Tag: Tech

  • WRECK (WordPress Regular Expression Comment Killer)

    IMPORTANT: The plugin described below has not been updated or tested in many years. Use at your own risk. In my ongoing battle against comment spam, I have finally decided to write myself a WordPress plugin as an additional layer of defense. It’s called WRECK (WordPress Regular Expression Comment Killer). WRECK (WordPress Regular Expression Comment…

  • An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

    Techmeme linked me to this amazing Bill Gates e-mail rant. It’s gratifying to know that even the creator of the operating system finds it infuriating, especially when it just took me 10 minutes to reconnect my old laptop to my 802.11g (WiFi) network. I mistyped the WEP key, allegedly, either in the first box or…

  • A Backup Solution that Works on Vista

    I detailed here the problems I had trying to craft a script-based backup solution using vshadow and robocopy. I never did figure it out, even after a BIOS upgrade and hours and hours on various forums. I ended up downloading a trial of SyncBack SE, which has worked very well so far, even with open…

  • Errors in VShadow.exe

    Alright, all you Windows geeks: I need help. I tried to implement a backup script that uses a number of Microsoft tools. I keep getting errors that look like this: ERROR: Selected writer ‘ASR Writer’ is in failed state! – Status: 7 (VSS_WS_FAILED_AT_PREPARE_BACKUP) – Writer Failure code: 0x800423f4 () – Writer ID: {be000cbe-11fe-4426-9c58-531aa6355fc4} – Instance…

  • Tip of the Day: Word Shortcut to Paste Unformatted Text

    If you are not familiar with the “Paste Special” options in Word, you should read this article. If you are already familiar with it, but find it frustrating that there’s no shortcut, you should definitely read this article. Paste Special Unformatted Text At Your Fingertips [ed.: link updated to an archived link because the original was…