Task Manager can be started three ways:

- Press CTRL + ALT + DELETE and click on the Task Manager button on the Windows Security dialog.
- Right click on the taskbar and chose Task Manager
- Press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC and Task Manager will be launched instantly.

Control Panel apps from the command line:

Windows substitutes the name of the tool you want to run for %1%. For example:
“rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL appwiz.cpl”.
To run the Users tool in Control Panel, type control Ncpa.cpl users, and then press ENTER.

Introduction

Just collecting some useful basic encryption-knowledge here.

Checksums

GnuPG supports new and secure algorithms:
$ gpg –print-md sha1 filename
filename: E83A 42B9 BC84 31A6 6450  99BE 50B6 341A 35D3 DCEB

It also will take multiple files:
$ gpg –print-md sha1 *.txt
test.txt: E0D6 3F44 4253 CED5 9205  4047 4AA6 4E0F FD0F 130D
test2.txt: 32AC 34F9 B7AF 1972 C015  E5EE 456E 89BD CC3C 7246

If you still need MD5, that’s available too:
$ gpg –print-md md5 filename
filename: 26 E9 85 5F 8A D6 A5 90  6F EA 12 12 83 C7 29 C4

The more recent GnuPG versions also support much more secure hash algorithms, such as SHA-512:
$ gpg –print-md sha512 filename
filename: FC37410D 9336DD60 22AEB6A2 A42E82F1 2EA3470D 4982E958 B35C14A0
CF381CD2 3C4CBA35 BE5F11CB 05505ED2 DBF1C7A0 397EFF75 007FAEBB
30B43B30 6514990D

By the way, you can validate these –print-md examples by creating a file called filename containing the single line: The Linux Journal.

Your hash values should have exactly the same hexadecimal value as those in this article if the contents of the file is the same.

(From The Linux Journal)

Key Admin

gpg –list-keys
all present keys will be displayed. To see the signatures as well type:
gpg –list-sigs

Export Keys

The command for exporting a key for a user is:
gpg –export [UID]
If no UID has been submitted all present keys will be exported. By default the output is set to stdout. But with the -o option this is sent to a file. It may be advisable using the option -a to write the key to a 7-bit ASCII file instead of a binary file.

By exporting public keys you can broaden your horizon. Others can start contacting you securely. This can be done by publishing it on your homepage, by finger, through a key server like http://www.pca.dfn.de/dfnpca/pgpkserv/ or any other method you can think of.

Import Keys

When you received someone’s public key (or several public keys) you have to add them to your key database in order to be able to use them. To import into the database the command looks like this:
gpg –import [Filename]

Encrypt

The command to encrypt is
gpg -e Recipient [Data]
or
gpg –encrypt Recipient [Data]

Decrypt

The command for decrypting is:
gpg [-d] [Data]
or
gpg [--decrypt] [Data]
Also here stdout is preset, but with the -o option you can redirect the output to a file.

Signing and Checking Signatures

To sign data with your own key, use the command:
gpg -s (or –sign) [Data]
By doing this also compression takes place. This means that the result is not legible. If you want a legible result you can use:

gpg –clearsign [Data]
this will make sure that the results are clearly legible. Furthermore it does the same (signing data).

With
gpg -b (or –detach-sign) [Data]
you can write the signature in a separate file. It is highly recommended to use this option especially when signing binary files (like archives for instance). Also the –armor option can be extremely useful here.

Quite often you find that data is encrypted and signed as well. The full instruction looks like:
gpg [-u Sender] [-r Recipient] [--armor] –sign –encrypt [Data]

The functionality of the options -u (–local-user) and -r (–recipient) are as described before.

When encrypted data has been signed as well, the signature is checked when the data is decrypted. You can check the signature of signed data by using the command:
gpg [--verify] [Data]
This will only work (of course) when you own the public key of the sender.

(From Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG) Mini Howto (English), Brenno J.S.A.A.F. de Winter)

Connecting to people you know, but haven’t been in touch with for a while, can be a bit frustrating on LinkedIn.

I like LinkedIn as a tool for maintaining contact with people I meet, and also it is a good place to let others search for my cv/qualifications etc.

Since I don’t use it “profesionally” to search for others etc, I don’t want to pay money for a subscription, and this is the root cause of my (now former) problem with adding people.

We all meet a lot of people along the way in our life, and alot of the would be nice to hook up with on LinkedIn. The problem is, often their email address have changed since last time you talked, and even if you find them using a search on LinkedIn, you can not connect without the email they used when they registered!

Thus, I have added a position to the Experience part of my profile. I have called it “Other”, and it is a self-employed position which might as well have been called “Life” or something like that.

Using this position, I can add a conact simply by doing a search, and clicking “Add Tore to your network”. Then, you can add the person under “Business Partner”, selecting your “Other” company.

This may not be the nicest method, but if you want to save the $19.95 per month, is is quite ok.

I reckon this could be used for spamming people you don’t know and try to make them add you, but serious people will just ignore your request if they don’t know you, and also I don’t think it would make a good impression…

TED Talks reposted one of their favorite videoes of 2007, which is Isabel Allende (famous author, born in Peru, brother of Chiles former president Salvador Allende) talking about ”writing, women, passion, feminism”.

The speach is truly worth listening to, as she is as good as a speacher, as she is as a writer.

“Heart is what drives us and determines our lives”

I found the link to her talk at Presentation Zen, which as usual had a great post.

Web Worker Daily has a nice article about staying on the secure side in 2008: Six Ways to Start Off Secure in ‘08.

• Get a USB Thumb Drive for Backups.
• Use a VPN in Public.
• Use the “S” with GMail; https://mail.google.com.
• Run and Regularly Update a Security Suite.
• Be Sure Your Home Wi-Fi Network is Secure.
• Clean Up and Tune Up Your Computer—Free.

There is some great stuff in the article, so it’s well worth a read.

I was exploring some of the articles on Sharpbrains.com today, and I discovered a link to a nice site on meditation.

I have been looking around for something like this, but most of the meditation sites seems to sell meditation classes, and nothing more.

How To Meditate on the other side, seems to have at least some good explanations to learn the basics of meditations. They seem to focus on Buddhist meditation, but I reckon that is as good as any…

Here are some of the topics covered:

Breathing Meditations

Transforming Meditations

Lamrim: The Stages of the Buddhist Path

How to Meditate on Lamrim

Loving Kindness Meditation

(and more…)

1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic understanding will serve you well to appreciate your brain’s beauty as a living and constantly-developing dense forest with billions of neurons and synapses.

2. Take care of your nutrition. Did you know that the brain only weighs 2% of body mass but consumes over 20% of the oxygen and nutrients we intake? As a general rule, you don’t need expensive ultra-sophisticated nutritional supplements, just make sure you don’t stuff yourself with the “bad stuff”.

3. Remember that the brain is part of the body. Things that exercise your body can also help sharpen your brain: physical exercise enhances neurogenesis.

4. Practice positive, future-oriented thoughts until they become your default mindset and you look forward to every new day in a constructive way. Stress and anxiety, no matter whether induced by external events or by your own thoughts, actually kills neurons and prevents the creation of new ones. You can think of chronic stress as the opposite of exercise: it prevents the creation of new neurons.

5. Thrive on Learning and Mental Challenges. The point of having a brain is precisely to learn and to adapt to challenging new environments. Once new neurons appear in your brain, where they stay in your brain and how long they survive depends on how you use them. “Use It or Lose It” does not mean “do crossword puzzle number 1,234,567″. It means, “challenge your brain often with fundamentally new activities.”

6. We are (as far as we know) the only self-directed organisms in this planet. Aim high. Once you graduate from college, keep learning. The brain keeps developing, no matter your age, and it reflects what you do with it.

7. Explore, travel. Adapting to new locations forces you to pay more attention to your environment. Make new decisions, use your brain.

8. Don’t Outsource Your Brain. Not to media personalities, not to politicians, not to your smart neighbor, not to this blogger… Make your own decisions, and mistakes. And learn from them. That way, you are training your brain, not your neighbor’s.

9. Develop and maintain stimulating friendships. We are “social animals”, and need social interaction. Which, by the way, is why the Baby Einstein series has been shown not to be the panacea for children development.

10. Laugh. Often. Especially to cognitively complex humor, full of twists and surprises. Better, try to become the next Jon Stewart, and create your own unique humor.

Read the rest of Fernandez’ entry here.

And for bullet point 1, here is an extract from sharpbrains:

The brain is composed of 3 “brains” or main sub-systems, each named after the evolutionary moment in which the sub-system is believed to have appeared.    A) Neocortex, or Human Brain, is the most recent area, where we perform high-level thinking and complex integrative tasks. Other mammals do have this part too, but in smaller proportion of the whole brain volume.  This is where we have our right and left hemispheres.      B) Limbic System, or Mammalian Brain, critical for emotions and for memory, C) Cerebellum and Stem, or Reptilian Brain, that regulates basic vital variables such as breathing, heartbeat and motor coordination (Credit for pic: Arnold Keyserling and R.C.L.)

Sources:

Sharpbrains; Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together

Fernandez; 10 Habits of Highly Effective Brains

Free is Chris Anderson’s new book. Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired, and this is a great speach about how technology gets so cheap that it’s offered for free, while the business gets its money from other sources.

Lifehack.org:

How To Move Forward Once You Achieve A Big Goal

What do you do once you achieve your big goal and make it to the top? This can become a big problem if it looks like the only way you can go is down. Professional athletes and aging celebrities all face this issue. The problem can be one of maintaining the position if this is what you want or figuring out where to go next while avoiding a big let down. (more @ lifehack.org)

Aligning shapes

Here is a typical Visio drawing, with some shapes here and there.

To make a drawing look better, select all the shapes (in this case the four to the right), and go to menu Shape – Allign Shapes.

Now select Horizontal Allignment = left, and press ok.

Next, go to menu Shape – Distribute Shapes. Select Vertical Distribution = evenly, and press ok.

Result:

Increasing Page size

File – Page Setup, in tab “Page Size”, select Pre-defined size and set it to e.g. A3 to double the size of your “paper”.

Note: This might ruin your print, so be carefull…