There’s a very clever syntax in bash (and several other unix shells) that allows the output / input for subcommands to be hooked together. http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/process-sub.html This can be used to secure mysql passwords in scripts. e.g. mysql –defaults-file=

Windows 7 is available for purchase at a discount from the Microsoft student and teacher “Ultimate Steal” website. This sounds great. Now to upgrade from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 7 you need to do a clean install. So far so good. Unfortunately,…

Some helpful instructions on Stuart Colville’s blog explain how to do this. To produce e.g. abc'def, you need to enter $echo 'abc'\''def' The '\'' first closes the single quotes, then puts a literal (escaped) ' and then opens single quotes again.

I found a good set of instructions for connecting to the Eduroam Wifi service from the website of the University of Valencia. These work for me in Oxford. http://www.uv.es/siuv/cat/zxarxa/wifi/Manual_Eduroam_Symbian_S60_v3.pdf (Local mirror).

This Microsoft support article explains how to prevent annoying password prompts that appear when downloading documents from password protected websites using Word 2007.

It is possible to gain root access on this router. You need to follow the telnetEnable procedure on the web, using the username/password Gearguy/Geardog as for the previous routers. Then, you telnet to port 23 and will get a “login:” prompt. At that…

Serves 2 Ingredients: 6 Sainsbury’s Taste-the-difference venison sausages 6oz plain flour 2 large eggs pinch of salt & pepper 6 fl oz milk 4 fl oz water Instructions: 1. Place sausages in a pyrex / ceramic dish about 15 x 25cm and 3cm…

My HP iPAQ ran out of battery this morning. When I started it up, the memory was blank. When I tried to restore my files using Windows Mobile Device Center under Windows Vista, I got an annoying message saying that “Restore cannot be…

I own a Netgear WGT624 v4 router. This router runs a MIPS embedded version of Linux and I was curious whether it is possible to get shell access. So far, I have failed, but in case anyone else is interested, I did find…

I scratched my flat screen (LCD or TFT) monitor some months ago. For a while, I’ve just lived with the damage. This evening, however, I tried a trick I found on the web. I rubbed hard on the scratch with a white pencil…