Monthly Archives: March 2009

Convert Unicode Files to ASCII

Posted on March 19, 2009 by under ASCII How I Do IT Unicode VBScript

I had a situation at work recently where I needed to mine some Unicode-formatted HL7 files for data.  For my purposes, I really needed the files in plain text format.  Here’s the VBScript I used to convert the HL7 files … Continue reading →

Posted in ASCII, How I Do IT, Unicode, VBScript | 3 Comments

Idea: Cooperative Music Publishing

Posted on March 18, 2009 by under Music

It’s a pretty simple idea.  You have an internet music station a la SomaFM or Pandora that plays only unsigned bands.  Bands produce their own songs and make them available, free of charge, to the radio station as MP3s (or … Continue reading →

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To Kindle or Not to Kindle

Posted on March 15, 2009 by under Blogs Kindle Twitter

I tweeted earlier today that I was pondering getting a Kindle.  I got a quick reply from @jesslynh with a link to a blog post titled Why you should get a Kindle…or Not. Let’s go over the Shoulds and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogs, Kindle, Twitter | 1 Comment

Using Taskkill to End Remote Processes

Posted on March 11, 2009 by under How I Do IT

You can kill processes on a remote computer by using the taskkill command. Run ‘taskkill /?’ on a command line to see all the options. We use SpySweeper on all our workstations at work. It occasionally hangs during a scan, … Continue reading →

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A VBScript ‘Wake on LAN’ Project

Posted on March 10, 2009 by under How I Do IT VBScript

Note: WordPress does weird things to punctuation, so don’t copy and paste the scripts in this post. For your convenience I’ve packaged the three scripts as plain text VBS files in a ZIP file, which you can download here: VBScript … Continue reading →

Posted in How I Do IT, VBScript | 8 Comments

Tweak XP to Work Better with Older Hardware

Posted on March 8, 2009 by under XP

Change XP to the Classic theme: Right-click on the desktop and select Properties. On the Theme tab, select ‘Windows Classic’ from the drop-down menu. Click Apply, then OK. On systems that use shared system memory for video instead of dedicated … Continue reading →

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