 69-c00D10E0Problem
If you’re seeing this message and error code, it means that the file is too large for streaming, the file may be corrupted, or the codec needed to play the file is missing.
More helpful would be a list of supported video and audio codecs, a list of not supported combinations or similar. Therefore, I had to dig somewhat deeper and to figure out how to work around this issue.
Choosing the Right Preset
I used a earlier version of Handbrake before, providing a dedicated Xbox preset. Version 0.9.8 of Handbrake does not provide such an default preset anymore. Instead you can chose Normal or High Profile from the Regular section for playback with Xbox 360.
Normal should work fine with he Xbox 360 System Player. If you are looking for a better video quality, choose the High Profile, though. Using High Profile, by default, the checkbox for Large file size is enabled. Eventually, that’s the problem, Xbox 360 System Player cannot play the streamed file as files generated with this flag contain 64-bit pointers, allowing a file size larger than 4GB, which the player simply cannot deal with. Therefore, just uncheck this one to generate Xbox 360 System Player compatible files.
Choosing the Right Audio Track Order
Another issue with the Xbox 360 Player is its inability to let you choose the audio track to play. I was wondering quite a while, why some encoded videos where played using the wrong audio track and – even worse – Xbox does not let you choose another track.
After some trial and error, I figured out, Xbox is playing the last track in the list of audio tracks encoded by Handbrake. You maybe haven’t realize this at all as native speaker only interested in the English track anyway.
Eventually, the secret how to use Handbrake to encode media files or you Xbox is to put the audio track you want to play on Xbox System Player on the very bottom of the list.
Keeping these two settings, you generate perfectly streamable media files to be played with Xbox 360’s System Player.
For a Web Service providing some REST-style URIs to access the data, I decided to use the ASP.NET MVC 4 Web API. Once developed, tested and deployed I experienced a mysterious 404 on my production server.
The Web API started originally as WCF Web API at CodePlex and is finally fully integrated within the latest .NET framework:
“ASP.NET Web API represents the joint efforts of the WCF and ASP.NET teams to create an integrated web API framework. You can get the bits and find articles, tutorials, samples and videos on the new ASP.NET Web API home page. All you have to do is to..”
The tutorials and examples for the ASP.NET Web API are overall easy to understand and you probably get access to the technology very quickly. After I set up my first Web API, which worked absolutely perfect on Windows 8, developed using Visual Studio 2012 and tested with the IIS Express, I was not able to get the bits executed on the deployment server. It’s a Windows Server 2008 R2, IIS 7.5 and a whole bunch of stuff installed using the Web Platform Installer.
Make sure the .NET Framework is installed, probably you missed to install the 4.5 framework on the deployment server. As IIS is set up already, once again it is necessary to register ASP.NET for the latest framework using
C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319>aspnet_regiis.exe -i
Even now, I got the 404. Eventually, I got the tip to check out how the routing of extensionless URLs work in ASP.NET. By adding
andreas on Google+<system.webServer>
<modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />
...
</system.webServer>
to the web.config file of my Web API the routing seems to work fine now.
Today, I spend literally hours in trying to fix a hardware problem on my MacBook Pro as the Bluetooth suddenly went fishing without saying anything to me. Said that, I run Apple’s Booot Camp with Mountain Lion and Windows 7 which makes troubleshooting sometimes easier, sometimes harder. As I turned on my MacBook Pro this morning my Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 (great device but a way too long name) mouse was – let’s say – working but not working. Left and right button and mouse movements worked fine but the mouse wheel as well as the middle button did not work at all. I followed some simple debugging rules from David Agan’s book Debugging The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems 
For the Impatient Ones
Jump to the very end of this article, do not learn anything, do not improve your analytic skill by one but see how to fix it.
Check The Plug
First, I checked the Microsoft IntelliPoint software (Still working? Latest version?) and it said there is no Microsoft Mouse connected.
Next step, I checked Windows Device Manager telling me here is a unknown device. Maybe Windows did not know, but I was pretty sure the device Windows did not want to know anymore today was the MacBook Pro’s Bluetooth chip.
I checked the device properties and found that
“Windows has stopped this device because it has reported
problems. (Code 43)”
What kind of problems, you’ll probably never known.
If you dig a bit you’ll probably come along the TechNet entry for Error Code 43 saying
“A device driver notified the operating system that the device failed.”
With some years of experience in this kind of business, I tried of course
Make it Fail
As nothing worked out for me, I rebooted into OS X to figure out if the device fails here as well and found a similar situation – Bluetooth went into its weekend saying
“Bluetooth: Not Available”
Eventually, that’s no driver issue, that’s definitely a hardware problem. One machine, two operating systems, different drivers (well module in OS X) resulting in a similar failure. Saturday noon and a not that satisfying Apple Store density in Germany, there is little one could do before next Monday. Hardware dies; usually at the most unpleasant moment you can imagine and nothing you can do about that.
Get a Fresh View
I did not follow the debugging rules in their given order, but I always try to keep the rule Get a Fresh View in mind. Often one is biased by some ideas in ones mind, some posts read while doing research or personal previous experience.
Eventually, I remembered what I have learned about power cycles during studies and realized that rebooting nowadays is not a hard reset of your machine anymore – there have been times (I do still remember) when PCs provided a (at least by me frequently used) reset button causing the device to hard reboot by turning the power of and on again.
So what’s the difference by rebooting the laptop several times, or booting into another OS? Right, this is no cold start and probably all devices keep their previous (faulty) state even after the reboot. As a consequence, plug out the power source, turn of the machine – leave it for a few seconds and turn it on again. Bluetooth is up and running again for both, Windows and Mac OS.
After upgrading WordPress on my Windows Server 2008 to version 3.4.1, I encountered a quite strange behavior. Using the Add New Post functionality, images, uploaded by multi-file-uploader have not been displayed anymore, neither in the editor nor in the post itself.
Once you finished your article, your blog will end up with a Internal Server Error 500. However, all thumbnails created by WordPress can be requested without any problems.
Eventually, I started to do some research on this issue, ending in a quite exhaustive digging down to the metal of Windows, however, with a quite surprisingly outcome. In this article I’ll try to give an overview of this issue, explaining why this occurs on Windows and how to solve this with almost a single click.
There are quite a lot of blog entries and stackoverflow answers about this topic with more or less useful steps. If you are just looking for the quick answer, without the need of understanding what causes this particular problem, here it comes:
Change the system’s default temp folder (C:\Windows\temp) rights by granting rights for IIS_IUSRS user and you are probably done.
The WordPress image upload is using the standard PHP functionality, using the temporary upload folder specified in your php.ini file. By default, PHP is using the system’s temporary directory (e.g. c:\windows\temp) for uploading the initial image.
Eventually, using the system’s temp folder is the root cause of the issue described in this article. When uploading the image to the temp folder, the file is initially created on the system. Consequently, the file is inheriting the folder’s security settings. After uploading, the original file is copied into the destination folder, e.g. \wp-content\uploads\2012\08. Here all thumbnails are generated from the original file. As they are being created in the destination folder, they will inherit the security settings from this folder resulting in two different sets of permissions applied to the original file and the thumbnails. This explains why you will only receive an error with error code 500 for the original file, while all the thumbnails can be requested without any problems.
In case you have already images the destination folder causing an error code 500, you can reapply the actual rights of the wp-content folder which will probably fix the problem.
In case changing the permissions of the system’s temp folder does not fix the issue, check your php.ini file if another upload folder is specified in the file uploads section. Baer in mind that PHP will use the system’s temp file for uploads also as backup in case PHP has no access rights for the folder specified in the php.ini file.
If you consider granting IIS_IUSRS as a security risk to access the system’s default temp folder you might want to specify an alternate upload folder anyway.
Ein anscheinend weit verbreitetes Problem mit Outlook 2010 scheint eine Fehler mit dem Signatur-Editor Signatures & Stationary zu sein, der es eigentlich ermöglicht Signatur-Dateien für E-Mails zu erstellen und zu verwalten. Der Editor öffnet sich nicht und der Benutzer kann daher keine Signaturen anlegen oder gar auswählen. Speziell für den Geschäftsverkehr sind Signaturen jedoch unerlässlich. Dabei gibt es grundsätzlich zwei Wege an den Dialog zu gelangen.
In einer Nachricht kann über die Schaltfläche Signatures / Signatures… der Editor geöffnet werden.
Alternativ kann dies auch über das Backstage von Outlook unter dem Menüpunkt File / Options / Mail / Signatures … geschehen.
Aus unerklärlichen Gründen kann es nun passieren, dass trotz wiederholtem Betätigen der Schaltflächen nichts passiert. Es erscheint kein Dialog, keine Fehlermeldung kein Nichts. Warum? Man weiß es nicht. Muss die Signatur bei jedem Geschäftsbrief von Hand eingefügt werden, steigt der Frustfaktor recht schnell an und Outlook fällt schnell in Ungnade.
Überwiegend lässt sich dieses Phänomen auf Systemen mit einer 64-Bit-Version von Windows 7 und einer 32-Bit-Version von Office 2010 beobachten. Lösen lässt sich das Problem mit wenigen Handgriffen.
Zunächst öffnet man den Registry Editor (regedit.exe) und navigiert zu
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesWow6432NodeCLSID{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}LocalServer32
hier ersetzt man den Wert für Schlüssel Default den Wert
C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice14Outlook.exe
ein. Nun wiederholt man das gleiche für
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREClassesCLSID{0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}LocalServer32
Nach einem Neustart von Outlook sollte dann der Dialog zum Editoren von Signaturen ohne Widersprüche starten und das Wochenende ist gerettet.
Since moving forward to Windows 7 x64 on my Dell Latitude D830, I had to live with the default behavior of the Touchpad and Pointing Stick of the D830 as there are no 64-bit drivers for Windows 7.
Finally, I found the right drivers for my system. You can pick it up at the Dell drivers and download page for the Dell Latitude D430. The is no explicit Windows 7 driver, however, the 64-bit driver for Windows Vista worked fine for me.
To make sure you oick up the right driver, the file name is R157047. The driver gives you full access to the Touchpad and Pointing Stick functionality, including the click feature of the stick.
Download: Drivers & Downloads for Latitude D430
Every time I reopend the Find and Replace dialog box (CTRL+H) in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, the width of the dialog box grew by several pixels. I was looking through various settings in Visual Studio, however, I haven’t thought of a bug in Visual Studio at all.
Finally, Alex Zeitler pointed me to a hotfix for this issue. The Knowledge Base entry KB2268081 explains the issue in details. The issue affects the following products:
In case you use the Find and Replace dialog quite often, you might download and install the hotfix from the connect site.