Technical Notes

Windows custom keyboard layouts, Englsih-German, Russian with additional symbols

2009-11-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

I need to type in German from time to time, but it is not so comfortable to have additional keyboard layout. Keyboard Layout Creator from Microsoft is a great tool. You can use it to create you own layouts.

For those of you who is lazy I offer my layouts.

1. English-German

I am used to type with US English layout and so I added German symbols for combinatins with AltGr:

To type in German quotation symbols I recommend to use AltGr+Shift+Q as an opening symbols and AltGr+W as closing symbol:

Download setup package.

2. Russian layout

It is a regular Russian layout with additional symbols available with AltGr:

Minus is replcaed with en dash symbol. AltGr+Minus is the em dash and AltGr+Shift+Minus is a hyphen-minus:

Download setup package.

Installation

To install the package you should:

Run setup.exe file from the package contents.

Follow the setup instructions, if any.

Go to the keyboard layout settings

You will see new layouts Russian - Custom and/or US - Custom.

Configure layouts as you wish, deletin unnecessary ones.

Enjoy :-)

Setting 3Proxy at home to redirect incoming connections

2009-06-20T12:30:00.000-07:00

Recently I wanted to set-up a PC as a web proxy. So client could browse the internet with the server IP address. As a web server software I used a great program 3Proxy.

Hardware setup and IP addresses

PC that runs 3Proxy has internal ip address 192.168.2.3 and connects to the internet via router. This is importang thing, because client can not access proxy server directly. You need to configure your router so client could connect. In my case I set up port mapping from external port 3128 to internal port 8080 and internal ip address 192.168.2.3. That is it. Incoming traffic from port 3128 is redirected to the 192.168.2.3:8080. Take a note of your router external IP address. Clients will use it. Assume, that external ip address is 10.1.2.3.

Proxy setup

internal 192.168.2.3
external 192.168.2.3
# internal and external addresses should be the same
# see http://3proxy.ru/faqe.asp

nserver 
nserver 
# DNS servers of your ISP

nscache 65536
# DNS cashe

auth none

log
allow *

proxy -p8080 -a
# set up anonymous proxy server to port 8080

Run 3Proxy. After this your can set-up your client's browser to access internet via proxy. Enter 10.1.2.3 (external IP of your router) as proxy address. Enter 3128 as proxy port.
Enjoy!

**** WARNING! **** The presented configuration does not secure your proxy. It should be used only for test purposes. The author is not responsible for how you use information from this post. Use at your own risk.

HOWTO: use LaTeX equations in other software (LaTeX2EPS)

2009-06-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

One possible solution to use LaTeX equation in other software is to create an EPS document with your equation.
I will explain how you can do this in Windows.

Let's create TeX file with name equation.tex:

\documentclass{minimal}

\begin{document}
$a = b \div c$
\end{document}

You can use additional packages in these document. As well as commands like \newcommand that could help you to shorten you equation writing.

Now you have two options to proceed.

You can use file dvi2eps.cmd

@echo off
SET USAGE=Usage: dvi2eps.cmd file_to_process
IF "%1" == "" (
 ECHO %USAGE%
 EXIT
)
echo Converting DVI to EPS
dvips -E -o "%~d1%~p1%~n1.eps" "%~dpnx1"

to process single .dvi file in command line. Save this file somewhere within PATH and run

> dvi2eps.cmd equation.dvi

Script creates file equation.eps in the same directory as equation.dvi.

Or you can setup a TeXnicCenter to output EPS files.

Save following text as file with .tco extension:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
<txcop:outputProfiles version="1" xmlns:txcop="http://schemas.ToolsCenter.org/TeXnicCenter/OutputProfiles.xsd">
 <outputProfileList>
  <outputProfile name="LaTeX=>DVI=>EPS" stopOnLatexError="false">
   <texCommand execute="true" path="latex.exe" arguments="--src -interaction=nonstopmode "%Wm""/>
   <bibTexCommand execute="false" path="" arguments=""/>
   <makeIndexCommand execute="false" path="" arguments=""/>
   <postProcessors>
    <processor name="DviPs (EPS)" path="dvips.exe" arguments="-E -o "%Bm.eps" "%bm.dvi"" inputFile="" outputFile=""/>
   </postProcessors>
   <viewer path="" closeBeforeCompilation="false">
    <viewProjectCommand type="commandLine">
     <commandLineCommand path="" arguments=""/>
     <ddeCommand path="" server="" topic="System" command=""/>
    </viewProjectCommand>
    <viewCurrentFileCommand type="commandLine">
     <commandLineCommand path="" arguments=""/>
     <ddeCommand path="" server="" topic="System" command=""/>
    </viewCurrentFileCommand>
    <viewCloseCommand type="commandLine">
     <commandLineCommand path="" arguments=""/>
     <ddeCommand path="" server="" topic="System" command=""/>
    </viewCloseCommand>
   </viewer>
  </outputProfile>
 </outputProfileList>
</txcop:outputProfiles>

Open TeXniCenter editor and go to the menu Build->Define Output Profiles...

Import file that you have created.

Adjust paths for LaTeX and DviPs executables.

HOWTO Play AVI videos reorded under Windows in QuickTime

2009-04-21T02:24:00.000-07:00

The problem is that if you record video in AVI format, then you can not watch it in QuickTime. Apple published document with information about Quicktime codecs.
Shortly, you need to change 2 instances of string ‘UYVY’ to ‘2vuy’ with you favourite hex editor.

Studio 2005: show current file in the solution explorer

2009-03-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Credits go to saraford:

On the Tools - Options - Projects and Solutions - General page, there's the Track Active Item in Solution Explorer. When enabled, this will sync your solution explorer with the open document.

I am surprised that this is not the default behavoiur.

HOWTO disable "beep" sound after changing the volume in Windows

2009-03-14T14:43:00.001-07:00

Having a laptop with Sigmatel sound card I was really frustrated about a very loud "beep" sound, which is played after changing the volume. I am quoting the steps to disable it from here:

1. Right-click on My Computer
2. On the Hardware tab, click on [Device Manager]
3. On the "View" menu, select "Show hidden devices"
4. Under "Non-Plug and Play Drivers", right-click "Beep"
5. Click "Disable"
6. Answer [Yes] when asked if you really want to disable it
7. Answer [No] when asked if you want to reboot
8. Right-click "Beep" again.
9. Click "Properties"
10. On the "Driver" tab, set the Startup type to Disabled
11. Click [Stop]
12. Click [OK]
13. Answer [No] when asked if you want to reboot

Run each explorer.exe in a separate process

2009-02-23T04:47:00.000-08:00

"When you cause a shell extension to be loaded by Explorer, it will stay in memory for a while, making it impossible to rebuild the DLL. To have Explorer unload extensions more often, create this registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AlwaysUnloadDLL

and set the default value to "1". On 9x, that's the best you can do. On NT, go to this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

and create a DWORD called DesktopProcess with a value of 1. This makes the desktop and Taskbar run in one process, and subsequent Explorer windows each run in its own process. This means that you can do your debugging with a single Explorer window, and when you close it, your DLL is automatically unloaded, avoiding any problems with the file being in use. You will need to log off and back on for these changes to take effect."

From the article "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Shell Extensions - Part I"

Visual Studio 2005 - Return to common Ctrl-Tab

2009-02-23T03:44:00.000-08:00

One can change default hotkeys under menu Tools -> Options > Environment > Keyboard
Window.*DocumentWindowNav - new awfull Ctrl-Tab
Window.*NextDocumentWindow - old Ctrl-Tab
* - Next or Previous