I hate Office/Word 2007/2008 Ribbbon crap

The change to Microsoft's "Office" suite with their new ribbon thingy is plain annoying/frustrating and big time waste. I have used Word for years and been comfortable with it (as far as is possible) I knew where things were - but now in 2007 I haven't clue. I'm not saying they were that logical before but they're no more so now and I imagine just annoy/alienate a vast number of existing users.

The stupidest thing was they didn't include some form of helper system for transition or provide a way to switch back to 'classic' mode. Though it turns out that there is some online info, including a Flash interactive helper to help you to find commands from Word 2003 in 2007. An one can purchase an external plugin, Ribboncustomizer, that provides access a version of the old interface - the free edition has some basic functionality including a 'Classic UI' tab.

There are plenty of other word processors out these days and instead of relearning Word I'm keen to move to something else - Open Office is getting better these days and Apple's Office suite is good too. Also online Office suites are getting very usable now - most notably Google Docs and others.

Automatically blocking failed ssh attempts

If you run an ssh server (sshd) and you're connected to the Net on a public IP then you'll likely be seeing a serious amount of wanna-bee hax0rs trying your box. Pain in the ass. Fortunately there's a few tactics that can be deployed. There's a good article here that covers it. Plus there's a good 'stickied' discussion from a good list of security issues on LinuxQuestions.org. Basically as far as I was concerned two options seem to be the best:

• Run fail2ban


• Or install some natty firewall rules (cribbed from above article) written by this guy:

(1) Create a custom chain for whitelisting first:


iptables -N SSH_WHITELIST




(2) Whitelist any host(s) that you like:




iptables -A SSH_WHITELIST -s TRUSTED_HOST_IP -m recent --remove --name SSH \
-j ACCEPT




(3) Add the blocking rules:




iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set \
--name SSH
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -j SSH_WHITELIST
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update \
--seconds 60 --hitcount 4 --rttl --name SSH -j ULOG --ulog-prefix SSH_brute_force
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update \
--seconds 60 --hitcount 4 --rttl --name SSH -j DROP

• Advantage: Transparent for users
• Disadvantages:
  • Does not distinguish between successful logins and unsuccessful login attempts (i.e. three successful logins within one minute will trigger just like three unsuccessful login attempts).

sshfs using ssh-agent on OSX

The FUSE based sshfs app is pretty nice - but it's even slicker if it imports your ssh-agent keys automatically (as mentioned here) - then it just connects automatically if you're logged into your agent. To do this you need to set up your ssh-agent and the setup sshfs: basically you open the sshfs package and rename the "Contents/Resources/sshfs-static" to "Contents/MacOS/sshfs-static.bin". (Doing the same for sshfs-static-10.5). Then create a new file called sshfs-static (and with sshfs-static-10.5) with the following content:
#!/bin/sh
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/Users/your-username/.ssh/ssh-agent.pipe $0.bin $*

Now make sure you've installed and set up the ssh-agent according to my instructions then you can start sshfs. Then add a machine you've got a key installed on and it will automatically connect.

[updated] Otherwise now in Leopard ssh-agent works properly and you don't need to follow my instructions - you can use the one here - use this in your sshfs-static:
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=`launchctl getenv SSH_AUTH_SOCK` \
$0.real "$1" "$2" "$3" "$4" "$5" "$6"

Bug reporting and listing/tracking

So how do I report a bug in Windows Vista, Gmail (maybe I'll add others)??? - they don't make it that easy... So I've managed to 'em track down:

• Gmail - You get it through the help center - but you have to navigate via an unexpected route: Through their trouble shooter and then via issues with 'Registrations & Invitations"....
• Windows bugs (Vista etc) - You go via their connect system - you'll need a M$ ID. It seems you can only report issues about various subsystems though not the core OS...
  

Coolest Firefox plugins

Yeah there's tonnes of 'em but mostly they're a waste of time. These are the ones I like (I'll keep updating this one too...):

• CustomiseGoogle - Allows various tweaks and additions when using Google's sites
• CookiePie - Keeps cookies from different tabs/windows separate - E.g. So you can be logged into Gmail in one tab, whilst in another use Google search (and not be logged in) thus not having everything logged (though they could quite easily correlate one's activity by IP...).
• Flashblock - Stops running Flash items on web pages till you click on the ones you want.
• Cacheit - Useful to access alternate sources of a webpage - e.g. when the main is down.
• Dictionaries - Great for spell checking any text as you type into any web form.
• Add more search engines to the search box - Not actually a plugin but darn useful all the same (e.g. add Way Back Machine, Scroogle (anon Google search), Cuil....)
• Locate in Bookmarks - Go Parent Folder, Show Parent Folder

More geeky ones:

• User agent switcher - Useful for playing with your browser's 'identity'
• ShowIP - Shows the IPv4/IPv6 address of the website you're at.

There are other sites that have some impressive lists too.

Debugging memory problems on Windows

There's a handy utility called gflags.exe which comes as part of Microsoft's Debugging tools package - it allows you to tweak various debugging features embedded in Windows ntdll.dll (the dll that handles memory allocation etc for all windows apps). One of the most useful features is enabling of pageheap which basically causes your app to crash (so you can catch it in a suitable debugger) when it encounters a memory allocation bug. You can use gflags on the command line or with its GUI - just enter the name of the executable (no path required) - and they start playing with those check boxes.

Problems when deleting file/folders on Vista

So you're [desperately] trying to delete a file/folder and it comes up with: "destination folder access denied" and says "You need permission to delete this file"??!

• Firstly check both file and sharing (folders only) permissions on the file/folder
• Right click on file/folder and select Properties
  
• You can also try this take ownership approach
• Check, using process monitor, to see if any other process has the file open
• If so close/kill this process.
• You could also try this delete on reboot - Which schedules a del on next reboot.
  

If you still can't delete the file folder then try renaming/moving it somewhere or rebooting (with above technique) and trying again.

Facebook app spams: "just gave you luv"

This annoying little facebook app (http://apps.facebook.com/which_programming/) automatically spams notifications to all your friends when you click on it's link - its message appears from one of your friends: "'your friend' just gave you luv Click here to accept and see what they did." It purports to be a programming quiz app but just seems to send spam.
[update]: It seems that there are other apps in the [spam] family with a similar name.