johnny ^_^'s weblog
Blogs
HOWTO: disable windows recovery
If your supplier modified your windows recovery console to automatically wipe your disk clean, you'll probably want to disable windows recovery from advanced boot options menu [f8] and other custom keyboard hooks such as [f11].
These might give you some clues how to do it:
bcdedit /set recoveryenabled no
bcdedit /deletevalue {bootmgr} customactions
bcdedit /deletevalue {bootmgr} custom:5400000f
(hint: check bcdedit /enum all for other references)
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty easter eggs
I've just found some funny easter eggs, while poking around StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty MPQs. It was hidden in one of the in one of the "UNN news report" videos.
Giant fly drinking booze
Nova slapping Matt Horner
Nova riding Matt Horner
$469 difference
It seems that Linus Torvalds approach is pretty clear:
focus on features and functionality, not the security
gmane.linux.kernel/706950
... And the only difference between Microsoft Windows and Linux is price tag.
The day I failed at googling
I've accidentally created one small piece of WTF! code yesterday, while hacking some c++ / windows mobile mail checker utility.
I wanted to synchronize mailbox in pocket outlook, but for some unknown reason I missed one simple and elegant solution...
Just compare:
tmail.exe -service "netvor.sk" -sync
with my original CEMAPI solution...
HINSTANCE hMailTrns;
ICEMAPISession *pSession = NULL;
IMAPITable * pTable = NULL;
IMAPITable * pMsgStoresTable = NULL;
IMsgStore *pStore = NULL;
SRowSet *pSRowSet = NULL;
SPropValue *pPropValue = NULL;
ULONG lCount = -1;
SizedSPropTagArray(2, PropTagArray) = { 2, PR_DISPLAY_NAME, PR_EMAIL_ADDRESS };
IMailSyncHandler * pIMailSyncHandler = NULL;
CMailSyncCallBack MailSyncCallBack;
ONESTOPFACTORYFUNC pOneStopFactoryFunc = NULL;
SYNCCREDENTIALS sc;
MAILSYNCREQUEST msr;
hMailTrns = LoadLibrary(_T("MailTrns.dll"));
if (hMailTrns == NULL)
return false;
}
pOneStopFactoryFunc = (ONESTOPFACTORYFUNC)GetProcAddress(hMailTrns, _T("OneStopFactory"));
if (pOneStopFactoryFunc == NULL)
return false;
}
if (FAILED((*pOneStopFactoryFunc)(L"IMAP4", &pIMailSyncHandler))) {
return false;
}
MAPIInitialize(NULL);
MAPILogonEx(0, NULL, NULL, 0, (LPMAPISESSION*)&pSession);
hr = pSession->GetMsgStoresTable(0, &pTable);
while (!FAILED(hr)) {
if (FAILED(hr = pTable->QueryRows(1, 0, &pSRowSet)))
break;
if (pSRowSet->cRows != 1)
break;
pSession->OpenMsgStore(NULL,
pSRowSet->aRow[0].lpProps[0].Value.bin.cb,
(ENTRYID*)pSRowSet->aRow[0].lpProps[0].Value.bin.lpb,
NULL, 0, &pStore);
if (SUCCEEDED(pStore->GetProps((SPropTagArray*)&PropTagArray, 0, &lCount, &pPropValue))) {
if (wcscmp(sName,pPropValue[0].Value.lpszW) == 0) {
// match
if (FAILED(pIMailSyncHandler->Initialize(&MailSyncCallBack,
pPropValue[0].Value.lpszW,pStore))) {
return false;
}
ZeroMemory(&sc, sizeof(SYNCCREDENTIALS));
sc.cbSize = sizeof(SYNCCREDENTIALS);
sc.pszUsername = _T("username");
sc.pszPassword = _T("password");
sc.pszDomain = _T("domain");
if (FAILED(pIMailSyncHandler->Connect(0, &sc))) {
return false;
}
ZeroMemory(&msr, sizeof(MAILSYNCREQUEST));
msr.cbSize = sizeof(MAILSYNCREQUEST);
msr.ffFlags = SYNC_NORMAL;
if (FAILED(pIMailSyncHandler->Synchronize(&msr))) {
return false;
}
pIMailSyncHandler->Disconnect(0);
pIMailSyncHandler->ShutDown(0);
}
// cleanup
MAPIFreeBuffer(pPropValue);
}
//cleanup
FreeProws(pSRowSet);
}
MX-2 and lain
It's been more than 16 months since I bought my first, and still one-and-only laptop, Asus F3Jc (lain). And even if most ppl say Asus is synonym for crappy hardware prone to failure, I still like it ^.^.
It has dedicated graphics (gf 7300go), nice connectivity (bt and 802.11 a/b/g) and mainly VTX enabled Core 2 \^^/ (t5600).
Only thing that annoyed me lately was that it was getting little more noisy and hot than I would like. And since I bought myself new tube of thermal paste as a xmas gift from a3c, I decided to peek inside and clean/re-paste everything possible.
Theres only one way to describe the result:
Huge success111
before pasting:
idle: 43°C, fan around ~1800rpm
full load: 74°C, fan running madly
after pasting:
idle: 39°C, fan is turned off
full load: 54°C, fan running at 1800rpm \^^/
Some pictures should be in gallery, but don't expect more than PDA quality.
update:
In meantime (between writing this post and remembering to publish it) I've opened another two notebooks, Asus A6R and HP nx8220, for pretty much same reasons...
And judging from what I saw inside, I must say that my Asus F3Jc has much robust cooling system than HP and without any noticeable weight difference. I just don't believe that some 0.3mm aluminum thermal plate can be enough to cool dedicated graphics and chipset. That also explains why the HP was so loud when my second cousin tried to play Oblivion on that machine.
But having notebook from HP also has its positives, ie. that cool maintenance manual that really comes in handy when you try to get to the heatsink... juts too many hidden screws ^^.
My own mug, with Kofola ... and Google
There are thing one will only realize after drinking 6-pack in one weekend.
*this is action shot of my new mug :]
*and yes, there was Kofola inside
(I really consider getting my self some better camera. Hints plz111)
Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 -- devolution
As classic would say: ZOMG11111
I came to a pretty nice and simple idea how to access my still-under-preparation ZFS storage from Windows.
It involved running FreeBSD 7.0 (or any other OS of your heart capable of accessing ZFS) in Microsoft Virtual PC, with a virtual hard disk linked to a physical hard disk and samba to talk whit microsoft :)
So nice and simple -- one would even think it would work... but... but...
Virtual hard disk linked to a physical hard disk was really cool feature back in MS VPC 2004 -- one could simply map physical hard drive to virtual machine and it would work! But not in MS VPC 2007, not anymore!
I've just tried to map my external USB drive to my virtual FreeBSD box... created virtual disk trough wizard... everything worked fine till now when this nice error appeared , when I've tried to assign virtual drive to virtual machine.
After some googling I've ended up reading release notes for MSVPC 2007:.
No support for using a virtual hard disk linked to a physical hard disk
You can create a virtual hard disk that is linked to a physical hard disk by using Virtual PC. However, it is no longer possible to use a virtual hard disk that is linked to a physical hard disk in a virtual machine. A virtual hard disk linked to a physical hard disk allows the guest operating system to directly modify the contents of a linked physical hard disk. This means that the guest operating system can overwrite the contents of the physical hard disk and potentially corrupt the host operating system and other programs and data of the physical hard disk.
O-k than... devolution is sure nice thing, but why the hell they won't remove option to create virtual disk linked to physical disks in the wizard?? Or at least some clarification in that error message would help... something like: 'there is no such thing as virtual drives mapped to physical drives in this version, go play somewhere else'.
Microsoft just proved their new strategies:
advertisers, advertisers, advertisers,... :(.
Where are those times Steve Ballmer was shouting for developers??
Lost hopes...
Ruby everywhere
\^^/ and productivity goes down...
Life without mobile data connection is painful, so I've googled out Ruby 1.8.6 for Windows Mobile just to have some fun on those offline/afk times ^^.
It's running great on my brick (HTC TyTN), but still one missing thing for perfection... vim ^_^
(google to get it running... or shortly: PocketConsole, PocketCMD and play!)
We do what we must because we can
I've returned @HOME for few days on late Wednesday evening, just to pick up some papers regarding my bachelors project and stuff.
I know, I _SHOULD_ be attending Web Engineering course next Tuesday, but it's xmas (30oct) and I really need to let some steam out ;]
[wiki:Portal_(video_game)]Portal[/wiki] helped me to waste some time yesterday, but it was very very very short and absolutely easy to win (~2h in first run). Yet, I really had great time! Nice idea, great script.. and I'm really starting to think that GLaDOS is even better villain than SHODAN (ultimate AI from System Shock ^_^).
Too bad that Valve didn't spent more resources in development.. just imagine that you would have your own GLaDOS like narrator \^^/.
BTW, I've created fortune file from GLaDOS's taunts... fortune-mod-glados.tgz
BTW^2, check this 'Still Alive' song from Portal ending credits:
!spoiler warning!
BTW^3, there is no cake111 :,,(
