Utility Updates

Quick linkfest running down some old tools updated and new tools discovered.

Autoruns v11.21: This update to Autoruns fixes a number of minor bugs, including one that could result in a crash when certain scheduled tasks are configured. Microsoft Sysinternals.

Process Explorer v15.12: This update to Process Explorer makes the search dialog asynchronous and reports the types of found items. It also fixes several bugs, including showing a small font when run after an older version, a bug in the restart-process functionality, working set columns not showing data, and again shows information about service processes when run from an unprivileged user account. Microsoft Sysinternals.

Strings v2.42: This Strings release fixes a bug that would result in a crash when the –n or -b options are specified without a file name. Microsoft Sysinternals.

Mark’s Blog: Case of the Installer Service Error: Follow along with Mark in another of his popular ‘Case of the Unexplained’ troubleshooting examples where he retraces the steps of a network administrator that used Process Monitor to figure out why the Windows Intune installer failed on one of his systems and goes on to fix the problem.

Mark’s Blog: The Case of My Mom’s Broken Microsoft Security Essentials Installation: Mark goes deep with the Sysinternals tools to fix a corrupt installation of MSE on his mom’s PC over the holidays.

CSVed 2.2.1 - Now at 2.2.1 version.  See also NirSoft’s CSVFileView

CCleaner v3.14 - Piriform - System cleaner

Recuva v1.42 - Piriform - File recovery tool

Speccy v1.14 - Piriform - System information collector

CCEnhancer - v 2.5 - SingularLabs - plugin for CCleaner adding support for over 500 additional aps.

JavaRa - v 1.16 - SingularLabs - not updated but great tool to remove old/redundant versions of JRE.  Now under development is JavaRa 2.0 alpha build which includes updating, removal and some additional bells-n-whistles.

Wecode.biz: Alternative Flash Player Auto-Updater - interesting tool to help update Adobe Flash Player. The latest builds of Flash Player do have an auto-updating feature baked in but it doesn’t (to me) seem to fire off and find newer builds as quickly as I would like to see. This is an alternative that might work good on friends and family PC’s.

ISC Diary | Newest Adobe Flash 11.1.102.55 and Previous 0 Day Exploit -Why keeping Flash updated is important…as if we didn’t need a reminder.

Crystal Dew World - lots of updates here including CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark

WinCrashReport - Displays a report about crashed Windows application - New NirSoft tool. See also this post by Nir Softer himself : New crash reporting utility for Windows

PST Viewer - Free tool to open and view content of PST files without Ms Outlook - Kernel Data Recovery. See also this review: Gave up Microsoft Outlook but need your PST file? There's an app for that - BetaNews. I like this tool in that when I recently had to carve the PST files off a nuked HDD to recover an end-users PST files, I got a ton of them. Rather than mounting each one to a working Outlook client profile, I just fired up this tool to inspect them with the user to find out which ones we wanted to attach and which ones were duplicates. Saved a boat-load of time. Could be good for incident responders as well.

Highlighter v1.1.3 Released - Mandiant M-unition blog notice. Download link

Download Batch Compiler - SourceForge - You need to install on a system (not portable) but still could be a great resource for building more complex batch files. See more info here at AddictiveTips: Batch Compiler: Create Batch Scripts & Convert Them To EXE Format

Splashtop Remote Desktop - interesting new tool for remote connection management. See this Splashtop Is A Better Alternative To Windows RDP at Windows7hacker blog.

Windows Live Writer Backup - Codeplex project page - See this Windows Live Writer Backup post at Windows7hacker blog.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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GSD Blog Template Reboot

No, you have not accidently experienced a page-redirection to either the TinyApps.Org or NirBlog website, although they remain quite inspiring to me.

I’m blaming it on the super-hot, super-dry summer.  Looking at the “warm” color-tones previously used on the GSD blog just has made me feel uncomfortable of late.

So we are trying on some new new minimalistic clothing here to weather this long, hot summer here on the Texas Gulf Coast.

I feel cooler already.

--Claus V.

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Blog Reboot #2

Fresh from last night’s Blog Breathing… GSD blog updating.

I’ve had a fairly decent night of sleep and have been hard at work on the additional design changes I’ve wanted to do.

I did change the overall “light-fonts on dark background” to “darker-text on lighter background”.  This should be better on the eyes by far.

Our resident graphic artist Alvis has been popping in giving me feedback and suggestions as well.

Most of the “Links” items and sub-categories survived, however I did add more than a few new items:  see the “Tech and Security Links”, “Life in Zen”, “Things to Motivate”, “Forensic Live CD’s”, “Software Sources”, “Guilty Pleasures”, and “Photography” sections for the super-duper changes.

I also successfully added the new “GSD Watch List” blog roll.  Blogger’s own gadget seemed to do the trick.  Only issue I have is that I have some awesome Microsoft TechNet blogs that it won’t add for some reason; Mark's Blog, Sysinterals Site Blog, MS Malware Protection Center, Network Monitor Blog.  I think it’s because of the way the blog home pages are addressed in a disallowed format: http://blogs.technet.com/b/blognamehere/   I’ve been unable to figure out a workaround for now so those had to get added statically up in the “Links” section.

I’ve noticed that Blogger platform now has the option to Create Pages in Blogger (more here Pages come to Blogger In Draft).  I think this might be a great way to add some static material pages for reference but I would need to do more organization.  What would serve me (and the faithful readers) best? Pages with lists of “best of” tools/utilities, wish-list, web-browser links (fav platforms/extensions), or useful CLI examples?  Or would those be better served under the Google Sites Grand Stream Dreams project site page instead?

We’ll have to see….

Cheers.

--Claus V.

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Blog Breathing…

I’ve just made a few updates/tweaks to the GSD blog tonight.  Didn’t really plan on it but there it is.

I’ve removed the two-column sidebar and reduced it to a singe column.

That then allowed me to expand the blog post text area but about 25%.  I feel like I can breath again when I look at the posts.  Weird.

I also changed the font.  I down-sized it just a touch, but also with a new sans-serif style which I think works a bit better on the eyes.

I haven’t yet, but I may still change the post background to a lighter one and ditch the white text.  I fiddled with it just a bit before deciding to leave it as-is for now.

I’ve replaced the “blogged by” image on the sidebar lead and rolled it back to the original GSD kids.  I like the colors and it seems “lighter” and more cheerful and image.  My real-life expression is generally more stoic in nature (except when I’m flirting…apparently all the time according to Lavie) so I think the old “new” image works better here.  Fear not, no other meaning with this change; Lavie and Alvis remain attached to my side…both in the fantasy anime as well as in real life!

My next task is to seriously update the “Claus’s Toolbox” and “Links” links.    Most of the toolbox links still stand but I’ve probably added a few more GSD posts and such that warrant addition.  It’s funny that while I still have those Tweaking XP and Vista links, I’ve not done one for Windows 7.  To be honest there are really only a very few tweaks I make under W7.  Strange…maybe they got it “righter” in the GUI/interaction this time.

I’m also self-aware of some glaring omissions to this mis-match “blog-roll” of sorts.  I’ve got some favorite blogs that aren’t listed, and other linger on though I haven’t clicked through in ages.

I think the “New Gear and Gizmos” links section is about to be retired and replaced with a Forensics one.  That probably makes sense because I am much less “hardware” focused now.  And while I am no professional “forensicator” - to use a keydet89 term – I am doing a lot of network and incident response posts and related activities on my own work-bench so I think it fits.

Finally, I’m considering adding my own (again borrowing from the keydet89’s blog sidebar style) fav BlogRoll list.  I just gotta figure out which gadget he used…hopefully it is a Blogger one to make things easy…

So I’ll be working on these as well from time to time, expect to see a few more tweaking as the weeks go by.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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GSD Recent Comment” Sidebar link references fixed

For anyone who cares, I finally took the time to “fix” the html links in the “Recent Comments” sidebar.

While they look good, it has always annoyed me.

The format is this.

(poster name) on (post title) comment bits…(more).

Clicking on any of the HTML links just took you to the top of the post the comment was left on. Not the comment itself as expected.

While users could scroll down to the comment section, it just wasn’t as right or polite as I wanted.

I’m not really much of a coder, particularly JavaScript, but I decided it was time to try to fix it.

So I located the correct comment link HTML format from a post comment as a sample to examine.

http:// <blogtitlelinkurl> ?showComment= <numbersetA> #c <numbersetB>

This code correctly takes you directly to the respective comment under the post.

Then I copied the existing HTML codes the JavaScript was generating into my notepad text editor and set out to compare them all.

Very quickly I found that the original JavaScript code (included at the end of this post for the curious) was replacing the “#” symbol in the working comment HTML structure with a “#comment-“ string instead.  This routed the link-click to the post title when Blogger couldn’t figure it out.

Looking at the JavaScript code I found a line “ctlink = ctlink.replace("#", "#comment-");” and replaced it with “ctlink = ctlink.replace("#", "#");” which was a dirty way to not muck the code up but keep the variable structure the same.  (Note: “ctlink” variable name stands for “comment link” I think).

Testing finds that it works perfectly.

Clicking on either the (poster name) or (more) parts will now take to directly to the comment itself, not the post title.

While clicking on the (post title) link takes you to the top of the post itself.

The only thing I still needed to do (being a bit neurotic) is that while that worked, the (post title) HTML code was sloppy as the JavaScript generating it still seemed to either be tagging it with, or failing to remove the “?showComment=numbers”  bit at the end.  It did work, it’s just not pretty.

That still needed fixin’.

Trial and Editor

Luckily I had recently found the following W3Schools Online Web Tutorials site that also has their “Tryit Editor”.

This is really, really cool as it lets coding doofs like me copy/paste/tweak/test code and scripts into their editor and view the results without nuking my deployed blog until fully tested.

Once I think I have the solution down, I then upload the changes to my gsdtemplatetester blog page.  This is the proving ground where I can experiment with code and templates on a “real” Blogger deployment before moving those changes into production on the GSD blog page template proper.

So I set to work using the JavaScript descriptions there, picking apart more of the code elements and variables, and via trial and editor, found the line to fix.

Originally it was

var ptlink = ctlink.split("#");

Where the variable name “ptlink” stands for “post title link” I think.

Which I finally worked out needed to be

var ptlink = ctlink.split("?showComment=");

Replacing that finally resulted in the comment sidebar (post title) link returning the HTML code format

http:// <blogtitlelinkurl>

and not the incorrect (but still functional)

http:// <blogtitlelinkurl> ?showComment= <numbersetA>

Hurrah! The Recent Comment sidebar links now all work correctly and the HTML code is fully correct as well.

Hopefully this will make monitoring and following the recent comments a bit more enjoyable and efficient for readers.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

Note:

For posterity, here is the original (working but barely) and fixed (working great) JavaScript code I am using if anyone cares to study it more.  I’m clearly not the original author of the JavaScript.  It came from somewhere within this Now See This: Adding Comments to your Blogger sidebar GSD post back in 2008 (gosh has it been that long?!!).

Original (working but barely) JavaScript code

<ul><script style="text/JavaScript">
function showrecentcomments(json) {
for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
var entry = json.feed.entry[i];
var ctlink;
if (i == json.feed.entry.length) break;
for (var k = 0; k < entry.link.length; k++) {
if (entry.link[k].rel == 'alternate') {
ctlink = entry.link[k].href;
break;
}
}
ctlink = ctlink.replace("#", "#comment-");
var ptlink = ctlink.split("#");
ptlink = ptlink[0];
var txtlink = ptlink.split("/");
txtlink = txtlink[5];
txtlink = txtlink.split(".html");
txtlink = txtlink[0];
var pttitle = txtlink.replace(/-/g," ");
pttitle = pttitle.link(ptlink);
if ("content" in entry) {
var comment = entry.content.$t;}
else
if ("summary" in entry) {
var comment = entry.summary.$t;}
else var comment = "";
var re = /<\S[^>]*>/g;
comment = comment.replace(re, "");
document.write('<li>');
document.write('<a href="' + ctlink + '">' + entry.author[0].name.$t + '</a>');
document.write(' on ' + pttitle);
document.write('<br/>');
if (comment.length < 120) {
document.write(comment);
document.write('<li>');document.write('<br/>');
}
else
{
comment = comment.substring(0, 120);
var quoteEnd = comment.lastIndexOf(" ");
comment = comment.substring(0, quoteEnd);
document.write(comment + '...<a href="' + ctlink + '">(more)</a>');
document.write('<li>');document.write('<br/>');
}
}
document.write('</li>');
document.write('<div style="font-size:95%;text-align:center"><a href="http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full">GSD RSS Comment Feed link</a></div>');
}
</script>
<script src="http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=showrecentcomments">
</script></ul>
<noscript>You need to enable JavaScript to read this.</noscript>

I’ve also linked to some of the JavaScript examples and actions at w3schools page as well for easy cross-reference to show what these various calls are doing.

Fully Working JavaScript code (changes in yellow)

<ul><script style="text/JavaScript">
function showrecentcomments(json) {
for (var i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
var entry = json.feed.entry[i];
var ctlink;
if (i == json.feed.entry.length) break;
for (var k = 0; k < entry.link.length; k++) {
if (entry.link[k].rel == 'alternate') {
ctlink = entry.link[k].href;
break;
}
}
ctlink = ctlink.replace("#", "#");
var ptlink = ctlink.split("?showComment=");
ptlink = ptlink[0];
var txtlink = ptlink.split("/");
txtlink = txtlink[5];
txtlink = txtlink.split(".html");
txtlink = txtlink[0];
var pttitle = txtlink.replace(/-/g," ");
pttitle = pttitle.link(ptlink);
if ("content" in entry) {
var comment = entry.content.$t;}
else
if ("summary" in entry) {
var comment = entry.summary.$t;}
else var comment = "";
var re = /<\S[^>]*>/g;
comment = comment.replace(re, "");
document.write('<li>');
document.write('<a href="' + ctlink + '">' + entry.author[0].name.$t + '</a>');
document.write(' on ' + pttitle);
document.write('<br/>');
if (comment.length < 120) {
document.write(comment);
document.write('<li>');document.write('<br/>');
}
else
{
comment = comment.substring(0, 120);
var quoteEnd = comment.lastIndexOf(" ");
comment = comment.substring(0, quoteEnd);
document.write(comment + '...<a href="' + ctlink + '">(more)</a>');
document.write('<li>');document.write('<br/>');
}
}
document.write('</li>');
document.write('<div style="font-size:95%;text-align:center"><a href="http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full">GSD RSS Comment Feed link</a></div>');
}
</script>
<script src="http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=showrecentcomments">
</script></ul>
<noscript>You need to enable JavaScript to read this.</noscript>

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GSD Redesign (again)

Probably not the best time to do something like this.  Been out in the back yard for most of the day hand-pulling the thick blanket of weeds from the yard.

My fingers are numb.  My sittin’ bucket is busted. My arms and legs still itch even after a long shower scrub-down.

The smell of wild green onions lingers in my nose.

I’ve got a 50-pound of weed bio-mass pilled in a back corner.

And then I take a moment to rest and find this stupid link:

Official Google Blog: Express yourself with the Blogger Template Designer

Well yeah. Of course I have to go muck around with it.

I’ve generally liked the lightly dark format of some sites/blogs but have never been brave enough to try it on for size.

I have also strongly resisted the image-background/floating layout style as well.

However, the new Blogger Template designs are quite well balanced and I’ve always been a sucker for earthy warm-tone color schemes.

I’m liking this one for now but I expect more tweaks will come down the line.

This is probably one of the largest in-house updates Blogger has released in quite some time.

Rendering so far in Firefox 3.6, Opera 10.5, IE 8, Chrome, and Safari all seem very spot-on.

Sidebar items will require some custom adjustments but I think overall it has translated pretty well.

Stay tuned.

--Claus V.

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Blog reboot – version 4.0

OK.

I have to say, while I liked the v 3.0 design overall, I just wasn’t feeling the lovin’ when it came down to the way the posts were separated.

It was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended.  And colors/fonts were still a bit off.

And I hadn’t really thought through the impact of the floating main content body for wide-screen monitor users.

So I eventually found  the Concept Nova template over at BTemplates.  I liked the overall feel.

The template code was a lot easier to tweak as well for my design.

So here it is…seems to render properly in Mozilla, Chrome and IE (though the lower-case “grand stream dreams” in the grey bar is clipped in IE).  Still need to check how it looks in Safari and Opera but I expect that will be well.

update: Opera also renders it fine although in Safari for Windows, if the text zoom is set at “normal” then the top-most heading punches a line gap between the images. Setting the text zoom for the page down one notch resolves the issue but it a bit harder to read. All else seems fine.

Hope everyone is pleased.

I still need to download and “self-host” the image files that make up the template elements just in case they get nuked or changed (doubtful but it could happen).

Feedback is welcome.

--Claus V.

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GSD Blog Redo: v 3.0

Please do not change your browser settings.

The GSD blog has been redesigned.

For some reason, in a fit of summer boredom and bravery I decided it was time for a redo.  Maybe it was the recent redo of the NPR website.  Maybe it was the Chron.com redo (or Dwight’s TechBlog ) .  I’m not sure.  Anyway I decided it was time for change.

And yes…your eyes don’t deceive you.  That indeed is a recent image of Lavie and I snuggling away in our real-life vectorized skins.  No need to imagine our mugs any longer.

I spent a few hours (honestly) poring over the Blogger Templates at btemplates.  There were lots and lots of really great templates.  Only problem I kept coming back to is that many of them looked way too commercial or polished for the tone of the GSD blog.  In addition, I just didn’t like having to depend on images or banner-images hosted off-site.

So I reviewed the default ones on Blogger and ended up really liking “Sand Dollar”.  It was a two-column template which was a bit hard to adopt from my previous three-column style.  However, I really liked the way the post-body section auto-resized (floated).  And the font worked quite well.

I did use this tip BP Web News and Tips: Template MakeOver - Procedure 3 to swap the body and sidebar columns.  I was just so used to having the body-text on the left that I had to get it back that way with the sidebar on the right.  This worked perfectly.

I did break the tag-cloud horribly with the new template.  However, I did find that the code I previously used by phydeaux3 was updated and refined a bit more since: New Blogger Tag Cloud / Label Cloud.  I think it looks smashing!

I did drop the “Links from Japan” as though I still RSS feed a number of Japan-centric blogs, I really didn’t find the length of the sidebar items pleasing going from a double-sidebar to a single one.  So it got cut.

I finally hard-coded the HTML code for the “apostrophe” character in “Claus’s Toolbox” so that darned “quote” character previously in it as “Claus”s Toolbox” is now fixed.

I also tweaked the colors (Blogger now has added a nice WYSIWYG Fonts and Colors editor) with Lavie’s help providing a critical eye  Simple borders were added to better separate the body from sidebar.  Padding and font sizings were manually adjusted as well.

The real killer-diller for me on this was the comment widget.  The original widget transferred over fine but the text was all jammed together and it was next to impossible to differentiate between comments.  It’s a JavaScript creation and while I am comfortable with basic HTML/XHTML coding, JavaScript is a different manner.  Through trial-n-error and careful studying of the code layout I finally figured out where to add a JavaScript language “linebreak” of sorts.  I think the comments look quite sharp now.  I also expanded the amount of allowed characters so it is easier to get a sense of the comment on longer ones before they are truncated.

I’ve still got some additional fine-tuning to do.  I’d like to separate the posts a bit more as they seem to run together just a bit. And with the new-found extra room I might be changing some of the other graphics on the side-bar just a touch.

I’ve checked it in Firefox, Chrome(ium), and IE8.  I’ve not jumped over to my Vista (dual-booting) OS yet so I haven’t seen it yet in Opera or Safari.  I imagine it is rendering fine there.  I really hope this particular template design fixes the annoying habit of long-lines breaking the previous three-column template in IE.  Specific HTML code I found in the template seems to address that issue.

Of course, I had to remember to update (refresh) my theme in Windows Live Writer so it now correctly formats according to the revised template.

All things said, I think the changes are pretty refreshing and makes a much more eye-friendly blog.

What say you?

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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