'512'
'345'
'876'

and needed to convert it into the format below


INSERT INTO BLAH VALUE ('512');
INSERT INTO BLAH VALUE ('345');
INSERT INTO BLAH VALUE ('876');

There are multiple ways, one can do this. Here is how I did this using Notepad++, an open source text editor. I used the regular expression capability of Notepad++ it’s search and replace function.

• Press “Ctrl + h” to bring up the search and replace window.
• Replace the single quote at the beginning of the line by using ” ^’ “
• Replace the single quote at the end of the line by using ” ‘$ “

Screenshots from the operation

The data in it’s original format

Replacing the first quote mark

Data after the first search and replace operation

Replacing the second quote mark

Data in the final format

I recently upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 RC from the beta version I was testing earlier. As part of installing my standard set of tools, I tried to install Wireshark (open source network capture tool), and ran into an error due to the UAC security settings. Essentially, Windows was blocking the install of WinPcap (network capture driver). I solved it by enabling compatibility mode on the install executable. Here are the steps to install Wireshark on Windows 7.

• Download the install file from http://www.wireshark.org/download.html
• Right click on the install file (I happened to download the 64 bit install) and click on properties
• In the properties window, click on the compatibility tab and change the option for “Run this program in compatibility mode for” to “Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)” and click on OK. Here’s a screenshot for reference

• Right click on the install and click on “Run as Administrator”
• Make sure you choose the option to install the NPF as a service during the install prompts. This will allow all users on the machine to use Wireshark without admin privileges.

P.S : WinPCap is apparently going to come out with a new version soon that is compatible with Windows 7.

socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=8192 SO_RCVBUF=8192

The receive and send buffer seem to do the trick.

Here’s what I did to connect to my IM services.

1. Configure Putty/SSH to act as a SOCKS proxy.
   • Most people might not be aware, but a typical SSH client can act as a SOCKS proxy. So I decided to leverage this functionality.
   • You will need access to a SSH server and Putty (Opensource Windows SSH client)
   • Launch Putty
   • Setup a new server connection profile. I used FREE_MY_IP as the profile name in this screen shot, but you can name it anything you want

1. • Expand the SSH option in the left column and click on Tunnels
   • Choose any port higher than 1024 as source port (unless you are running some kind of server software on your workstation, it is safe to use any port above 8000) and enter the SSH server in the Destination field. Then choose the “Dynamic” option and click on Add.. the screen shot below shows the options I used

   

   • The tunnel will show up as below

   

   • Click on Open and establish the SSH tunnel
2. Configure Pidgin (open source IM client) to use the SOCKS proxy
   • Launch Pidgin
   • Click on Tools -> Preferences in the menu
   • Click on the network tab
   • Choose SOCKS4 as the proxy type and enter localhost in the host field. In the port field enter the port you selected when setting up the tunnel in Putty.

1. Connect to your IM services.. chat away and be unproductive

If this was Linux, we would have done something simple like adding a route to point all the traffic destined to mail server to /dev/null by running “route add IP_ADDRESS_OF_MAIL_SERVER MASK /dev/null”

A search on Google showed that you can achieve similar results by doing the following “route ADD IP_ADDRESS_OF_MAIL_SERVER MASK 255.255.255.255 127.0.0.1“. 127.0.0.1 being the IP address of the loopback interface in this case. But when we ran the command, we got an error “incorrect gateway 127.0.0.1″.. So there is NO way to route traffic in Microsoft Windows to a null device..

Finaly, we figured out a round about way to achieve this.. Since the main aim was to reduce the load on the firewall, we identifid an un used IP in the same network as the application server and added a static route to point all traffic going to the mail server to this IP. We ran the following command “route ADD IP_ADDRESS_OF_MAIL_SERVER MASK 255.255.255.255 UN_USED_IP_ADDRESS”

For example, if you application server is in the range 192.168.1.0/24, the mail server is 192.168.2.20.. and an unused IP in the application server range is 192.168.1.10.. the command would look like this “route ADD 192.168.2.20 MASK 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.10“.. You will see a lot of SYN_SENT status in the network connections, since the application is trying to connect t othe mail server via an IP address that doesn’t exist..

Might not be the smartest way to achive this.. but it did the trick.

start regedit
navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\SQMClient\Windows\DisabledSessions
rename MachineThrottling to _MachineThrottling

Colleague : Thats a Beta!!

Me : Yes.. it is Beta..

Colleague : No.. No.. that”s a beta!!

Me : Dude.. seriously.. it is Beta.. I know it..

Colleague : (almost smacking me on my head) No..that is a Beta Fish!!

Looks like a smart programmer (or marketing person) put the picture of a Beta fish as the default background for Windows 7 Beta .. Here’s a screenshot.

Hopefully, Windows 7 will finally convince us XP lovers to upgrade. Vista is a failed operating system as far as I am concerned. Not in the league of “Windows Millenium“, but it is going to be shoved away into the annals of history soon if Windows 7 delivers as promised.

I recently got a 3G card at work and needed to install it on my laptop. I figured that the AT&T  provided software was just setting up a dial-up connection with specific settings. Guessing that some Linux geek might have already figured out what the settings where, I used the following search term in Google “Linux Ubuntu Configure AT&T 3G card”.. Lo and behold, the following link showed up http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/12/07/how-to-use-an-att-ericsson-f3507g-card-on-ubuntu-intrepid/.

Here are the steps, I follwed to configure the card in Microsoft Vista

• Insert card into the laptop and use the “search online” feature for installing the required drivers.
• Open “Network and Sharing Center”.
• Click on “Setup up a connection or network”.
• Choose “Connect to the Internet” option and click on Next.
• If you are already connected to the Internet, you will get a message stating the same, but choose the “Setup a new connection anyway”.
• If you already have existing dial-up or DSL connections, choose “No, create a new connection” and click on Next
• Choose “Dial-up”
• Choose the modem related to your 3G card.. For example, mine was “Sierra Wireless AirCard 875 HSDPA Modem”
• Enter the following information in the ISP Information
  • Dial-up phone number : *99#
  • User name : *
  • Password : *
  • Connection Name : Whatever you want to name it

• Click on Connect and enjoy the broadband speed without bloatware .

I wrote a post earlier about using OpenOffice as a free PDF Editor.. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with OpenOffice.

Most of the people that use Microsoft Office, only use the basic functionality. As my old boss used to say, “95% of the people use 5% of the functionality in Office”. And switching to OpenOffice would be a breeze for then. OpenOffice is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac OS X.

Since OpenOffice 3.0 was released back in October, the software has been downloaded more than 10 million times. And we are close to hitting 20 million downloads..Here’s a live counter from the OpenOffice website

Thx to Microsoft’s oversight (or potentially by design), you can still recover the certificate from the server.. Here’s how

1. Open a MMC console by typing “mmc” in the Start –> Run prompt
2. In the MMC console, click on File -> Add/Remove Snap-in
3. In the “Add/Remove Snap-in” window, click on Add
4. Choose the “certificate” snap-on and click on Add.
5. Choose Computer Account in the certificate snap-on window and click on Next.
6. Choose “Local Computer” (Note : If you want to recover from a remote computer, you can put in the UNC path. But you need to have admin rights on that machine) and click on Finish.
7. Click on close and go back to the MMC console
8. You will see all the certificates installed on the server
9. Expand the “personal certificates” folder and you will see the SSL certificate from the website you deleted from IIS. Follow standard steps to export the certificate.