Category Archives: How Tos

Step by step instructions on a specific task relating to any topic.

How To – Get Your Mac Address

Posted on by

Background Knowledge

A MAC address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces (network cards/NICs) for network communications. For the most part we don’t need to know what the MAC address is but at times it is necessary to know for instance when one wants to create a DHCP reservation.

Solutions

Note: In each solution one must know what your network interface device name is, in order to get the correct MAC address .

Linux/Unix – Command Line

Using the following command look under the network interface device name and just after “HWaddr” you will see your MAC address.

1

# ifconfig

The alternative would be using the following series of command to only return the MAC address for a given network device name.

1

# ifconfig eth0 | grep HWaddr | awk '{print $5}'

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) – GUI

  1. Go to the menu Applications > System Tools > Network Tools.
  2. Under the “Devices” select a “Network device”.
  3. Under Interface Information you will see the MAC address after “Hardware address”.

Windows NT/2000/ME/XP/Vista/7 – Command Line

After running the below command look under the network device name and then just after “Physical Address” you will see the MAC address.

1

ipconfig /all

Windows 7 – GUI

Open the Network and Sharing Center > Local Area Connection > Details > Physical Address.

Mac OS X – GUI

  1. Go to “System Preferences…” from the Apple menu.
  2. Then select “Network.”
  3. Double-click on “Airport” or “Built-in Ethernet” depending on how you access the Internet/network.
  4. Your MAC Address will be shown under “Airport ID” or “Ethernet ID”.

Mac OS X – Command Line

Use the same method shown above under “Linux/Unix”.

Source: Wikipedia – MAC address
Source: Working with MAC addresses
Source: How to Find the MAC Address of Your Computer

How To – Read Outlook 2007/2010 Emails Messages in Plain Text

Posted on by
Reply

Background

This how to will explain how to view all email messages in plain text format, how to convert an HTML formatted email message to plain text format and how to convert an email in plain text to HTML while using Microsoft Outlook 2007/2010.

Solution – View All Emails in Plain Text

  1. In the menu/tab left mouse click on the “File”.
  2. Left mouse click on “Options”.
  3. Left mouse click on “Trust Center” and then “Trust Center Settings” button towards the right.
  4. On the left hand side left mouse click on “E-mail Security”.
  5. Under the heading “Read as Plain Text” left mouse click to place a check mark on “Read all standard mail in plain text” and “Read all digitally signed mail in plain text”.

Each time you view an email message no matter what the format is the message will be viewed in “plain text”.

Solution – Compose/New Email – Chang Email Format

  1. Create/compose a new email message.
  2. Under the menu “Format Text” left mouse click on the desired email format, “HTML”, “Plain Text” or “Rich Text”.

Solution – While Viewing an Email Change from Plain Text to HTML

  1. Open an email message.
  2. In between the menu/ribbon bar and “From” you may see an message “This message was converted to plain text”. Left mouse click on this message and then click on “Display as HTML”.

Source: Read e-mail in plain text
Source: How to Convert Plain Text Email Messages to HTML

How to – Turn on Line Numbers in Visual Studio/Express 2010

Posted on by
Reply

Background Knowledge

This applies to Microsoft Visual Studio/Express 2010 and as far as I know 2008 as well.

Solution

  1. Go to the menu “Tools” -> “Options”.
  2. In the Options dialog go to “Text Editor” -> “All Languages” or pick a specific language.
  3. On the right hand side under “Display” place a checkmark on “Line Numbers”.
  4. Click on the “OK” button.

Example of a Basic ODBC (MSSQL Server) Query using PHP

Posted on by
1

An example of a basic ODBC (MSSQL Server/DSN-Less) query using PHP.

Example of Result Set Returning One Row

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

$szDBConn="DRIVER={SQL Server};SERVER=SQLServerNameHere;DATABASE=DatabaseNameHere";
$szDBUsername="UsernameHere";
$szDBPswd="PasswordHere";
$szDBQuery="SELECT FooBar, Foo_Bar, Foo_ID FROM FoobarSubscribers WHERE FooID=777";
$rDBConnect = odbc_connect($szDBConn, $szDBUsername, $szDBPswd);  
$rDBRes = odbc_exec($rDBConnect, $szDBQuery);
$szLastCheck = odbc_result($rDBRes, "LastCheck");
odbc_free_result($rDBRes);
odbc_close($rDBConnect);

Example of Result Set Returning Multiple Rows in an Object

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

$szDBConn="DRIVER={SQL Server};SERVER=SQLServerNameHere;DATABASE=DatabaseNameHere";
$szDBUsername="UsernameHere";
$szDBPswd="PasswordHere";
$szDBQuery="SELECT FooBar, Foo_Bar, Foo_ID FROM FoobarSubscribers";
$rDBConnect = odbc_connect($szDBConn, $szDBUsername, $szDBPswd);  
$rDBRes = odbc_exec($rDBConnect, $szDBQuery);
while($obRows = odbc_fetch_object($rDBRes))
{
	print $obRows->ColumnName1."<br />";
	print $obRows->ColumnName2."<br />";
	print $obRows->ColumnName3."<br />";
}
odbc_free_result($rDBRes);
odbc_close($rDBConnect);

Example of Result Set Returning Multiple Rows in an Array

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

$szDBConn="DRIVER={SQL Server};SERVER=SQLServerNameHere;DATABASE=DatabaseNameHere";
$szDBUsername="UsernameHere";
$szDBPswd="PasswordHere";
$szDBQuery="SELECT FooBar, Foo_Bar, Foo_ID FROM FoobarSubscribers";
$rDBConnect = odbc_connect($szDBConn, $szDBUsername, $szDBPswd);  
$rDBRes = odbc_exec($rDBConnect, $szDBQuery);
while($saRows = odbc_fetch_array($rDBRes))
{
        print $saRows['ColumnName1'];
        print $saRows['ColumnName2'];
        print $saRows['ColumnName3'];
}
odbc_free_result($rDBRes);
odbc_close($rDBConnect);

Comments/description of Example

Line #1
Database connection string to define the driver, server host name and database name.
The “server host name” is the server name or IP address of your database server. If your host has multiple instances the “host” value would be formatted like so “foo\bar”. If your using SQL Server Express the “host” name locally would be “.\SQLEXPRESS”.
Line #2-#3
Database login credentilas; username and password.
Line #4
SQL query.
Line #5
Connect to the database defined by Line #1, Line #2 and Line #3.
Line #6
Prepare and execute an SQL statement.
Line #7
Fetch results returned back from the SQL statement. I use a while loop to enumerate through each row of results returned. If you know only one row is going to be returned the while loop is not necessary.
odbc_free_result()
Close database connection.
odbc_close()
Close database connection.

How To – Resolve iTunes App Update Notification

Posted on by
Reply

Background Knowledge

The Apple’s iTunes software shows notifications of updates available for apps (applications) for iPhones, iPad and iPod Touch by placing a small numeric value in a box beside “Apps” under “Library” within iTunes. As time goes by it appears this numeric value becomes inaccurate as it reports that there is updates yet when you click on “Updates Available” under “Apps” (bottom right corner) there is no updates or only a few updates that does not add up to what it is reporting is available. It should be noted that though this maybe anonying to some it is not in any way harmful to iTunes or the device.

Solution – One

This issue occurs when one or more apps are purchased using more then one iTunes account. Login to each iTunes account and check for app updates. If there are any then allow the updates to be downloaded and installed. One other option would be to delete the app in iTunes and on the device and then download and install under the preferred iTunes account. In most cases this will resolve the problem.

Solution – Two

Be warned this this step is only necessary if the above does not work. Also be aware the steps below will delete all apps (applications) in your iTunes library. Make sure to have the applications backed up before proceeding.

  1. If the first solution didn’t work try going in iTunes under “Library” -> “Apps”.
  2. Highligh one random application and then select all applications by pressing CTRL-A or click on the menu “Edit” -> “Select All”.
  3. Right mouse click on the an application and click on “Delete” or click on the menu “Edit” -> “Delete”.
  4. Click on the device under “Devices” on the left hand side and then click on “Sync” at the bottom right hand corner.

When the sync is completed all the applications installed on the device will be back in the iTunes Library and the Apps update notification should now be corrected.