My Monkey Do

A Log of Coding Solutions

Tools

Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750

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Opened the box, saw the instructions written on the inside cover of the box (nice simple pictures), plugged it in and it worked. No software needed to install, no charging, just worked. The keyboard can work with minimal inside light (i opened it at night).
The feel and sound of the keyboard is similar to a macbook keyboard. It has a little curve in the keys though so it’s easier to feel for the center of the key. I like the keypad and the Insert/Home/Page Up key section. I’m a programmer and I’m used to using the Home/End buttons to get to the end or start of a line or page while typing.

My desktop is on the ground below my wooden desk and the receiver plugs into the back of my desktop.  It’s a good 3 feet away from the keyboard with the desk in the way. The keyboard works fine with this setup. It’s a lot better than the old mini receiver Logitech used to have where it needed to be on the desk for it to work good.

K750 Solar Keyboard is green in more ways than one. It doesn’t have batteries of course. It also doesn’t have loose paper instructions. They write all instructions and info on the inside of the box. If you need more instructions, they give a website to go to to get a pdf.

My only gripe is that it doesn’t work with a mac. It has to be Windows as stated on the box.

I think the Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 is the best keyboard I ever bought.  It seems to let me type faster once I got used to it.

Weblog Expert

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Problem

A client had wanted Google Analytics on their site a few months back so they asked me to put it in their website.  I thought I had, and I did, locally, but for one reason or another, it was not on the server.  The client depends on this report to get funding so I needed a way to get some type of statistics for the past few months.

 

Solution

GoDaddy, where the website is hosted, offers Statistics on traffic for free.  However, you need to enable this for it to start tracking.  Searching high and low I wanted to get access to the Apache Logs so I could use a tool like AWStats.  Through google I found GoDaddy’s help and saw that you can see Apache Logs in your FTP File Manager.  So I downloaded it.

A friend ran across Weblog Expert as I was retrieving the files.  I decided to try it since my last memory of AWStats was spending hours trying to find the right paths to enter into the config file.  Weblog Expert Lite is free and contains enough features for me to use.

I downloaded Weblog Expert Lite, installed it (it is a client installed on your local PC), created a new profile, selected the folder with all the downloaded logs.  Presto!  the reports were created and I was out of hot water.  So much simpler than AWStats.

 

PuTTY

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PuTTY and its related tools are a free version of Telnet and SSH for windows.  It has been available since 1999 and I have heard about it since way back then, but I haven’t had a real need for it until just recently.  I used to use the SSH Secure Shell commercial client, but since that is technically not free to use for non-commercial use I decided to switch.

Uses for me

  • Login through SSH using Public Key authentication
  • Converts a Linux private key to a PC-usable key
  • SCP and SFTP clients

Download

PuTTY can be found here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Open Source Licenses

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Originally published by Zack Rusin, found by using the WayBack Machine. I am not a lawyer and do not know legal stuff.  I posted this here for my reference and in case the wayback machine loses the page.  If this posting itself violates some kind of license let me know and I’ll take it down since I have no clue about licenses. The information here may or may not be out of date. Take it as a starting point to find out the differences between the licenses.

 

http://mymonkeydo.com/example/open_source_licenses.html

Diff Merge

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DiffMerge is an application to visually compare and merge files within Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.  Best of all it is free! as in it’s free for you to use, you don’t need to pay anything, ever.  This is a very useful tool when you are trying to find a differences between two files.  You can use it as an external tool for CVS or SVN when diff-ing multiple versions.  Other features include:

  • Graphically shows differences between two files
  • Side by side comparison between two folders
  • Right click and compare two files in Windows Explorer
  • Configurable
  • Compatible with 42 different encodings
  • Cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux)

The best feature that makes DiffMerge stand out against the rest of the diff tools is their Folder Diff.  I work on a project I work on multiple files at a time and I loose track of what file I touched.  If I ever need to see the changes I’ve made in an entire folder, DiffMerge can easily show me that.

DiffMerge can be downloaded here: http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/index.html

TrueCrypt

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TrueCrypt is an amazing free open source tool that allows you to encrypt files very easily.  Anyone can do it as long as you can remember your password.  It acts like another drive on your computer so you can view edit and delete the files as if it’s a normal drive.  Any files copied into the “drive” gets encrypted on the fly.  Once you’re done with the files you can dismount the drive and that’s it.  Best of all you can transfer the “drive” from a Mac to a PC without any hiccups.

Usage

I have company passwords that I share with a few other people.  Some are on Macs, some are on PC.  We don’t have an intranet or local server so what we do is we store all of our passwords in a TrueCrypt file which is stored on Google Docs.  That way all of us have access to it and if the file were to be compromised the file would be of no use without the file’s password.

So my typical usage of this is:

  1. Download the TrueCrypt file from Google Docs
  2. Open TrueCrypt
  3. Select the file in TrueCrypt
  4. Click a button and type in the password.
  5. View/edit/whatever to the files within what appears as another drive.
  6. Click on Dismount when done.
  7. Reupload the TrueCrypt file to Google Docs.

Looks like a lot of steps, but I just listed out each and every button press.  Anyway if you want to know more, you can head on to TrueCrypt’s website.