The Nerd Lifestyle

Something we recently encountered at the office was getting Windows 7 clients to install the older Crystal Reports ActiveX plugin. We run Crystal Reports Server XI which we have tightly intergrated with our CRM system (SageCRM) due to the lumbering nature of our CRM, we do not update components of it without extensive testing. Thus we are using a slightly older Crystal Server.

Problem: We encountered on some Windows 7 systems during deployment that the Crystal Report Plugin for IE would not install. It’d prompt then present a red x. Searching shows us that IE8/IE9 are not exactly supported. Anyways searching for about 3 hours and trying numerous things here is the work around we found.

• Downgrade to IE8
• Create a local account. Assign that account admin rights.
• Reboot into the created local account
• Enable full UAC
• Browse to the site that wants to present the ActiveX plugin. You should get prompted by UAC.
• Return UAC to the previous level

After that you can reboot and it should now work for all accounts on the workstation (including domain users).

Last Thoughts: I don’t know if downgrading to IE8 is necessary. Something I have noticed with IE and some of the newer features in Vista/Windows 7 that when you disable something that would reside fairly low-level in the program (pop-up blocker in IE) a lot of times even if it is off, it still trips up. I think in this case even though we gave full ActiveX unsigned rights and had UAC off, it still passed that request through that layer and got tripped up. Enabling UAC allows the trip up to be brought up.

We have had luck upgrading to IE9 after the plugin install and having it still work.

So take this as you will.  It is a work around.

This is the path I took in getting squeezeslave to run on my hacked Dockstar (Should work on Pogoplug or Sheeva/Guruplug). Squeezeslave is a software implementation of a squeezebox. It is command line driven and so far fits great on my little marvel devices. I now have one in my daughters room for streaming her children’s audiobooks from our squeezecenter (which is running on another Dockstar).

First thing I did was grab the tarball:

#wget http://squeezeslave.googlecode.com/files/squeezeslave-marvell6281-lnx26.tar.gz

Unpack it

#tar xzfv squeezeslave-marvell6281-lnx26.tar.gz

Which will give you the license file and a executable named squeezeslave. At this point if I attempt to run squeezeslave I get the following.

# ./squeezeslave
PortAudio error4: Host error. Could not open any audio devices.

From my brief understanding (and I mean brief) and light research we need the AOSS wrapper files in order to play with my USB sound device. I grab the following packages:

# apt-get install alsa-oss

Next go into the directory you unpacked squeezeslave in. You should now be able to execute with the following.

#aoss ./squeezeslave -L
Output devices:
* 0: /dev/dsp
#aoss ./squeezeslave IP_of_squeezeboxserver

And that is it. Just run it and point it to the squeezeboxserver.

Thanks to the folks at the squeezebox forums and the authors of squeezeslave.
Current release forum: here

Any questions or more likely corrections, leave a comment.
Edit:
Some people are having issues with it quitting out. I have had luck by running it with ‘-R’

#aoss ./squeezeslave IP_of_squeezeboxserver -R


I have taken the playhouse off the grid.  This weekend I installed a series of 15W PV Panels.  The panels feed 60W into a 7amp charge controller which at this time charges a 55AH deep cycle battery which allows a 110v 200watt inverter to pull power from it.

60W from the sun feeding a 55AH battery

Currently I am using this to power on the coop lights at night to lure the chickens into the coop.  I’ll also wire up a switch in the playhouse for the kids to turn on/off the lights, a fan to exhaust some of the heat in the playhouse and a series of garden lights.

If you are like me you ran to your computer and had someone google “How to unstick a martini shaker”.  Atleast I did.  The information was underwhelming.  With most ending in “OMG Get a Boston style you noob”.  that is all good but I already poured some tasty gin into this and it is subject to melting ice.

I ended up salvaging it by running some warm water over the top.  Leave a comment with your tips for getting these things unstuck!

I was visiting with a neighbor last night and we got on the topic of cycling. Actually we talked about the fact that the STP (Seattle to Portland) ride was this weekend. I talked about my one experience riding the STP. So he told me the bridge pedal was coming up and we should do it. All he had to say was that I could ride my bike across the marquam bridge (My arch traffic nemsis).

So today I dusted off my bike, gave it a quick tune up and went for a Ride. I have until August 18th to get ready. I’ll put it this way, I may have road 210 miles for the STP, but that was 8 years ago!

I got some work to do.

This is hard for me.  This is hard for me to let go.  This is hard for me to embrace something like wordpress with all its widgets and web 2.0 goodness.  This is hard for me to embrace something that I didn’t code myself.