CTRL + ALT + DEL on Remote Desktop

Accessing the Task Manager through Remote Desktop - CTRL + ALT + DEL

Today I tried to access my work PC from home through Remote Desktop over a VPN.

However when I logged in the page was totally black.

No menus, no taskbar, nothing to press nothing to see.

Was the PC out of memory and couldn't show me anything or just bust. I needed the task manager on that PC to see what was going on.

To send CTRL - ALT - DEL over a remote desktop connection to get to your task manager, see running processes and open or close programs then you need to be able to send that command over the connection. And if you don't know the keystrokes it's not simple if you don't know it.

There are two ways to access this.

1. If you can see the task bar in the footer of your remote screen just right click on it and hit taskbar to open it up.

2. If you cannot see anything use the following combination of keys: CTRL + ALT + END. This will bring up the same screen as if you had hit CTRL + ALT + DEL on the computer.

You can choose to shut down, reboot or show the task manager.

Why it's those keystrokes I don't know as it's not intuitive but it works and it's good to remember and write down if you forget.

Re-Starting Windows Explorer Remotley

If your windows explorer has crashed or killing your remote computers memory or CPU you can kill the process in the task manager and restart it without rebooting.

Just follow this.

Kill the run away windows process.
Wait a few seconds.
In task manager go to the "Applications" tab.
In the bottom right corner select the "New Task" button.
In the dialogue that opens up type "explorer" in the "open" text box. This will open a new instance of Windows Explorer.

Remember killing processes is not advisable as killing a process means the normal shut down functions of that application have not run and this could mean that files are left on your disk, keys in your registry and so on - so only do it if you really need to.

A clean up of your registry with a tool like CCleaner afterwards and regular de-fragmentation of your disk is advisable if you regularly use this method as it will keep your PC clean and fast.

SQL Server - Find time of last database backup

Find the last time your Database was backed up

Quick one - wanting to find out the last time your DB was backed up?

This SQL Statement will show all database backup times on a server.

SELECT sdb.Name AS DatabaseName, 

       MAX(bus.backup_finish_date) AS LastBackUpTime
FROM sys.sysdatabases sdb
LEFT JOIN msdb.dbo.backupset bus 
    ON   bus.database_name = sdb.name
GROUP BY sdb.Name

Also in SQL 2008 there are a load of good built in reports which you can access by

• Selecting the database
• Select Reports 
• Select Standard Reports 
• Select the report you want such as "Disk Usage" 

This shows you the disk usage and log file usage for your database in a nice pie chart as well as numerical terms.

If you didn't know about it, its a good little feature.

Use Blogger to create blogs quickly and automate the content easily

Using Google's blogger.com over wordpress.com

Whereas blogger used to be pretty basic since the new format of blogger arrived on the free blog scene it has been much easier and quicker to set up a blog than other free CMS systems and I would recommend using the new blogger.com system over the free hosted wordpress.com site any day.

Obviously having your own server and your own code running on it is the best way to go but if you are trying to get a blog up quickly or want to automate it by sending posts by emails then I would say blogger.com is better than wordpress.com because of its new simplistic design and ease of use and for a number of other reasons.

Whereas in Wordpress you have to use a plugin (which you cannot use on their free version) to post articles by email to the site e.g Postie in blogger it is built in.

As blogger only uses tags and not categories it is a shame they cannot either have an Automatic Tagging widget like my own or allow you to post tags in the subject line as you can when you send the email.

This is possible in the Wordpress plugin Postie (available for the non hosted version)  which needs a fix to get it working properly: Fixing Postie to use Categories

But as we are talking about the free blogging versions they both have downsides on the the automated posting front.

I have a number of horse racing sites that are on my own server and also use blogger e.g:

http://ukhorseracingstar.blogspot.co.uk/
http://ukhorseracingautobot.blogspot.co.uk/


However before I created UK Horse Racing Star I tried to create a Wordpress free blog on their wordpess.com setup page to use their free domain e.g something like: ukhorseracingstar.wordpress.com.

The registration process went through okay including double email confirmation but when I tried to login it either allowed me to login but not post any articles or change settings OR it just wouldn't let me login in the first place.

During sign up it didn't say "This user name or URL is unacceptable" or that "this goes against our Terms of Service" (for whatever reason), and it really should have done if certain words are unacceptable to their Terms. If they know a word is banned from their URL's then why not say so at registration time?


On one day I tried creating 4 sites all with different names and they were all blocked with no reason given either by email (when I tried complaining) or by their system. Not good service at all.

If you go to https://signup.wordpress.com/signup/ now and try and create a blog with the name ukhorseracingstar it will say "Sorry that site already exists" and it does - by me along with 3 other variations - although I cannot use any of them!

Therefore I tried the new blogger system.

I know this strictly-software.com blog is using the old layout but I haven't got round to changing the styling -  I'm a developer not a designer or CSS guru!

However with the new blogger template and layout tools it was so easy to create a new site I had UK Horse Racing Star up in minutes with widgets down the side for links, RSS Feeds of racing results, banners, text and scripts.

It really was a very simple process to re-size uploaded images, change the background colour, add custom CSS and script.

Therefore I don't know if it's against Wordpress rules to have sites related to horse racing but if you have your own copy of the software you can do what you want with it (GPL and all that) so I have a Wordpress site hosted on my own server www.ukhorseracingtipster.com which is almost ready to rumble.

Also as wordpress.com won't even let you show Google AdSense on their free blog system OR it seems let you create sites with certain words in it like "horse" or "racing" (and whatever else is in their ban list) then I would recommend blogger for free blog hosting because you can show adverts (on non adult themed sites - e.g not gambling or porn sites - I know from my warning by Google over this so be warned)

Their new system is so simple and easy to use you can get a good looking site up in minutes and it took me less than 20 minutes to create both of these blogs:

http://ukhorseracingstar.blogspot.co.uk/
http://ukhorseracingautobot.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Whereas on wordpress.com's free blogging system it really is a very cut down version of their downloadable software and you cannot add your own images, css, scripts, widgets or plugins etc on blogger.com you can do all of this and more. Hopefully they will be extending their widget selections in the future to add more features and drag n drop functionality to their system.

So there is my two pence on the wordpress.com versus blogger.com debate.

Quickly Randomise a number in SQL Server

How to get a true random number in SQL Server

We all know that the RAND() function in SQL Server doesn't generate a true random number and people have come up with many ways to randomise the "seed" that is passed into the RAND() function to make it more "random".

However a quick way in SQL 2005 + to get a random number or randomise a recordset is to use the NEWID() function which generates a GUID.

To randomise a recordset e.g to show a random sub-select of 5 out of 100 records you would just do this:

SELECT TOP 10 *
FROM   MyTable
ORDER BY NewID()

You will see that on each execution a different recordset is returned.

How To Generate a single Random Number between 0 and 9 with NEWID()

If you want a single number e.g to do a simple test like@

IF @No < 5 
  Do X 
Else
  Do Y

Then you could use the NEWID() function in conjunction with some casting and the varbinary function.

For example this code below will return a random number between 0 and 9.

DECLARE @RandomNumber INT

-- roll a dice to get a number between 0 and 9

SELECT @RandomNumber = CAST(RIGHT(CAST(ABS(CAST(CAST(NEWID() AS VARBINARY) AS INT)) as VARCHAR),1) as INT)

I noticed that if you used a LEFT([code],1) instead of RIGHT([code],1) you would get a large sample of 1's in your result set which would skew the results whereas as the RIGHT function gives a more random sample.

Obviously you could change the second parameter of the RIGHT function to get longer digits e.g use RIGHT([CODE],2) to get a random number between 0 and 20.


There you go a simple way to randomise either a recordset or get a single random number.

Flash Crash Problems with Firefox 13.0.1 and Adobe Flash 11.3.300.257

Flash Crashing constantly in Firefox 13.0.1

All day I have been experiencing problems with Firefox and Flash.

Flash is notoriously buggy and crashes a lot which is why HTML5 offers so much hope for those of us wanting to watch movies online, on our phones or devices and Youtube style with the VIDEO tag and a wrapper iFrame.

I don't have a fix but I just wanted to put it out there that Flash version 11.3.300.257 is causing constant problems when used with Firefox 13.0.1.

A movie will start playing and then hang or the screen will go black before the "flash crash" message appears.

I am trying to watch some comedy central with another header plugin and up until today I have had no problems at all.

I don't know if this a problem with Flash or Firefox or a combination of both but it is really starting to piss me off. I have re-installed both Firefox and Flash multiple times.

I don't know why Adobe cannot get their act together with Flash as people are working their ass off to accommodate them and their notorious bugs, high CPU and memory leaks on devices whereas before they were just going to ditch Flash altogether and wait for HTML5 to spread.

If anyone else is having the same problem with Flash crashing let me know.

Forgotten your SSH Password?

How to quickly recover your SSH password

If you are like me your memory sometimes fails you and like today I tried to login with SSH into my server with Putty and couldn't remember my password. After about five attempts of all the ones I could remember I decided to give up incase I blocked myself.

Luckily I had added my IP into AllowHosts so I wouldn't be blocked by the DenyHosts settings which contain a long long list of IP addresses who have tried hacking my server but it was obviously doing my head in.

I then thought of a quick way of recovering it.

I could access WebMin in Chrome easily as my password was auto-filled stored but in Firefox it wasn't which had the web developer toolbar. Therefore as copying passwords doesn't work I couldn't use the web developer toolbar to show the password with a single button click.

Therefore in Chrome with the auto-filled password for my https://domain.com:10000 login page I did the following.

• Hit F12 - this opens the developers console
• Choose the Console tab
• In the console write the necessary code to change the type of the input from "password" to "text"
• If the password doesn't have an ID like VirtualMin then you can just access the first password in the form e.g:

document.forms[0].pass.type = 'text';

And if my magic your password field will change into a text input and you can retrieve your password.

And if your in any doubt about why you should leave your computers locked when you are away from your desk then this should be a reminder to you!

New unobtrusive EU Cookie Compliance Code

Some people have said that my JavaScript lightbox method for EU Cookie compliance is a bit off putting for users as it takes them away from the site if they disagree.


Also at the last minute the EU has allowed compliance with their new cookie privacy rules through a much easier method.

This allows sites to show the users that cookies are being used with a link to the sites cookie policy and a button to hide the message in future. If they continue to use the site they have basically agreed to the use of cookies.

You may have noticed on sites like the BBC or Channel 4 etc they will show a little piece of text at the top of the page that slides out and tells the user that cookies are being used with a link to their cookie policy. They also have a button to set a cookie so the message isn't shown again.

This method is a lot less intrusive and doesn't take the user away from the site as there is no "agree" or "disagree" button.

Therefore for those of you not wanting to make use of my EU Cookie compliance code I have created a newer version that follows this new format which can be seen here.

It is up to you to create a cookie policy document that details how cookies can be viewed and disabled through various browsers and toolbars etc. Plus the text and styling is up to you but the example html page shows this new unobtrusive method in action.

The code makes use of jQuery to handle the animations so load in the source code from your usual repository e.g Google or jQuery e.g: http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js
  
The actual JavaScript for the html test page is below.

// run immediatley - place in footer
(function(){

 EUCookie = {
  
  confirmed : false,

  Confirm : function(e){   
   var self = this;
   
   // create cookie   
   self.CreateCookie("EUCookie",1,365);  
   
   // slide back in the cookie bar
   $("#cookieWarning").animate({
     height: 0
   }, 300, function(){
    $("#cookieWarning").css("display", "none");
   });
   
   return false;
  },

  CheckEUCookie : function(){

   var self = this,
    val = self.ReadCookie("EUCookie");
   
   // if our cookie has been set
   if(typeof(val)!=undefined && val==1){   
    self.confirmed = true;
   }
 
   return self.confirmed;
  },

  CreateCookie : function(name,value,days) {
 
   if (days){
    var date = new Date();
    date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000));
    var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString();
   }else{
    var expires = "";
   }
   
   document.cookie = name+"="+escape(value)+expires+"; path=/";
  },

  ReadCookie : function(name){
   
   var nameEQ = name + "=";
   var ca = document.cookie.split(';');
   for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) {
    var c = ca[i];
    while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length);
    if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0){
     var r = unescape(c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length));    
     return r;
    }
   }
   return null;
  }
 };

 // add click event;
 $("#cookie-close-button").click(function(){EUCookie.Confirm()});
 
 // if no cookie set show form
 if(EUCookie.CheckEUCookie()){
  
  // cookie already set so hide box
  $("#cookieWarning").css("display", "none");
 }else{
  
  // Show the form - set to zilch then slide out to the appropriate height
  document.getElementById("cookieWarning").style.display = "none";
  document.getElementById("cookieWarning").style.height = 0;
  
  $("#cookieWarning").animate({
     height: 28
   }, 500, function(){
  }).css("display", "block");    
 }
})();

To view the code in action you can visit the demo page and download the html page and tweak it to your hearts desire.

Let me know what you think.