Technology How To’s

How To: Use Equation editor in Office 2008 (for Mac)

Posted by Rick on in Microsoft, OSX, Technology How To's 2 Comments

How To: Use Equation editor in Office 2008 (for Mac)

Equation Editor in Office 2008 should be installed by a default install of Office. If for some reason it is not, you’ll need to find your Office Disc and reinstall Office 2008 for Macintosh.

To check if Equation Editor is already installed, look in /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008/Office. The Application, Equation Editor, should located there. But you don’t need to launch it from here or you’ll get error messages saying fonts are missing. Equation Editor is meant to be used inside of Word, and other Office applications.

To use Equation Editor, first step is to launch “Word” from your toolbar, or from Applications.

In Word, click on “Insert” in the menu bar, then at the bottom choose “Object.”

Choose “Equation Editor” from the list of Object Types.

Type in the required equation using the buttons at the top of the Equation Editor to get the Mathematical Operations needed.

Once you have your equation, click the red button in the upper left hand corner to close the Equation Editor. This will automatically insert the equation you just entered into the Word document at the cursor location.

Keep in mind this is for MS Office 2008 for Mac only. If you know how to do this in Office 2011 for Mac, please comment below!

How To: Tweak OS X “Spaces”

Posted by Rick on in Apple, OSX, Technology How To's 0 Comment

How To: Tweak OS X “Spaces”

Spaces is OSX’s cool virtual window program that allows “multiple” desktops to be setup. The thought is that it allows you to group programs together by task and thereby increasing your workflow productivity.

Apple has a great tutorial on how to really maximize it’s usefulness.

But some of us want to tweak it’s usability. For instance to disable the “teleport to another space feature” in terminal (as root)

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO

killall Dock

To switch back:

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool YES

killall Dock

To remove the animation between spaces:

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES

killall Dock

Please comment and add any other tricks you have.

How To: Fix Portable Ubuntu Remix in Windows

Posted by Rick on in Linux, Technology How To's 1 Comment

How To: Fix Portable Ubuntu Remix in Windows

The Portable Ubuntu Remix or pubuntu project allows Linux to run INSIDE Windows as a native win32 application. This is not the same as running Linux within a VMWare or Virtual Machine environment.

Recent versions have become much more stable, to the point that it’s now possible to even run Gnome (a typical Linux GUI Desktop). Screenshots can be found on Lifehacker.

Installing Pubuntu is actually pretty easy, just open the downloaded file, click on the application and follow the prompts.

The first thing to do after it’s installed is to change the default user and password. (pubuntu, 123456)

1. Open up a terminal
2. Type: adduser (Replace with the new user name from here down)
3. Enter the password 123456 if prompted for pubuntu’s password and then fill out the information it asks for
4. type: cd (Just to make sure you’re in the right directory)
5. type: cp ./* ..//
6. type: cp ./.* ..//
7. type: cd ../
8. type: chown *
9. type: chown .[^.]*
10. type: chgrp *
11. type: chgrp .[^.]*
12. type: sudo nano /etc/event.d/tty1
13. Find the line near the bottom that says: exec /sbin/mingetty –autologin pubuntu tty1
14. Replace pubuntu with the new name
15. press Ctrl+X, press Y, press ENTER
16. type: sudo nano /etc/init/tty1
17. Repeat steps 13-15
18. type: sudo visudo
19. Find the line that says: root ALL=(ALL) ALL
20. Underneath it, add the following line: ALL=(ALL) ALL
21. Repeat step 15
22. type: reboot

Every once in a while pubuntu’s fstab will get messed up. If it hangs when trying to launch, you need to do this:

1. Look for the pubuntu icon in your task bar, right click it, and click restore
2. In the terminal that pops up, press ESCAPE
3. type: mount -o remount,rw /
4. type: nano /etc/fstab
5. delete the “-e” at the beginning of a line, just after cofsX.
6. Press Ctrl+X, press Y, and press ENTER
7. type: nano /etc/init.d/postmount_pubuntu.sh
8. replace the first like (#! /bin/sh) with #! /bin/bash
9. Press Ctrl+X, press Y, and press ENTER (again)
10. type: reboot

Poking a hole in that pesky firewall.

Posted by Rick on in Hacking, Linux, Technology How To's, Unix 0 Comment

Poking a hole in that pesky firewall.

There are more than a few ways to access a firewall.  I will be giving a brief tutorial for one of the more common methods. Called “poking a hole”, or professionally called an SSH back door.  Please, please be careful with this, any script kiddy with 30 lines of code can exploit an SSH server.

This is a great post by IBM detailing it pretty well. If you have any question feel free to leave a comment and I will assist you.

  1. SSH from ginger to blackbox.example.com with the -R flag. I’ll assume that you’re the root user on ginger and that tech will need the root user ID to help you with the system. With the -R flag, you’ll forward instructions of port 2222 on blackbox to port 22 on ginger. This is how you set up an SSH tunnel. Note that only SSH traffic can come into ginger: You’re not putting ginger out on the Internet naked.You can do this with the following syntax: ~# ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 thedude@blackbox.example.com

    Once you are into blackbox, you just need to stay logged in. I usually enter a command like:

    thedude@blackbox:~$ while [ 1 ]; do date; sleep 300; done

    to keep the machine busy. And minimize the window.

  2. Now instruct your friends at tech to SSH as thedude into blackbox without using any special SSH flags. You’ll have to give them your password: root@tech:~# ssh thedude@blackbox.example.com .
  3. Once tech is on the blackbox, they can SSH to ginger using the following command: thedude@blackbox:~$: ssh -p 2222 root@localhost
  4. Tech will then be prompted for a password. They should enter the root password of ginger.

Thanks IBM.