I think if I had to start my own business, I’d love to open a small-town “un-general” store.
It would be have hot coffee and cold root-beer along with uncomfortable wooden chairs and tables for sitting. It would have not have Wi-Fi. The shelves would be filled with uselessly cool things of interest to no-one but me and the locals; like twine and carabineers and itchy woolen garments and conductor caps. And there wouldn’t be computers, but maybe some manual typewriters for visitors to use for their communication needs. And a pay-phone outside under a single dim street light.
It would open when I felt like getting up and close when I got tired of having company.
It would be filled with Americana melodies from artists no one has ever heard before and would never forget. And Opera.
I would probably call it something like “<tiny town name>’s Curmudgeonly Un-General Store”.
It would seem smaller on the outside and have a blue entrance door. That would be grand.
Anyway here are an assortment of links off the shelves of that make-believe place. Disregard any of the expiration dates at your own peril.
- Microsoft reissues flawed Windows security update with new flaws - ZDNet, and
- What went wrong with Microsoft's August updates? - ZDNet
I ended up manually uninstalling “KB2982791” from all my Windows systems. The posts indicate that when the new update gets installed, the system will use the new code and just not execute the old code…therefore uninstallation is not required, but since MS pulled the patch, I’d rather not have it sitting there on my system, even if it is unused. I didn’t have any issues after the uninstall and mandatory reboot but YMMV.
You aren't using Resource Monitor enough - Scott Hanselman - A long time ago I found and posted about the various advanced troubleshooting tools Windows can offer. Though I am now fully enamored with the power of the Windows Performance Analysis Toolkit (WPT) for Windows (SDK 8), Scott’s post is a good reminder that with some skilled usage, Resource Monitor can be a great starting place and useful tool since it is already installed on Win 7/8/8.1 systems.
Case of the Excel Hang on Worksheet Open - chentiangemalc
Session Manager Firefox Add-on - MoonPoint Support Weblog
Some time ago Lavie (who leaves a bazillion tabs open in Firefox as her page-management technique) had a Firefox crash that wiped out her history of open tabs and the like. Painfully she had to start over again. She does have bookmarks, but most material she either is reading or plans to read is left open in a tab. The Session Manager Add-on that MoonPoint highlights would have saved her bacon. It will be a new feature coming soon to Lavie’s Firefox install!
Editing ISO files with Magic ISO Maker - MoonPoint Support Weblog
DAYU Disk PhotoFiltreMaster Free looks like an interesting product. More information in this BetaNews article: DAYU Disk Master Free: image backups and more
AOMEI OneKey Recovery is another free partition management tool that allows for system backup to a recovery partition. More info in this BetaNews line AOMEI OneKey Recovery allows you to recreate your PC’s recovery partition, and hat-tip to tinyapps.org who passed on a lead to it.
How To Quickly Repair Windows System Files in Windows 7 / 8 - Next of Windows - “sfc /scannow”
New: Sysmon v1.0; Updates: Autoruns v12.01, Coreinfo v3.3, Procexp v16.03 - Sysinternals Site Discussion blog
Updates: Autoruns v12.02, Coreinfo v3.31, Sysmon v1.01, Whois v1.12 - Sysinternals Site Discussion blog
Some tools in Outlook 2013 for diagnosing Exchange connectivity issues - MarkWilson.IT
Why Chrome Browser Looks Fuzzy in Windows 8 and How To Fix It? - Next of Windows
PhotoDemon - a fast, free, portable photo editor - I have Paint.NET, Photoshop (CS4), RawTherapee, Photivo, GTKRawGallery, Scarab Darkroom, FotoSketcher, and PhotoFiltre (to name the main ones) that I flit between while making edits and manipulations to digital photos. PhotoDemon is a new one to me and I’m positively loving it. It is jam-packed with filters and custom edits, it supports layers, and is very intuitive to use. There seems to be a lot of similarities in the usage, menu-system with Paint.NET so I instantly felt at home. It may not replace all of the other “fun” digital image tools I use, but it could replace more than a few. Since it is portable by design, clearing off the others would make easy room for this one…and allow me to reclaim some space in the process on my USB stick.
Best free video editing software: download these DSLR movie editors today - Digital Camera World - I was familiar with most in this list but there were some new-to-me finds that made the list bookmark-worthy.
RegEx 101 - Online regex tester and debugger: JavaScript, Python, PHP, and PCRE
Debuggex - Online visual regex tester. JavaScript, Python, and PCRE.
Regular Expressions Quick Start - Regular-Expressions.info
regular expressions 101 - DonationCoder.com This is the post that got me started and led to me finding the above RegEx links. For some desktop level applications to help with RegEx testing and learning, this post by Sivakumar K. at Hongkiat.com has a good list of options: Regular Expressions: 30 Useful Tools and Resources. I didn’t see these listed: Regular Expression Editor by WaterProof Software and Simple Regex Tester at SourceForge.net. Other projects at SourceForge include Regex Creator and Regular Expression Editor (RegExpEditor)
Apple’s iMessage becomes a major source of mobile spam - TechBlog
How to block and report iMessage spam to Apple - iMore
I’m now generally seeing at least one spammy iMessage notice a week, and like Mr. Silverman, it seems to deal with fake sunglasses. Both posts above provide guidance on how to report iMessage spam to Apple to help with the whack-a-mole.
Problems with a wireless mouse and USB 3.0 flash drives was driving me crazy! - RMPrepUSB, Easy2Boot and USB booting... blog. Great post about troubleshooting the unintended consequences of ubiquitous hardware!
Ultimate Settings Panel One Click Access To Windows & Outlook Settings - AddictiveTips. Not for the feint of heart or Windows noobies.
Windows Performance Analysis Field Guide–Book Review - chentiangemalc.
TechEd in Houston Texas; and other troubleshooting bits - GrandStreamDreams blog - The above book reminded me that I still have a lot of TechEd presentations to get caught up on!
GlassWire - free new software firewall and network monitor. Hat-tip to tinyapps.org who directly pointed this gem to me and did a great micro-review in his blog post Beautiful new software firewall and network monitor. It’s been a lifetime ago since I spend any amount of time posting on firewalls for Windows platforms and a lot has changed since that time. TinyApps also linked to a great firewall testing tool Comodo's HIPS and Firewall Leak Test Suite. Check out the post and follow-on linkage.
Currently, I continue to run the default (and lightly tweaked) Windows Firewall on our home systems. (GlassWire might lead me to change with the degree of logging/reporting it offers.) Windows Firewall does have some disadvantages.
Thus this post was interesting.
How to Control and troubleshoot outbound traffic in Windows - Next of Windows. It points to a portable and free network file tool -- Windows Firewall Notifier -- that “enhances” Windows Firewall in that it can display notifications for outbound connections. The current version 1.9.0 is from March 2014,but the author has a newer beta version 1.9.1.9 (pending the v 1.9.2 public release) that is available from the downloads page. YMMV.
Cheers!
--Claus Valca
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