Priyank

Google Reader’s UI Issue Fixed

February 22nd, 2012 | by | technology

Feb
22

In my last post, I have showed, how the new Google Reader’s user interface is so unfriendly, wasting more than 40% screen space. I came across, some user defined CSS to solve the Google user interface issues. I have modified the CSS by Ingmar Hupp to provide more reading space for news items. I am using Stylish addon for Firefox, to load the user CSS.

Google Reader's UI Layout Issue Fixed
Google Reader’s Fixed GUI

vs

Google Reader's Stupid GUI
Google Reader’s Stupid GUI

I am not a CSS expert, and this CSS has lot of issues, and it interferes with GMail and other Google products. So, I just disable it, when I am not using the Google Reader. The idea here is to show Google: how their GUI needs to be user friendly. Google Reader is basically a reader for RSS feeds, and any reader’s first priority should be to use the screen real estate efficiently.

No Comments »

How to remove Visual Source Safe binding from Visual Studio projects?

January 19th, 2012 | by | technology

Jan
19

Just wrote this script to remove the VSS source safe bindings from old visual studio projects, so that I can move to GIT repository. I just run these commands using the Cygwin shell, from the solution root folder, and it removes all traces of the source control of the Jurassic era.

find . -type f -name *.dsp -print0 | xargs -0 -r perl -p -i.vssbak -e 's/^.*Scc_ProjName.*$//g'
find . -type f -name *.dsp -print0 | xargs -0 -r perl -p -i.vssbak -e 's/^.*Scc_LocalPath.*$//g'
find . -type f -name *.dsw -print0 | xargs -0 -r sed -i '/begin.source.code.control/,/end.source.code.control/d'
find . -type f -name *.sln -print0 | xargs -0 -r sed -i '/GlobalSection(SourceCodeControl)/,/EndGlobalSection/d'
find . -type f -name *.*proj -print0 | xargs -0 -r perl -p -i.vssbak -e 's/^.*SccProjectName.*$//g'
find . -type f -name *.*proj -print0 | xargs -0 -r perl -p -i.vssbak -e 's/^.*SccLocalPath.*$//g'
find . -type f -name *.*proj -print0 | xargs -0 -r perl -p -i.vssbak -e 's/^.*SccProvider.*$//g'
find . -type f -name *.vssbak -print0 | xargs -0 -r rm -f
find . -type f -name *.*scc -print0 | xargs -0 -r rm -f

Now its easy, to create a GIT repository on top of it.

git init

No Comments »

Flashing STM32 MCU using ST-Link Command Line Utility

January 18th, 2012 | by | technology

Jan
18

You can directly download your compiled HEX file from the Keil µVision 4 IDE or any other IDE to your STM32 value discovery kit or any other STM32 microcontroller, using the command line ST-Link utility. That means, that you don’t need to manually search the HEX file and use the ST-Link Utility GUI to flash the MCU. Just a press of download button in the IDE, will be enough to load your new program to the STM32 MCU and reset it also.

You need to go to the Utilities tab in the project options (ALT + F7) and select the “Use External Tool for Flash programming“. Browse to the path of the “ST-LINK_CLI.exe” program and give the command line arguments as: ‘-c SWD -p "$H@H.hex" -Rst -Run‘.

Flashing STM32 MCU using ST-Link Command Line Utility

No Comments »

Digital Frame implementation using STM32 Cortex M3 processor and FatFs

January 9th, 2012 | by | technology

Jan
09

My first try at implementing Digital Frame using STM32 Cortex M3 processor. Using Keil IDE and STM32VLDISCOVERY as ST-Link for programming. The prototype device is HY-Smart STM32 board. The FAT 32 file system on the SanDisk 8GB card is read using FatFs library. Luckily, most of code is just copied from the sample code provided with the board.

Download code: Digital Frame using STM32 Cortex M3 and FatFs

No Comments »

How to read Circuit Schematics

January 4th, 2012 | by | technology

Jan
04

Yesterday, I watched this amazing tutorial from Collin’s Lab (Make Magazine). Collin has some other interesting videos also like: Electronics Tools, Infrared light, PCB Etching, Pulse Width Modulation, etc. Make sure to watch these.

 

No Comments »

Crack password protected zip files in a minute

December 31st, 2011 | by | technology

Dec
31

I never knew, breaking a password protected zip file, would be so easy. Just broke a password protected zip archive of a code base. The code uses some standard code libraries, which are publicly available. Using the known plain text and Eli Biham and Paul Kocher algorithm to get the PKZip keys, it take seconds to break into the encrypted zip archive.

This bring us, into an interesting question, why we still uses zip standard, when 7z format is there for so many years now. Also, why do we have password requirements for WiFi, etc. where password algorithms flaws have already been shown publicly. Also, what is the use of root digital certificate authority, when they can’t guarantee the authenticity of their own root certificate.

No Comments »

Older Posts