GMail omnibar search settings

I'm still alive :)

If you want to set your Google Chrome omnibar to have a GMail search shortcut:

• Chrome (triple dots)
• Settings
• Manage Search Engines
• Add
• (Give it a name, such as "GMail Search")
• (Give it a keyword that you will enter into the omnibar, such as "GMail")
• https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/%s

Happy finding!

Travel Tips from a (sorta) jet-setter

Some tips from my own travel experiences!

(note, I travel primarily [but not exclusively] to African countries so YMMV)

(last updated 20180825)

1. Pack a container or tupperware
1. Often you may need "padkos" and have nowhere to store it
2. A container (like an ice-cream tub) can also be used to do handwashing if your place doesn't have a decent sized hand basin or lacks a bath;
   
   the ice-cream tub can also store more fragile things a lot more reliably than leaving said fragile things loose in the bag;
   
   ice-cream tubs lose their value in their larger volume ... a slim or small multi-compartment container (e.g. lunch or snack box) can be much more versatile for snacks if you go on day trips.
   
2. Toilet paper
1. Particularly in African countries - the last thing you want to discover is that the bathrooms don't have toilet paper - this has happened often enough that I've now learned to pack my own bogroll :)
2. Also useful for flights and such - you never know what's going to happen on the plane! 'Loo rolls are handy for all sorts of situations - wiping up spilled drinks, tooting your nose, wrapping something up with a little padding, and even if you need fire: Crazy Russian + Toilet Roll
   
3. Check-in online whenever you can!
1. Not only does this alleviate last-minute stress about completing check-in but it also gives you the best shot of a decent seat on the plane
2. ALSO if you don't have to go to a check-in counter at the airport you can sometimes get away with a larger than normal carry-on bag (dimensions are usually hard to cheat on but if it fits the dimensions, and hasn't been weighed, you're golden).
   
   Chances are, if you approach a check-in counter for any reason and have a carry-on in tow, they will weigh it. Even 0.5kg over the limit and your bag will need to be checked.

I'll continue to update this if / when more bright ideas surface from my travel escapades ;)

Disqus comments installed

Woohoo! I'm into the big leagues!

I've had so many comments lately - half of them are spam but the other half are dinkum people! I've failed to respond to them and also the comment mode for Blogger doesn't lend itself nicely to replying to posts, so I've gone an installed Disqus now - hopefully not a bad move!

Can't add fingerprint with Windows Hello - stuck at "Get Started"

History:

Swapped out motherboard on Lenovo T460P.
PIN no longer identified and biometrics flakey.
Deleted PIN and fingerprint data in Hello.
Can't add new data.

Symptoms:

When adding a new fingerprint, it goes through the usual process of asking for you to touch the biometrics reader etc. but at the end, when it prompts you for a PIN, the fingerprint is not saved, nor is the new PIN you've entered.

If you first set up a PIN, then try to add a new fingerprint, it gets to the Welcome to Windows Hello screen; when Get started is selected, it freezes.

Solution:

Water Saving Tip - Using your air conditioner condensation

Water Saving Tip - Using Air Conditioner Condensation

Without going into the technical process of an air conditioner / water heater / air pump, the bottom line is, there is likely going to be a pretty reasonable amount of condensation coming out which amounts to free and pure H2O.

I have confirmed with a colleague who's using an appliance like this that he is collecting close to 15l (that's FIFTEEN LITRES) of water a day.

In the context of Cape Town #DayZero where we will be hit with 25l per person per day, that's nearly double the daily allowance and if you have one unit at home, or several at work, think about the difference this can make.

Like I said, this is pretty pure water (in theory it's rain water, although stagnant conditions etc. can still be sufficient for bacteria to breed), so if you catch it right, it's FREE WATER.

We all need to save water for our planet's future, and in my place of residence, Cape Town, right now, we need all the tricks we can master.

Here are some links to explain the process and give tips and ideas:

• http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/outdoors/landscaping/using-air-conditioner-condensation
• http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/08/how_gross_is_the_water_that_drips_from_air_conditioners.html
• https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/revised-air-conditioner-condensate-calculator-available-buildinggreencom

Google Chrome tab switching etc. very slow - unusual fix

(I posted this to the Google Product Forums but never got any help)
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/rY7tI_eAshA;context-place=mydiscussions

---

I have Version 61.0.3163.100 (Official Build) (64-bit) of Chrome installed on Windows 10.

I have four active profiles running (i.e. separate signed-in Google accounts - call them "main", "work", "personal", "darkwebz").

One profile - my oldest and primary account - is the one with the following issue:

Creating a new tab, switching tabs, or creating a new window, takes about 2 to 3 seconds. I have disabled all of my extensions and rebooted - even signed out the profile and rebooted - every time I sign in it brings back the delay.

Interestingly, while this delay occurs with the primary profile, the rest churn along quite happily - open / close / switch tabs is near instantaneous. This is all happening on the same machine with everything running; so it's not a specific CPU problem or resource issue - at least, I can't see how. As a test, I opened 40 tabs on the primary, and 80 on another profile, and the primary is slow, the alternative is lightning fast. That being said, page navigating within a tab is not affected - only new tabs, tab switching, and general navigating around tabs.

After exhaustively trying to disable every extension, refresh, reboot, sign out, sign in, etc. I happened upon one little tidbit that seemed to affect everything - the moment the Chrome theme loaded up, it all went to pot.

I then disabled the Theme and presto! Everything is normal and fast!

So, when in doubt, try reviewing the Google Chrome theme ...

Etherpad - awesome free collaborative online tool

There are a few handy tools out there that I consider to be game-changers.

Etherpad is one of them.

According to http://etherpad.org/ it's an open source project that is designed to allow you to edit documents collaboratively in real-time. You can also add in tons of plugins that allow your instance to suit your needs.

You also can run it online from one of the public repositories.

This little tool has a lot going for it and it's just simply fantastic. It is so simple to set up, so simple to use, and has great functions. It's ideal for a group collaboration and doesn't require the added fluff of Google Accounts etc. (although Google accounts do have their own merit, this is a sure-fire way to get a simple solution up and running quickly and is more like a use-once-and-then-burn option).

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/

or check out my live demo here, and say hi :)

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/brattexblogspotexamplepost

or, check out a very good and populated demo here with some extra features:

https://board.net/p/testboard2

Applying for a US visa on SA passport

Recently I had my UK passport stolen and had to fly out to the USA 2 weeks later. I was in Botswana at the time of the theft so I really had pressure.

I was able to apply online for an appointment at the US Consulate General in Cape Town and initially it said the earliest appointment was 4 November. I needed to get it done way sooner than that. I phoned the US Consulate General later that day and was advised that the booking slots had changed and I could get to them on 31 October. First lesson to learn:

Beat the price increase with Xbox Live Gold : South Africa

So Microsoft is doing a douche financial move - they're more than doubling the SA Xbox Live subscription fee. There's only one thing for it - stock up now before the price increase hits!

Here's my simple (possibly painfully complicated :)) process:
(pardon the hastily drawn up blog post with terrible screenshots and indentations)

1. Go to your Microsoft account page
2. Select Service & Subscriptions
   and select show more
3. Get more Gold
4. (as an aside, I currently have 30.5GB free space on OneDrive but MS is reducing that to 5GB ... good luck to all the businesses running Office 365... MS isn't showing much favorable behaviour at the moment. They've even acquired Sunrise calendar and now they're discontinuing it :( ).

Choose your subscription, then follow the confirmation prompts, and voila! You'll get no confirmation of the purchase and will be dumped at an Xbox settings home page, none the wiser ...

To verify your subscription status, go back to the Services & Subscriptions page and confirm the new expiry and renewal dates. The best thing about doing the R50 monthly thing is you won't be screwed royally if you accidentally forget to cancel the auto-renew. You'll get enough warning to cancel it yourself before you are hit with a massive 12-month subscription price increase... you'll suffer one month of losses but that's better than the equivalent 12-month subscription auto-renewal coming off your account. 

Android Angles: Contacts+, one of the most versatile contact apps for Android

I'm a complete perfectionist and it is the worst experience ever to have an Android device. There are far too many choices and I just can't decide which is the right one.

In order to save you from the same nightmare of choice, I present to you an app that I think will cover almost all the bases for those needing a better Contact management experience on their device.

I present... Contacts+ as enjoyed (or at least, installed) by more than 10 million users.

Why do I like this app? Well, it's not perfect, for starters, but it seems to cover my wishlist for a contacts management app:

• Simple, intuitive, fairly minimalist interface
• One-stop app to cover all my basic communication needs
• Duplicate Contact management
• SMS conversation management (including deleting multiple SMSes easily)
• Fast dial functionality
• Unknown number identification
• Cloud backup

Looking through my list you'd think I was asking for the impossible. But thankfully, I found my home with Contacts+.

I must say from the outset that it's not at all 100% perfect in all departments - in fact, on a loan Samsung Galaxy S4 I found that received SMSes were blank "MMS" ... could have been the sender though, because other users were fine. At any rate, my experience has been around 95% satisfactory which is a large step up from using seven different mediocre individually focused apps.

Let's get started then, shall we?

Mac OS X local HDD read-only

Recently had to run a recovery for someone on Mac OS X - the local disk was mounted read only.

To fix this:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21666054#21666054

mount -uw /

Voila!

iSCSI connection failure in RHEL / Linux

Condition

We're running a Dell PowerVault MD3600i iSCSI connection to a RHEL server. From time to time (rarely but more frequently than I like it) it seems to lose the mount and needs intervention.

Herewith the script that I've written to repair the lost mount connection - hope it's useful for someone. 

Script solution

Run a cronjob to check the mount exists and if not, perform a mount repair...

(note the *** portions of the below script are going to be different for your personal setup)

if grep -qs /data /proc/mounts; then

date >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "/data is mounted" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "---" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

else

date >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "!!! /data is NOT mounted !!!" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "^^^" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "attempting repair" >> /usr/local/sbin/logs/checkdatamount.log

echo "..." >> /belfry/logs/checkdatamount.log

iscsiadm --m node -T iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3600i.6f0******2d788ac --portal 10.***.***.1**:3260 -u

iscsiadm -m discovery -t st -p 10.***.***.1**

iscsiadm -m node --targetname "iqn.1984-05.com.dell:powervault.md3600i.6f0******2d788ac" --portal "10.***.***.1**:3260" --login

iscsiadm -m session

vgchange -an MD3600i***01

vgchange -ay MD3600i***01

mount /dev/mapper/MD3600i***01-MD3600i***Vol01 /data

echo "... repaired (possibly)" >> /belfry/logs/checkdatamount.log

fi

PXE booting from Primary PXE server to Secondary PXE server

PXE Chaining.
PXE chainloading.
PXE cross booting.

I don't really know the correct term but I know what I wanted to do. Surprisingly, through my efforts, I found it very difficult to get a straightforward answer from the interwebs, but after doing this-and-that etc. I've drawn up my own notes; perhaps they may be helpful to someone else.

Setting

We run an old Windows 2003 (ahem, not my choice) server with DHCPdNT service which seems to emulate the Linux DHCP configuration (we have a DHCPd.conf file, /tftpboot/ folder, etc.).

I shall refer to this as a hybrid setup.

We run standard PXE boot menus referenced inside our DHCPd.conf file for various subnets; inside each boot menu are more options, with one being "boot diskless Linux". When this is selected, the pxelinux.0 image file is invoked, and off we go inside /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/ and look for a matching config file (you know the drill, start with the MAC address, work your way down until eventually you get to default if nothing else is available).

Challenge

I now wanted to add Clonezilla SE to the PXE menu option but Clonezilla SE insists on using DRBL for its functionality. This is how it works, in a nutshell (or outside of a nutshell too):

1. Boot up Live DRBL CD (or from local install)
2. Initiate DRBL / Clonezilla Server
3. It will likely create an IP alias for the local NIC if you only have one NIC
4. Initiates DHPC / PXE
5. Waits for clients

I wanted to have my primary PXE server have a menu item that links to the secondary PXE server; if I ran the secondary PXE server on the same network as the primary DHCP we could have conflicting DHCP issues, and some of the clients would pick up the secondary PXE menu when they didn't ask for it. I avoided this by running the secondary server on a totally separate subnet (with its own potential problems but we will ignore them for now :)).

How do I get a solution along these lines:

PXE Menu 1

option 1: boot local

option 2: memtest

option 3: diskless linux

option 4: load PXE menu 2

Solution

(some tips from http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/35409/pxe-boot-chaining-to-hardcoded-tftp-server)

1. Download pxechain.com from  syslinux project archive
1. copied pxechain.com to c:/tftpboot/ on Primary PXE / DHCP server.
2. within C:\TFTPBOOT\pxelinux.cfg\
1. edit default (for all PCs, or if you want to be safe and troubleshoot / test with a single PC, create new blank file 01-00-0c-29-ca-1a-81 [YMMV])
2. Add the following text to configure the menu item:
   

default Clonezilla-live menu title Modified Menu timeout 300 label Clonezilla-live  MENU LABEL Clonezilla Live (Ramdisk)  KERNEL pxechain.com  APPEND [[IP Address of 2ndary server]]::pxelinux.0

3. This will run pxechain.com which prompts for a server and filename, which are fed above (using the Clonezilla DRBL default options for testing purposes)
1. Only the defined MAC address machine will load this PXE configuration

That's about it :)

Claim your Mini Day Z game for free

Zombies have been with us for many years but it's only really become a thing with the advent of AMC's awesome Walking Dead series.

One of the things that's been around is Day Z and the web-friendly version, Mini Day Z.

You can claim the free online (multiplayer) version here:

https://store.bistudio.com/products/minidayz

It's free, so why wait?

22Seven - Protect your money by setting up a view-only account (FNB)

Old Mutual's online financial support service, 22seven, seems to be the big deal when it comes to managing your finances. The service is explained here:

https://www.22seven.com/manage-your-money

but the most important part is that it extracts information from your account/s by logging in.

To avoid the however-unlikely risk of the service being compromised and someone nefarious having access to your money, you are best advised to set up a view-only account.

With FNB it's a few steps, as outlined below (YMMV with other banks) in a picture story.

Login and select Online Banking Settings

View Secondary Users

Add User, giving an appropriate Name

Fill out the information