tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:47:41 +0000http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/noreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)Blogger275125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-934379320231726506Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:21:00 +00002008-08-15T13:58:17.689+10:00FirefoxFalls in the use of older versions of MSIE are always offset by rises in use of newer versions and some rise in the use for other browsers. The July 08 browser statistics for W3 Schools show that the use of all versions of MSIE fell 2.0% while use of Firefox rose 1.6% (and Opera gains 0.2%). Has the use of MSIE7 peaked? (Insert usual caveats about selective audience of this site, monthly http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/08/firefox-unexpectedly-popular.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-4313999318189088651Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:10:00 +00002008-08-05T14:27:52.418+10:00SoftwareAnnoyancesAn annoying feature in Microsoft Word 2003 is that the default setting for the Reviewing toolbar is Final Showing Markup, so that all changes in your documents are highlighted when you open it, even after you accept all changes and saved the document previously. The solution is to unset your Security option Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving.. See How to turn off annoying MS Wordhttp://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/08/change-default-for-show-markup-in-ms.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-6560650653892125886Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:10:00 +00002008-08-08T10:16:55.211+10:00PerlDatabaseA port of my Python DBI program to Perl. Note that you have to install package DBD-ODBC for the ODBC driver. use warnings; use strict; use DBI; use constant MDB_PATH => '<path>'; my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:ODBC:DRIVER=Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb);Dbq=' . MDB_PATH); my $sth = $dbh->prepare( "SELECT name FROM MSYSOBJECTS WHERE name NOT LIKE 'MSYS%' AND type = 1"); $sth->execute(); my $http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/08/list-empty-access-tables-using-perl.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-5641148475759538875Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:12:00 +00002008-08-04T19:20:04.589+10:00DatabasePythonWe wanted to find empty tables in a Microsoft Access database. Below is a Python script that uses the PythonWin odbc module to find empty tables in an MS-Access database. Edit the required path to your database file by modifying the MDB_PATH variable. Follow the note at the start of the script to configure your MS-Access database security if you get the following message: dbi.program-error: [http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/08/list-empty-access-tables-using-python.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-5368611350183650754Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:39:00 +00002008-07-29T13:34:36.882+10:00PerlRubyGawkGroovyPythonMore ways to extract a block of text from a stream and prepend the line number to each line. Below is the Gawk version. The built-in variables NR is the number of the current line and $0 is the content of the current line. gawk "(NR >= r1 && NR <= r2) {printf("""%4d %s\n""", NR, $0)}" The Perl and Ruby scripts are exactly the same. The built-in variable $. holds the number of the current http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/07/extract-lines-with-line-numbers-using.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-1246824418898890081Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:09:00 +00002008-07-28T13:59:03.760+10:00PerlHere's a port of my simple Python HTTP Server Monitor to Perl, using the Tkx module to interface with Tk. A minor difference is to use the Tk options database to specify the font of the headers in a configuration file. # Basic HTTP Server Monitor by Kam-Hung Soh 2008. use strict; use warnings; use Log::Log4perl qw(:easy); use LWP::Simple; use Text::CSV; use POSIX; use Tkx; use constant http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/07/basic-perl-tk-http-server-monitor.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-7780902016470672218Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:02:00 +00002008-07-27T19:02:29.976+10:00Python We had some servers which would occasionally go offline, so I wrote a basic HTTP server monitor using Python and Tkinter (the interface to the Tk GUI library): # HTTP Server Monitor by Kam-Hung Soh 2008 from csv import reader from httplib import HTTPConnection from logging import basicConfig, error, info, INFO from os.path import exists from time import strftime from tkFont import Fonthttp://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/07/basic-python-tk-http-server-monitor.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-7318847412204727425Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:06:00 +00002008-07-13T10:10:29.781+10:00PowerShellPythonFinishing off different ways to extract columns, here's the PowerShell and Python versions: foreach-object { $_.Split('<delimiter>')[-1] } $_ is the current object (or record) in the loop. When processing tabular text, $_ is a .Net String class, so we use its Split() method to divide the input on the <delimiter>. Split() returns a String array, and index -1 refers to the last String (or http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/07/extract-columns-from-tabular-text.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-270148574192379179Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:52:00 +00002008-07-13T10:09:16.353+10:00PerlRubyMy previous posting described using the GnuWin cut command to extract columns from tabular text data but you couldn't specify columns relative to the last column. The cut command is pretty easy to use in a command console, so if you want to overcome this limitation without too additional effort, you could write an ad-hoc script using Perl or Ruby programming languages. A Perl solution: perl -F http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/07/extract-columns-from-tabular-text-perl.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-3053624072279498754Sat, 05 Jul 2008 03:04:00 +00002008-07-05T19:46:36.062+10:00FirefoxW3Schools Browser Statistics page shows that in June 2008, 41% of hits came from developers using Firefox and 53.5% from developers using MSIE7 or MSIE6. What would the list be like at the end of this year? IE7 should cross 30%, IE6 to be about 22% and IE5 may disappear from the list. Unlike IE5, Moz could be barely be on the list because the number of hits is declining slower than IE5. FF http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/07/browser-usage-forecast.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-39862384214202838Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:57:00 +00002008-07-13T10:07:53.333+10:00GnuWinA quick way to extract one or more columns from tabular or character delimited data, such as Web pages or log files, is to use the GnuWin cut command. Some examples: Print just the bug number and title from a list of bugs in a Web page (e.g. from Bugzilla): cut -f1,8. Print the URLs requested from Apache log (in common format): cut -d" " -f7. The -f switch specifies the column to extract. http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/07/extract-columns-from-tabular-text-cut.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-688249092832070887Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:27:00 +00002008-06-27T11:34:51.770+10:00SVGInternet ExplorerFirefoxI did a quick check of my SVG Game of Life demonstration with Firefox 3 and found that it ran much faster compared to Adobe's ancient SVG Viewer 3.03 (ASV). The performance ratio used to be roughly 3:2 in favour of Firefox. Now, it's close to 5:1! The raw numbers on the same computer: 24-27 fps on Firefox 3, 5-6 fps for MSIE6 + ASV.http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/firefox-3-svg-performance-improvement.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-1523697812121284627Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:49:00 +00002008-06-25T11:08:43.155+10:00WindowsWindows Event Viewer kept reporting error event 7000 each time I restarted my computer: The DS1410D service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified. The error is caused by Windows trying to load a file called DS1410D.SYS. This file is part of an application called FlexLM but since I've uninstalled FlexLM, the file has also been deleted. The fix http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/event-7000-ds1410d-service-failed-to.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-894435424984103155Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:27:00 +00002008-07-13T10:06:11.746+10:00GnuWingawk script to print the last field of each line: gawk -F <delimiter> "{ print $NF }". -F defines the separator in the command line, otherwise you would prepend "BEGIN { FS=<delimiter> }". NF is the number of fields in a line and $n is the value of the n'th field, so $NF outputs the last field. See Also Perl and Ruby versions PowerShell and Python versions Cut command version http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/gawk-print-last-field.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-7868288624065306956Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:07:00 +00002008-06-24T14:24:34.700+10:00FirefoxSecond impressions after using Firefox 3 for a couple of days: Smart Location Bar pretty much replaces the Search bar in most situations. Faster than FF2 when rendering of pages with Javascript controls. Load http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa923541.aspx and select some of the menu links at the top of the page. In FF3, the menus expand immediately while in FF2, they used to take abouthttp://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/firefox-3-second-impressions.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-4731187369040085648Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:40:00 +00002008-06-21T20:05:27.376+10:00FirefoxFirefox 3's release was reported on ABC Radio National Breakfast Tech review with Peter Marks - Firefox. The ABC doesn't seem to make transcripts of that programme (at least, I couldn't find any), so here's one: Mark Bannerman: Well increasingly we do business, receive entertainment and socialize through the Internet. And the way we access the Internet is with a Web browser. This week, a new http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/firefox-3-on-abc-radio-national.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-1124502940663784794Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:00:00 +00002008-06-21T18:10:43.726+10:00FirefoxUpgraded from Firefox 2.0.0.14 to Firefox 3.0 and found that I couldn't load the default Gmail client (Firefox displayed the progress bar and then stopped). Same problem with using the HTTPS URL. The plain HTML client and older Gmail client was OK. I worked my way through the Firefox Basic Troubleshooting guide and the problem was fixed only after making a new profile.http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/firefox-3-gmail-problem-fixed.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-8699249062820873734Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:47:00 +00002008-06-18T10:59:08.561+10:00SoftwareAnnoyancesHow to create a UML composite state element using Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect application: In a state machine diagram, create a new state element. Select the state element's context menu item Advanced / Composite Element. The selected state element is converted into a composite state element (the image has a infinity symbol) with its own state machine diagram (check the Project http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/creating-uml-composite-states-in-sparx.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-7953440081573528062Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:00:00 +00002008-06-10T19:00:30.549+10:00SoftwareAnnoyancesMicrosoft Visio 2003 doesn't provide keyboard shortcut for the user to resize a shape instance. You have to use the mouse pointer or (shudder) enter the required height and width of the shape in the Size & Position window.http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/visio-2003-cannot-resize-shape-directly.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-3108825149668251645Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:30:00 +00002008-06-04T11:15:02.686+10:00GnuWinWindows CmdTo find multiple string patterns in an input file or stream, these commands are equivalent: sed -n -e "/pattern1/p" -e "/pattern2/p". -n suppresses printing all input lines. sed -n -r -e "/pattern1|pattern2/p". -r enables extended regular expressions. grep -e "pattern1" -e "pattern2".. grep -E "pattern1|pattern2". -E enables extended regular expressions. findstr "pattern1 pattern2". You http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/06/match-multiple-string-patterns.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-5216797743246286903Mon, 26 May 2008 09:07:00 +00002008-06-06T13:41:33.365+10:00ProgrammingDatabaseIntroduction A pivot table or cross tabulation is a reporting feature that BAs love to use to summarise transaction data, such as server logs and sales figures. Spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc have nifty wizards to help you create a pivot table. You can also create pivot tables in databases. For example, Microsoft Access has a TRANSFORM … PIVOT SQL http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/05/pivot-table-hack-in-sqlite3.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-8168856498532947298Sat, 24 May 2008 23:05:00 +00002008-05-25T09:22:42.196+10:00WindowsAnnoyancesVista has a Memory Diagnostic Tool which you can turn on to test your computer's memory when you restart it. Once it is enabled, this tool starts every time you restart your computer. Be warned: the Vista help system doesn't explain how to disable it! After some Web searching, I found this tip: - Open command prompt as Admistrator: by typing in start ''cmd'' right click the .exe file and http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/05/disable-vista-memory-diagnostic-tool.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-4622638296407100328Sat, 24 May 2008 02:43:00 +00002008-05-25T18:03:59.584+10:00GnuWinWindowsSoftwarePythonThe Problem We had a lot of text files committed into our CVS repository as Unicode format. When these files were checked out later, we found that they weren't really text files nor Unicode files because CVS had only prepended two bytes to the start of these files, FF FE, but left only one byte for encoding each character. Some text editors such as Vim could open these files but other http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/05/fix-incorrectly-encoded-unicode-files.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-6822377476328615755Fri, 23 May 2008 03:14:00 +00002008-05-23T14:42:19.962+10:00WindowsI accidently moved PythonWin's Interactive window out of sight when I grabbed and dropped it with my mouse pointer. Restarting PythonWin didn't help because the position of the child window was stored in Windows Registry, so it remained hidden even after restarting PythonWin. I considered hacking Windows Registry to reset the child window's position, until I found the keyboard shortcuts to movehttp://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/05/mdi-child-window-menu-shortcuts.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11223139.post-4529937659817915036Tue, 20 May 2008 09:00:00 +00002008-07-13T10:14:16.884+10:00GnuWinWindows CmdReminder on how to use -exec action in GnuWin32 find command in Windows cmd.exe. For example, if you want to find a string, the format is: find . -type f -exec grep <pattern> {} ; If you do any of the following, you can get this cryptic error message: find: missing argument to `-exec' Put double-quote marks around the command: find . -type f -exec "grep <pattern> {} ;" Don't leave a space http://kamhungsoh.com/blog/2008/05/gnuwin32-find-and-missing-argument-for.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kam-Hung Soh)