visual studio 2010 "copy web site" tool is slow; solution: web site publisher

scenario #1)  you don't mind publishing your source code, and you need to publish you aps.net web site via ftp to your host.   visual studio's built in "copy web site" tool is prohibitively slow because it scans the server for changes, and your website has many folders and files. (your host may even throttle your ftp connections after visual studio scans a few directories.)  analyzing the ftp server is unnecessary because you are the only person who updates your website.  you only want to do a one-way sync to the ftp server without scanning the server.  your hosting company does not support svn.

scenario #2) you use, microsoft expression web, and want to publish only changes to the server.  the problem is that their "publish changed files" option does not propagate deletions.  to propagate deletions in expression web, you must use the "publish all files" function, which is much too slow when the remote copy is accessible over only ftp.

solution: web site publisher, the simplest and most genius program ever.  it took me many hours to find it, which is why i felt the need to share it.  you can configure it to scan only your hard drive for new/changed files and deletions, and then publish the changes since you last published to the ftp server.  my solution won't work for *pre-compiled* asp.net web applications.

download it here:  http://www.cryer.co.uk/downloads/websitepublisher/

you must enable the turbo optimization so that it does not scan the server.  click "config", "optimisations", and then check "turbo".

kindle "show display options" menu is disabled

i am trying out kindle for pc and am reading a textbook.  i found reading to be rather difficult on kindle for pc because of it's jagged scrolling (please complain here).  while looking to add a smooth scrolling option i noticed the view / show display options menu was disabled.

problem: not all books support changing settings like font size and background color.  for example, my textbook has pictures and stuff written in the margins of pages.  if i changed the "words per line" setting, the words would overlap on the pictures or problems would arise from trying to apply features that aren't defined for a textbook.

there is no easy solution.  author's of textbooks need to make books in a e-reading friendly format, which they will have little incentive to do until physical books phase out and e-books really start to catch on.

if you want to know what the dialog box looks like, this is what you're missing out on:

latex error "image failed (no JPEG header found)"

i use texmaker to write latex documents on windows.  i wanted to insert a graphic using the directions on this page.  i got these errors:

!pdfTeX error: pdflatex (file C:/.../dog.jpg): reading JPEGimage failed (no JPEG header found)==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

i created the jpg file in microsoft paint.  perhaps if i used a different jpeg, it would've worked.

the solution is to open the jpg file in paint, save it as a .png file and then use the png file.

no need to change the latex code if it doesn't include a file extension.  e.g.

\includegraphics{dog}

otherwise, just change the filename.  change
\includegraphics{dog.jpg}
to
\includegraphics{dog.png}

securely send passwords over email

i've been sending passwords to people over email for years and just realized how bad it would be if someone hacked into my own email account and searched for "password".  this is why we should never send non-temporary passwords over email.  i used to type "delete this email" in the subject line, but this is a better solution.

http://timebomb.it/

timebomb.it lets you send login credentials to people via a link that expires after an hour, day or month.  that way, if a hacker gets into your friend's or co-worker's email and searches for "password", they will only find expired links and no passwords.

just go to timebomb.it and type in the username and password you want to send.

then you'll see the page with the url.  copy the url...

and email it securely!

then, if someone searches for "password" in the recipient's gmail a year later, they get this!

i was going to use kl1p.com, an online clipboard, to send passwords, but they got rid of the option to make the clipboard contents expire after a certain amount of time.  timebomb.it is a good alternative for sending sensitive information that you want to be available for a limited amount of time.

solution to windows 7 "open with" browse button not working

problem:

i was trying to open an iif file in excel by right clicking the file, clicking "open with..." and clicking "choose default program."  excel wasn't in the list, so i clicked, "browse..." and navigated to excel in my program files folder.  when i clicked "ok," excel was not added to the list and i could not choose to open the file with excel.  of course i could've opened the file in excel by opening excel and clicking file/open, but there is an actual solution.  this is what worked for me:

solution

warning! these directions instruct you to modify your computer's registry.  if you mess up these directions, you can seriously mess up your computer.  if you don't know what you're doing, just use the workaround i mentioned above.

1. click start and then click run.
2. type "regedit" and then click ok.
3. navigate to the key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Applications\"
4. right click the key and click delete.

windows 7 virtual pc fails (dddgraphics - vmware wins

windows 7 virtual pc shows weird lines on the screen then crashes when i try to install ubuntu. when i try to install cent os 5 the and the text is barely readable and stretched out with many black lines going through it.  i've discerned it to be a problem with virtual pc.  i tried using vmware's viewer and i didn't have any trouble. download here: http://www.vmware.com/products/player/.

how to use a relative path to a data source for word mail merging (word 2007, word 2010)

suppose you set up mail merging in a word document and specify a data source that is in the same folder (e.g. a csv or an excel file), and then you move the folder.  next time you open the word document, word will look in the original location for the data source and give an error "file.docx is a mail merge document. Word cannot find its datasource."

here is a macro solution, but this requires disabling some security features so that it can run every time you open the document:

Sub Document_Open ()
Dim PATH, SOURCE As String
PATH = ThisDocument.Path 'determine current directory
SOURCE = PATH & "\Adresses.xls" ActiveDocument.MailMerge.OpenDataSource Name: = Source
End Sub

with way too much trouble you can make the source relative by editing the word document without using microsoft word.

0. back up the word file you are editing because you might destroy it in the following steps.

1. find an OpenXML editor that can edit zipped xml files.  for non-commercial use you can use this: http://free.editix.com/.  the following directions contain elements that are specific to using editix.

2. open editix.

3. click file-> open

4. under "files of type" choose "microsoft office documents"

5. open a word file with mail merging already set up with an absolute path to the datasource

warning: there may be two places where you have to change the path when using text files.

6. if you can find it, navigate to "file.docx" > "word" > "_rels" > "settings.xml.rels" (open this .xml.rels file).  if you can't find it then skip to step 9.

7. right click in white space in the panel on the right and click "pretty format" to make the xml easier to read

8. look for something like the below.

Target="file:///C:\users\you\documents\datasource.csv"

above is an absolute path.  change it to something like the below, which looks for a file called "datasource.csv" that must be in the same folder as the word document.

Target="datasource.csv"

warning: there may be other references to the data source in settings.xml.rels that need to be changed to relative paths.  thanks to mark for pointing this out.

if the data source is in a folder called "data", and the "data" folder is in the same place as the word document, type

Target="data/datasource.csv"

if the word document is in a folder called "word documents" and the "word documents" folder is in the same place as the data source, type

Target="../datasource.csv"

because ../ means go to the folder above.  "../../datasource.csv" means to look two folders up.  for more help google search "absolute and relative paths".

in this step only, if there are any spaces in the path to your file, replace the spaces with "%20" (not including the quotes)

9. navigate to "file.docx" > "word" > "settings.xml".  you should definitely be able to find this one no matter what your type of data source.

10. format again so you can read the xml easily

11. look for something like the below

 <w:query w:val="SELECT * FROM C:\users\you\documents\datasource.csv"/>

do not replace spaces with %20 here.

12. change "C:\users\you\my documents\datasource.csv" to a relative path.  it should be the same as the path you used in step 8 if you did step 8.  e.g.

 <w:query w:val="SELECT * FROM datasource.csv"/>

i would love a comment if this article helped you.