James McDonald

Just had a situation where a user couldn't open a 9MB excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet had heaps of formulas and links. When opening Excel sat there with (Not Responding) in the Title Bar. Attempted a few things in an attempt to fault find the problem: Tried...

I keep having to Google how to discover the correct MTU for a link so I'm going to blog about it to save the effort. The command to test for the MTU in Linux is: ping -M do -s <bytes> <ip address> First a succesful MTU test ping: ping -M do -s 1372...

This is what I did (you need to have wget installed first. i.e su -c "yum install wget") # as root do the following cd /etc/yum.repos.d wget -nd http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/chromium/fedora-chromium-stable.repo yum update yum install chromium

I don't use TeX much, but I am a fan of professional quality opensource typesetting and document layout. So sometimes when I try to make a TeX document I end up in a corner wondering how to do something. Just discovered this ==> link http://tex.stackexchange.com/....

Test Date: Jul 6, 2011 11:32:50 pm Connection Type: Wifi Server: Sydney Download: 6696 kbps Upload: 765 kbps Ping: 81 ms  External IP: 58.168.70.107 Internal IP: 10.254.239.101 Latitude: -32.72635 Longitude: 151.53099  A detailed image for this result can be found...

Today I tried to add a firewall rule in Windows 2008 using syntax such as 1024-2000 and got an error message saying that I had to specify the ports correctly. Seems that it doesn't allow an inclusive range but you need to specify each port individually such as...

It's been years since I was on the certifications treadmill. The MCSE, CCNA and CCA certs that I got are so long in the past that the knowledge gained by passing them has diminished in relevance and usefulness. Not that attaining certifications is pointless. If you...

I created this howto a while ago. How to password protect files by saving them as PDF's using Open Office. Note: The file must be in Open Document or a format that Openoffice can read. And then: Using Openoffice. Open the file you want to password protect. Click File...

Just had a strangely unresponsive banshee not allowing me to click on other songs while one was already playing. (In my case banshee was downloading album art at the same time I was trying to switch tracks). Did the sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade...

Currently at the Apple store in Charlestown Square on a Mac.... nice cable-less computer... my wife would love one (less mess). My wife is buying an iPhone (sigh).... We are going to be a split smartphone household as I have an Android (HTC Desire). Oh well. Anything...

Just had a learning experience. Virtualbox-ose (4.04) on Ubuntu 11.04 will not allow the Fedora 15 Guest Additions to Install successfully. I had to download Virtualbox-4.0 (4.08) from from the http://www.virtualbox.org site and the guest additions installed and...

So I have managed to put together my new computer and install Ubuntu 11.04. Some things that I have found. My Samsung SyncMaster 910T monitor does not work with the new computer. I can't see the BIOS boot screen when booting up. I get a floating incorrect...

OK so finally after 6 years of having a P4. I am getting a new Desktop Computer for home. The dream: Is to have a reasonably fast CPU capable of running Virtual Machines (VT-x) which will let the VM's talk more directly to the hardware (VT-d) with enough RAM to load...

Just used http://speedtest.net/ to do a speed test. I usually use ozspeedtest.com but for some reason it's giving inaccurate results. This is probably because I have dansguardian doing virus scanning of the download and then it sends it in a hurry after it has...

Adding to my previous Online PC Parts Sellers List Here is another PC Case Gear

OK so I've had this blog forever and I've been watching the traffic climb slowly but surely as people use the tech-tips and content. It's hovering between 150-300 per day. So I'm thinking maybe I should place some ads on the site and hopefully generate a small amount...