Picture viewer

A simple yet effective picture viewing application for android (but sadly removed from the market)

Root it now

Good step-by-step guide how to root a Nexus One
Recovery image which let to install a zip file (and many other features)

Say, you need to return an array of strings from a COM "interop" object implemented on C# to be able then access to its items from a code on VBScript.

The only correct way to do that is make the method to return the VARIANT which is an array of VARIANTs, not strings.
In other words, the return value of the VBScript's VarType() function has to be 0x200C, not 0x2008 ! Only then VBScript will be able to access the array's members.

In the C# terms, you need to make the code look like follows:


public Object f() { // the function returns (VARIANT *)
Object[] a = new Object[3]; // which is an array of VARIANTs
a[0] = "a"; // each of them contains a string
a[1] = "b";
a[2] = "c";
return a;
}


cmd variables tricks

Get the variable value with replaced part to some new string:
%variable:wildcard_string=new_string%
Get only part of the variable:

%variable:~num_chars_to_skip%
%variable:~num_chars_to_skip,num_chars_to_keep%
%variable:~num_chars_to_skip_from_start, -num_chars_to_skip_from_end%
%variable:~-num_chars_to_skip_from_end,num_chars_to_keep%
%variable:~-num_chars_to_skip_from_end,-num_chars_to_skip_from_end%  

other variable substitutions can be found in the command-line reference

Pulse

In Debian squeeze videos played in the Adobe flash player had no sound.
A solution - activate the virtual "Pulse" audio driver and make it to be the default.
To do that, create file /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc with the following content:

pcm.pulse {
type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
type pulse
}

Browser pas

Desperate one behaves vilely. Opera installer v11.11 made that browser default without asking me (I can swear, no questions were asked). To return the IE as default browser (not that I like or use IE for browsing, but to make it start first for test purposes) I had to modify the registry.
As it turned out, the HKCR hive is not a link but a cascade union of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes and then HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes. So, modifying one branch, make sure there is no the same in the second place which will override the values.

A certification pit

Each time we need renew or issue a new certificate for test web servers it becomes a quest. The certification server is installed on a windows 2003 server and each time it behaves different. I wonder, if somebody noticed that too?
It works differently in different browsers, and does not let you in even with IE until the browser's advanced security property "Enable Integrated Windows Authentication" is off.