I just recently set up a new email server for the company I work with.  With this new setup I’ve tried to be a bit more security conscious, forcing clients to use SSL/TLS when sending and receiving messages.  Part of the process for this setup involved generating a self signed security certificate.

The problem?  Outlook throws a warning message every time it’s opened.

Solution?

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One of the most basic Apache administration tasks I perform is password protecting a directory or site.  In lieu of creating a complicated login/registration engine, sometimes I prefer a quick and dirty basic authentication.  This is especially true for projects only I’m meant to see.

Here’s a quick refresher on how to password protect a directory with Apache.

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Several services I’ve seen over the last few months provide thumbnail screenshots of webpages, often through an API.  While most provide free options, to use something a lot you’ll either have to pay for it or include some sort of link back to the site wherever the screenshots are used.

Being technically inclined, I set out to create my own such service.  After a few months of fiddling with various tools and utilities, I came up with a simple technique which I set up on an Amazon EC2 server running FC6.

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For years now my favourite media player has been Media Player Classic.  It looks like an old copy of the Windows Media Player, hence the name.  Feature rich, yet with none of the bloat of its namesake, it’s pretty much the perfect lightweight media player!

One problem with it however is the ability to tell it what you want it to do when it finishes playing. Sure, there is the ‘After Playback’ option under the Play menu, but this setting is not retained after the program terminates.  It’s default behavior is to loop the video!  I quite frequently fall asleep watching something, only to wake up hours later to the same program which has been repeating all night!

I finally found a fix….

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