Ruben’s blog

The correct way to write a link to a Windows UNC path in HTML is to use this syntax:

file://///servername/share/file.txt

But if you try this using Firefox you will quickly find that this type of link only works when using a local html file. If you put the html file in a web server an click on the link there, firefox will silently refuse to load the link. If you open the JavaScript Console (Tools->Error Console) you will find an entry like

Security Error: Content at http://... may not load or link to file://...

As stated here and here, firefox will silently refuse to load file:// links from html pages (loaded via http://) as it is considered a security flaw to do so. Currently, firefox users must right-click the link and select “Copy Link Location” and then paste it to the Location Bar.

Diskeeper and PerfectDisk are main leading Windows defragmenting tools in the market. The hard disk in my Windows XP machine is heavily fragmented and the MS built-in defragmenter doesn’t help very much so I decide to take a look into the commercial defragmenter tools out there.

First I tried Diskeeper because I found that the Windows built-in defragmentation tool contains code licensed from Executive Software (the makers of Diskeeper). I thought that being licensed by Microsoft was a good sign but… Diskeeper like the built-in tool is a multi-pass defragmenter. That means that if you run it one time (or two or three for that matter) the hard drive will not end fully defragmented. You need to execute it periodically over a long term to end up with a fully defragmented drive. And it doesn’t consolidates free space. Diskeeper says that those two things are not important because drive performance is not affected. Doing it that way they consume less resources which is good but I found very frustrating to execute a defragmenter and end up with a slightly less fragmented disk I want a full defragmentation now!.

Then I tried PerfectDisk, for me it’s better. One pass defragmentation and free space consolidation that’s what I want. Now the disk map looks much better. Everything is defragmented and all the free space is grouped at the end of the disk.

The only thing I miss from Diskeeper is the background defragmentation. Diskeeper runs a service that continuously search fragmented files and defrag them. I found that interesting but at the end I prefer the PerfectDisk way of working: you schedule the defragmentation once a week or once a month and PerfectDisk will start automatically.

Add Command Prompt Here Shortcut to Windows Explorer

Very useful. It adds a “Command Promp” to the right-click menu in windows to open cmd.exe in the selected folder.

I’ve lost my ability to see my c: drive from cygwin. when I do

cd c:

or

cd /cygdrive/c

all goes ok. But if I do

ls

then it complains

ecerulm@rlm-ecb4fe6cda1 /cygdrive/c $ ls ls: reading directory .: No such file or directory

I found something at this forum and also here So it seems that I screwed up permission (maybe it related to some automatic windows update). So after checking my username and group are the right on with

id

I notice that I can perform

cd /cygdrive/c/Documents\ And\ Settings

and see the contents of that directory so I must be some problem with the permission at the root folder c:

So I right-click the c drive and click on Properties. In the security tab added permission to “Read & execute” to Everyone but I didn’t solve the problem so I guess I have to live with this little anoyance.

Continuing with my previous post 1 , 2 …. I wrote a little script that I run every day via Windows Scheduled tasks. The script adjust the volume and EQ setting of all the podcasts and audiobooks everyday to update the just downloaded podcast. I find hard to listen to podcast and audiobook at the gym (that’s were I hear the podcast/audiobok) at the standard volume so I like to adjust the volume +100% and change the EQ setting to “Spoken word”.

Save the file adjustvolume.js and make sure that file extension is handled by wscript.exe. The file association windows should look like this

Now in Control Panel -> Scheduled Tasks you can set that script to execute every day to maintain your podcasts and audiobook with the correct settings