Egil Hansen

I worked on a site a few weeks ago where the user wanted visible scrollbars no matter how much space the content takes up on the page. Internet Explorer is happy to oblige, just put in a overflow: scroll; in your CSS and your good to go. However, Mozilla Firefox wouldn’t play ball. A bit of Googling revealed Mozillas own implementation -
overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical;.

So to sum up, add the following CSS code to your site if you want the scrollbars visible at all times:

html {
     overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical;
     overflow: scroll;
}

I was tired of always having to start/stop my IIS and MSSQL services (I turn then off when I’m not developing), so I decided to write a small VBScript to help me do it. This script can be used to start/stop a number of services and their dependents, in a toggle start/stop fashion. It also allows you to specify a explicit action, either start or stop.

I’ve made it easy to modify it for use with other services, so have a look and let me know what you think:

Download: StartStopServices.vbs

A few weeks back, I was reminiscing some of the great times I had when working at Diablo NetCafe, one of Copenhagens first gaming centers. Suddenly I remembered the sentence ?I put on my robe and wizard hat” from back when AOL was still the place to be if you were looking for some cyber action, one guy made us all laugh when unsuspecting girls like BritneySpears14 and DirtyKate got their hands full. Luckily, Google never fails to keep good memories alive.

Here is probably the most famous chat log ever – behold the legend of the BloodNinja:

bloodninja: Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
BritneySpears14: Aight.
bloodninja: Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
BritneySpears14: I slip out of my pants, just for you, bloodninja.
bloodninja: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
BritneySpears14: Oh, I like to play dress up.
bloodninja: Me too baby.
BritneySpears14: I kiss you softly on your chest.
bloodninja: I cast Lvl. 3 Eroticism. You turn into a real beautiful woman.
BritneySpears14: Hey…
bloodninja: I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite.
BritneySpears14: Funny I still don’t see it.
bloodninja: I spend my mana reserves to cast Mighty F*ck of the Beyondness.
BritneySpears14: You are the worst cyber partner ever. This is ridiculous.
bloodninja: Don’t f*ck with me bitch, I’m the mightiest sorcerer of the lands.
bloodninja: I steal yo soul and cast Lightning Lvl. 1,000,000 Your body explodes into a fine bloody mist, because you are only a Lvl. 2 Druid.
BritneySpears14: Don’t ever message me again you piece of ****.
bloodninja: Robots are trying to drill my brain but my lightning shield inflicts DOA attack, leaving the robots as flaming piles of metal.
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik’s evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it’s getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?

I just love the witty reply from BritneySpears14 after BloodNinja casts his level 8 “Cock of the Infinite” – good times.

My favorite TV talk show has finally arrived on Danish television. It’s the Daily Show with Jon Stewart from Comedy Central, where the latest news from the US (and sometimes, the rest of the world), gets presented in a satiric and often ironic way. It’s fantastic and intelligent humor, highly recommendable. With nine Emmys won since its start in 1996 and great taglines like “When news breaks, we fix it“, “More people get their news from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart… Than probably should“, and “Third rate reporters giving the first degree the second news happens” you can’t go wrong.

The show can be watched on DR2 Monday through Thursday at 23:30.

• DR2 press release (Danish)
• The Daily Show on IMDB

After working with both SUS, WSUS 1 and 2 over the years and always feeling somewhat limited and tied down, it looks like the guys at Microsoft are finally giving WSUS a major overhaul, essentially giving administrators more options and control. Everything from a new revamped installation wizard to a new MMC console (instead of the sluggish web interface in previous versions), nesting of computer groups and a new reporting service should make patch management of Microsoft products more enjoyable. Over at TechRepublic Joshua Hoskins have good rundown of what’?s new in WSUS 3.0, which should be out of the beta stages soon (currently beta 2.0). If you want to try out the new version of WSUS, make your way over to Microsofts Windows Server Update Service page for all the details.

Today I attended a very fascinating two hour lecture at DIKU where Mads Torgersen (Program Manager at Microsoft) talked about LINQ and how it works. He especially focused on the different ideas and technologies that Microsoft uses under the hood to make it less of a pain for the rest of us when working with data. One of the things that he focused a great deal on was how principles from functional programming are being introduced into the C# and the .NET framework.

A funny side note: I was sitting next to a professors who teaches a course on functional programming that they make every first year student take, and he said numerous times that “this is a great advertisement for my course”, and I do understand why he is was excited. I remember back when I was dragged kicking and screaming through that course, wondering why I needed to learn this weird kind of programming that wasn’t even used in general practice, but now, all of a sudden, this guy from Microsoft is typing in lambda expressions in Visual Studio on the projector, God knows I never thought I would see a lambda expression again after that course .

Back home from the university I goggled around a bit and found two interesting videos featuring another Dane, Anders Hejlsberg (Chief Architect of C# at Microsoft). In the first video Anders gives an introduction to benefits LINQ will give you as a programmer using easy to understand code examples, and in the second video he talks more theoretically about the problem that LINQ solves and also gets into what capabilities functional programming will bring to the table down the road. Both videos are well worth the time.

More information can be found over at The LINQ Project page on the MSDN network.

While doing some research on remote support software at work I was pointed to a great piece of software called TeamViewer. It basically allows you to remote control a computer anywhere, as long as it is connected to the Internet, and it’s even free for non commercial use.

It’s quite simple, ask the person you need to support to download the Customer module and run it and have them give you the ID and password it displays.
Then you download the Supporter module and enter the ID and password he/she gave you and you can now show instead of having to explain.

The only limitation is that a support session can only last 30 minutes the you have to reconnect.

Back in October 2005 when Quake 4 was about to be released I decided to write a guide to dueling in Quake. A few years back I was dueling on a fairly high level (at least by Danish standards) in Quake 3 and besides having some experience to share I also though an article like that would help build a good Quake dueling community in Denmark again by helping aspiring Quakers get some tools to work on their game and not give up right away.

I actually never started playing Quake again when Quake 4 was released, largely due to time constraints but definitely also because my computer couldn’t deliver the performance needed to run the game decently, so I’m unsure how much my article actually helped.

The article was originally posted on XplayN.com – the biggest Counter Strike community back then, but since it’s nowhere to be found now, I thought I would repost it here. Unfortunately it’s only in Danish, but I hope some of you might find it an interesting read.

Read the rest of this entry »

In the spirit of sharing code, I thought I’d publish my custom style sheet I’m using to customize the K2 theme. So far it’s pretty basic, but I guess it will evolve with time.

For this style sheet to make any sense on your blog, you obviously need the K2 theme. Then you need to create a new directory (for example “egil”) in /wp-content/themes/k2/styles/, and copy the egil.css file to it.
After that you need to create a sub directory in /wp-content/themes/k2/styles/[style dir]/ called images and copy the header image there.

I had to reinstall my laptop the other day and since the only Windows XP CD I could find at work was one with SP1, I just installed that thinking it would be a smooth ride upgrading to SP2 once I had it up and running.

As you have probably guessed it didn’t go as planed. Every time I started the SP2 installation, it would get stuck when it reached “Checking Product Key”. After some googling I stumbled across the following solution mailed to another unlucky guy by Microsoft Support, which thankfully worked for me as well.

Fix for Service Pack 2 installation stuck at “Checking Product Key”

1. Please go into the CMD prompt (Start/Run –> cmd.exe)
2. Then type cd /d %windir%\inf and make sure we are in that directory.
3. Then type ren oem*.inf oem*.old, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (do not worry about it).
4. Then type ren oem*.pnf oem*.old1, it will go back to the prompt after giving you some error (Do not worry about it).
5. Then goto Start/Run and type "%windir%\inf" and you will see the files in the folder.
6. Then find the file by name INFCACHE.1 and move it to the desktop (or another place outside the Windows folder) from c:\windows\inf.
7. Close all windows and reboot the computer to safe mode and start the installation of SP2 and it should go fine.

Microsoft, you owe me three hours…

Update: I originally forgot to mention why this happens. When SP2 tries to validate your Windows key using the infamous Windows Genuine Advantage, it can fail if OEM drivers have been installed. So to avoid this problem completely, simply upgrade to SP2 right away after the initial installation of Windows.