Utilities and Tools

I use avast 4 (home) for my virus protection. I frequently found that when running an ASP.NET application locally that sent mail via an external SMTP address, avast would get in the way and either slow the process down to a crawl, or cause a timeout and prevent the mail from going out. My temporary solution was to simply disable outbound email scanning while I was doing some local debugging.

Today I had a few minutes and thought I would find a more permanent solution. I dug through the various options in the Internet Mail scanner section, but didn't find anything that seemed to apply. I could choose to not scan by port or IP, but this external SMTP is my primary SMTP, so that's not a good solution either. After searching on the Avast forums, I discovered a "hidden" setting that has to be keyed directly into the avast4.ini file.

Open your avast4.ini file (default location is c:\program files\alwil software\avast4\data) and find a section called [MailScanner]. Right under that heading, add the following new line:

IgnoreProcess=aspnet_wp.exe

Save and it takes effect immediately without a reboot or avast restart. You could comma separate additional values if you have other processes you'd like to exclude.

Posted under the influence of [[Stereolab::Hallucinex]]

I'm currently in the process of setting up a new laptop at home, and high up on the list of priorities is installing Firefox with my must-have extensions. There are a couple I could name in my sleep, but there are others I always hunt and peck for until I finally track them down. Below I have documented the extensions I use not only for my own reference, but also to share with others as well. They are listed in order from most amazing to simply just amazing.

1. Web Developer
2. All-in-one Gestures
3. Super DragAndGo
4. Firebug
5. User Agent Switcher

I have not bothered with version numbers and links since those things tend to change over time. If you visit the Mozilla Extensions Gallery you will easily be able to find these with a simple text search.
One final note: These extensions are provided free of charge by developers. If you find them as valuable as I do, please consider a small donation to the extension's developer.

Here's my setup: I have a Windows file server at my office, with well nigh 50GB of mp3s. I use iTunes on my iMac (also at the office) to manage and play those mp3s. I've grown quite fond of iTunes and it is my mp3 player of choice. I've always wanted to be able to tap into that iTunes library (and all it's many well-designed playlists) from my home computers. iTunes 4 introduced a feature called 'iTunes Music Sharing' which lets you do just that. The only catch is that it does not work outside the local subnet, undoubtedly to prevent piracy or abuse.

From home, both my iBook and my Windows laptop have access to the work LAN via a VPN. Just as expected, my shared library at work does not show up on either of my home PCs. I really wanted to find a way around this, and at first I did, albeit only a partial solution. There was an OS X app called Rendezvous Beacon (now Network Beacon), that serves as a proxy for Rendezvous traffic. [Rendezvous is the technology that enables iTunes Music Sharing, among other things.] This app worked great, but only with my iBook.

Today, I found a Java-based app that works on Windows and OS X. It's called Rendezvous-Proxy, and it works beautifully. Now, from either my iBook or my Windows laptop at home, I can fire up my iTunes library (all 11,000 songs) at the office and use it as if it were local. I must say too, that I was absolutely amazed at how efficiently it operates. Even with 11,000+ songs, I can filter and sort in realtime. Clicking Play usually offers no more than a one or two second delay until the song begins playing.

Couple all this cool technology with the Airport Express I picked up last night, and I have a pretty cool music setup at home now.

Posted under the influence of [[Deviates :: Come With Me]]

Occassionally, there will be a pesky application that simply does not properly uninstall. It may list itself in the Add/Remove control panel, but clicking on the option to remove it generates an error and the program remains. I had a customer recently experience this behavior with Quicken 2003 for Windows. What's more, they couldn't install Quicken 2004 until Quicken 2003 was properly uninstalled.

Microsoft provides a "cleanup tool" for applications in this predicament. Download it and give it a try. Proceed with caution though. Definitely read the instructions on this one, or else you could find yourself wiping out far more than one application.

Posted under the influence of [[The Cure :: Pictures of You]]

Open relays are very bad things. They are responsible for a very large chunk of the spam that haunts your inbox every day. Often, they are created through incompentence, not maliciousness. Either someone is running a mail server in their home as a hobby and doesn't know what they're doing, or even worse, a for-profit hosting company has hired people who should know what they're doing, but don't.

If you are indifferent to whether or not your mail server is an open relay, you are walking a very dangerously fine line. Why? Well, spam reduction is becoming quite a profitable industry. Companies are scrambling to reduce the amount of spam that gets to their clients and employees. One easy way for them to do this is to block any and all mail that passes through an open relay. How would the average user know if the piece of mail they received is coming through an open relay? Well, they wouldn't. But there are tools that will automatically figure it out for them, and block mail accordingly. If you happen to have a mail account on a server hosted by a company with open relays, you may soon have your legitimate mail blocked by a wide variety of people. You may get an email message bounced back to you with a link to a site like this. You will want to correct this as soon as possible.

My advice is to not wait until you get a message like this. Instead, there are tools online that let you test your mail server.

What happens if you find out you have an open relay? This page has detailed information on how to secure every flavor of mail server on a wide variety of platforms. You can thank me later.

Posted under the influence of [[FantömasMelvinsBigBand :: Terpulative Guns & Drugs]]

I was trying to figure out how to get this blog to trackback to another blog entry I found. Apparently, Serendipity does it automatically, and the other guy's trackback system just isn't working. However, in the struggle, I discovered a neat online tool that allows you to manually submit a trackback ping.

It's called Simpletracks. Give it a whirl.

Posted under the influence of [[L7 :: Questioning My Sanity]]