Author Archives: Laz

Komodo IDE Snippet Variables

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Here we go, for anyone out there using Komodo IDE (and maybe Komodo Edit, not sure if this is available in the free version).  Aside from being the coolest and best IDE I have found for editing PHP, PERL, SHELL and other scripts, the environment itself has lots of features.  One cool thing is that you can create “snippets”, which are text files that you can insert into your code files with one click or assignable hot keys.  When you create these snippets you can use variables to add to their functionality.  Some variables get substituted with information at the time you submit them, and some will ask you for information so you can tailor your snippets to suit whatever need you have.  Listed at the end of this post are the variables available for use in snippets, sometimes it’s hard to find them, so I thought I would post them all here.  All snippets aside, I highly recommend that any developer out there working with the earlier mentioned PHP, PERL, and the like, go check out Komodo.  You can start out with the free version, Komodo Edit and see what you think.  Remember, I don’t get paid to tell you that, I am just a very happy user of the product and recommend it to anyone who needs something along those lines.

[[%f]]: file base name
[[%F]]: file path
[[%d]]: directory base name of file
[[%D]]: directory path of file
[[%P]]: path of the active project
[[%p]]: directory path of the active project
[[%L]]: current line number
[[%s]]: selection
[[%S]]: URL-escaped selection
[[%w]]: selection of word under cursor
[[%W]]: URL-escaped selection or word under cursor
[[%guid]]: A new GUID
[[%date]]: Current date
[[%ask]]: Ask when snippet is inserted

Review: Ghost In The Wires

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This post is a little bit different than normal, but still applies overall to the scope that I am going for here I think.  I just finished reading a really cool book called Ghost in the Wires written by Kevin Mitnick and William L. Simon with the foreword by Steve Wozniak.  Sounds like a thrill ride already, doesn’t it?

I am sure I don’t have to tell anyone reading this blog who Kevin Mitnick is, but just in case, he’s a well known (in geek circles at least) hacker/social engineer who spent years breaking into corporate systems all over the U.S.  Some of the systems he gained access to belonged to Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Novell, and more.  By the time he was caught and arrested the final time in Raleigh, N.C., in 1995, he was the most wanted computer criminal in the United States.

This book basically tells his story from early in life up to when he got arrested in 1995.  He talks about his exploits, his hacks, the people he hacked with and what is the most entertaining, how he managed to pull off all this crazy stuff.

So, if you are looking for an informative book, as well as one that is funny and entertaining as heck as well, look no further.  The audio book is good, with a great reader, and the hard cover and kindle editions are great too.  I advise you to check one of them out, this book was great!

Check it out at Amazon now: Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker … Or if you’d rather get it for your Kindle, click HERE for the Kindle version!

New Advisory Pages!

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Whoah!  We have been busy, busy over here setting up a bunch of new advisory pages.  Just in case you are wondering, we take an RSS feed and set it up to display on a page.  So, you can click on that page link and get the latest information from that RSS feed right there on the page here at Solarum dot com.  We have many of the major feeds that IT folk would be interested in, from Microsoft and Cisco security advisories to Linux and UNIX as well.  We even include feeds from NIST, US Cert, OSVDB and more so we can keep an eye on apps and everything else too.  Not to mention that we add feeds any time we can, and especially when we find good information to share.  Enough talking, why don’t you go check them out, they are in the middle column near the top, all the information you need!  If you know of a feed that we should carry, please let us know so we can add it!!

Gratuitous Space Battles and the error “Failed to initialize 3d engine”

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Gratuitous Space BattlesHowdy folks, here is a tip for some of you gamers out there.  I don’t know how many this might help, but as with some of the other posts on this site, this tip comes from figuring out an error that I ran into myself, so I thought I would share the solution with everyone.  This relates to the game Gratuitous Space Battles, but this type of fix might be something that could fix other games as well, who knows.  This tip does involve deleting files, so as always, be sure to have an appropriate backup in case you need to put them back!

OK, on to the good stuff weight loss fast pills.  I have the game Gratuitous Space Battles and I rather enjoy playing it.  I purchased it through Steam and up until now, haven’t had any trouble running it.  I installed it recently on my laptop, which is acting as a fill in for my main computer since my Alienware desktop finally died on me.  What this means is, I hadn’t had this game installed on my laptop before, but I had the contents of “My Documents” from my desktop restored to my laptop since it was now my main machine, the desktop where GSB had in fact been installed.

I tried the game yesterday for the first time and when it started up, all looking like normal, I received the following error:

Failed to initialize 3d engine

I tinkered with the game a bit but didn’t have the time to fix it so I just closed it up and bagged it for the night.  Then tonight I decided to dig into it, I tried it again just in case the shutdown and restart from last night might have had anything to do with it, but nothing, I got the same error.  I then did some digging and found that in my “My Documents” directory, and then further down into the “My Games” directory, there was a Gratuitous Space Battles directory from where it had been installed on my desktop.  I know it was full of old data because all of my screenshots I had previously taken were there.  What does this mean you ask?  Well, all of the configuration information from the desktop setup is in that directory, including settings for the 3d engine!  Well now, that should be easy enough to fix.  I make a copy of that directory, just in case, and then delete the thing (even going so far as to emptying my recycle bin).  That directory should recreate itself when the game restarts, complete with all new default settings.

So, I fire up the game once again and what do you know?  The game starts up, no problem at all, and the directory gets created again fresh.  Now I can play the game on my laptop!  It’s fascinating to me how simple things like that can be the problem and the fix for so many things.  I hope this tip helps someone out there, until next time … Enjoy!

VMware Virtual Machine Startup Shortcuts

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I am going to share a VMware tidbit with you, something that some of you may already know, but for those of you that don’t, it might help out a little bit. This is particularly aimed at the VMware Workstation crowd. OK, first let me setup the background here. I have a virtual machine that I use for development all the time. It’s running on my laptop, along with my dev tools. I can open VMware workstation and then select the machine I want and fire it up and then close Workstation (since it is set to keep VM’s running when Workstation closes) and all that, but this is time consuming and somewhat aggravating if I am in a hurry. The point is, I am lazy and nit picky and making all those clicks and waiting for programs to load is tedious, especially when I sometimes do it several times a day.

So, I found a nifty little command in the directory where VMware Workstation is installed called vmrun.exe. This command allows you to manipulate your VM’s on the command line. With it you can start and stop, pause, take snapshots of your VM’s, plus many, many more actions. Look at the bottom of this article for more information, I have included the output of vmrun.exe’s usage text, and there is a bunch of stuff there!

Now, back to the article here and my purpose for writing it, what I wanted was a quick and easy way to fire up or start that virtual machine so I could use it when needed, but not have to go through all of the above mentioned steps and wait times. What I came up with was a quick little batch file that when executed, uses that vmrun.exe command to start my virtual machine, easy as pie.

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Mobile Data On Disk

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Today I thought I would show you a neat trick you can do with your PC or laptop and a blank CD or DVD.  Using something that Microsoft calls their Live File System, you can create or format a blank disk that will then allow you to use that disk (while it is in your disc drive) just like you would use a floppy disk or USB flash drive.  You can copy files to and from the disk, erase files you no longer need, etc.  All without “burning” files like you might be used to, just drag and drop right from Windows Explorer or whatever your favorite file manager might be.

There are some caveats with this, it appears that creating these disks is something you can do on Windows 7 machines only.  However, once created, they can be read on Windows versions going back to Windows XP and in some cases even Windows 98.  There is a URL at the bottom of the article that will take you to a Microsoft page with more information.  In addition, the reason I so far have only said CD, DVD and disk without getting specific is because you can create this kind of disk on standard writable media (-R) as well as re-writable media (-RW) meaning the list of disks you can format for mobile data storage starts to get kinda long, like so: CD-R, CD+R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, or DVD-RAM.

The process for setting up a disk for this kind of use is quick and easy, you simply insert your blank disk into your drive and wait a second.  If you have autoplay enabled, you know where your CD’s that you insert start automatically, you will get a window that pops up asking you how you want to use the disc, like a USB flash drive, or with a CD/DVD player (like a normal writer).  If you don’t have autoplay enabled, simply open Windows Explorer or My Computer and locate your CD or DVD drive.  Double click on it and you should receive the same window asking you how you want to use the disk.

Once you see the window, make sure that use “Like a USB flash drive” is selected and then press next. You will then get a message that the disk is being formatted.  Just wait and watch, and after a minute or two it should be complete and will disappear.  Once the formatting windows goes away you are done and ready.  You should now be able to drag and drop files to and from the disk, delete any that you want to, and manner of good stuff like that.  I hope you find this useful!

Get more information at Microsoft’s site