Everyday Nerd » General

Notepad ++ Powershell Language Syntax Coloring

Nerd — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:32:50 +0000

Notepad++ is my editor of choice for writing PowerShell code. There is a built in language syntax for PowerShell, but it doesn’t include Exchange cmdlets in the syntax coloring. So, I’ve created a custom user-defined language file for PowerShell, that includes the Exchange, and Active Directory cmdlets, as well as a few other modules that I use regularly. I also included the new PowerShell 2 comment block coloring, as the built-in didn’t recognize them.

This is my first attempt at creating a user-defined language for Notepad++, but I thought I’d share it, mainly because I didn’t see anyone else that had one available on the internet.

Here’s an example of the coloring:

Extract the zip, and place the xml file in %AppData%\Notepad++\ directory. If you already have a userDefineLang.xml, you will have to edit your original, and append the data from this file to it. More info can be found on Notepad++ website if you need help.

[Download]

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Nerd — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:30:32 +0000

(image credit)

Facebook–Two Factor Authentication Coming Soon

Nerd — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:12:10 +0000

Following Google’s foot steps, Facebook is now rolling out two factor authentication. Two factor authentication adds a second password – or token number – required to log into your account. Basically, when you try to log into Facebook, you get a text message, with an additional password to complete your sign-on. Check out the Facebook Blog for details, and keep an eye out on your Facebook Account page for the availability!

[ Facebook Blog ]

Amazon Cloud Player – 5GB free!

Nerd — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 06:14:39 +0000

So while everyone is waiting around for Google Music to go live, Amazon comes out and goes live with Amazon Cloud Player! Stream your music from the web to your computer or Android device – all you need is an Amazon account (free). All users get 5GB of space for free, and option to purchase more at a very reasonable price! Comes with a great utility that will automatically upload your music from your computer to the cloud.

Nice addition, any mp3 albums purchased on Amazon are automatically stored on your Cloud Drive, but don’t count against your quota. Also, if you purchase an album, you get one year of 20GB storage for free! (Details on 20GB promo) Not bad!

[ Amazon Cloud Player ]

[ Learn more about Cloud Drive ]

Facebook Security: Bit Defender SafeGo

Nerd — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:33:21 +0000

Facebook security is really hard to achieve with their constant changes in policy and design. Facebook has become a place for malware and other malicious code to hang out – tempting you by “Click here to see what really happened…” senerios, and as soon as you click “Allow” your profile is infected.

Bit Defender SafeGo application uses cloud scanning to keep your Facebook account safe. It scans all authorized apps, links, and warns you if you are about to share your personal information.

Check it out here, and secure your social networking account today!

[ Facebook – BitDefender SafeGo ]

Nerds explained

Nerd — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:26:31 +0000

Ran across this picture this morning, and just had to post it here… Pretty much sums it up!

Airport Security… Hmm…

Auditing Exchange 2007

Nerd — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Mike Lagase from Microsoft just posted a GREAT article about auditing Exchange 2007. Related posts: Exchange 2007 SP2 is out. Exchange 2007 CCR – Move File Share Witness Manage Exchange Certificates with a free GUI Related posts:

Check Facebook Privacy Settings: ReclaimPrivacy.org

Nerd — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:36:56 +0000

Due to recent privacy concerns, it’s a good idea to ensure that you are keeping your Facebook account secure, and private! Facebook has done a decent job at making this task a rather difficult job – spreading privacy settings across many menus, and confusing the average user.

ReclaimPrivacy.org has a fantastic tool to check your Facebook Privacy settings. To use the security scanner, visit http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/

Scroll down to the “Get Protected” section. Depending on the browser you are using, follow the directions for your browser:

Firefox/Chrome users: Click and drag the “Scan for Privacy” link to your browser’s bookmarks bar.

Go to Facebook.com, sign in, and click the “Scan for Privacy” shortcut in your Bookmarks Bar.

You will see the security scanner at the top of the page, and the results within a few seconds (depending on you internet connection)

Internet Explorer Users:

Note: I tried to add the link to my favorites, as directed to, but was unable to (using IE 8), so am posting directions how to do it another way.

Right click “Scan for Privacy”, and choose “Copy Shortcut”

Now, sign into Facebook, and click in the Address bar, delete all text in the address bar, and paste (right click Paste, or Ctrl+V on your keyboard). You should see the following text in the address bar:

Press Enter, and the Security Scan will begin:

Both Browsers: Depending on the results, adjust your privacy as needed!

New – Alerts for Facebook Account Login

Nerd — Wed, 12 May 2010 15:17:51 +0000

With Facebook privacy being a concern these days, it was nice of the Facebook folks enabling this new feature. To enable notifications, go to Account, Account Settings, Account Security, and enable alerts – checking SMS if you wish to receive those as well.

Once notifications is enabled, you will be prompted, on next login, to name the computer you are logging in from. This allows you to track what devices are logging in. You can see the details by going back to Account, Account Settings, and Account Security.

I tested this from my mobile device, and was promptly notified via SMS that I had logged into Facebook using Facebook for iPhone. Next, I logged in using the mobile web browser on the iPhone, but was not notified. Wasn’t too happy about that, but it may have been because I had just accessed Facebook from the same device, just via an App instead of the browser. I’ll have to try this from another phone and see what the results are.

All in all, it’s a start in the right direction for Facebook.

Shared Links – March 15, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:03:29 +0000

Use Autoruns to Manually Clean an Infected PC

March 15, 2010

Cities Go Gaga for Google Fiber [Google]

March 11, 2010

Macros for Google Spreadsheets

March 10, 2010

Easily Add Facebook Chat to Pidgin

March 10, 2010

Refresh POP3 Accounts in Gmail

March 9, 2010

Shared Links – March 8, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:03:07 +0000

Here are some interesting things I found in my RSS feeds: TeamViewer App For iPhone & iPod Touch March 6, 2010 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service March 5, 2010 Related posts: Shared Links – February 1, 2010 Shared Links – … Continue reading → Related posts:

Shared Links – March 1, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:02:58 +0000

Control 20 Spotlights in Vancouver’s English Bay From Your Web Browser [Interactivity]

February 26, 2010

Profile Relocator Moves Windows Profiles to a New Location [Downloads]

February 25, 2010

The First Flash-to-Native-iPhone-App Conversion [Adobe]

February 24, 2010

Shared Links – February 22, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:04:10 +0000

Google Voice, explained

February 18, 2010

Kindle App For BlackBerry Now Available In US [Blackberry Apps]

February 18, 2010

F0recast Released for iPhone 3.1.3 Jailbreak Info

February 17, 2010

Shared Links – February 15, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:07:12 +0000

Top 5 YouTube Converters

February 10, 2010

Introducing Google Buzz

February 9, 2010

Beautiful Planet Posters Are Space Geek Catnip [Space]

February 8, 2010

Shared Links – February 8, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:00:04 +0000

Compare the Environment of Two Computers using ENVy

February 5, 2010

Jailbreak iPhone 3G 3GS 3.1.3 with Sn0wbreeze

February 4, 2010

Office 2010 Release Candidate Now Available for Download

February 4, 2010

Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 with redsn0w 0.9.3 to Enable Tethering

February 1, 2010

Shared Links – February 1, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:02:56 +0000

Logitech Touch Mouse App Turns iPhones Into a Trackpad and Keyboard, for Free [IPhone Apps]

February 1, 2010

Download Redsn0w 0.9 to Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 Firmware

January 31, 2010

Shared Links – January 25, 2010

Nerd — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:42:42 +0000

Here are some interesting things I found in my RSS feeds: Microsoft Help: How to Install, Reinstall, Upgrade or Uninstall Windows January 23, 2010 Related posts: Shared Links – February 1, 2010 Shared Links – March 8, 2010 Shared Links … Continue reading → Related posts:

Shared Links – November 30, 2009

Nerd — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:42:42 +0000

Here are some interesting things I found in my RSS feeds: Wallpaper Roundup: Abstract Ice and Snowy Scenes [Wallpaper Roundup] November 27, 2009 Related posts: Shared Links – June 29, 2009 Shared Items – November 21, 2008 Shared Links – … Continue reading → Related posts:

Why it’s a bad idea to send large email attachments

Nerd — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:14:49 +0000

The Google Operating System Blog has a great post explaining why it’s not a good idea to send large attachments:

People who demand large message size limits rarely understand the limitations of the email transmission. Because of the MIME encoding used when sending binary attachments, your files expand 33% when sent via email.

In other words, a 15MB attachment requires 20MB plus the message text, plus message headers.
When you carbon copy 20 of your friends & coworkers, a separate message is sent to each. 20MB x 20 = 400MB. That’s half a freaking CD.

If 5 of those friends are on the same small company email server, downloading those messages saturates the entire bandwidth of their T1 data line for nearly 9 minutes. Because each message has separate headers, it isn’t easily cached and gets completely downloaded by each recipient.

Compare this to uploading the same attachment to a web server, FTP server, file transmission service like YouSendIt, or video streaming site like YouTube. One copy is uploaded. The download is typically 8-bit so minimal expansion factor. The small business’ network can cache the content, so it’s only downloaded once then fetched locally from the web caching server.

Bottom line, sending a large attachment via email is relocating using the U.S. Postal Service as your moving company. It is painful, limited, and expensive.

As an email administrator, I couldn’t agree more…

New How-To added: How to secure your wireless network

Nerd — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:09:31 +0000

Most wireless networks are unsecured, which can cause major security concerns. Go check out the new How To here on EverydayNerd.com

[ How to Secure your Wireless Network ]

Shared Links – September 8, 2009

Nerd — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:02:31 +0000

Here are some interesting things I found in my RSS feeds: Homebrew carputer September 1, 2009 Related posts: Shared Links – September 1, 2009 Shared Links – June 29, 2009 Shared Links – July 23, 2009 Related posts:

Shared Links – September 1, 2009

Nerd — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:03:25 +0000

Here are some interesting things I found in my RSS feeds: BucketVac Turns Any 5 Gallon Bucket Into a Wet/Dry Vacuum [Vacuum] August 31, 2009 Related posts: Shared Links – September 8, 2009 Shared Links – August 6, 2009 Shared … Continue reading → Related posts:

New How To section on EverydayNerd.com

Nerd — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:37:58 +0000

I have a lot of people asking common questions, so in order to help in a more efficient manner, I’ve added the “Everyday How To” section. I’ll be adding to this section on a semi-regular basis (how-to’s take longer to write than normal blog entries), and will update the blog with new entries are added.

First up, I’ve added two How To’s:

I have another one, “How to protect your PC from Malware” in the works, but it is rather extensive, so stay tuned.

Hope you enjoy, and if you want to request a topic to be added, just use the Contact link, or post it on Facebook. Either way works!

Use Excel to create easy batch jobs

Nerd — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Do you have to run a command on several servers remotely? You can enter each command separately, but every good admin should know how to make life easier for him/her self. For example, I wanted to use the psloggedon.exe tool to find out who was logged in to all the servers I manage (about 150). Naturally, I could log into each server, check the Terminal Server Manager, and go on the next, but who wants to do that?

The PSTool – psloggedon.exe is a nice little utility that I can run from my command prompt, and have it query a remote computer, returning who is logged on to that server. So, starting in Excel (I already had a list of all the servers), I pasted the list of servers in the C column.

Next, in Column A, I entered "psloggedon.exe” – the name of the executable I want to run. in Column B, I put a “ \\” – note the space in front of the \\. In column E, I entered my first switch, “ –l” – and in column F, a second switch “ –x” again, note the spaces before the switches.

Now, to bring the whole thing together. I LOVE the command Concatenate.

In column G, I entered =concatenate(A1,B1,C1,D1,E1)

This will combine all the columns together (now you know why the spaces were above) for your final command.

You can now select column G, and copy and paste it into notepad, and save it as a .bat file. You now have an easily made bat file, using Excel.

That was just dirty Microsoft…

Nerd — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:21:59 +0000

I really hate “sneaky” installs. Some software will try to install a browser toolbar, change your search engine, or change your home page. Well, now I can add Microsoft to the list. I installed the Microsoft Office 2010 Tech Preview, and it changed my browser home page to MSN, and changed my search engine to Bing. I use about:black as my home page, and Google as my search engine. So I had to go back in and change it back to what I wanted… Read this… My computer, My settings… At least ask me when I install your software if I want to change my settings… I mean common Microsoft, this crap I expect from other companies, but this is just low… I hope that when the final release comes out, this isn’t going to be implemented…