setting a web page to expire on IIS

This is useful for pages which are frequently updated. If this is not done, visitors complain that old content is seen on the page; we need to keep telling them to refresh the page.
Instead, do as shown in the screenshot below.

cyberoam configuration

Sat with P configuring the Cyberoam CR50i for quite a few hours - 1-4 on two afternoons and 8-11 last night.

Actually info on what we needed to do was there in the knowledge base, what we were doing wrong was
(a) using the hardware ports to create sources for port forwarding while creating virtual hosts, and
(b) not creating simple Accept firewall rules with the virtual hosts as the destination.

So, first go to Firewall -> Virtual Hosts and create as required:

Then the firewall rules to allow connections.

We had to make a similar rule for Wan also, of course.

One more thing which we needed to do was to disable the Web console of cyberoam from WAN. This was found in the User Manual, blandly located in Firewall -> Local ACL

the fickleness of printers

While printing to the USB attached printer, I plugged in an external hard disk to another USB port. And the printer stopped mid-job! And wouldn't resume! Had to restart the computer and the printer to continue printing. So, moral of the story - don't do anything to tick off printers!

8 hours recording time with the Transcend MP330

More on recording with the Transcend MP330 - I didn't charge it yesterday, so that I could check out the recording time on one charge. From 13th evening, more than 8 hours recording time over 40 hours. That's good going.

Recording with the built-in mic is almost useless, though. Even the priests chanting more than 5 metres away makes it saturated.

making chages to Daylight Saving Time dates

The dates when Daylight Saving Time starts or ends for various countries varies from year to year, and periodically we have to update our schedule page's database. Earlier, I was doing it manually one by one, changing something like 30+ records. This was both painful and error-prone. This time, I made some SQL queries to make it relatively painless. I've saved them locally as zonestoupdate.txt - queries along the lines of
UPDATE `radiosai_zone_master` SET `dstEndDay` = '31' WHERE `dstEndDay` =25 AND `dstEndMonth` =10
for countries in Europe etc.

recording with the Transcend MP330

I'm using the Transcend MP 330 for recordings in PC, using it's line-in with a Tascam US-144 as a pre-amp. For powering the US-144 - it needs 500 mA through USB cable - I used the old Tangerine iBook.

The first session had the level set too high - all the way up on the US-144's line-out control. For the second session onwards, set the line-out to 50% - that seems to be the sweet spot. This particular US-144 seems to have something wrong with the right line-out (or maybe the right input) with a continuous hum/hiss. But not too bad - when the input is turned down to 50%, the S/N is good enough so that the hum/hiss is drowned in ambient noise.

running 1920x1080 on saispace2

As noted in my last post, I tried out a GeForce 6200 card borrowed from P. It had a DVI out, so I tried connecting it to the monitor with a DVI to VGA adapter. Maybe because the output was DVI-D and not DVI-A the monitor did not show any display. No DVI cable to test direct DVI connection, either. And no display from the integrated AGP, since the AGP card in the slot probably overrides the integrated graphics.

Then, tried seeing the tech specs of the integrated Intel 865 graphics. Apparently it supports upto 2048x1536. Various forum posts say that with Linux drivers, people have used 1920x0180, and recommend Windows users to update the driver. Accordingly updated the driver to version 14.17, released in 2007. Now when I disabled "Hide modes that this monitor cannot display" and chose to list all modes, 1920x1080 was listed! Directly viewing it on the LG Studioworks 221U 21 inch monitor showed the desktop as spanning more than the viewable area, with the mouse making the screen pan when taken out of left or right end of the screen. The 1080p video played without any stuttering, and the Optoma EP 1080 projector displays it just fine. And when the VGA out of the Optoma is connected to the LG monitor, it displays the whole screen, with a mode of 67.5 kHz vert. 60 Hz horiz. Since the Samsung Syncmaster 753 Dfx with the touchscreen upstairs is supposed to support 30-70 kHz, maybe it will even work with the touchscreen.

trying to run 1920x1080 with the Matrox card

In order to play the MirrorDome videos, I need a computer. The tests were done with my laptop, which could comfortably play 1920x1080 at native resolution, since it has nVidia graphics - GeForce 9100M G. Trying to run on saispace2 was altogether different. It has a 2.7 GHz P4 processor, so it should be capable of playing 1080p. But the integrated Intel graphics can only go up to 1600x1200, though it plays the video fine. With the Matrox G400, the driver in WinXP doesn't seem to be accelerated. (Also, 1920x1440 is available, but not 1920x1080, even when "List all modes" is enabled.) So, the video plays at something like 1 fps! Tested the mga driver using puppy linux 5.11 - that too doesn't play the video. Now probably I will test with a graphics card "borrowed" from P.

Meanwhile, the network card stopped working on saispace2 - the device was just not seen on device manager, and was not seen in Linux either. Maybe due to inserting it without unplugging the power from the cabinet. Swapped it out for another DLink DFE 538 TX card, same problem. Then tried an old 10 Mbps card, NEC compatible - that one is working.