No login prompt for Exchange

It is possible to suppress the login prompt that appears in Outlook, when trying to connect to an Exchange server via Outlook Web Access.

This prompt can be skipped:

• Close Outlook
• Get the Exchange server name: Control Panel -> Mail (32 bit) -> Email accounts... -> View or change existing e-mail accounts -> Double click the "Exchange" account
• The microsoft exchange server name, e.g. exmbx01.acmexchange.com, becomes the exchange server name: *.acmexchange.com
• Get the webserver name: -> More settings -> Connection -> Exchange proxy settings
• The connection settings URL, e.g. webmail.acmeweb.com, becomes the webserver name: *.acmeweb.com
• Set proxy authentication settings: NTLM authentication
• Start the Credential Manager: Control Panel -> Credential Manager
• Add a windows credential, e.g. for jim@acme.com
  a. internet or network address: *.acmeweb.com
  b. username: jim@acme.com
  c. password: pwd
• Add another windows credential
  a. internet or network address: *.acmexchange.com
  b. username: jim@acme.com
  c. password: pwd

Start Outlook and send/receive. The login popup should be gone.

Keywords: microsoft exchange, outlook 2003, outlook web access, repeating login prompt

SkyDrive photos in Flipboard

Flipboard is a great app for the iPad. It displays a collections of RSS feeds as a magazine. The latest version (1.1.1) offers the ability to add a Google Reader account, which can contain a multitude of feeds. These feeds can even be categorized. Flipboard can easily display all feeds, the feeds in a category or individual feeds.

It has the ability to add a Flickr account to show the photos in that account. Unfortunately, Flickr is rather limited in its features: no more than 300MB per month upload.

There are alternatives for Flickr, like Google Picasa, Mediafire or Microsoft Live SkyDrive. Picasa has a storage limit of 1GB, which is even worse than Flickr. SkyDrive has a storage limit of 25GB, but no monthly upload quotum. The best thing about SkyDrive is that it has a RSS feed capability, so you can add it to your Google Reader account and have a magazine of photos. Mediafire has no upload or storage limitations, but no RSS feed capability, which is too bad, otherwise it would be the perfect photo-in-flipboard solution.

Because there is no dedicated Microsoft Live SkyDrive iPad app, this is a nice alternative.

Unfortunately, the RSS XML that SkyDrive returns is not interpreted by flipboard, like it is interpreted by, say, Google Reader, where the photos are displayed directly in the feed. Flipboard displays an empty article, with a link, that, when clicked, redirects to the photo. This is not useful. It turns out that the <link> element is the culprit.

Workaround

• Optionally, create a SkyDrive account. Create a Windows Live / SkyDrive account and create a new folder. Set it as a "photo" folder. Upload some photos to this account. Make a note of the "cid-" code in the URL (or on the SkyDrive webpage). It is the unique identifier for that account. Also make a note of the folder name.
  
  
• Create a conversion script that corrects the XML supplied by SkyDrive. Flipboard only displays the photos in the feed items, when the combination of the <link> tags of the <channel> and <item> tags form a valid URL. SkyDrive supplies the complete URL in the <link> tag of each item, so the <link> tag of the <channel> should be empty or not present at all.
  
  
• Host the script online. I have created a PHP script called default.php and am hosting it on freehostingnoads.net. An account can be freely created and their PHP configuration support the functionality needed to get HTML code from another website, in this case, SkyDrive. The complete URL to the website is:
  http://www.livestreem.freehostingnoads.net/default.php
  
  
• Optionally, make the script dynamic. I added the posibility to supply a SkyDrive account id (CID) and folder to the script. Example for CID "cid-dba80f3be68c2301" and folder "genericweb" :
  http://www.livestreem.freehostingnoads.net/default.php?cid=dba80f3be68c2301&folder=genericweb
  
  
• Add script URL to the Google Reader: add the URL of the conversion script to the Google Reader account. Use the complete URL, including the PHP script name.
  So:
  http://www.livestreem.freehostingnoads.net/default.php?cid=dba80f3be68c2301&folder=genericweb
  and not:
  http://www.livestreem.freehostingnoads.net/?cid=dba80f3be68c2301&folder=genericweb
  
  
• Optionally, test the feed. Google Reader updates the results from feeds at set intervals, that cannot be controlled. Pressing the "refresh" button is only useful after this interval has passed and Google has updated the feed internally. I use Chrome and, to test the feed realtime, I use the extention/add-on "Slick RSS"
  
  
• Add a Google Reader section to Flipboard: login with your username and password. This only needs to be done once. The domain name part of the link tag is used by Flipboard to prefix the text of an item with a bold text containing this text and a small icon. If there is no text, just a photo, it does not do this.

Some downsides:

• History explosion. Google stores the history of a feed. This can be annoying when testing a script with a lot of photos, because they get added again and again. Even worse, after deleting the subscription and adding it later, Google restores the full history! Google remembers the URL's and content of feeds that were added in the past.
• Low resolution. There is no easy way to get the full resolution photo from SkyDrive. It supplies a encoded path to a preview version - most of the time 600x400 pixels - and, when clicked from within the SkyDrive website, redirects to another encoded path for the full resolution.
• Photos are public. The photos need to be in a publicly available SkyDrive folder, unlike Flickr. With the Flickr photostream of Flipboard it is possible to login in with a username and password to a private folder.

SkyDrive ASPX pages

A list of .Net scripts to access SkyDrive:

• self.aspx: returns SkyDrive page for the specified document/photo
• embedphoto.aspx: returns a downsized version of the photo
• embedalbum.aspx
• feed.aspx: returns a XML document describing the RSS feed
• browse.aspx

Update 20110727:

Skydrive has been redesigned. The current feed works correctly with Flipboard, so the workaround above is no longer needed!

Combine two DVD's into one

When you want to combine two DVD's onto one disc, but keep the chapters, then try the following steps. I assume the video_ts folders of both DVD's are already available on your harddrive.

In most cases there is no vob file per chapter, but each vob file is filled to its maximum (1GB) and then a new one is created. Sometimes, however, there is a vob file per chapter. In this case, you only need to follow the steps following DVDStyler:

• Download and install DVDShrink (freeware)
• Start DVDShrink and click "Reauthor"
• In the right pane under "dvd browser", navigate to the video_ts folder of the first DVD
• Drag the desired chapters to the left
• In the right pane under "dvd browser", navigate to the video_ts folder of the second DVD
• Drag the desired chapters to the left
• Under File, click "Backup" and save to folder c:\shrink. This set automagically creates a vob file per chapter!
• Download and install DVDStyler (freeware)
• Start DVDStyler and add all .vob files from c:\shrink to the current project. The DVD main- and chapter menu's are created automatically 
• Optionally: add the names of the chapters to the chapter menus
• Burn the project to an iso file or directly to disc

Ofcourse, you can only do this with homemade DVD's or to DVD's you own legally and when local law permits it.

Use 32-bits Excel Source with 64-bits SSIS

The following is still work in progress and more of a braindump than anything else, but I've put it here, because someone might already find some use for it

Straight out of the box, you cannot use the Excel Datasource in SSIS on a 64-bits Windows platform , because the Excel Datasource uses a 32-bits OLEDB library. Microsoft has not released a 64-bits version of this library.

0) Use MADE 2010
There is 64 bits version for Office 2010, so for Excel 2010. It is called "Microsoft Access Database Engine  2010 Redistributable" of which there is a 32- and 64-bits version. We're interested in the 64-bits version, but this package can only be installed after removing all 32 bits Office applications!

a) Install MADE 2010 while NOT removing 32 bits Office applications:

AccessDatabaseEngine_x64.exe /passive

Notes:

• THE SYSTEM WILL AUTOMATICALLY REBOOT, SO SAVE WORK BEFOREHAND!
• Start Excel once to go through the configuration process. Start it a second time. It the configuration process starts again, then disable it by renaming this file to "setup_disabled.exe":
  c:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE14\Office Setup Controller\setup.exe
• run the repair option for the Microsoft Access database engine 2010 program inside "add/remove programs" 

b) If that doesn't work, then also install the Data Connectivity Components:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=23734

1) Trick Windows to use 32-bits ODBC data sources
Try adding the SysWow64 folder to the beginning of your path:

Path=%systemroot%\SysWow64;...old values here...

When done via the command prompt via the SET-command, it will be undone when that window is closed.

2) Run SSIS in 32-bits mode
Use the 32-bit DTEXEC.EXE to execute the package containing the Excel Datasource. It is located in "Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Sql Server\90\Dts\Binn" (or for SSIS 2008: "Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Sql Server\10\Dts\Binn")

You can schedule this using "task scheduler" or SQL Agent.

3) Compile package as 32-bits
Package configuration properties -> Debugging -> Debugging Options -> Run64BtRuntime -> set to False.

4) Even dirtier trick: convert Excel spreadsheet to CSV beforehand
This can be done in several ways, with minimal coding required:

• If Excel is installed, then create a VBS script that uses CreateObject("Excel.Application") to create an Excel object. Then open the XLS file and save it as a CSV using this object.
• ... or a perl script using the "Spreadsheet::ParseExcel" module
• ... or a powershell script using "comobject Excel.Application"
• Install OpenOffice and program a small macro in it's OpenOffice basic language. Then create a VBS or DOS script that opens OpenOffice and calls the macro with parameters, one being the source XLS, and one being the target CSV.
• Without installing anything on the server running SSIS: write a small C# application that utilizes the Excel OLEDB data provider built into Windows to read data from the Excel sheet. Then write the results to a CSV file.
• ... or write a small C# application that utilizes the opensource Excel Data Reader library to read data from the Excel sheet. Then write the results to a CSV file. This library appears to be buggy however.
• Freeware commandline tool: XLS2CSV by Zoom Technology. Parses only the first sheet. The column separator and text quotes are configurable throught an ini file
• Freeware commandline tool: XLS2CSV by Tom Crow. Parses all sheets to separate CSV files

ODBC/DSN configuration can be found here:

• 32 bits ODBC connections: %windir%\syswow64\odbcad32.exe
• 64 bits ODBC connections: %windir%\system32\odbcad32.exe

Notes:

• ADO also uses the OLEDB library.
• The OLEDB library is a piece of code that gets loaded and compiled into the calling application at runtime.
• If you use the MADE 2010 Redistributable package, then be aware of a small bug when connecting to Office 2010. You have to use "MICROSOFT.ACE.OLEDB.12.0" as the driver name in stead of the specified "MICROSOFT.ACE.OLEDB.14.0".
• Although previous Office versions need to be de-installed before installing MADE 2010, they can be reinstalled afterwards.

Increase maximum volume of the iPad

If you find that the maximum volume on the iPad is not loud enough, then you can fix that with the following adjustment:

• Start Cydia
• If you haven't installed OpenSSH, then search for it and install the app, restart the iPad
• Install WinSCP on your Windows environment and make a connection to the iPad. The iPad IP adress can be found on the iPad in Settings -> Wi-Fi. Click on the blue arrow on your current wifi connection. By default the username is "root" and the password "alpine".
• Download and install iPodRobot for Windows
• Open a connection to the iPad via WinSCP
• Copy the following file to your Windows environment: System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Celestial.framework/RegionalVolumeLimits.plist
• Just in case anything goes wrong: make a copy of this file on your Windows environment
• Start iPodRobot and load RegionalVolumeLimits.plist
• Find and replace 0.xx000000000000004 with 1, where x=79 or 84, or some other number under 100
• Save the file and copy it back to the iPad using WinSCP
• Reboot the iPad.

The volume will be much louder, so tune it down before starting any music or video on the iPad.

Note:

• The iPad needs to be jailbroken, i.e. needs to have Cydia installed
• The Cydia/Winterboard apps Volume Boost X3 and Volume Boost 4.0 have no effect on the iPad.
  

Alternatively, using iTunes, you can boost the volume of each individual video/song:

• Start iTunes
• Select all songs under iPad -> Music
• Right click and select "Get info"
• Tab "options", drag the slider to +100%

The song volumes will be adjusted song by song. This can take a long time!

Keywords: setting the maximum volume limit on iPod

Internet on iPad via adhoc wifi hotspot

Scroll down for the solution, read on for some trial-and-error background info.

When no direct wifi internet connection is available, then it is possible to use the internet connection of wired Windows PC. The only requirement is that the PC needs to also have a wireless (wifi) network card.

It is possible to use internet connection sharing (ICS) on Windows to setup an adhoc wireless network and connect to this network from the iPad:

• Control Panel -> Network and sharing center -> Setup a new network or connection -> Set up wireless adhoc (computer to computer) network -> Next
• Give the network a name
• Security type: WPA2-Personal
• Give the network a password (security key) of at least 8 characters
• Click "Turn on internet connection sharing"
• Select the LAN internet connection when asked "Select the internet connection that you want to share"
• iPad -> Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Select the network, type in the password

I couldn't get this to work properly. I tried all of the following:

• "Turn on internet connection sharing" does not appear. Try a solution posted by sinnerman on windows7forums.com:
  
  • Open Network and Sharing Center
  • Go to Change Adapter Settings
  • Find the adapter for the default internet connection (it was a PPPOE in my case)
  • Right click on that -> Cancel as Default Connection
  • Right click -> Properties -> Sharing tab
  • Uncheck "Allow other network users to connect ..." if it is not
  • Setup the ad-hoc as explained above, the Turn on Internet connection sharing should appear.
• Disable Windows Firewall. If you have another one, for example Bitdefender, then there is/might be a direct option to allow ICS.
• Allow other users on internet connection:
• Control Panel -> Network and sharing center -> change adapter settings -> select internet connection -> Properties -> Sharing -> Check "Allow other network users to connect ..."
• Set a policy that allows you to use ICS: 
• Start gpedit.msc.
• Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> Network Connection
• Set "Prohibit use of Internet Connection Sharing on your DNS domain network." to false

Solution

• Download Connectify. It is freeware
• Install and allow the software to install drivers
• Start Connectify and start easy setup wizard
• Give the network a name, next
• Give the network a password, next
• Select the connection (wired/LAN) through which there is an internet connection
• iPad -> Settings -> Wi-Fi -> Select the network, type in the password.

The connection from the iPad is lost when unused for a couple of minutes. When using, for example, Safari on the iPad, the connection is quickly restored via a popup that lets you select from wifi networks. Sometimes this is not even necessary and safari restores the connection automatically.

Bluetooth device not found on Dell laptop

If you are sure you have a built-in bluetooth device on your Dell laptop, but you cannot find it in control panel or device manager, then try these steps:

• Determine bluetooth device type using the Dell device locator
  or
  Go to http://support.dell.com and type in the search bar: "Find Out Which Bluetooth Adapter Is in Your Dell Computer"
  or
  Go to the webtool "system configuration tool" directly: system configuration tool
  In all cases, use the service tag that can be found on the bottom of the laptop
• Search for "bluetooth" on the page that the SCT returns, it should have code beside it, i.e. "370"
• Go to http://support.dell.com and type in the search bar: "bluetooth 370"
• The results page contains drivers for bluetooth for various Windows OS'es:
  - Look for "Dell Wireless 370 Bluetooth Minicard, v.XXX" and search for the most recent version XXX.
  - Make sure "Win 7" is in the description, if the driver is needed for Windows 7.
• Download and install the driver.

Notes:

• The SCT only works from Internet Explorer 5.5+
• And only from the 32 bits version of Internet Explorer. Make sure you don't use the 64 bits one.

CTAS disregards number precision and scale

When using a "create table as select" (CTAS) to create a table based on a query, when that query also contains a window function/analytical function in the SELECT-clause, results in the precision and scale being omitted.

The precision/scale are neglected, when running the following example in Oracle 11g:

CREATE OR REPLACE FORCE VIEW VSA_X AS
SELECT
CAST(1 AS NUMERIC(10,2)) AS FLD1,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY 1 ORDER BY 1) AS RN
FROM DUAL;

DROP TABLE X;

CREATE TABLE X AS SELECT * FROM VSA_X;

Table X will have no precision/scale for FLD1. It is bypassed and will simply have NUMBER for its datatype. This is a bug in Oracle.

Note:

• Using NUMBER in stead of NUMERIC makes no difference, the bug is still there.
• Explicitly casting the ROW_NUMBER() function also makes no difference.

Solution:

Put the window function inside a derived table:

CREATE OR REPLACE FORCE VIEW VSA_X AS
SELECT
CAST(FLD1 AS NUMERIC(10,2)) AS FLD1,
RN
FROM
(
  SELECT
  1 AS FLD1,
  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY 1 ORDER BY 1) AS RN
  FROM DUAL
) x;

Keywords: CTAS omits precision, CTAS omits number precision, CTAS bypasses precision, CTAS bypasses number precision.