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Kirsle.net http://www.kirsle.net/ The web blog of Kirsle en Copyright 2012, Kirsle.net Sun, 5 Feb 2012 00:18:05 GMT Sun, 5 Feb 2012 00:18:05 GMT root@kirsle.net Kirsle.net http://www.kirsle.net/static/avatars/casey.png http://www.kirsle.net/ 96 96 Kirsle's Avatar Force MSN Messenger to Use a Proxy http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/force-msn-messenger-to-use-a-proxy For anybody wanting to know how to do this, it's possible to force Windows Live Messenger to obey your proxy settings. In my case I wanted MSN 2011 to connect using a socks proxy (using <a href="/blog/kirsle/ssh-port-forwarding">SSH port forwarding</a> to use an SSH tunnel as SOCKS 5 proxy). To set the proxy settings, go to the "Connection" page in the preferences of MSN Messenger, click Advanced Settings and enter your proxy details. The problem is, MSN will only use your proxy settings if it can't normally connect to MSN without them (i.e. if your default TCP internet connection will work, MSN will always use that instead of your proxy settings). This is how you can force MSN to use the proxy settings. You have to block MSN from being able to connect to its authentication servers without the proxy. To do this, we have to tamper with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_%28file%29">Hosts file</a>. The Hosts file on Windows is kept at <code>C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts</code> (note that it doesn't have a file extension). Open this in a text editor like Notepad or the <code>edit</code> command in Command Prompt (I prefer the latter approach because you can open a Command Prompt window as Administrator and then editing the file is a snap without having to deal with permission issues when saving changes). Add these lines to the Hosts file: <pre>127.0.0.1 messenger.hotmail.com 127.0.0.1 msgr.hotmail.com 127.0.0.1 gateway.messenger.hotmail.com 127.0.0.1 login.gateway.hotmail.com</pre> And then restart MSN and it should have difficulty connecting without the proxy settings (if using a SOCKS proxy, attempt to sign into MSN before you open the proxy to be sure that it fails to connect. Then start the proxy and see that it successfully signs in). This works by routing all the MSN Messenger hostnames to the loopback address and blocks MSN from being able to authenticate. But with the SOCKS proxy, it can connect because it would do the DNS lookups from the SSH server instead of the local system. Hope this helps someone! Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:33:45 GMT VirtualBox Scale Mode http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/virtualbox-scale-mode Updated: added pictures. Bumped the timestamp to make this post new again. I don't know how I missed this, but apparently <a href="http://www.virtualbox.org/">VirtualBox</a> finally supports a "Scale Mode." I've always wanted this feature. Why, you ask? One easy example is for running an old operating system (older than Windows 2000) that isn't supported by VirtualBox, so that there are no Guest Additions for it. Guest Additions for supported OS's install extra drivers for the virtual machine, so that when you put VirtualBox into "Full Screen" mode, the guest OS will automatically increase its screen resolution to fit your display. When it can't do that, it will just display the screen at its literal resolution and put a black margin to fill in the extra space. Here is an expertly Photoshopped demonstration of what I'm talking about. If you were running a Windows 3.1 virtual machine at an 800x600 screen resolution, and you put the VM full-screen, this is what it would look like on your 1366x768 monitor: [image] Another example: even on supported guests, running an older game like Starcraft (which runs in a resolution of 640x480) had this problem too: if the VM is running Full Screen and you start Starcraft... instead of the game's display stretching across your whole monitor, it stays at 640x480 pixels and is centered on the screen. This sucks. So it seems VirtualBox has finally added Scale Mode (available in the "Machine" menu along side Full Screen and Seamless modes). There's one quirk to it, though: Scale Mode and Full Screen don't work together. On my system, going into Scale Mode put the virtual machine into a window on my screen. This window could be maximized, but it couldn't be made full screen. So that sorta sucks. Luckily, my Linux window manager (xfwm4, the window manager of the <a href="http://xfce.org/">XFCE desktop environment</a>) supports putting any window full screen, whether the window wants it or not. This means the window decorations are taken away and the contents of the window are resized to fill the display. Success! I can now run full screen, scaled resolution guest operating systems. [image] [image] Scale mode with xfwm4's full-screen option gives you a "native" experience. Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:56:42 GMT Xfce for Gnome 2 Refugees http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/xfce-for-gnome-2-refugees Ever since I jumped ship from Gnome to Xfce a few years ago when <a href="/blog/kirsle/category/Gnome%203">Gnome 3/Shell</a> was first announced, I've configured my Xfce desktops to strongly resemble the standard Gnome 2 panel layout. <a href="/creativity/articles/xfce-gnome2.png">[image]</a> Click the screenshot for the full size version. Along the top panel I have my Applications and Places menus, app launchers for my commonly used programs, my CPU usage graph, notification area and clock. On the bottom panel are my task bar and workspace switcher. These are all standard Xfce panel applets. The details for anyone who's interested (the only panel applet options shown are the ones that differ from the default options): <ul> <li>Top Panel: Orientation: Horizontal Size (pixels): 24 Length (%): 100 <ul> <li>Applications Menu Button title: Applications Icon: a Fedora icon in /usr/share/pixmaps...</li> <li>Places Menu Show: Label Only Label: Places</li> <li>Separator</li> <li>Many Launcher applets for my commonly used programs</li> <li>Separator Style: Transparent Expand: checked</li> <li>Brightness plugin</li> <li>Screenshot</li> <li>CPU Graph: Background: black Width: 48 Show frame: checked Show border: unchecked</li> <li>Separator</li> <li>Notification Area</li> <li>Separator</li> <li>DateTime: Layout Format: Date Only Date Format: Custom: %a %b %e, %l:%M %p The DateTime applet has a drop-down calendar, unlike the normal Clock applet.</li> </ul> </li> <li>Bottom Panel: Orientation: Horizontal Size (pixels): 24 Length (%): 100 <ul> <li>Window Buttons</li> <li>Workspace Switcher</li> </ul> </li> </ul> So, any Gnome 2 refugees who can't stand Gnome 3... Xfce 4.8 is a very good option and you can configure it to look and feel just like Gnome 2. [image] Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:42:39 GMT Sequence Breaking http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/sequence-breaking I spent most of the day today toying around with Pokemon FireRed Version - trying to sequence break it, mostly. [image] Originally, I wanted to see what would happen if you got to Fuchsia City without having taken one of the fossils from Mt. Moon... because in the Fuchsia City Zoo, there will be either an Omanyte or a Kabuto there -- the opposite fossil from the one you chose early in the game. So I wanted to see what the game would do... But then I realized that, Fuchsia City is the perfect city to start the game in because, while there's a steep difficulty curve to get your bearings, you can actually continue the game from there and get back on track. This can't be said of all the other cities (especially Cinnabar Island). I've divided my whole quest up into four parts, complete with screenshots. <a href="/firered">Read about my sequence breaking quest here.</a> Sun, 30 Oct 2011 04:30:14 GMT Google Voice for Firefox http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/google-voice-for-firefox Just a simple little way to get Google Voice notifications if you're a Firefox user... and it doesn't even involve any add-ons. [image] How to do it: simply go to the Google Voice website (<a href="https://www.google.com/voice">https://www.google.com/voice</a>), then right click on the tab and click "Pin as App Tab." In Firefox, if a pinned tab changes its page title (to put a "(1)" in it for example), the tab will highlight as its attempt to notify you that something has changed. So if you're a Google Voice user and you want to know when somebody texts you but you don't want to use Google Chrome, this method is easy and works pretty well. Incidentally, if you pin Facebook, its tab will also highlight if you get new messages or notifications. It works on any web page that notifies you by changing its page title. Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:06:01 GMT Pidgin Theme: Native Emoticons http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/pidgin-theme-native-emoticons I've put together an emoticon theme for Pidgin that uses the native emoticons for AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messengers. AIM emoticons use the shiny yellow version from AIM 7: [image] MSN uses the standard emoticons up through Windows Live Messenger 2009, and Yahoo uses the usual native Yahoo icons. Download: <a href="/download?project=Themes&file=Pidgin-Native-Icons-1.0.tar.gz">Pidgin-Native-Icons-1.0.tar.gz</a> (211 KB) Sun, 9 Oct 2011 22:08:36 GMT Perl -T http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/perl-t I've now enabled <a href="http://gunther.web66.com/FAQS/taintmode.html">Taint Mode</a> on my Siikir CMS, for Kirsle.net, Siikir.com and RiveScript.com (which now runs the Siikir code as well). Fortunately it wasn't too difficult to fix my code for taint mode to work. I was already centralizing my various string filtering functions to a small handful, which just needed to untaint the strings before returning them. Then it was just a matter of making sure I ran these filters everywhere that a user ID gets passed into a function (I was relying on the fact that my <code>userExists()</code> check would fail if you give a bad user ID number, but the variable was technically still tainted so I had to fix that properly). I've thoroughly tested all areas of my sites to make sure nothing broke. Hopefully I didn't miss any. [image] Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:51:15 GMT Android - MMS Without Data http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/android-mms-without-data Today I finally decided to break up with T-Mobile and take my number and Nexus One phone to AT&T, as a prepaid phone (tl;dr - I'm tired of cell phone ISPs locking people in to contracts and then they can't do anything about it when the ISP changes their plans around). My Nexus One was originally for T-Mobile's network, so it doesn't work with the 3G on AT&T's... but that's fine because my AT&T plan doesn't include data. But, my phone can still use AT&T's Edge network. I don't want any random background apps using the Edge network and costing me usage fees when I'm out and about. But, if I disable Mobile Data altogether, picture messaging (MMS) stops working too. So after a lot of searching around I seem to have found a way to disable the mobile network for all apps, but still allow MMS to be sent/received using it. On my Nexus One, from the home screen: <ol> <li>Push the menu button and pick Settings</li> <li>Pick "Wireless & networks"</li> <li>Pick "Mobile networks"</li> <li>Make sure "Data enabled" is checked (MMS won't work either if you disable it here!)</li> <li>Go to "Access Point Names" <ul> <li>On my phone, the only APN here was named "ATT (wap.cingular)"</li> </ul></li> <li>Scroll down to the "APN type" setting. <ul> <li>On my phone, the original value for this setting was "default,supl,mms"</li> </ul></li> <li>Change its value to be only "mms".</li> <li>Push the menu button and pick "Save."</li> </ol> After this, I tested it. I was able to send and receive MMS messages (which turned on the Edge network notification), but apps like Facebook, Google+, and the mobile web browser all complained that I didn't have an Internet connection. <acronym title="Your Mileage May Vary">YMMV</acronym>. Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:35:44 GMT Gnome Panels for Windows XP http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/gnome-panels-for-windows-xp I know this information is pretty outdated nowadays, as it only works with Windows XP and older. But it's something I discovered a few years ago: How to get a Gnome-like panel layout on Windows XP (and Windows 2000 and some older versions as well). Here's what the end result will look like: <a href="/creativity/articles/gnome-xp.png"> [image] </a> Click for a bigger screenshot (800x600). The how-to: <ol> <li>First, set your window theme to "Windows Classic" mode. It looks better this way. <ol> <li>Right click the desktop, go to Properties.</li> <li>On the "Appearance" tab, change the style to "Windows Classic."</li> <li>Click Apply, then OK.</li> </ol> </li> <li>Right click the task bar and make sure "Lock the task bar" is unchecked.</li> <li>Create some folders in My Documents to hold your panel icons and menus. Recommended folder names: <ul> <li>Applications</li> <li>Places</li> <li>Launchers</li> </ul></li> <li>Fill these folders with shortcuts to your favorite programs (you may want to put additional folders under Applications to organize them).</li> <li>Right click the task bar and go to "Toolbars -> New Toolbar...", browse to your Launchers folder and select it.</li> <li>Grab the handle for your new Launchers toolbar and drag it onto your desktop. This creates a floating window. Now drag the window by its title bar to the top of the screen. This will dock it on the top (resize it vertically so it's as small as it can be).</li> <li>Right click your new panel and make sure "Show title" and "Show names" is unchecked, so that all that's on the panel are icons (just like how the Quick Launch toolbar usually looks).</li> <li>Right click the panel and add new toolbars for your Applications and Places folders too. Rearrange the toolbars so that only the titles of the new toolbars are visible, with a drop down menu.</li> </ol> And there you have it. In your Places menu you can create shortcuts to all your drives in My Computer. It won't dynamically update like on Gnome but it should still work pretty well. Right click the panel and choose "Always on top" and your panel will always be visible even when you have a maximized window open. This doesn't work on Windows Vista or Windows 7, because toolbars aren't allowed to be separated from the task bar anymore in these systems. [image] Sat, 3 Sep 2011 03:44:13 GMT Run Fonality HUD on Linux with Wine http://www.kirsle.net/blog/kirsle/run-fonality-hud-on-linux-with-wine Disclaimer: running <a href="http://www.fonality.com/product/fonality-hud">Fonality HUD</a> on Linux isn't supported by Fonality. The only supported platforms for HUD are Windows and Mac OS X. So, if you can't get HUD to run on Linux, don't call tech support about it because it's not supported. That being said, here's how to get Fonality HUD to run on Linux using <a href="http://winehq.org/">Wine</a> (a compatibility layer that runs Windows executables on non-Windows platforms). There are two methods: using your system version of Wine, or use <a href="http://www.playonlinux.com/en/">PlayOnLinux</a> which can manage multiple versions of Wine for you. <h2>Using your system Wine</h2> 1) Install Wine <pre># For Fedora/RedHat users $ sudo yum install wine # For Ubuntu users $ sudo apt-get install wine</pre> 2) Install Java Runtime Environment in Wine I recommend creating a new wine prefix specifically for HUD, just to keep it separate from any other Wine apps you may use. HUD will require the Java Runtime Environment to be installed. The installer for HUD will normally try to install this automatically, but in my experience the installer might not work, so it's best to get Java manually. Get the Windows JRE installer from <a href="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre-6u25-download-346243.html">here</a> (or else Google it). I've had better luck using the Offline installer so I recommend using that. Install Java in your wine prefix: <pre># Using a wine prefix: $ mkdir ~/.HUD3 $ env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.HUD3" wine jre-6u25-windows-i586.exe # Not using a wine prefix: $ wine jre-6u25-windows-i586.exe</pre> 3) Install HUD Now use Wine to run the HUD installer. <pre># Using a wine prefix: $ env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.HUD3" wine hud-*.exe # Not using a wine prefix: $ wine hud-*.exe</pre> The launchers for HUD in the menu may or may not work, if you have trouble with them I recommend just creating your own launcher. These details should work fine: <ul> <li>Command: <pre>env WINEPREFIX="/home/<ins>kirsle</ins>/.HUD3" wine 'C:\Program Files\Fonality\HUD3.5\HUD.exe'</pre></li> <li>Working directory: /home/<ins>kirsle</ins>/.HUD3/drive_c/Program Files/Fonality/HUD3.5</li> </ul> Be sure to substitute your real home directory there. The icon for HUD will probably be found somewhere under your <code>~/.local/share/icons</code> folder, so browse around for it. Now hopefully everything should "just work." If not, you may need to use PlayOnLinux instead, because sometimes particular Wine versions don't get along very well with HUD. <h2>Using PlayOnLinux</h2> This will be similar to the above steps, but we'll be using PlayOnLinux so we can use a Wine version that's different than the system one. 1) Get PlayOnLinux Visit <a href="http://www.playonlinux.com/en/">PlayOnLinux.com</a> and install it. 2) Begin installing HUD 1. In the PlayOnLinux window, click "Install" 2. Click "Install a .pol package or an unsupported application" at the bottom of the Install window 3. Choose "Manual Installation" 4. "Install a program in a new wine prefix" 5. Name it "HUD3" 6. Check "Assign a Wine version to the program" 7. Select a Wine version to use. You can manage and download Wine versions from PlayOnLinux by going to "Tools -> Manage Wine Versions" from the main window. 8. It will create the wine prefix. 3) Install Java For now, ignore the PlayOnLinux window. Get the Java JRE installer, and install it under the wine prefix created by PlayOnLinux: <pre>$ env WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.PlayOnLinux/wineprefix/HUD3" wine jre-6u25-windows-i586.exe</pre> 4) Continue installing HUD in PlayOnLinux Go back to the PlayOnLinux window and continue following the prompts. Browse to the HUD installer when it asks. If it asks you to "Choose a file to exec the game", browse to the HUD3.exe from the installed application. <h2>Caveats</h2> This will get HUD running on Linux. It won't be perfect, and may have some bugs and crash from time to time, but for the most part it works really well. I use it every day. Some common bugs I've found and how to work around them: <ul> <li>I can't type anything! Sometimes the HUD window thinks the Alt key was pressed and the menu is activated so you can't type anything in text boxes. I usually just tap the Alt key (to select the menu) and then hit Escape, and then I'm good to go.</li> <li>Clipping when dragging the main window around On Wine 1.1.38 when I'd drag the main window around, the window would be "clipped" - it was as though the shape of the window wasn't moving, but the window itself was, so it looked weird. But using the Alt+Click to drag feature of my window manager (which is present on the GNOME and XFCE desktop environments) would let me move the entire window with no clipping.</li> </ul> And, again, running HUD on Linux is NOT SUPPORTED. You're on your own. Tue, 16 Aug 2011 23:25:29 GMT