Category: Computers

Mac OS X and Windows

Losing Internet Connection When You Plug In An Ethernet Cable?

How to keep your wireless internet connection working when you also have a wired connection

You know the scenario. There you are with a wireless internet connection, you want to configure a router, you plug it into your ethernet port because you still want to keep your internet connection alive and ping! your internet connection has gone.

Solution

Open your network control panel to the settings for your wired ethernet connection. Change the IP configuration from DHCP to Manual. Remove any router or gateway settings. Apply.
You should now find that your computer routes to the internet successfully over your wireless connection instead of failing by trying to reach the internet over your wired connection.

Can’t Find Groups Management On Windows 7 Home and Vista Home Editions

How to Manage Local Groups on Windows Home

Ever helpful, Microsoft provides a GUI interface for managing users and groups on Windows. Unless you have a Vista home edition or a Windows 7 home edition, in which case you can't find the interface to manage groups because it isn't there. You can however manage groups very easily from the command line.

Manage Windows Groups from the Command Line

Simples. Find Command Line in your Start Menu Programs so that you can right-click on it and choose 'Run As Administrator'
Type:

net localgroup /?
net localgroup MyNewGroupName /Add
net localgroup MyNewGroupName MyFirstUserName /Add
net localgroup MyNewGroupName MySecondUserName /Add
... and so on

And voila. You can now set security on folders in explorer, and use your new group to grant access.
If your Windows permissions are not working after you've granted new permissions, the usual trick is to lock and unlock your session (Start Menu -- The Power/LogOff/Hibernate/Lock/Sleep button). Failing that, log out and back in again.

Net Localgroup Reference

Is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725622(WS.10).aspx

iTunes Home Sharing Not Working

There's a handful of reasons that can cause this. The probably definitive list can be found by combing the apple tech support discussion thread for it at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2586385?start=105&tstart=0
I recommend you start at the end of the thread where you'll find the answers rather than at the beginning of the thread where'll you find the kind of posts that people write when they're tearing their hair out because their shiny expensive toy DOESN'T WORK.
The one that worked for me was:

  • Restart the windows Bonjour service. If you don't know how to do that, just restart your computer.
  • The other popular one is: "Sorry bud, you need a new router." Or if you're 'lucky' just a firmware update (Have you ever tried updating your router firmware? I did it once). You can't win then all.

A Very Small Editable PDF for Testing

A Small PDF

Ever wanted a small PDF file, or to tweak your own PDF for testing? Below is a very small PDF which you can paste into a text editor and save as MySmallPdf.PDF.
Two things are easy to edit:

  • The page size. Look for the line /MediaBox [0 0 612 144]. Leave the first (0,0) pair and edit the (612,144) to be (width of page,height of page) in 1/72ths of an inch.
  • One line of text. Look for the line (This is a small text editable pdf) Tj and replace the text with your own.

This is particularly helpful if you are testing http://itextpdf.com/ or itextsharp or some other PDF generator or API, and you want a couple of small identifiable test files to play with.

The Editable PDF

%PDF-1.4
1 0 obj
<< /Type /Catalog
/Outlines 2 0 R
/Pages 3 0 R
>>
endobj
2 0 obj
<< /Type /Outlines
/Count 0
>>
endobj
3 0 obj
<< /Type /Pages
/Kids [4 0 R]
/Count 1
>>
endobj
4 0 obj
<< /Type /Page
/Parent 3 0 R
/MediaBox [0 0 612 144]
/Contents 5 0 R
/Resources << /ProcSet 6 0 R
/Font << /F1 7 0 R >>
>>
>>
endobj
5 0 obj
<< /Length 73 >>
stream
BT
/F1 24 Tf
100 100 Td
(This is a small text editable pdf) Tj
ET
endstream
endobj
6 0 obj
[/PDF /Text]
endobj
7 0 obj
<< /Type /Font
/Subtype /Type1
/Name /F1
/BaseFont /Helvetica
/Encoding /MacRomanEncoding
>>
endobj
xref
0 8
0000000000 65535 f
0000000009 00000 n
0000000074 00000 n
0000000120 00000 n
0000000179 00000 n
0000000364 00000 n
0000000466 00000 n
0000000496 00000 n
trailer
<< /Size 8
/Root 1 0 R
>>
startxref
625
%%EOF

The PDF ISO32000 standard

The PDF reference is available for free from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com/content/dotcom/en/devnet/pdf/pdf_reference.html The one you want is the copy of the ISO reference at http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf