AutoHotKey is a powerful Windows automation tool, capable of doing pretty much anything you could do yourself on your PC. I have a number of scripts I run regularly (or always have running) to speed up my work and/or make it more accurate and efficient.

One of my favorite scripts responds to the key combination of Ctrl-Alt-0 (that's a zero). When I press that combo, a couple things happen:

1) First, the script checks to see if the machine is connected to WiFi, and if so, grabs the name of the WiFi's SSID.

I haven't found a way to make my email 'groups' from Outlook available on a mobile device (Android phone). I've tried several email clients, but none of them brings in the groups I use frequently in Outlook.

Recently, I came up with a workaround, using Outlook rules. Essentially, I can set up a rule with the following criteria:

• Sent from my account

• Sent to my account

  I almost never send mail to myself, so this works. If you routinely cc: yourself, you may need to be careful here.

Background

Network drives allow multiple users on the same network to have acccess to the shared folders/files. However, if you have two different sets of network drives (at work and at home, for example), it can be a hassle to manually map drives when your computer 'resumes' on the new network.

As part of a major kitchen remodel project, we moved the old laundry room up to a 2nd floor closet. With the washer and dryer occupying about a third of the old closet space, we needed an elegant solution to cover the rest of the old closet door space.

We settled on a rustic barn door option. We already had a little experience with distressing new boards to make them look old (from the remodeled kitchen ceiling), so we decided to use that same method on the door.

Notepad++ is a powerful text editor; so much more than a Windows Notepad replacement, and (for me at least) often better for 'real' word processing than Microsoft Word, when coupled with language tools (like Markdown) and plugins.

One of the powerful features in Notepad++ is the Plugin Manager, which provides an easy check-box menu system to install a wide array of plugins that enhance the program. This way, you don't have to mess around with finding and downloading add-ons - it's easy to get them right from the application.

I've had trouble mounting SMB/CIFS External Storage recently in OwnCloud (currently version 9.1). External storage mounts have always been flaky in OwnCloud, but this time I think I found a solid solution.

Here's a log of my experience installing Mosquitto server on Ubuntu 14.04. Mostly, I followed the excellent walkthrough on the OwnTracks Broker page, with a few adjustments along the way.

First, the errors/issues:

From my Windows 7 machine, I've consistently been able to connect via SSH (using Putty) to two different Linux servers. A few weeks ago, one of them stopped responding to connection attempts. Putty would just sit there with a black screen and eventually time out. Troubleshooting attempts:

• It wasn't a local outgoing firewall (or Windows 7) problem, because I could still connect to other OpenSSH servers
• It wasn't a problem with the OpenSSH server itself, because I could SSH to one server, and then SSH from there to the 'problem' server. 

I recently had a need to turn on Bitlocker encryption (in Windows 8.1) for a 1.8 TB external hard drive. After three workdays (more than 24 hours), the drive was claiming it was only 5.2% completed with the encryption step. I searched all over and didn't find an answer, but a colleague recommended plugging the usb drive into a USB 3.0 compliant port, vs. a USB 2.0 port. I had that option available on my machine, and as I'm writing this (about three hours later), the drive is about 67% encrypted. It's working! 

When I tried to install Autohotkey 1.1.20.1 recently on a Windows 8.1 64bit machine, the installer failed. It 'ran' ok, but on the installer splash screen, none of the buttons or links would 'do' anything. I tried the "Express Installation" and "Custom Installation" buttons and the "Read license" and "Extract to..." links. I tried running the installer as an Administrator.

I recently had a complaint of 'abuse' , with my mail server sending out spam.  First, one of my users complained that email was bouncing back, then Linode notified me that I'd been flagged for abuse.  I also found that Spamcop had blacklisted my server.  In the Abuse report from Linode, this line stood out:  X-PHP-Originating-Script: 33:.page93.php(241) : eval()'d code I didn't catch on right away, but that's a warning that a php file (.page93.php) is sending out the email.

I struggled with this long enough, and ended up guessing the right answer; maybe this will save someone else the trouble. On a Windows Server 2003 box, IIS 6, trying to get it to server .aspx pages from a virtual folder.  I could get .html files to serve just fine, but trying to hit an .aspx file kept returning a 404 Not Found Error.  I had to Open the 'Web Service Extensions' folder in IIS Manager, then 'Add a new Web service extension...' to add the .NET 4 application handling.  I used the following:

• Extension Name: - "ASP.NET 4.0"

It took me a long time to find this solution (which worked perfectly), so I'm going to do my part to focus the rest of the Internet that direction.  These instructions worked perfectly to get SQL Server conectivity going for PHP 5.5 (x86), on WIndows 7 x64, running Apache (XAMPP).  http://robsphp.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-to-install-microsofts-sql-serve…

Here's a really nice article that takes the mystery out of autoloaders in PHP.  I've loved the concept, but not understanding the details has caused a frustrating, lost half hour or two...http://www.sitepoint.com/autoloading-and-the-psr-0-standard/

I've been learning to love CSS over the last few years, but have always struggled when it comes to displaying content in a tablular format.  Whenever I've run into the need for it, I've run straight back to the HTML <table> element, and then just felt bad about it later. Today, I accidentally ran into a post on StackOverflow that might finally turn me away from tables forever.