David Vielmetter

Category: Tricks

  • Context menu issues with gVim in Windows 7 x64

    Over the years I’ve developed a serious vi editor habit (mostly from my days working as a system administrator). I use it for coding in PHP, c, and perl because it is convenient and lightweight. Since gVim has been available for Windows, I have never had any issues running it on my home computer and…

  • Miniaturize your pictures using TiltShiftMaker

    Last year I first discovered a flickr group dedicated to tilt-shift photography and miniature faking by running across a couple of amazing images. Back then to create tilt-shift pictures involved either obtaining an expensive tilt-shift lens or modifying existing photos using Photoshop or GIMP. Now TiltShiftMaker.com allows anyone with a picture to create a tilt-shift…

  • All I want is a nice 404 page

    The other day while trying to show off my website I fat-fingered the URL and got a standard 404 page not found error. Halfway through typing the URL I had expected to see this page, what I hadn’t expected was a bunch of hostgator advertisements all over it. So I did a bit of digging…

  • Upgrading a RainingData D3 DBMS from NT/UNIX to 2003

    D3 is a PICK based DBMS system used by many government institutions and large businesses. I was recently tasked with upgrading an existing RainingData (now TigerLogic) D3 installation from a failed NT server to windows 2003. Although a bit convoluted as far as steps go, the upgrade was surprisingly pain free and straight forward. Had…

  • Win2k3 Blacked out Logon Screen Fix

    I recently had a Windows 2003 Server installation that ran out of disk space on the operating system partition due to known problem with Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 virus definitions (KB2007111509244948). After fixing the Symantec problem, my servers logon screen remained strangely messed up. The logon screen was completely blacked out with only the blinking…

  • Restrict client DHCP requests using DHCP snoop

    What do you get when a multi-site network with several different domains was setup using a single class C IP subnet and an 8 bit mask? Broadcast storm mayhem! While ideally the solution for this organization would be to logically re-segment their network into smaller domain specific subnets such that inter-domain communications are not broadcast…

  • Allow or deny DHCP by MAC address

    I recently found this little gem on petri.co.il and subsequently discovered its origin at the DHCP technet blog. MAC Filter Callout DLL is a free dll file which allows a windows 2003 DHCP server to check a requesting client’s MAC address against a list of allowed or denied hosts before issuing an IP address.

  • Remove Tunnnel Adapters from IPCONFIG

    I’m a network administrator and I use the command <ipconfig> a lot. Unfortunately Microsoft has managed to complicate almost every aspect of Windows networking in VISTA including the <ipconfig> command. It now displays the status of 14 useless (until you start using IPv6) Tunnel Adapters and pushes the info you want to see out of…

  • Virtualize your old computer

    Virtualization is process of separating a computer system from its underlying platform resources. In other words taking a system off of its existing hardware platform and letting it run on virtual resources. With today’s multi-core computers it has become easy to consolidate several older systems into one. VMware has released two tools that allow anyone…

  • Block MP3’s from getting on your file server

    IT managers know that when it comes to keeping music files off of corporate file servers & workstations that acceptable use policy the lawyers ripped off the internet is only as good the paper it’s printed on. Every environment I’ve word at has had to deal with inappropriate media files that made their way into…