Java Control Panel in Vista

It seems that Java’s Control Panel needs administrator rights in order for some configurations to work, but when I need to configure settings for the current user, it becomes a pain in some part of the body.

Here’s how to open the Java control panel using the user account and not the administrator account:

1. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Java (where you installed Java)
   
   
2. Press F3 for search
3. Type in cpl and search for the file
4. You should see the cpl files used to launch the Java control panel
   
   
5. Double click on it to run it using the current user account
   
   
6. After doing what you need to do, when the applet closes, Vista might prompt to always open the cpl file using administrator rights. Say NO! (select “This control panel works correctly”)
   

To run it using administrator rights, instead of step 5, right click on the cpl file and select “Run as administrator”)

Prohibited Relationships

Interesting list from ROM's website: list of prohibited relationships/marriages.

With many people fighting over the homosexual issue (not as publicised now, thanks to state-controlled media), what would they say about this?

Going against the original design of humans is a bad idea really. It has always been put that way (e.g. marrying your mother).


Kindred and Affinity
Prohibited Degrees of Relationship

Prohibited Relationship for Man (Man cannot marry any of the following persons)	Prohibited Relationship for Woman (Woman cannot marry any of the following persons)
Mother	Father
Daughter	Son
Father's mother	Father's father
Mother's mother	Mother's father
Son's daughter	Son's son
Daughter's daughter	Daughter's son
Sister	Brother
Wife's mother	Husband's father
Wife's daughter	Husband's son
Father's wife	Mother's husband
Son's wife	Daughter's husband
Father's father's wife	Father's mother's husband
Mother's father's wife	Mother's mother's husband
Wife's father's mother	Husband's father's father
Wife's mother's mother	Husband's mother's father
Wife's son's daughter	Husband's son's son
Wife's daughter's daughter	Husband's daughter's son
Son's son's wife	Son's daughter's husband
Daughter's son's wife	Daughter's daughter's husband
Father's sister	Father's brother
Mother's sister	Mother's brother
Brother's daughter	Brother's son
Sister's daughter	Sister's son

DefCon 15 - T112 - No-Tech Hacking

A really good presentation, both in terms of content, and delivery ;) Johnny Long's talk on hacking without the use of "technology". The book is available on Amazon also (Kevin Mitnick's the series editor for this)

To troubleshoot a printer

[Dated 13/03/2008]

Yifen's printer had been giving her problems since last night: the paper refused to load into the printer and print. She thought that the printer was dead, and now we need to get another one.

When I looked at the printer, it really didn't load the paper in properly somehow, and it couldn't print as a result.

So in order to find out why the paper wasn't loading...
Tried to "guide" the paper in: failed.
Tried to open the front panel of the printer and look for jammed stuff inside: nothing found.

Thought the paper was too damp from the constant raining these few days, and thus becoming too soft to be loaded properly. =O Tried loading a different set of paper: failed.

Then I noticed that the paper was jamming in an odd (and consistent) way: it always tilted to the right when loading, before it stopped there. So the only reason left was that there's something jamming the printer from that end, on the left side...

Succumbing to desperation and curiosity, I put away my common sense and inserted my hand into the printer feeder's left portion (whilst it was trying to load more paper!), and as expected, I felt something furry in there...

Thought it was a dustball that was stuck there somehow. But it sure felt BIG. How could a dustball of such a size appear so suddenly? And in a printer?

I managed to grab an endge of the "dustball", hoping to pull it out to remove bit by bit, and guess what I found instead?

Some used tissue paper...that had somehow flown in and gotten lodged in the printer! -_-

Moral of the story: never leave used tissue paper lying around, especially on printers. Heh.

Stress-relief

If you can't read the text, it says: "Birds fly high, hard to catch. Friends like you, hard to forget!" A (primary school era) phrase in one of my colleague's childhood ;) Drawing is great for stress relief. Especially when the board was originally used for more work-related uses. I know my drawing is horrible, but I'm not Picasso! I'm an engineer!

Why not change the meaning somewhat? ;)

To further clarify the new meaning: I'm sure it would be really hard to forget this "friend", heh.

Microblogging

First blogging took the (inter-webs) world by storm, and it was one of the contributing forces towards the change in how the internet is used.

Next up: micro-blogging. Where you can blog even easier, wherever you are. I'm trying out Twitter if you noticed, but don't expect me to put on it stuff like where I am, or the time I go to the toilet, etc etc etc. (sorry stalkers)

It'd be interesting to see alternative uses for it though, one I can think of is for it to be a command and control channel for botnets (coming from the idea that social bookmarking sites can be used for such nefarious purposes also; I can't remember where I read that from..). ;)

Mom fell pretty sick today, quite worried for a while when she was finally forced to see doc, but was too weak to go alone (in case anything happened along the way).

To cut a long story short, it turned out to be a bout of flu that got her, so with the right medicine and rest she should be fine...

Though things (relationally) haven't been mended much since months ago when things just went (really) crazy, it's generally always easier to take care of someone when he/she's down, this incident included. But the tough part will be to honour your parents out of reverence for Christ when things are "normal" again, where she recovers from her sickness and things go back into the aftermath kind of situation.

Not to say that I'm perfectly able to do the "tough" things here: in fact, I'm going to need all the help (divine, or indirect) I can get to do this rightly and properly.

TR: Up to one billion RFID access cards could be affected by hack

From TechRepublic blogs.

Send e-mail with your Cisco router

A helpful tool network admins could use for alerting: configuring your Cisco router to send emails.

10 traits to look for when you’re hiring a programmer

From TechRepublic's blogs. ;)