Rants and Raves

I’ve been working with desktop search solutions, and I’ve determined through a great deal of perspiration that strigi seems to be the only Linux based desktop search engine that reliably indexes the majority of files that I’m interested in searching (Microsoft Office, Open Office, and files containing RF822 compliant email).

While the core engine for strigi might be the best I found, the client interface and tools leave a great deal to be desired.  In fact, to really figure out how to use strigi I needed to download and peruse the source.

In the source I found an elegant command line Perl script (search.pl) which demonstrated how to submit queries to strigi through a Linux socket.  The script was easy to port over to PHP5, and in doing so I added some enhancements in my core routines to make it easier to use to write a search client — that is I organized the results as array elements so that I could easily manipulate them rather than needing to attempt to parse them apart.

I haven’t gone any further than just writing some basis PHP5 functions and a harness that drives it from the command line; but I’m posting the code for others.  Just run the script from the command line, and provide the query as arguments (if the query has a space, make sure you enclose it in quotes — and you can put multiple queries on the command line as well).

Running the program and seeing the dump of the data is by far the easiest way to understand what I’ve done.

strigiSearch.7z

Tags: Computers, Linux, Search, Software, ► Downloads by roger
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The other night I decided to write a simple little PHP5 script to force all file extensions to lower case — mainly because when I upload pictures from my Nikon and Canon DSLR I get pictures with upper case file extensions (as I do when I RIP a DVD) and that can create no end of headaches when I place one of those files on a Linux based Apache server.

The script is simple (rather brute force), but it works, and seems to work fairly reliably.

lcExt.7z

Tags: Software, Technology, ► Downloads by roger
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I just don’t understand why Windows litters thumbs.db files all over the disk. Yeah it might be quicker to get thumb nail images from that cache for a directory with a huge number of images, but in general the files are just an annoyance and really don’t save any appreciable amount of time on a modern computer with reasonable numbers of image files in a single directory.

I made my life a little easier clear thumbs.db by writing a batch file that you can downloads (in a 7z archive) via cleanup_thumbs.7z

Tags: Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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I’ve never figured out why Windows and Windows applications don’t properly clear out the temporary directory, but they don’t and certainly a lot of “junk” can accumulate there.

I made my life a little easier clear the temp by writing a batch file that you can downloads (in a 7z archive) via cleanup_temp.7z

Tags: Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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Using clean manager on older versions of Windows (in particular) always requires setting the options, which isn’t hard, but makes it a little hard to automate as part of a larger process of cleaning up your drive.

I made my life a little easier to run clean manager by writing a batch file (and registry file) that you can downloads (in a 7z archive) via cleanup_disk.7z

Tags: Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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If you run an older version of Microsoft Windows (Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 for instance) and you don’t use Outlook Express, or you’ve replaced it with Live Mail (or another program), you can remove it by typing the following command (all on one line)

“%ProgramFiles%\Outlook Express\setup50.exe” /APP:OE UNINSTALL /PROMPT

Or download a batch file (in a 7z archive) via remove_outlookexpress.7z

Tags: Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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If you run an older version of Microsoft Windows (Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 for instance) and you don’t use Net Meeting, you can remove it by typing the following command (all on one line)

%SystemRoot%\System32\rundll32.exe setupapi,InstallHinfSection NetMtg.Remove 132 msnetmtg.inf

Or download a batch file (in a 7z archive) via remove_netmeeting.7z

Tags: Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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I wrote this little batch file to make Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 have a user directory structure more similar to Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.

You simply need to run it as a user with administrative privileges and it will create the “User” directory in the root of your drive along with all the other more “sane” directory structures that the newer Windows use — don’t worry, it uses links so that you won’t have two copies of the information, and applications that expect the old structure will continue to work.

There is an older BLOG post that describes how it works:  Revise Windows XP “Home” Directory Structure if you’re interested in the details.

MkLinks

Tags: Computers, Technology, Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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I use a lot of virtual machines, and I often RDP to my servers to manage them; sometimes I’ll have several windows open at once and it becomes fairly easy to get a little confused as to what window is associated with which machine.

Long long ago (in a galaxy far far away) I started making desktop background images that contained the machine name and installing them on each machine.  That was a fair amount of work, and require configuration on each and every machine.

Then I found BgInfo (from SysInternals, now Microsoft), and that was a great solution — but it did still require a moderate amount of configuration on every machine…

So, I created an “installer” for BgInfo that puts all the files in the right places, and creates the startup link so as to almost completely automate the configuration (OK – you have to run a single command on each machine; but if you map to a share or put this on a thumb drive it’s really simple).

BgInfo (my installer; includes an older version of BgInfo)

BgInfo on Microsoft

Tags: Computers, Software, Technology, Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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When you install Corel PaintShop Pro X2 (version 12) you get an extra service that you’re not told about — ProtexisLicensing.

It’s alleged to be spyware that monitors your system and reports back to the software vendor.

Removing it is simple:

1. Use the service manager GUI to stop it and set it to disabled (that’s probably enough, but not for me).
2. Open a command prompt (with elevated priviledges on Vista, Win7, or Server2008) and type “sc delete protexislicensing”
3. Now delete the file “C:\Windows\SysWOW64\PSIService.exe”

For your convenience I’ve included the command to do all these tasts below; simply put them into a batch file and run it (withe elevated priviledges) or copy paste execute each line in a command window.

Odd that I haven’t seen federal charges against Corel for cyber terrorism — they certainly didn’t have my permission to install any type of monitoring software on my machine (and that’s probably true of all their paying customers).

I certainly don’t feel that companies that take actions like this are on any higher moral or legal ground than software pirates — while perhaps not as devious as the root kits many software suppliers installed, it is every bit as invasive.

Join me in boycotting Corel (and any other company that violates the trust of it’s customers)… as a former first lady once said:

Just Say NO!

- Nancy Reagan

——

disable_corel_spyware.bat

sc stop protexislicensing
sc config protexislicensing start= disabled
sc delete protexislicensing
del “%windir%\SysWOW64\PSIService.exe”

You can also download a “fancy” batch file to do the job from my server as a batch file in a 7zip archive disable_corel_spyware.

Tags: ! ALERTS !, Computers, Software, Technology, Windows, ► Downloads by roger
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