InControlCMD – Command Line Control of InControl HA ZWave Devices

February 25, 2013 theninja 8 Comments

InControl HA from Moonlitz Software is my preferred Home Automation Software.

It supports a multitude of ZWave devices and, of late, has an extensible plugin system so you can incorporate other non-zwave devices into the fold and control them via InControl’s iPad, iPhone, Android & Windows Phone UI’s.

InControlCMD is a Command Line executable I wrote which allows you to turn devices on and off from the Command Line. This is especially handy if you want to script actions external to InControl but also incorporate controlling devices within InControl.
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Tech

DCOM 10009 errors on a Domain Controller

January 22, 2013 theninja 1 Comment

Sometimes when you demote a domain controller in your domain and the domotion partially fails your other domain controllers can start to generate an enormous amount of DCOM 10009 errors because in their domain metadata they still expect to be able to contact this demoted/non-existent domain controller.

The specific error message is:

“DCOM was unable to communicate with the computer {computername} using any of the configured protocols”
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Tech

Implementing Apache Compression and Caching

September 17, 2012 theninja Comment

Compression and Caching can improve your webapp or website performance quite considerably.

A great article from David Baker can be found here for implementing Apache Compression and Caching:

http://dtbaker.com.au/random-bits/howto-enable-compression-and-caching-on-apache2.html

If you run an intranet, webapp or you run your own web server you will find this information very valuable to squeeze a little more performance out of your website.
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Tech

Freeware MTS (AVCHD) Converter

August 26, 2012 theninja 2 Comments

A few of my clients have Sony HD Cameras and are constantly asking for assistance on how to import video into Premiere or other video editing programs.

Most of the newer Sony\Panasonic Cameras (it seems) record to a transport stream format of AVCHD in a .MTS container. Adobe Premiere and other video editing applications cannot import this format so the easiest way I have found to import these types of videos is to convert it to an industry standard format that is supported by Premiere prior to importing.
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Apps, Tech

Feedr – An advanced RSS Desktop Ticker Slider for your Windows desktop for all those RSS feeds you want to read like a boss..

April 24, 2012 theninja 4 Comments

I’ve been working on this for some time now. As my first WPF application i’m sure it has a few bugs and problems but I hope you enjoy it.

Anyone with a multi monitor setup at the office or home will really love having all your important RSS feeds scroll along the bottom of your screen.
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Tech

How to fix SQL Server when you have changed your computer name

April 24, 2012 theninja Comment

Sure every SQL Server wants to feel special.. But before you take it out on the town and give it a new name and a dinner, and a show.. Just keep in mind the SQL SERVER WILL CRASH AND BURN TO PIECES if you change your machine name..

You see there are tables in your SQL Server that explain what the machine is called that it resides on.. This is kinda important and if SQL Server can’t ‘find itself’ you start hitting all sorts of problems.
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Tech

VMWare & NFS for Windows (with a little iSCSI thrown in) for free(ish)

December 21, 2011 theninja Comment

Working in an environment where we have 100 or so Virtual Machines running across for a multitude of ESX Servers it becomes exponentially harder to maintain them as users begin to want to copy, backup, duplicate & migrate Virtual Machines from different ESXi Servers within our organisation. It was time to implement some additional, external, centrally managed storage to store and maintain the expanding collection of virtual machines we have.
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Tech

Running Media Player Classic with Microsoft Media Center

September 13, 2011 theninja Comment

As an avid Media Center User I have many many nice things to say about it.. Though I have always been a little annoyed and the poor video format support in Microsoft Media Center. When I found out the new version of MediaBrowser had the ability to user other applications to watch Videos, rather than the internal decoder, I jumped straight in and configured it to launch Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition to as it’s always been my favourite media player for Windows.
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Tech

Ubuntu 11 Natty Narwhal – Can’t roll up windows anymore!

June 2, 2011 theninja 2 Comments

Oh the humanity! One of my favourite features, which I use constantly in Ubuntu 10, is the ability to rollup windows by rolling my mouse wheel on the title bar.

Unfortunately in Ubuntu 11 this feature is omitted by default. Rar what am I to do!

Anyway to fix this in a terminal run the following:
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Tech

“Compositing not enabled” message in Ubuntu 11 Natty Narwhal when using Unity-2D or Classic Desktop

May 27, 2011 theninja Comment

A quick one:

If anyone is expericning ‘compositing not enabled’ issues with their applications on Ubuntu 11 – even though you have Compiz installed and it’s saying that Compositing IS enabled try this application below from Mariano Chavero.

http://marianochavero.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/a-simple-gui-for-unity-2d-settings-ubuntu-11-04/

This worked perfectly for me to re-enable compositing after upgrading to Natty Narwhal..