The individual desktop

I can see an interesting movement on the market: Many Apple iPhone users seem to lurk towards a Mac when they think of buying a new computer. - And some actually do.

And in my neighbourhood I can count already 6 Macs in the first minute trying to count them.

I find it a good thing, that Macs are increasing. With more people using Macs, companies need to start considering that there is not only Windows and world is colorful.

There is just one thing that I need to make clear: Many Mac users think that they are a special individual with their extraordinary computer and this is not true IMHO.

I can see the following different strategies:

• Microsoft: Keep compatibility to keep market share but try to offer new GUI stuff that feeds people's enthusiasm and keep some flexibility.
• Apple: Focus on usability and don't make the user think or choose.
• Linux: Be open and flexible. Everybody should be able to use it as desired.

I was thinking if there could be the optimal all-use-fitting user interface but I came to the conclusion that there are many different use cases, many different jobs and many people thinking in many different ways.

I think, the Apple way is not the worst, but for those who work a lot with the computer it might be worth to invest a little more time finding the best fitting environment. If you want to be really individual, Linux is the way to go - just search youtube - e.g. for "my Linux desktop" or "top linux distros" to get an idea what people do with Linux.

Related posts: Distribution choice, Popular Ubuntu desktop myths.

Failed user lock-down

Have been on a Citrix Windows 2008r2 server machine where the admins really tried to lock down everything.

The other side is: Some stuff is not working well and I do not wonder because I am pretty sure that a lot of features that have been disabled are required by several pieces of software.

And the funny thing is: You can't really lock out the user on Windows - just to show one simple way to open the command prompt if disabled:

1. Start Microsoft Word
2. Press ALT + F11
3. Press CTRL+G
4. Type: vba.shell "cmd.exe"
5. Press Enter
6. Voila here it is the commandline window.

In the particular case C: drive was disabled and command prompt -  now everything is at hand form the command prompt. You can either try:
vba.shell "explorer C:\Windows"
works either. :-)

Smart Backup on Linux

About two years ago after setting up a Linux server I was asked to create a backup of the last seven days. Reason for this was the idea that if something gets deleted or corrupted it might not be noticed immediately.

The problem was: The hard disk did not have enough free space to hold 7 times the data and at the moment there was no external hard disk available.

I searched the Internet and found a really smart solution - you can find details here on mikerubel.org (rsync snapshots). My final script looks like this:

 #!/bin/bash  
 rm -rf /data/autobackup/backup.7  
 mv /data/autobackup/backup.6 /data/autobackup/backup.7  
 mv /data/autobackup/backup.5 /data/autobackup/backup.6  
 mv /data/autobackup/backup.4 /data/autobackup/backup.5  
 mv /data/autobackup/backup.3 /data/autobackup/backup.4  
 mv /data/autobackup/backup.2 /data/autobackup/backup.3  
 mv /data/autobackup/backup.1 /data/autobackup/backup.2  
 cp -alv /data/autobackup/backup.0 /data/autobackup/backup.1 > /data/autobackup/0to1.log  
 rsync -av --delete /data/live/ /data/autobackup/backup.0/ > /data/autobackup/last-rsync.log  

If you want to go more into detail - Michael Jakl has posted a variant here (rsync time machine).

Currently in my use case the live part takes 149GB and the whole backup of 7 days takes 161 GB (instead of more than a TB!)

I know, disk space is quite cheap, but the rising amount of data also requires a lot! - In my case:

1. I already have several external drives (2 HDs where HD images of my work notebook are saved alternating).
2. Two separate external drives where data only is saved with rsync (to one disk more often to other about once in two months).
3. I have a 500GB external HD where data is outsourced that I do not need that much or simply consumes too much of my primary HD. That one was not saved in the early times. In the meantime I do sync it to a second one from time to time (people have a lot of external HDs these days but I am not sure if they backup those too...).

Guess what, if I would decide to keep snapshots of several days - way too much for a normal copy x7!

Google Maps issues

A while ago I had problems using Google Maps - I had a slow loading issue which ran into an error.

I found a discussion about this problem where many people were angry at Google because they don't fix this problem.

I found out that the problem was due to my browser security plugins Adblock Plus and NoScript. At least one of those (I think it was NoScript) was blocking the site gstatic.com (and google.com of course or at least maps.google.com). No need to completely disable (which was mentioned also in the discussion), just whitelist relevant sites in those plugins (Check site media information to see loaded images for example).

Some other people mentioned different reasons causing the same problem like:

• Check your orther privacy or security plugins for blocking maps.google.com or gstatic.com
• Delete cookies for maps.google.com as well as all temporary internet files (clear cache).
• Skype extension for Firefox causing the problem.
• DNS problems (that usually temporarily - to separate this reason from others check availability of maps.google.com and gstatic.com using nslookup and check if it works using a different browser without any plugins - if both works then DNS is not the reason for your problem).
• if2k (if on Mac).
• Badly written router firewalls (try deactivating IPv6).
• Turn off inprivate filtering (if on Windows IE).
• Windows only: Uninstall Java and reinstall launching as Administrator (Win 7).
• Your mobile web service provider might have implemented an accelerator reducing image quality - check and turn off on the provider's website.

I am posting this because there were many responses to this and still some are posting without reading the earlier answers offering solutions and it seems that plenty of people experiencing problems with google maps.

Normal.dot in OpenOffice or LibreOffice

Some time ago I was asked where the normal.dot is in Open Office and I was stuck. I don't open the writer and write. I have copied all my templates to ~/Templates. The first action I take when I want to create a new document is to go in the folder where I want to save it, click the right mouse-button, hover on "Create new document" and choose the template of my choice. That way I neither have to think about what type of document (text, graphic, spreadsheet) my template needs to be.

However, most people are just used to just firing up MS Word or if they are on Windows with Open Office they miss the nice template folder and to create a new document from a template within Open Office for me is definitely too many clicks away (3 clicks and 2 double-clicks).

When I was asked for the "normal.dot" I searched a lot and I searched the internet to finally find out, that it is described very well in the Open Office help:

To Create a Default Template

1. Create a document and the content and formatting styles that you want. 
2. Choose File - Templates - Save.
3. In the New Template box, type a name for the new template. 
4. In the Categories list, select "My Templates", and then click OK.
5. Choose File - Templates - Organize.
6. In the Templates list, double-click the "My Templates" folder.
7. Right-click the template that you created, and choose Set as Default Template.
8. Click Close.

It's the same in LibreOffice by the way.

Related posts: Default paper size in Open Office, Firefox change default page format, Locale configuration on Ubuntu.

Default Paper Size in Open Office

Under Linux (or at least under Gnome or Ubuntu) we already had the issue with default paper size in Firefox. Now on my older Ubuntu 10.04 workstation where I have not yet upgraded from Open Office to LibreOffice my wife has a permanent problem with wrong default paper size when using Open Office.

I have examined the situation and found out that in Ubuntu system administration under Printing the default paper size has not been set to A4. OK, but didn't help for OpenOffice.

Finally I gave up finding the problem and started to google. After a while I found a blog entry at "Starry Hope": OpenOffice Default Paper Size for Printing - here the important part:

1. Change the default paper size in /etc/papersize
This is the first place to look and solved the problem most of the time. Simply edit /etc/papersize and change “letter” to “a4″ then restart OpenOffice.


2. Check for settings in ~/.cups
In some cases, CUPS saves printer settings for individual users in their home directory (don’t ask me why). If you see a .cups directory in your home directory, open it and see if “Letter” isn’t set as the default paper size in there. (In my case, I just deleted the .cups directory all together).

3. Check for poorly formatted PPD files
Check the PPD file for your printer in /etc/cups/ppd/ to see if it has errors. Apparently, some PPD files are incorrectly formatted and cause an error. This problem is most commonly discussed in relation to Brother printers. You can find more info in this bug report. - Seems to be fixed.

4. Change DefaultPageSize in SGENPRT.PS
It appears that OpenOffice gets its default media size for some printers from the DefaultPageSize line in the /usr/lib/openoffice/basis3.2/share/psprint/driver/SGENPRT.PS file. More info here.

In my case indeed, changing "letter" to "A4" in /etc/papersize already solved the issue - thanks so much!

Related post: Firefox change default page format, Normal.dot in OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

Outlook Calendar Meetings

When it comes to discussion about alternatives to MS Outlook, a common argument is the unique calendar and meeting request feature. So far I could understand people as it seemed quite comfortable to me (even although nothing beats the Google Calendar).

After working a lot with the Outlook Calendar (although mostly through the web or thank good, integrated with Lightning in Thunderbird), I can tell you: No, the Outlook Calendar is not so good, as you might think!

BTW: Outlook is not the only software supporting such features any more.

Here are a few things that are super-annoying (and I am talking about the 2010 version - so state-of-the-art version):

• I cannot create an appointment over n hours with one click and drag (this works in Google Calendar and Ligthning for example). I always need to double-click and set the length by adjusting end-time.
• When I accept a meeting request, in the Outlook Web-Access, the appointment is carved in stone - I cannot change it (apart from background color), however,
• in the Outlook 2010 desktop application I can change the meeting details - usually I add relevant informations to a meeting, information that I need exactly for that appointment, like addresses, contact phone numbers, conference call numbers etc. So far so good, problem: When the initiator of the meeting makes changes to the event, mine gets updated without notice and my edits are gone! - This also means that if somebody is ill and I change a foreign appointment, I wipe out their notes either - that's crazy!
• When viewing a shared calendar from another person in web client, the other calendar gets displayed next to mine and not in  an overlapping mode. Do this with 3 and everything gets too narrow to view on a normal laptop display.

Related posts: Outlook 2010 Meeting requests, Thunderbird & the Outlook Global Address book, Popular Ubuntu desktop myths, Maintaining multiple calendars.