Chris

Using Mac OS X FileVault 2 Whole-Disk Encryption with Long Passwords

I’ve been using KeePass for years to store my passwords for all the various sites, servers, etc. that I need to access. As such, I have liberated myself from having to remember any of them and can therefore choose entirely unguessable, randomly-generated passwords for highly-secure things like, for instance, accessing my online back accounts. IContinue reading “Using Mac OS X FileVault 2 Whole-Disk Encryption with Long Passwords”

Read-only CVS access for only certain projects

I’ve recently decided to move from CVS to Subversion, but I’m not ready to move everything at once. Thus, I have decided to move some things and save others for later. In order to do that properly, I need to make some projects in CVS read-only while allowing others to remain active. A bit ofContinue reading “Read-only CVS access for only certain projects”

Cure for OpenOffice.org Calc “the maximum number of rows has been exceeded”

Today, I was working with a colleague to generate a report in CSV format and she was having trouble opening it in OpenOffice.org’s calc (spreadsheet) program. She was getting the error “the maximum number of rows has been exceeded”, yet the file had only about 2800 rows in it. I tried it and got theContinue reading “Cure for OpenOffice.org Calc “the maximum number of rows has been exceeded””

Firefox Sync Non-start

I’ve been using the Firefox 4.0 betas recently, and I just noticed that Firefox Sync is available without a plug-in. I had never used Firefox Sync before, but I currently have 32 tabs across 4 windows currently open in my 3.6.10 install and it would be nice to be able to open them all inContinue reading “Firefox Sync Non-start”

SVG external stylesheet fails to load in MSIE and Adobe SVG Plug-in

I recently because aware of a problem in CHADIS where our SVG images weren’t styling correctly in print previews: everything was black-and-white, except for a particular image that seemed fine. This was observed in MSIE 8 with the Adobe SVG plug-in, and also in Microsoft’s new MSIE 9 platform preview. Actually printing the image hadContinue reading “SVG external stylesheet fails to load in MSIE and Adobe SVG Plug-in”

Trapped DVD after a failed Snow Leopard Install on a Mac Mini

I have an Intel-based Mac Mini running Mac OS X Tiger that I tried to upgrade to Snow Leopard. After a failed install (not enough memory), the DVD stayed in the drive and, after the reboot, the whole process repeated. I was able to get the DVD out! Read on for details…

LiveHTTPHeaders in Firefox 3.5

One of my favorite Mozilla Firefox add-ons has always been LiveHTTPHeaders: you can observe the HTTP headers being sent to and received from the server when a web page is requested. You can even have it record a bunch of requests as you click through a site to see the entire series of transactions. OneContinue reading “LiveHTTPHeaders in Firefox 3.5”

Properly Handling Pooled JDBC Connections

I’m an active member of the Tomcat-users mailing list and I see lots of folks that post questions about not being able to get a new database connection. The answer is simple: you have exhausted their JDBC connection pool. The answer is not so simple because the reasons for the situation can often be different,Continue reading “Properly Handling Pooled JDBC Connections”

Indenting HTML options

In CHADIS, we had a requirement to indent certain <option> elements within a <select> dropdown list. Until recently, only team administrators had to use these pages, so we just made it work in Mozilla Firefox and left the other browsers out in the cold. Now that we have some new features that need this capability,Continue reading “Indenting HTML options”

Disabling Password-less SSH Connections

I use Ubuntu on a server I use for software development over a VNC session. This is how I learned to do Java software development way back in 2000 at one of my first jobs, and the habit stuck. I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (via a completely straightforward and painless upgrade process, IContinue reading “Disabling Password-less SSH Connections”