Are your applications portable?

Installing software applications on your computer is one thing. However, what if you want to use them on a different system? Or how about the situation when your OS has to be re-installed? This brings up the question posed in the title of this blog post: Are your applications portable?

One solution is to use “portable” versions instead of “installable” versions – meaning, you’d be able to just extract the application binary to just a directory directly and use it from there on. Having portable versions of the programs is good. Wouldn't it be better to have an entity to manage all such portable applications? This is exactly where the solution offered by this Techbit, PortableApps comes into picture.

PortableApps lets you install various applications and manage them easily. It can be downloaded from http://portableapps.com/. Not all the applications are covered as of now but the positive side is PortableApps is gaining popularity and we should be seeing the application repository of PortableApps ever increasing.

To summarize, following approach is what I would generally suggest in the context of installing software:

• If the software has a portable version compatible with PortableApps, use it.
• If not, check if a portable version of the software exists and use it if so.
• If the software does not offer any portable version, only then install it in the installable mode.

Donate blood & Save lives

Quite a while, it has been, since I shared something that is not only non-technical but also in sync with my blog's caption.

Being helpful to one another is the least that we could do. We should not only be mindful of not harming others but also equally mindful of helping others. This is still more relevant in these changing times.

Blood donation is one such act of reaching out and helping those in need. Regarding titling this blog post "Donate blood & Save lives" in old fashioned manner, few things are better that way! In any case, as old as it sounds, it is as much valid and important even today :)

Donate blood

Blood donation is a very special way of volunteerism. One may not always have the required resources to be of assistance to others. However, blood donation does not require anything else except your good health and willingness. While other forms of giving bring joy to you psychologically, blood donation is unique in the way that it additionally gives many health benefits and improves you physically too.

Register yourself
 
Register your willingness to donate blood at any of the noted blood donor registry sites like the following; look out for other equivalent sites or channels depending on where you reside.

http://www.bharatbloodbank.com/
http://www.friends2support.org/
http://www.redcrossblood.org/

Make a list

Build a handy list of the people you know with details like their blood group, contact number, when did they last donate etc. This is like a local repository that is available only with you and your folks. You can have different repositories for different groups like family, friends and colleagues. Having such list(s) can come in very handy at unexpected times. Get started by creating an excel with columns like below:

1. S. No.
2. Name
3. Blood Group
4. Last donated
5. Notes

Create awareness

Being aware is one thing. Creating awareness is another altogether. Understand the necessity & benefits of blood donation; explain the same to others. Encourage your family and friends to register and come forward to donate blood. Spread the word around and ask the folks to do the same in turn.

Experience & enjoy the joy of giving and being of assistance to others!

EPIC: Eclipse-based Perl IDE

Are you a programmer? And, is Perl one of the languages you use? If so, then this Techbit is for you.

EPIC is the point to start from for your Perl programming. It is imperative that one uses IDE for programming and it is precisely where EPIC comes as aid in the case of Perl-based development activities. As an IDE, EPIC provides all the standard functionality like syntax highlighting, syntax checking, content assist, debugging aids etc.

EPIC is located at http://www.epic-ide.org/.

For a quick head start, you can go through http://web.archive.org/web/20120113222246/http://www.cs.wcupa.edu/~rkline/Ubuntu/eclipse-perl.html (archived version of the no longer accessible http://www.cs.wcupa.edu/~rkline/Ubuntu/eclipse-perl.html). The detailed documentation can be found at the official website listed above.

Process Hacker

Process Hacker is similar to Process Explorer, which was covered here as part of an earlier Techbit.

There are differences though. While there are parties taking sides on either of these as usual, it is commonly said that Process Explorer is more helpful from a process inspection perspective whereas Process Hacker is stated to excel in process manipulation. As you use both the utilities, you’ll find the use-cases that only one of them can realize or those that can be realized in a better manner though one or those that can be realized equally well through either.

This utility is homed at http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/.

Command Line Snippet Store

Straight from the words as described on the site itself, http://www.commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

Process Explorer

You tried to delete a file on your Windows system and the system complained that the operation cannot be completed as the file is being in use. Which process or processes have the file handle? Or is it due a runaway process that did not do proper cleanup before exiting, in which case system restart is the only option? How about finding out what process does an open window correspond to? And, how about then checking the details like description, corporation etc. of that process?

Process Explorer lets you achieve the above tasks and much more.

This utility was from Sysinternals and later became part of Microsoft’s kitty as part of an acquisition. This utility is hosted and available for download at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.

Disable clicking sound in Windows Explorer & Internet Explorer

Are you irritated by the clicking sound while navigating in Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer (IE)? If so, this Techbit is for you. Are you annoyed about bad things happening to good people? To make matters worse, are you bothered about good things happening to bad people? Well, neither can this Techbit be of help nor can I comprehend the rationale. Are you miffed at why the subject of this Techbit is not yet covered? Here we go, I can help you here and jump right into the topic!

Windows XP

• Click Start
• Click "Control Panel"
• Click "Sounds and Audio Devices"
• Click the Sounds tab
• Scroll down the list under Program Events
• Under the Windows Explorer section, highlight Start Navigation
• Under the Sounds box, select (None) > OK, close Control Panel

Windows 7

• Click Start
• Click "Control Panel"
• Click "Hardware and Sound"
• Under Sound, Click "Change system sounds"
• Scroll down the list under "Program Events"
• Under the Windows Explorer section, highlight "Start Navigation"
• Under the Sounds box, select "(None)"
• Click OK
• Close "Control Panel"

That should shut it!

Note that you would normally need to do this only once. That is unless the OS is re-installed on your computer after which the defaults would have to be changed again.

How to find USB 3.0 ports?

I keep hearing people say that they get good transfer speeds while dealing with the content stored in their USB devices from their computers "sometimes" and do not in the other unfortunate times. Until a while ago, I may also be counted among such. Even though I was guessing that it had to be related to the ports or USB 3.0 vs 2.0, I did not bother to find out the details behind. Now is the time to unlock what those "sometimes" are!

USB 3.0 offers betters speeds over 2.0. Obvious but this is a point to be noted. Those "sometimes" might have been those occasions when the USB device is plugged into the computer through a USB 3.0 enabled port. The question that comes next is how do you determine if a USB port on your computer (desktop or laptop) or your USB device/cable can support 3.0 or 2.0.

Following are few ways to determine if the USB is 3.0 or 2.0:

1. Check if there is "SS" symbol on the port or the cable.
   
   
   
   
   
   If so, then the port or the cable is 3.0 enabled.
   
   
2. Check if there is blue color inside the port or on the cable.
   
   
   
   USB 3.0 ports are blue colored and USB 2.0 ports are grey although it may not be the case always.
   
   
3. Another phenomenon seen commonly in the case of laptops and worth noting is that USB 3.0 ports are found on the left side.
   
   
4. Follow the below procedure:
   
   
   • Right-click on "Computer" icon
   • Select "Manage"
   • Select "Device Manager"
   • Look under "Universal Serial Bus controllers"
   
   If you see entries with "USB 3.0" text, it means you have USB 3.0 enabled ports on your computer. Note that this does not determine which of the ports is 3.0 and which not though.

In the process of figuring out, I've found an article providing a nice summary of different kinds of ports at http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/pc-ports-explained-get-to-know-the-back-of-your-computer-2/.

Explorer++: Alternative to Windows Explorer

Explorer++ is to Explorer as what C++ is to C! As the name itself indicates, Explorer++ is an enhanced version of Windows Explorer, which is bundled by default with Windows operating system.

Explorer++ has additional features like creating tabs, splitting and merging files etc.

You can download this quite useful utility from http://explorerplusplus.com/.

MyUninstaller: An alternative to the default Windows Add/Remove utility

MyUninstaller is an alternative uninstaller utility to the default Windows Add/Remove program. The additional features provided by this utility are the display of details like product name, company, version, uninstall string, installation folder etc. of each of the applications and the ability to export the installed applications to a text/HTML file.

Some of the use cases where the exported file can be used: for references in case of migrating to a new computer or replicating to create a similar setup, taking automated snapshots to compare what has changed between two points in time, to share the configuration setup with someone else etc.

The tool is available for download at http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/myuninst.html.

Khan Academy: Rich repository of Educational Videos

Khan Academy accessible from http://www.khanacademy.org/ has huge number of free educational videos on a variety of subjects.

Though students are the ones who can benefit most here, this site can also be used by anyone interested in dusting the mind cabinet and doing a refresh!

Unix: more or less?

Commonly seen in Unix-based operating systems is usage of the command more to view paginated outputs. However, this command is quite old.

There exists the less command which has lot more functionality (like both forward and backward navigation) and is better performing as well (by not reading the entire file contents at the time of command invocation itself).

So, next time you want to use more, be frugal and use less instead – it is not useless though :)

Unix command: script

What is "script" command?

script is a very useful command that can be used to capture all that appears on a terminal. The output thus captured from the interactive session may then be useful while sharing with another colleague or team, or even used in a variety of debugging scenarios.

Next time you find yourself in a position to grab the screen/terminal contents, make use of this wonderful utility instead of relying on ad-hoc output redirections and screenshot captures.

What is its syntax and how do I use it?

Refer to the man pages on your system for the exact syntax/details, or an online resource like the one at http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?script. Typical usage however is along the lines of:

script [-a] [-c COMMAND] [-f] [-q] [-t] [file]

Are there any interesting points to be noted?

One standard note is that interactive commands, such as vi, create garbage in the output file. Be aware of it as such and use "script" for capturing plain text.

Few oft missed aspects, though, are that it:

• Invokes a new shell based on what is populated in the environment variable SHELL
• Creates a new login session as can be seen from the output of last command

Why don't you show me a simple invocation and what does it result in?

Sure, I can :)

Here's a sample invocation of the command:

sh-3.2# script
Script started, file is typescript
sh-3.2# ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  lib64  lost+found  media  misc  mnt  net  opt
proc  root  sbin  selinux  srv  sys  tftpboot  tmp  typescript  usr  var
sh-3.2# exit
exit
Script done, file is typescript

And, this is what is logged into the file:

sh-3.2# cat typescript
Script started on Tue 23 Jul 2013 04:10:04 PM IST
sh-3.2# ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  lib64  lost+found  media  misc  mnt  net  opt
proc  root  sbin  selinux  srv  sys  tftpboot  tmp  typescript  usr  var
sh-3.2# exit
exit

Script done on Tue 23 Jul 2013 04:10:20 PM IST
sh-3.2# 

MobaXterm

I wanted to include a one-liner in the title of this Techbit than just the tool name i.e. MobaXterm - it was very difficult though. There are so many wide-ranged features integrated into one single app.

Listed below are some of the features/findings:

1. Tabbed Console with UNIX-like interface – replacement for Console & accommodates part of Cygwin
2. Tabbed Console with support for embedded terminal server sessions – replacement for PuTTY Connection Manager
3. X-server client – replacement for X-based commercial tools like Exceed or Reflection-X
4. Multi-Execution Mode – you want the same command to be invoked in parallel on several servers? Then, this is what you want.
5. Ability to download files (SFTP/FTP) from the terminal session – In general, if you want to fetch a file while working on a terminal server session, then you open a separate file transfer app (like FileZilla) and then download it. This can all be done from the same session in this tool.

MobaXterm is free and available for download at http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/.

Tip to open Word documents quickly

One tip to open word documents quickly, i.e. reduced time between when you double click the Word document and when the document is presented, is to press Esc key.

This prevents Word from making a connection to the printer (if any), which results in opening the document right away.

Those working and connecting to office network from home via VPN might find this tip even more helpful while opening word documents, especially if the computer is not connected to the VPN/printer or if the VPN connection is slow AND if you don’t need to print the document being opened.

In fact, Word presents this tip on the document’s status bar but it goes unnoticed mostly.

Wink: Screencasting Software

What is a Screencast?

As the Wiki page says, a screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. The term screencast compares with the related term screenshot; whereas screenshot is a picture of a computer screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the changes over time that a user sees on a computer screen, enhanced with audio narration.

Where or how are Screencasts useful?

If you want to create illustrative videos explaining how to use a specific software or its feature. If you want to report a bug and would like to do so by video capturing the exact steps that reproduce it. If you want to record your desktop for the purpose of record or afterwards replays. These are some of the scenarios that I could think of and I'm sure there would be more.

Now, what is Screencasting Software?

With the above explanation, one should be able to understand what Screencasting Software is meant by – it is that software that helps you in creating Screencasts.

Wink is one such software that is free and well reputed. Using Wink, you will be able to create screencasts and use in demonstrations, trainings or just for better illustration simply.

Wink (not the verb!) @ http://www.debugmode.com/wink/
Comparison of Screencasting software on Wiki @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software

E-Books Directory

http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/ is a very good source for hundreds of e-books in PDF or web/wiki based. Research works of many authors on a varied field of subjects are available here.

Unable to drag cell corner in Excel to auto-increment?

If you ever run into the issue of not able to get auto-incremented numbers when you drag cell corner in Excel, then this is for you.

1. Select Office Button
2. Select Excel Options
3. Select Advanced
4. Tick the check-box “Enable fill handle and cell drag-and-drop”

Note that this is for Excel 2007. A similar option should be present in earlier/later versions as well.

File Shredder: Remove files permanently

One way to shred a file on your hard drive is to take its printout and then feed it through the physical shredder that you can usually find near your Office printer ;)

Jokes apart, “File Shredder” is a tool that can be used for shredding (destroying) unwanted files beyond recovery. Provided below are couple of paragraphs from the tool’s documentation to provide a quick overview. Go to the website for complete details and to download the tool.

Why is this tool required? There are quite a few software tools today for retrieval of deleted files under Windows OS. Those tools, often referred to as "file recovery" software, are taking advantage of shortcoming of Windows "delete" command that we all use regularly to delete files. Actually, the "delete" operation in Windows only removes bits of information from files so they appear deleted in OS. It is easy to retrieve those files using aforementioned specialized file recovery software.

In order to remove, or shred files permanently from your system, you have to use a program that is capable of rewriting the files with random series of binary data multiple times. This process is often called shredding. That way, the actual content of the file has been overwritten and the possibilities to recover such a shredded file are mostly theoretical.

http://www.fileshredder.org/

Reduce Microsoft Office document sizes

There are many ways to achieve reduced file sizes for your Office documents like Word or PPTs. This is very helpful if you are sharing the documents by email – enabling you to meet the etiquette of not clogging others’ mailboxes.

Tips to reduce document sizes

1. Compress pictures
2. Do not paste snapshots directly
3. Turn off versions (revisions)
4. Turn off Preview Picture
5. Turn off Fast Saves
6. Embed true type fonts only if required

Tips 1 and 2 turned out the most helpful as I found on lot of situations.

How to compress pictures?

• Select a picture
• Select “Picture Tools” on the window bar
• Select “Format” section
• Select “Compress Pictures” option.
• Choose a resolution of 96 ppi (pixels per inch) – unless you want your recipient to print the images you sent over!

Note that the way to do these settings might vary a bit depending on the Office version (2003 or 2007 or later).

Do not paste snapshots directly

A common practice while embedding snapshots is to perform either “Print Screen” or “Alt + Print Screen”, and then paste it directly into your Word / PPT. However, the image is copied in BMP format in this case – leading to large document size. Instead, paste the snapshot into an image editor like MS Paint, save it into a format like JPEG & then insert the JPEG into your Office document.

Dia: Open source alternative to Visio

Dia looks to be a fair open source alternative to Microsoft Visio. Visio is licensed (not free) and it may not be available with everyone as such. This tool can be helpful in such scenarios. It can be downloaded from http://dia-installer.de/.

Provided below are additional links that you might find useful in this context:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/a-free-open-source-alternative-to-microsoft-visio/
http://www.osalt.com/visio
http://www.lucidchart.com/ (online and should be used only for non-official purposes)
http://inkscape.org/
http://www.networknotepad.com/

Oh! Big O?

If you had ever thought of “Big O” notation, which is used to represent algorithm complexity, as complex or something “which needs to be memorized”, then here is a very useful link for you.

A very simple and plain English explanation of Big O @ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/487258/plain-english-explanation-of-big-o/487278#answer-487278.

SSH or Telnet using Java

Ever wanted to find out how one can programmatically connect to a server or a network element like router, switch, firewall etc. using SSH or Telnet – specifically if the programming language is Java? If so, then JSch and Apache Commons enable you to realize it.

SSH in Java using "JSch"

JSch can be downloaded from http://www.jcraft.com/jsch/.
Examples can be found at http://www.jcraft.com/jsch/examples/.

Telnet in Java using "Apache Commons"

Apache Commons can be downloaded from http://commons.apache.org/.
Example can be found at http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-net/examples/telnet/TelnetClientExample.java.

JD-Eclipse: Java Decompiler

JD-Eclipse is a plug-in for the Eclipse platform. It allows you to display all the Java sources during your debugging process, even if you do not have them all.

JD-Eclipse is free for non-commercial use. This means that JD-Eclipse shall not be included or embedded into commercial software products. Nevertheless, this project may be freely used for personal needs in commercial or non-commercial environments.

JD-Eclipse >> http://java.decompiler.free.fr/?q=jdeclipse

WinDirStat: Disk Usage Analyzer

WinDirStat is a disk usage analyzer that gives you a visual representation of what files are taking up the most space on your disk. It scans a disk and displays a treemap representing each file as a colored rectangle, the area of which is proportional to the file's size.

Here is a sample use-case: If you find a large file or two taking up loads of space that you had forgotten was/were there and don't need, it's very easy to find the culprit(s) from WinDirStat. Once the tool finds the files, you can either open the folders containing the large files in Windows Explorer, open the files directly, or delete the files altogether directly from the tool itself.

WinDirStat is located at http://windirstat.info/.

Startup Delayer

Sometimes, hearing it straight from the horse's mouth is much more beneficial compared to rephrasing and repeating. The topic of this Techbit is one such example. The below mentioned summary of the application "Startup Delayer" is taken from its website directly.

Does it take quite some time till your computer is ready to use after starting it up? Do you find your computer is really unresponsive even though you can already see the Desktop? Do you want more control over what starts on your computer? If so, you would definitely be interested in Startup Delayer that gives you the power to optimize your Startup Process by delaying applications from starting up as soon as you log into your computer.

When Windows loads its startup file, it attempts to load every program in there at the same time. Therefore if you have quite a lot of programs starting when Windows starts, each program will try and grab CPU and Disk time so that it can load. If each program tries to do this at the same time, you will soon notice the slow down that occurs due to your CPU trying to help all the programs to load, and your hard disk accessing multiple files.

Startup Delayer allows you to add some order to this process by determining the best time to launch your Applications. You can choose to do this based on how idle your computer is, or you can set an arbitrary time.

Startup Delayer can be downloaded from http://www.r2.com.au/page/products/show/startdelay.

How to find the count of physical processors, cores and threads on Solaris?

Let’s first understand the terms and relationship between the same quickly.

• Physical processor – processor that is actually / physically present
• Core – further division of physical processor i.e. a physical processor can contain multiple cores
• Thread – a distinct execution path provided by a core i.e. a core can support multiple threads
• Virtual processor – can be considered equivalent to a thread

That means, Number of virtual processors in a physical processor = count (cores) * count(threads).

psrinfo -p gives the number of physical processors

psrinfo -pv gives the number of virtual processors per each physical processor

But, how does one find the number of cores / threads on a physical processor? The only way that this could be found out is by going to the specs page on Sun/Oracle website. However, recent updates of Solaris 10 did include a fix to report this kind of detail. In case the fix is not there, it can still be found out from the command “kstat cpu_info”. For more details, you may refer to http://blogs.oracle.com/sistare/entry/cpu_to_core_mapping.

Unix: Why do “df” and “du” report different disk usages?

Let's understand the fundamental difference between the two commands first.

• "df" reports usage based on details available at filesystem-level (inodes)
• "du" reports usage based on the actual contents (files) of a directory

There are many reasons for the discrepancy between the numbers reported by the two commands. However, it is _mostly_ because of removal of a large file, the file handle of which is still present with a process (the file was opened by the process). When a file is removed, "du" no longer takes it into consideration although "df" counts it as the file inode is still present because of the open file handle - which is why "du" reports free usage where as "df" does not.

How do you fix the discrepancy in such cases? Simplest is by not removing the files that are held open by some process. However, if you do run into a situation of accidentally removing such files, restart the application/process that held the open file descriptor - this is the proper way to clean up. There is also a workaround of clearing the file descriptor manually/directly although it is not recommended procedure.

Another reason for the mismatch is that "df" counts the complete blocks (8 KB blocks, for example, as seen in the above techbit) where as "du" counts the actual file sizes (like 1 KB if the file is actually only 1 KB). If there is a large number of such small files, then the difference can show up significantly.

There are many other possible reasons as well for the mismatch. Provided below are few links for further reading:

http://linuxshellaccount.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-du-and-df-display-different-values.html
http://blog.thilelli.net/post/2008/10/18/Discrepancies-Between-df-And-du-Outputs
http://sysunconfig.net/aixtips/df_du_diff_out.txt

HJSplit: Split & Join Files

Have you ever wished you had the ability split a huge file into smaller files and then merge the smaller files back to recreate the original file?

Maybe, when you wanted to transfer the file from a computer to another using a USB drive but the USB cannot hold the whole file due to insufficient capacity? Or how about when you want to send a file over email but cannot either because the mail server does not allow attachments beyond a specific size? Or may be, the mail server allows but you want to avoid any issues with intermittent network connectivity breaks / issues by sending over the file in several different chunks?

If you answered a "Yes" to any of the above questions or if it simply sounds interesting/useful to you, then you should try HJSplit. It is a free file splitter and merger. It is obtainable from http://www.hjsplit.org/.

By the way, do let me know if you have any comments. If you find the posts helpful or if you think someone else can benefit from them, feel free to share the same.

TrueCrypt: Disk Encryption Software

Here is an excellent open-source disk encryption software: TrueCrypt @ http://www.truecrypt.org/.

TrueCrypt can be used to realize wonderful use-cases from a security standpoint.

For example, what if you wanted a document like text file or an excel or a word document or a PDF on your computer that ONLY you should be able to access? TrueCrypt can do it for you.

As another example, you've a USB stick that is currently unprotected i.e. if you lose your USB stick, then whoever finds it has access to all of your data! TrueCrypt can create an entire encrypted partition on the storage device to meet this need.

FileZilla – A (or The?) FOSS FTP Client

Firstly, what’s the fuss about FOSS? Well, it’s an acronym for “Free and Open Source Software”.

If you've worked on transferring files from one system to another, then you might already be aware of this tool. If not, then this is for you.

FileZilla is a very good free, open source and GUI-based FTP client. Something like this is always preferred to command-line utility that comes by default with the desktop/laptop. http://filezilla-project.org/ is where you can download the software from. Note that it also has a server edition that you can try if interested.

Being helpful

What better way to start blogging in the new year than to write about what has been close to my heart.

To have a mindset to be of help to others, to assist the needy & deserving, and to bring about a change in the society are some of the qualities that one should inculcate. We start consuming from the society right from the time we're born. Not many even pay attention to this. We should not only realize this but also start contributing and giving back to the society. I'm fortunate to have been brought up by my parents and teachers who had placed a lot of emphasis on these aspects. I'd forever be indebted to them for creating an environment conducive to such wonderful thoughts.

The immediate next and straight question that follows is: how to do it? The answer is also equally straightforward: in whatever possible way that one could. If you've the will, you'll easily find ways. There're many different ways. Listed below are few examples:

• You could help someone around you whom you've seen in need of assistance.
• You could become a member of volunteering organizations in your area.
• You could contribute to charities, about which you know for sure, established for a good cause.
• You could look out for articles seeking help in credible newspapers and televisions.
• You could start sharing your learnings and knowledge via blog posts if you've access to computer/Internet!

Personal life, busy schedules and work pressures are always going to be there. Nonetheless one has to try, accommodate and allocate time (even if it is just an hour per week!) to volunteer for service activities.

The message is clear and simple: If you're in a position of being capable of providing assistance to others, then just use the opportunity that you've and help.