For some reason the sharepoint people picker in Sharepoint Services 3.0 was not seeing domain users. This could be due to this sharepoint install not being installed by a user with access to the domain (i.e. a local user). To fix this use the “stsadm.exe” command:
stsadm -o setproperty -url http://<webapplicationurl> -pn “peoplepicker-searchadforests” -pv “domain:<fulldomainurl>,<username>,<password>”
where the username and password are for someone with access to the domain.
For the AIBO project we needed to stream webcam data from a webcam to an iframe on our website. We used an Axis IP camera but as soon as we had more than 2 people viewing the built in server crashed and the camera needed restarting. Although this problem didn’t happen every time, it happened enough that we decided to go with a webcam and SimpleCam from Dead Pirate Software, which I have used before.
The setup is easy, just make sure your webcam is installed, run SimpleCam and make sure the server port is set. To view the feed just visit the ip and port of the pc with the webcam attached. There are more instructions with pictures on the Dead Pirate site.
I have tried several different techniques using loads of different software to rip chapters of a DVD directly to wmv. It seems that it has to be done in several stages, with a final stage of AVI to WMV as windows media encoder seems to crash every time I give it a .vob or .mpg file to convert.
I tried using dvd decrypter to create .vobs for each chapter in IFO mode but ended up with sound de-synchronisation despite the framerate etc being set correctly. After trying a lot of other programs (all open source) such as dvdx (crashed creating .wmv with my required resolution of 720×576) I ripped the dvd using Nero to one big .mpg then used Sony Vegas to cut it into chapters. I saved these chapters out as .mpg hoping to convert directly to .wmv using Windows Media Encoder 9 but the encoder would crash opening them.
Eventually I gave up and saved the mpg files as raw avis using virtualdub with the mpeg 2 plugin from fccHandler. I then used a great batch script from Tech Recipes to convert these avi files to the wmv format I was after.
So steps I used were: DVD > Nero conversion to one big mpeg > Sony Vegas manual chapter splitting and saving as mpeg > virtualdub mpeg2 conversion to raw avi > batch conversion of avi to wmv.
There must be a better way of doing this but every known way of doing it either didnt allow me to save out the chapters or caused audio synchronisation errors. I know Nero can see the chapters but why wont it let you rip them?
You can automatically back up all user databases in your SQL Server Express 2005 install using either a stored procedure or command line program combined with windows task scheduler. ExpressMaint was written to bring some of the backup functionality from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server Express 2005 and seems to be pretty easy to use based on the instructions at sqldbatips.com.
Combining regular backups using ExpressMaint with some shadow copying of the data files provides a fair bit of redundacy in the event of hardware failure, database corruption etc..
http://www.kood.org/terminal-server-patch/ allows you to be working on a PC and allow multiple concurrent sessions. Windows XP normally only allows the client console plus 2 remote connections due to “licensing issues”.
We have been using AIBO for a while now as a platform for demonstrating human interaction and speech/gesture recognition. Unfortunately our AIBO is getting a bit tired and will need to be replaced in the not so distant future. It looks like BP use a pretty neat and cheap (in comparison) robot called the SRV-1 Blackfin Robot which is on sale now for $475. This is so much cheaper than even a second hand AIBO and with the right plastic moulding (as BP have done) it could look just as attractive to the general public.
A huge bonus to the SRV-1 Blackfin is that it has been built from the ground up as a research robot and works with a number of different robot control software packages, including the Microsoft Robotic Studio. If we can use C# to control and program the robot our development time would be cut drastically as everything is already written for the “brain” side of the robot project.
Although I use remote desktop almost exclusively at work there are times when I’ve needed to do tech support over the phone to people with a VERY basic understanding of windows. To get to their desktop I created a hotmail account and talked them through the install of msn messenger so I could get them to send a remote assistance request from this hotmail account.
In hindsight this was totally overkill but I couldn’t find any way to EASILY get access to their desktop when the concept of windows and desktops was unfamiliar to them. I found this post on Lifehacker with a collection of programs to handle exactly this scenario for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Make sure “file and printer sharing” is enabled on the client you are joining. This is not enabled by default on server 2003.
Need to precreate machine name in domain controller, rename your machine to this name then reboot.
Need to make sure dns can resolve domain controllers (use “nslookup domaincontroller” to get the IPs of the domain controllers if you want to ping them).
Set the DNS suffixes to the domain suffixes in tcpip settings, one of these will more than likely be the domain name itself. To make sure these are used check “Append these DNS suffixes (in order)”.
You need permission to add to the domain, make sure you have it.
After trawling the forums I found an acpi-support config that worked and allowed me to suspend and hibernate in ubuntu 8.04.
sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support
Then edit the acpi-support file so it looks like:
# Comment the next line to disable ACPI suspend to RAM
ACPI_SLEEP=true# Comment the next line to disable suspend to disk
ACPI_HIBERNATE=true# Change the following to “standby” to use ACPI S1 sleep, rather than S3.
# This will save less power, but may work on more machines
ACPI_SLEEP_MODE=mem# Add modules to this list to have them removed before suspend and reloaded
# on resume. An example would be MODULES=”em8300 yenta_socket”
#
# Note that network cards and USB controllers will automatically be unloaded
# unless they’re listed in MODULES_WHITELIST
MODULES=”"# Add modules to this list to leave them in the kernel over suspend/resume
MODULES_WHITELIST=”"# Should we save and restore state using the VESA BIOS Extensions?
SAVE_VBE_STATE=true# The file that we use to save the vbestate
VBESTATE=/var/lib/acpi-support/vbestate# Should we attempt to warm-boot the video hardware on resume?
POST_VIDEO=true# Save and restore video state?
# SAVE_VIDEO_PCI_STATE=true# Should we switch the screen off with DPMS on suspend?
USE_DPMS=true# Use Radeontool to switch the screen off? Seems to be needed on some machines
# RADEON_LIGHT=true# Uncomment the next line to switch away from X and back again after resume.
# This is needed for some hardware, but should be unnecessary on most.
# DOUBLE_CONSOLE_SWITCH=true# Set the following to “platform” if you want to use ACPI to shut down
# your machine on hibernation
HIBERNATE_MODE=platform# Comment this out to disable screen locking on resume
LOCK_SCREEN=true# Uncomment this line to have DMA disabled before suspend and reenabled
# afterwards
# DISABLE_DMA=true# Uncomment this line to attempt to reset the drive on resume. This seems
# to be needed for some Sonys
# RESET_DRIVE=true# Add services to this list to stop them before suspend and restart them in
# the resume process.
STOP_SERVICES=”"# Restart Infra Red services on resume – off by default as it crashes some
# machines
RESTART_IRDA=false# Switch to laptop-mode on battery power – off by default as it causes odd
# hangs on some machines
ENABLE_LAPTOP_MODE=true# Spindown time on battery
SPINDOWN_TIME=12
UPDATE:
If you have success with this and are active in the community it might be a good idea to update the people on the Ubuntu forums. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that’s had to do this to get standby working! I’ve had problems with Hibernate since posting this, seems it is still a bit flaky, and gives me a psychadelic screen (like its breaking and fading to white) occasionally.
I will be using this blog mainly for technical code snippets and notes. This isn’t a personal advertising platform so it could be pretty stale for most people!
